The CRAP Report

How lame does that title sound, huh?  Almost as lame as what one client told me, regarding how prospects would feel about their product:  “The streets are going to want to marry you!”  You know what I found during that campaign?  The streets didn’t even understand my language.

One of the most vital aspects of any good sales prospecting effort is the script that your business development rep’s are going to use.  The truth is that people are more likely to respond to an email these days than they are pick up the phone, and it is that truth alone that makes having a quality sales prospecting script a must.  While I’m a firm believer that the best way to generate fully qualified leads is through the phone, I also know how difficult that can be if the script that you’re using isn’t good.  It is critical that a good teleprospecting script comprises the following: 

1.  It doesn’t sound “scripted” – You know what its like to get a call with someone trying to sell you something at home, be it a newspaper subscription or digital cable.  They all HAVE this one in common, that they sound scripted.  A good manager will work with his/her BDR’s to ensure that their teleprospecting script doesn’t sound “scripted,” and that it flows well.

2.  It does get to the point – Please, please, please do not product dump!  NOBODY wants to listen to 47 seconds of your BDR babbling about your technology, I can promise you this.  A good script is going to get to point and do it fast.  Tell the prospect why they want to talk with you, not about you.

3.  It does get the prospect talking – This may sound remedial, but you’d be surprised at the number of scripts I look at from client’s that do not end their intro with an open ended question.  One of the most important things that BDR’s can do to ensure a better, more qualified sales opportunity is to ask open ended questions.  We’re trying to, as my colleague Matt described in his blog on the 16^th, paint a picture as to what the opportunity really looks like for our client.  The more a sales prospecting script is loaded with open ended questions, the more we can get prospects talking.

Now, about the clients who told me that “the streets [would] want to marry me”?  The script that I originally got from them was just full of techno-babble and product dumping, and that’s why it wasn’t a hit with “the streets.”  “The streets,” in this instance, were looking for a quick way to separate themselves from me, not marry me.  For now, keep the script real by following the guidelines above, and maybe you’ll get some play that way.