Participating in business development activities is rarely a default behavior. Sure, it’s incredibly important, but typically only occurs when the sales pipeline starts running empty. Instead of going into sales calls completely cold, why not use scripting? Scripting helps alleviate pressure and can also improve sales performance by helping convey complex concepts in a concise, articulate manner. It takes a little practice, but by following these steps, you too can reap the rewards of scripting.
1. Develop Key Themes
Coming up with something new and insightful to capture the attention of your prospects rarely comes easy. Instead of thinking of specific angles, start by thinking in terms of themes. Themes enable you to organize your thoughts and content and help bring variety to your messaging.
2. Develop Talking Points for Each Theme
Under each theme, come up with 10-15 things should be said about that theme. During your first go around, just dump ideas onto the page. You’ll go back later to organize, but you don’t want to stop your creative thinking processes. Once you’ve put all of the information you can think of into bullet points, organize the data from most to least important.
3. Create Email and Voicemail Scripts
After writing the talking points, you can leverage the content to create email and voicemail scripts. Because you’ve written the talking points and organized them, you know the three or four key points you want to make your prospect aware of and can use them concisely in your scripts.
You may struggle at first but stick with it. Scripts work and can help you and your team members build confidence.