Do You Think Scripts Are Good or Bad? How About Both!

I am not a script guy. I have some deep beliefs about typical sales scripts and why they don’t work. Perhaps you have built your career on scripts.

So before you get all judgmental and click out of this blog, let me explain what I mean. Every time I am handed a script, I think to myself, “I would never say this.”

I especially love the scripts that include what the buyer will say. Whenever I read those scripts, I think, “There is no way the customer is going to say this!”

On the flip side, I believe scripts can be very helpful.

Wait…what? Didn’t I just say that I don’t believe in scripts? Ya, I did. Now that I have your attention, let me unpack my thinking here.

The key to why I don’t like scripts is that they make me sound like a robot.  Let me give you an example. Perhaps you are told to say something like this to customers:

“Our homes come with a 10 year warranty! That gives you the peace of mind you are looking for, wouldn’t you agree?”

You might be thinking, what’s wrong with that? I will tell you and I really want you to get this:

I don’t talk like that in my real life! Do you?

I can’t imagine being with someone at a coffee shop and saying to him or her, “You would love another refill of your coffee, wouldn’t you agree?”

Uhhh… YUCK.

Instead, I would probably say, “I am going to get another refill. You want one?”

The down side of repeating a script someone else wrote for you is that it causes you to speak in sales script language. But a script can be a powerful thing… with one rule.

The script must be in your own words.

When you write a script in your own words, practice becomes about getting further into your customer’s life.

Think about it. Most sales people are too busy trying to figure what they are going to say next and the conversation is stock full of words like “Soooo…..” and “Ummm”. In other words, they are in their head trying to figure out what they will say next. You know where they should be? In their customer’s life!

Here’s your tweetable:
“You are either in your head or in your customer’s life,
but you can’t be in both at the same time.”

So how do you get out of your head and into your customer’s life? Write down and practice your own words over and over again. Get your part out of the way so you can give your customers 100 percent of your attention.

Doing so will allow you to communicate at a much higher level. You will hear tonality shifts in your customer’s voice. You will see non-verbal communication you most likely have not picked up on before.

Get out of your head and into the customer’s life through practicing your own scripts and watch how you change people’s worlds.