Scripting for Inside Sales

A lot of people are turned off by the idea of a scripted call. They are concerned that it won't sound natural, that it will sound forced and artificial. They are convinced it will will render Inside Sales Reps incapable of thinking for themselves or on their feet. They are right! There is nothing worse than a badly trained agent, reading a badly written script.

I'm currently preparing to faciliate a sales training program at a local university. One of the areas we will be discussing is the differences between inside and outside sales. On the handouts that were given to me (I'm following their lesson plans), "scripted" is one of the differences atributed to inside sales.

But hold on a minute, the best outside sales people I know prepare their calls thoroughly, down to the words they will use. Isn't that scripted? The difference would be that the inside person gets to write it down and refer to it during the conversation, while the outside rep must memorize it.

The very best inside scripts are carefully written to allow for conversation, not just a one-sided announcement (and then management wonders why sales aren't better). Inside reps are trained to use them, trained to help make someone else's words or thoughts their own. Giving someone a desk, a chair, a phone and a computer and telling them to "just read the script and you'll be fine" is the type of situation that leads to those awful calls to people who can't get off the phone fast enough. The potential buyer stopped listening and is only waiting for a pause to break in and say a hurried "thank you but we're not interested at this time" and swiftly hang the phone up. No, there's no sales to be made that way.

What if, instead, inside sales reps were trained properly? What if they role-played extensively through many situations before beginning to make any calls? You'd be surprised at how much more effective, how many more sales would be closed and how much more motiviated to succeed your inside sales reps would be.