The following is a short list of what you should and shouldn’t do when using phone call scripts.

Have some sort of script to work from to make an effort to improve sales calls.

You’re likely to see more benefits than when not using a script by improving your preparation by having a script. Also, you’re likely to make a better impression, get more out of each sales call, end up with longer conversations as well as generate more leads.

Don’t create your script to be incredibly long and/or paragraph after paragraph.

You’ll have challenges with using a sales script that is a full page of one paragraph after another. By using a script like that, it can be designed for you to do most of the talking. Setting the call up so the prospect does a lot of the talking is one way to improve sales calls. This helps you extract more information as well as get the prospect more involved in the conversation.

Another challenge is this type of phone script can be tough to embrace and learn. Does anyone really want to memorize a long page of things to say? Salespeople will either skip using a script or revert to reading directly from it when on prospecting calls, with these types of being more difficult to incorporate. Neither are good outcomes.

Design your script so that it’s more of an outline.

Alternatively, when using a call script, you can build it so that it’s more of an outline than a page of paragraph after paragraph. Key goals, statements, and questions that you want to go through when on a prospecting call can be listed out by a call outline.

The key benefits of this type of structure are that it can be easier to learn and use. Memorizing a list of paragraphs is much harder than learning an outline. Also, it’s easier to use when on a call because it’s more flexible, which enables the salesperson to move to different parts of the outline as the call goes in different directions than planned.

Do not read your phone call scripts.

Sales scripts have a negative view by many people. Part of that is driven by the picture of a salesperson reading word for word from a sales script while on the phone.

Reading from phone call scripts gives off a very negative and amateurish impression, which makes this perception correct. The correct way to use a phone script is to use it as a tool to prepare for the sales call as well as a guide and to be prepared enough so that we don’t need to read directly from it.

Focus your script on the prospect.

Commonly, salespeople build their script to say all of the great things that their products can do. You should design your calls so that 80% of the call is on the prospect and only 20% is on you when phone prospecting. Including a lot of questions in your phone script is the key way to get to this balance.

SalesScripter provides a  call script tool that helps sales pros build phone call scripts.