What Is a Sales Call Script and How Do I Write One?

A Guide to Writing Your Way to More Effective Sales Calls

Defining a Sales Call Script

To begin with, it’s important to understand that sales call scripts are not necessarily “scripts” that a sales representative inflexibly reads out line by line. Instead, they serve as guides that direct how your sales call will go. Think of a call script as a way of structuring your call; although a script will feature lines to remember, its purpose is to give you a better grasp on the selling points you’ll discuss with your prospect, letting you conduct the conversation more naturally.

As such, the structure of a call script is key to its success, meaning you’ll need a compelling structure to resonate with your prospect. Fortunately, we already have an effective structure that you can use for nearly any call script:

1. Intro — Establish who you are in an interesting, attention-grabbing manner.
2. Connection — Tell your prospect why you’re calling them: Establish that you connect to and understand a concern of theirs, such as by referring to a webinar they attended or a post they shared on social media.
3. Context — Describe how your solution is relevant to this connection and, more importantly, how it will solve the problem at hand — in other words, give your pitch.
4. The Ask — Extend a clear call to action that establishes the next step you’d like your prospect to take, be it scheduling a product demo or even going for the final sale.

When writing your own script, make use of this general outline to prepare yourself more quickly and effectively.

Writing a Sales Call Script

Now that you know the nature and structure of a call script, we can move onto how to write one. The first step in this process is to consider what outcome you’re trying to get from this call: Are you trying to win a sale from your prospect? Or do you simply want to open the door to further conversation? This is crucial to establish first, as this intention will necessarily affect all other elements of the script.

For the purposes of this article, let’s establish a sample scenario: We’ll say our goal is to get our prospect, Mr. Smith, to schedule an appointment for a product demonstration. We’ll also say that we’ve already called Mr. Smith about our product before, meaning he knows us purely from a sales relationship.

Knowing all of this, we can begin writing our call script step by step using the previous four-part outline.

1. Intro — First, we want to give Mr. Smith a friendly greeting while reminding him of who’s calling:

Hello, Mr. Smith. This is [your name] from [Company X]. How have you been since we last spoke?

2. Connection — Now we can explain why we’re following up with Mr. Smith:

I’m calling because, in our last conversation, it sounded like you were interested in upgrading your cybersecurity platform. Am I correct in assuming that?

3. Context — Here, we can begin giving our specific pitch for the product we’re selling, while still keeping in mind what Mr. Smith already knows about it through past conversations:

Like I said last time, [Company X] has a highly robust cybersecurity platform that keeps companies safe from today’s biggest online threats. It even incorporates greater protection against ransomware and DoS attacks, which I remember you said were of particular concern for your company.

4. The Ask — Finally, we’ll now give a call to action to bring about our desired outcome:

To show you how our product can help, I was hoping we could schedule a time for you to view a demo. Would that work for you?

After this point, all that remains is to listen and respond appropriately to Mr. Smith’s answer, then schedule the demo itself. (Remember, when scheduling something with a prospect, it helps immensely to email them a calendar invite to help them remember your appointment.)

Additional Reminders

In putting this script together, it’s important to also add in reminders to pause and listen to your prospect’s response, as you’ll achieve the highest chance of success by making your calls a two-way conversation. Also, don’t feel pressured to use the exact lines you wrote; should your prospect change the conversation, you’ll need to nudge it back in your desired direction, which can only be done by adapting your speech as needed.

All that being said, writing out a sales call script in this way will be immensely helpful on any call, as the having a structure to guide the conversation is an invaluable safeguard. After all, in an important scenario such as an important call, it never hurts to go in with extra preparation.

With that, you should have all the info you need to go ahead and write a compelling script of your own. Go ahead and use these steps to put together your first piece, and you can count on landing your next sale more easily than ever.