Words that Work

Within the compressed sales scenario of the telephone contact, words and phrasing often tend to carry more weight and have more of an impact than in print. Selecting the right words for your next campaign involves much more than deciding what goes after “hello.”

In the last TeleDIRECT (“Ready, Fire, Aim!”, page T8, August), we focused on understanding customers and prospects thoroughly before crafting any kind of telephone sales campaign. Let’s assume you’ve done your due diligence in this area by:

– Searching your database and customer buying histories to generally understand which people are the most profitable to you AND which prospects never seem to buy.

– Profiling your most profitable customers, documenting their basic “buying statistics.”

– Talking with buyers and non-buyers to learn more about the emotions behind the buying decision.

– Creating a list of hot buttons that would interest well-qualified prospects and compel them to respond.

Now you’re ready to tackle one of the most daunting tasks of any telephone marketing program: developing the first draft of a script for crash-testing.

The word “script” is used here to represent the full range of telephone presentation tools – from tightly controlled verbatim scripts to loose call outlines. Whatever its format, the script is a must within the call center for many reasons:

– A well-designed script greatly reduces the time new phone reps take to become productive while they learn the subtle nuances of your product/service in climbing the learning curve.

– Without a script, management has no way of knowing which elements of the presentation are working or not working. Many times the success of a telephone campaign hinges on a handful of well-chosen phrases or words.

– Scripts offer a level of consistency across the diverse telephone workforce.

– The best scripts allow lesser-skilled representatives to achieve more success on the phone by emulating the phrases, questions and presentation points of their higher-skilled counterparts.

– Scripts allow the marketing department to test various campaign elements (such as the offer, price, incentives, buying terms, etc.) within a more controlled environment.

Even with all these very good reasons for scripting, some companies still hold a bit of a bias against formalized scripts. The fact is that we all use scripts – especially outside field reps. They’re just not written down, thought through, tested or highly consistent. If you’re skeptical about that, try traveling for a day or two with a field sales rep. You’ll find that successful outside reps stick pretty closely to a basic pitch – which is just an unwritten script in their heads.

What most people really object to is not the written phone script, it’s an unnaturally written phone script that’s inappropriate and sounds as though it’s being read (usually poorly). That’s one reason why the best scripts are recorded and transcribed instead of written.

The first step in combating this problem is designing a flexible script that focuses on the needs of the prospect and speaks his/her language.

To illustrate this point, let’s return to the real-life example we used in the last issue: a well-recognized company selling a technical fix for a legacy computer system within the financial services market. Decision makers for this program included the main technical resource for the bank as well as upper management, usually at the vice presidential level or higher within the branch.

Since the technical know-how differed greatly among this group, the main benefits of the fix being sold had to be translated accordingly. Regardless of the title or the function of the person, his or her technical savvy could be determined fairly quickly based on language and questions.

Once we knew whether we were dealing with a techie or non-techies, we could also determine which of two benefits would be most compelling: the fix’s positive impact on the business or the fix’s positive impact on the skill set required in solving the problem.

For non-techies, the fix would improve system failure recovery time and be fully automated, saving the extra time and money it would take their own technicians to fix the problem. For techies, the fix would prevent inadvertent restoration of non-OS data files, and had a built-in patch dependency checking and validation.

Beyond the obvious advantage of being able to talk the prospect’s language, this exercise is a key first step in getting to the heart of the script even before you tackle the first hello.

What ARE the main benefits to the decision makers and influencers? What needs do these benefits fulfill? What problems do they fix? How is what you’re offering better than what the competition can offer or better than how the prospect is currently addressing the situation? How can what you’re offering be best positioned with different levels of decision makers?

Without completing this exercise, it’s next to impossible to begin the conversation with what I call an “ear opener.” This is the interest-generating opening statement that gets your foot in the door and piques the prospect’s curiosity so they will listen more closely for a few more seconds.

The best ear openers provide instant credibility by citing proven results for a group to which the prospect belongs. Here’s an example I use:

“I’ve developed new scripting techniques for call centers like yours that can typically increase sales per hour by 5% to 40%. On a recent project, we actually doubled the firm’s conversion rate…”

Here’s another example from a client program:

“We recently worked with a customer in your industry who increased recovery of deductions by 500% without adding any additional staff…”

The idea is to make a connection to the customers you serve, and cite typical or extraordinary results that most people with those needs would want for themselves.

Again, the technique is successful because it concentrates on how your customers have benefited and what your prospects need, not on what you have to sell.

The exact same ear opening technique can be used for new products or services with no track record by adapting it slightly: “We designed this service so you can increase the percentage of deductions you recover without adding any additional staff…” From here, all you need is one satisfied customer and success story to beef up your opener with some specific statistics.

The ear opener is usually followed by a “take away”: “I don’t know if we can achieve the same results for you” and “permission to qualify”: “If I haven’t caught you at a bad time, I’d like to learn a little more about your situation to see if what I have to offer is a good fit for you.”

Like most elegant scripting solutions, these techniques sound deceptively simple. In fact, they require some knowledge to design effectively and some skill to implement through training and skill development. While more prevalent within business-to-business phone campaigns, they can also be adapted for consumer scripting.

In either case, the results are definitely worth the effort to differentiate yourself from the pack, especially since outbound telemarketing is approaching the saturation level.

Customer-centric scripting – which starts and ends with the prospect’s needs above all else – not only outperforms traditional telemarketing scripts, it leaves everyone involved with a better feeling about the call.