Your reps don’t need cold calling scripts, your reps need call frameworks.
Have you ever heard someone jump for joy when you say “here is a script” or worse, have you ever heard someone scripted and said, “Wow, now I really feel a connection to this rep”?
Odds are you have not.
So I would assert that we should leave scripts to actors and take a more practical approach with sales teams.
Some of you might be asking “what’s the difference” between cold calling scripts and a framework? Well, the framework is more of a shortened version of a talk track or snippets of information that can be worked into a natural conversation.
In many ways, your reps need frameworks to allow for call guidance that sounds natural, fast training, and on top of this, they need real-time feedback. We will outline these in more detail below, but if you take anything out of this blog, it will be that it’s up to you to help your reps know what to say.
That is why your reps don’t need cold calling scripts, they need sales call frameworks.
What really happens on cold calls
We have all been there, the first day on the job, not having any clue what to say.
New reps start listening to demos, taking notes, and bullet-pointing out pieces of the call that they think is critical.
They end up with a list of bullets for how they “think” the call will/can/should go, and then, they get a crash course in reality when their first call goes south (bye-bye $500 lead).
A couple of problems arise here (outside of being wasteful):
- Depending on who they listen to and derive their notes from, they could be picking up and using bad habits.
- They may not be hitting on the right information to be the most effective with the leads they are provided or that they obtain.
- The company has almost no say in how the information is learned and then repeated on sales calls. If there were some guidance and measurement, it would solve these problems, but scripts are strongly avoided because of how unnatural people sound when they use them as well as the team’s reluctance to use them.
Again, your reps don’t need cold calling scripts, they need frameworks.
Why your team needs call guidance, not cold calling scripts
The best way to work through the problem of not using scripts is breaking out a call guide or sales call framework.
Most of the time, this is a call flow with bulleted sections of easy-to-consume information.
This gives you several advantages over a script because your reps can personalize and inject their personality, but you can tightly control and measure talk-track (framework) success. If you already have an ideal call or call structure in place, odds are your team has something like this already that is passed down from rep to rep.
The good news is that you now have the opportunity to take control of what is being talked about and learned by your incoming reps. Plus you can see who is adhering to best practices inside of your tenured pool of sales reps.
All important things when it comes to cold calling.
Why onboarding is important
Humans have amazing brains – odds are, your sales reps are also human.
So the question remains – how do you get them to onboard quickly and effectively?
If you said “scripts” enthusiastically, then you may need to go back to the previous sections.
Frameworks and talk tracks are actually some of the fastest ways for your reps to consume information, learn, and get “call ready” as soon as possible.
This statement is backed up both in psychology and science.
Inc. Magazine does a great job explaining all of the physiological benefits of consuming information via bullet points. This is especially important in outbound sales and in SDR-type positions.
The reason this is so important is that those positions tend to have higher turnover rates and need faster onboarding to be successful.
Abstrakt was designed to deliver these bullet points in real-time, and report on how reps adhere to their frameworks.
Reps need real-time guidance
Your reps don’t need call scripts, they need real-time feedback and guidance.
Imagine a world where you could pause time and give a rep the perfect bullet point to overcome an objection… would your reps be more successful?
This is why real-time objection handling is so important for new reps. They need to know how to overcome objections, sometimes live on a call, even when they may have never heard of the objection before.
Abstrakt helps overcome this problem from a technology standpoint. However, you don’t need Abstrakt to do this… you just need to listen to every call in real-time – but we know most managers don’t have time for that.
Guess we should have led with “your reps don’t need cold calling, they need Abstrakt”.
Anyways, if you want to see how Abstrakt can help – book your demo here. Otherwise, continue what you’re doing and hope your team doesn’t get left behind.