What's Wrong With This Cold Calling Script?
Here's a gawd-awful cold-calling script that a reader just sent to me. See if you can find all the problems and errors, then click on the link below for my commentary:
- Script: "Good morning/afternoon, my name is _______ and I am with Acme Publicity Solutions. I was wondering if I could please speak with whoever is in charge of your marketing and advertising decisions."
- Instruction: If not in/busy, note contact name and make attempts to call back or find out when would be best. Make sure that you get contact name and say it.
- Script: "Good morning/afternoon ________ , my name is _______ from Acme Publicity Solutions. We offer a lot of solutions for any sort of business to increase visibility or revenue and have specialists that would work with your company to provide you with what you want and need. We're also a member of your local Chamber of Commerce (if applicable!) and like to work with other local businesses."
- Instruction: If conversation continues, mention our products/services and that we have a marketing specialist to get the most out of the market.
- Script: "If you would like I could have a specialist give you a call to flesh out the details and give you anything you need that I can't provide."
- Instruction: When done cold call go to Excel sheet and update as necessary. In contacted for all successful contacts place 'y' for all unsuccessful place 'n' in column.
It's incredible that anyone thought this script would generate any business. You could mate Steve Jobs with Ron Popeil (there's an image for you, eh?) and the resulting super-sales-pro couldn't get a conversion with this script. Here are my specific comments:
- Script: "Good morning/afternoon, my name is _______ and I am with Acme Publicity Solutions. I was wondering if I could please speak with whoever is in charge of your marketing and advertising decisions." [1]
- Instruction: If not in/busy, note contact name and make attempts to call back or find out when would be best. [2] Make sure that you get contact name and say it.
- Script: "Good morning/afternoon ________ , my name is _______ from Acme Publicity Solutions. We offer a lot of solutions [3] for any sort of business [4] to increase visibility or revenue [5] and have specialists that would work with your company to provide you with what you want and need [6]. We're also a member of your local Chamber of Commerce and like to work [7] with other local businesses."
- Instruction: If conversation continues [8], mention our products/services [9] and that we have a marketing specialist [10] to get the most out of the market.[11]
- Script: "If you would like I could have a specialist give you a call to flesh out the details and give you anything you need that I can't provide."
- Instruction: When done cold call go to Excel sheet and update as necessary. In contacted for all successful contacts place 'y' for all unsuccessful place 'n' in column.[12]
[2] Because you've not established any value, the prospect will almost always be busy. You should have sold the gatekeeper first or bypassed the gatekeeper directly to the prospect.
[3] This is the beginning of the spray and pray. The idea, of course, is that it's trying to sound "full service", but this just makes the pitch unfocused.
[4] More spray and pray. The seller is trying to be all things to all people, hoping that somebody will think that's a good idea.
[5] Trite and meaningless. Every B2B service pretends to increase revenue and "visibility" in this context means absolutely nothing.
[6] In other words, they have an outside sales staff, but they're pretending that the outside sales guys consultants and hoping the prospect won't notice.
[7] Why in heaven's name would any buyer care two cents what a selling firm "likes" to do? Especially a firm that they've never worked with?
[8] ROFLMAO.
[9] Here's comes more spray and pray! The original script actually listed out 7 or 9 unrelated products and service.
[10] Hello! The outside sales rep makes another appearance, this time as a product feature. Sales rep as product feature. Interesting...
[11] Sounds like the "specialist" is going to do a hard sell because the customer is his market.
[12] I'm gonna take a wild guess here that the "n" key gets struck somewhat more often than the "y" key.
READERS: Any further comments?