Improve Call Effectiveness Without Scripts

Call scripts have been a classic tool in telemarketing and sales, but executives and business people have become much more tuned to canned questions. We use two simple but much more effective tools to plan and execute calls: AAA Call Planning and Call Flows.

“AAA Call Planning”
Even if a sales person take just five minutes, they can quickly generate a list of objectives for their call:

1. What Answers do you want to learn in the call?
2. What Attitudes do you wish the prospect to feel?
3. What Actions should occur after the call?

“Call Flow”
The order of questions (how the conversation flows) makes a dramatic difference in the ease and productivity of calls. First, we reverse the classic cold call method that teaches salespeople to use the first 30 seconds to spark a prospect’s interest. We teach sales people a nonthreatening, research-oriented approach that uses the beginning of the call to learn about the propect’s business and needs. The sales person positions our service and value at the end of the call, after they’ve just uncovered the prospect’s needs, meaning they position the solution to the specific needs of the prospect distracting, irrelevant information.

Below is a typical “flow” for a research call. The sales person has previously set up the appointment:
1. Opening
2. Discuss prospect’s current business situation (open ended questions)
3. Probe for prospect’s needs (and confirm understanding of the needs)
4. Position solution
5. Handle objections
6. Next steps
7. Follow up