The Hottest Selling Tool

What characteristic distinguishes the sales superstar – that rare individual who consistently outperforms his or her peers by pulling in 50, 100 and in some cases 1000 percent more business than the other members of the sales team? How are these people able to earn $100,000 $5,000,000 and even $1 million a year in personal income?

The answer, discovered by several research groups in the late 1970’s, is a variety of key personality traits, which many salespeople possess in total or in part, plus one extra unheralded attribute. The sales superstars – geniuses of the presentation, close and handling of objections – use the most powerful selling tool available: the sales script book.

For decades, organized sales script books have been in use by some of the nation’s most successful companies. In the same time it takes others to make only a mediocre showing, corporations like IBM, New York Life and AT&T have all used script books to help their sales professionals reach top dollar figures. These companies have invested time and money to develop sales script books for their salespeople. They have also zealously guarded these secret weapons to keep them out of the hands of the competition. No one wants the best sales lines of their most powerful sales men and women floating around for anyone to see – and use.

SCRIPT BOOK PROTECTION

To protect the script book from the ravages of the competition’s copy machine, some corporations have even printed their script books in blue ink on blue paper. Still others hand out their script books in the morning and collect them again for safe storage overnight in a vault! A large savings and loan institution assigns special numbers to each script book so management can track the exact whereabouts of any book during the course of a business day.

If this seems a bit cloak and dagger to you, consider the following. Sales superstars have distinctive forms of verbal communication that, when coupled with selling skills, have an almost magical effect on customers. In short, they don’t talk like everyone else, but the words and phrases they use make the prospect act. When these words and phrases are collected and organized into a sales script book, the power can be transferred to anyone – to me, or to you. This alone makes the script book a major resource for success and profit. No wonder companies protect their script books with the tenacity of generals guarding the war room.

HOW YOU CAN GET A SCRIPT BOOK

So, where can you get one? Well, script books are not available at your local bookstore. Neither can they be ordered from any mail order company. Script books are customized sales tools made up not only for your industry but for your particular company. The best way to organize and duplicate the persuasive powers of sales superstars is by actually traveling with them, listening to their magic words and phrases, recording the way they handle objections, stalls, presentation and closes, and then compiling a “best of” script book that duplicated their selling style. A book like this makes it possible for you to reproduce your best salesperson’s best selling phrases – ones that work over and over for anyone.

Take a few moments to make a few mental notes on how a script book – a tool that can reproduce your top salespeoples’ efforts – can improve your business outlook, and your own personal income. At stake are perhaps millions of dollars in sales. What do you have to do to get it and is it worth the trouble, the time, the money? You tell us.

Sales script books are powerful and they work. They help even the best salespeople turn in a consistent top performance. With a script book at his fingertips, Tom Olds, who in 1982 earned $38,000 selling taxfavored investments to wealthy clients in Orange County, California, increased his personal income in 1985 to over $500,000. Tom’s script book sits on his desk next to his phone. With it, he can make over 100 calls a day, without being worn out or stale. Long after most of his competitors are exhausted and ready to call it quits, Tom is fresh and has the energy to make an extra 20 or 30 calls. Late in the afternoon he may be hit by any one of dozens of objections, stalls or resistance. He quickly turns to the appropriate section of his script book and glances down at an extraordinary variety of powerfully persuasive ways of handling each one. His competitors are by now sitting down, martini in hand, wondering how they could have handled that last objection, while Tom is still using the most awesome lines in the business to close more sales.

This is not fantasy. The script book is organized into sections for every possible situation you may encounter. Tab dividers give you easy access to each one, whether it is objections, stalls, closes or openings. The prospect says XY8 and you say QB2. It takes some training, and it takes some studying. You have to be able to use this powerful tool correctly for it to work for you. But, once mastered, it will help you outperform your own best performance consistently. With proper training, you can even read from the script book over the phone and no one will ever know.

Along with a custom made script book, you also get training in voice control and speech patterning. Sales champions know that we trust people who sound the way we sound. Therefore, they match the customer’s tone, pacing, phrasing, and modulation. Sales superstars do this almost without thinking. But it can be trained. The customer will never know that you are reading from a script book, or that you even glanced at one before your meeting with him.

For instance, Mary Stewart calls on Dr. Goodenough. She knows from a previous phone call that his major objections are likely to be 1) price, 2) her company’s service contract, and 3) equipment reliability. She parks outside his office and, before getting out of the car, looks at the following sections in her script book: “PRICE,” “SERVICE CONTRACT,” and “EQUIPMENT RELIABILITY.”

Written out in clear passages are the most powerful responses to each one of these objections – phrases that have consistently won sales in exactly the same situation before – and by superstars of selling. Mary is now in control. She makes a mental note of which phrases will work when she hears Dr. Goodenough’s objections, she goes in, and closes the sale. She is relaxed, confident, and handles the situation with an effortless ease that puts her prospect’s fears to rest.

CREATIVITY AND THE SCRIPT BOOK

Script books will not decrease a salesperson’s own creativity. On the contrary, they free him to be even more creative. The client will be impressed with your understanding of his needs, and your ability to think on your feet without making him wait for an answer. With hundreds of scripts at your command, you won’t ever find yourself using the same old cliche over and over – the standard answers that prospects have heard before and that bore you both to death. Script books give you a freedom that no other form of selling skill can.

Script books give you flexibility. They may contain as many as thirty or more responses to one objection. No salesperson could possibly remember, on his own, everything that the script book contains. It gives you serious responses, soft responses, tough responses, and even funny responses. Many a sale has been closed because the salesperson was able to make the prospect laugh – at his own tension or at the situation. Script books help you to be logical, assertive, creative, humorous, serious, reassuring, and relaxed. What more could you possible need?

THE SCRIPT BOOK AS ART

The sales script book is really a business art form. This means that there are few masters of the trade. In choosing someone to create your script book, you must keep certain qualities and qualification in mind. First, check for experience. Anyone can say he’ll do the job for you, but let him show you books he has already produced. Check for references and call them. If a company has increased sales by two or three million dollars because of the intelligent decision to hire a script book consultant, they’ll be only too glad to brag about it.

Second, make sure your script book consultant has a library of 20 or 30 script books to draw on. No matter how good your best salespeople are, there will always be two ways of handling objections, stalls, etc., that even they haven’t thought of. For this you need a backlog of scripts to fill out your own.

Third, your script book consultant must do field research for your company and product with your best producers. If a script book writer tells you he can produce your book from his office without much research in the field, run like hell. You’ll be wasting your time and money. No good script book was ever produced without extensive field research and travel with top producers.

Finally, be sure your script book consultant has the experience, knowledge, and skill to train your people in using your custom made sales script book. What does all this add up to for you? That’s an easy one: more sales, consistent high performances, no more motivation problems, and less stress. Is there anything else that a sales team needs?

Now you’re probably wondering what all this costs. Well, it isn’t cheap, that’s for sure. But if it were, you would be getting in value exactly what you were paying out. A script book is a long term selling tool that takes time to research and prepare. Furthermore, your people will have to be taught how to use it and how to use their own voices to their best advantage. This is a tool that is custom tailored to your business, territory, and product. It’s also likely to produce 10 to 20 times what it cost – in the first year of use.

COST AND VALUE

How much does it cost – exactly? We can’t give you a figure because script books vary in length, and in research time to prepare. Small companies with twenty salespeople may need a script book that takes four weeks to prepare, has 30 pages, and costs five to ten thousand dollars. A major corporation may spend as much as $100,000 on a script book that can be 200 pages long and used by thousands of salespeople in twenty different territories. There are even script books used by international companies written for countries as varied as Saudi Arabia and Australia.

The two things we can tell you for certain about script books are that they work and they are here to stay. In the future, most of the companies in your industry will be using a script book in some form. Right now only a fortunate few are aware of the great advantages a script book offers. If you are sincere about wanting to improve your sales and profits, look into script books today.

In later issues, Dr. Moine and Mr. Gschwandtner will discuss the specifics of building your own script book, how to train salespeople in using a script book, and how to find the right script book consultant for your company. For additional information, call 703)752-7000.