Today’s Question: Do you use sales scripts or not?

I posted this on LinkedIn and there was a whole crazy banana explosion. People saying that sales scripts are inauthentic, and they make you seem cheesy.

But, let’s back up a Little. Do you recognize this line?

“Hey, I'm going to have to science the shit out of this.”

Well, that was from a movie script: The Martian – pretty amazing.

So some scripts are valuable, that one probably made around $600 million dollars, in Box Office. You can't say scripts don't work.

Next, we have manuscripts. Did you read James Patterson’s The President is Missing? It probably made $5 million dollars in advance for that script.

And then you have some scripts that the military runs on. What about something like this?

“Diamond back. This is big. Oh, actual angels three. I've got unknown radar contact, designated bogey three and four. I am bingo fuel. Wait a second. Fox one away. Look into RTB. I am Winchester. Winchester. Do you have Texaco in range? Repeat diamond back. My signal is bustard a mother bingo Winchester confirmed Texaco in route.”

That's a script. If they don't have that, they don't know how to talk to each other.

So every industry has scripts of some kind. These beautiful scripts are patterns of language that convey information to each other and tell each other how to work together, convey urgency, transmit information. Rapidly create relationships, signal how to move forward. Signal authenticity, signal competency, and convey facts.

Scripts are absolutely essential to almost every major commercial industry.

So why do sales scripts have such a bad reputation?

Take this one sales script; I got it right out on one of the biggest books on sales and they recommend that you use it, but would you use it?

“Hey, Mr. Jones, I know the big question on your mind is price. Well, that question would be on my mind too, as you might imagine, there are several factors that affect the price of what we offer. If I can ask you a few questions that will allow me to provide you the right pricing, is that okay?”

So what's wrong with that script?

Well, it's definitely cheesy, the people who say that don't really put any time into it. Is that script worth $5 million, $3 million, a million dollars? It’s something somebody just whipped up to manipulate.

So IF A SCRIPT IS MANIPULATIVE, if it pushes somebody into a corner, if it's forcing them to “yes-answers”, if it feels like you are self-motivated, to get something for yourself without giving somebody something they need, IT’S A BAD SCRIPT.

The goal of the script is NOT to manipulate someone into giving you the information you need to sell them something.

The goal of your script should be to compress a large amount of information into a concise story that, sort of beautifully told, has emotion to it; it frames you up as a top expert in your industry, and authentically gives the buyer a choice to either move forward or do something else. It raises the stakes and creates urgency around a decision.

That's really the goal of the script.

Prepare your thoughts

Generate a script

Practice it

And it can be authentic.

You would rather convey all of your thoughts, your ideas, a beautiful emotional story, and create urgency and stakes in six minutes. Or would you rather wind chaotically through 30 or 40 minutes of it?

So, the question you need to ask yourself is:

Should I use scripts?

And once you answer it, the next question to ask yourself is:

How many times should I practice?

And then the answer is until your script is invisible. And it just really feels like you're telling an authentic story.

I always ask myself and the people I work with: Why should we put any less effort than an actor puts into a movie script or a writer puts into a manuscript or the military thinks about moving jets from one location to another?

This is just as important to us as any of those things are to other people that use scripts.

If you're still not convinced of the true power of scripts, think about this one thing you are good at. Probably one thing, either a Big Picture, Narrative Storytelling, Business Development or Technical Details, getting down for customers exactly how it works, what it does, how you're differentiated. Rarely are people great more than one thing.

I've written hundreds for CEOs. We'll cover your weakness, whether it's in legal, whether it's in technology, whether it's in big picture, whether it's in competition, the script allows you to shore up your weaknesses.

Another thing that a fantastically well-constructed, a well-practiced script does, is it allows you to close strong. I see so many great presentations and then you just run out of energy, you run out of strength, you run out of ideas and it just closes weak, “So what do you think?”

Well-written sales scripts let you close strong with specific next steps call to action, time, urgency, and stakes.

The power of the right script is so incredible.

And, because I'm seeing so many deals, so many presentations, I'm now making one short video a day on scripts, on tactics and strategies specifically for dealmaking.

Jump over to the DAILY DEALMAKER. There's a free trial. I think you're going to love the scripts there and they're going to make you a lot more money than if you just wrote a movie script.

If you really love deal-making and you want the scripts that have worked in other deals, the scripts that we're using every day, jump over to the daily deal maker, try that out, and find out what we're doing.

That works.