I was doing some warm calling this week, and since it was to people who had just attended my webinar, I felt confident and did not need to use a warm call script. It is easy for all of us to feel like this and that you can just “wing it.” Well, I ended up on a call that did not go great, so I thought it would be a great example to break down here.

 

Background

I had delivered a webinar on how to improve the onboarding of sales resources a week prior, and I was calling some of the people who attended. This topic hits on a pain point that we help to fix, and if someone at a management level signs up and takes time out of their busy day to attend this webinar, there is a good chance they might have this challenge and be a qualified prospect.

With all of that being the case, it is understandable for someone like me to think that all I have to do is get these prospects to answer the phone when I call, and it will be smooth sailing from there, so I don’t need a warm call script, right?

 

How This Call Started

While working on the list, I saw a Director of Sales at a technology company attended. By the way, we fit extremely well with technology companies, so I am feeling confident. I make the call, and the prospect answers.

I establish the call, and I am OK out of the gate because I do have the first few questions in my warm call script for webinar follow-ups in my head, and I go through those:

Did you find the information helpful?
Was it what you were looking for?
Is there any other information or help on that topic that you need?

With my overconfidence, I was expecting those questions to open up a flowing dialogue about onboarding and challenges, which it often does, and I could use all of my experience to improvise.

But the reception was a bit cold, and here are some of the responses that he had:

It was good, but it just confirmed we are doing all the right things.
This area is actually not a top priority for us.
We are good right now.

 

Things Don’t Always Go as Expected

This is the point where going with my overconfidence over a warm call script began to get the best of me. The response was a bit flat, and I did not have my backup questions up in front of me as a guide as we teach our customers to.

At this point, I say something like this:

OK, are you interested in schedule some time to get together to have a more general discussion about your operation?

What I am doing here is trying to close for the meeting, but what I have not done prior to this is identify any pain points that he has or any real reason to meet. Needless to say, he did not agree to meet, and rightfully as I did not create a reason to.

 

What My Warm Call Script Would Say to Do

If I had my script in front of me, I would have seen these questions:

How concerned are you about the amount of time it takes to get new sales hires ramped up and performing?
How confident are you that all of your sales resources are saying and asking the right questions when talking with prospects?
How important is it for you to get under-performing sales resources to meet or exceed their objectives?

If I redirected back to those when the response was a bit cold, it is extremely likely that I would have kept the call going and might have found a reason to schedule that meeting that I was trying to close for.

This is a good example of how it is also important to use a warm call script when you are calling warm leads.