Sales scripts put sellers inside a box and lock them into selling a certain way, but when you throw away your sales script and do more creative, engaging selling, you'll increase your conversion. Ned Leutz runs two teams for ZoomInfo, a business data and technology company that helps salespeople get in touch faster and drive more meetings and more sales. He'll talk today about throwing away the script in your sales efforts to increase your flexibility and your success. Fast answers People are accustomed to getting fast answers without ever having to engage with a person. By the time the prospect makes contact, the salesperson with a script may prove to be less flexible than the Internet. When that's the case, there's really no need for a salesperson. Ned believes that giving a salesperson a script is the "kiss of death" and that scripts don't drive conversion or sales. Salespeople who are limited by scripts will often fail to connect with the prospect's problem. If the goal is to find mutual challenges that you can solve together, the script will be extremely inefficient. Instead of operating from a script, Ned suggests providing a map to sales reps. He believes in setting an agenda with the main goal of finding a point of mutual connection. Solving problems Ned's team starts with the question, "Why did you decide to take my call?" He says that most people don't take a call with a salesperson unless they have a suspicion that the salesperson can solve a need. About 90 percent of the time, the prospect faces a challenge that he needs help with. The other 10 percent might be a case of someone taking your call because you're just a nice person. In those cases, you'll have to work to qualify the prospect before moving forward. The question seeks to discover what caught the prospect's attention and prompted him to accept the phone call. It eliminates half of the guessing. Start with the end Begin from a point of mutual agreement. Either there's a problem that you can solve or there isn't. Once you've set that agenda, you've established an expectation for the conversation. You've earned the right to discover whether or not there's a problem you can solve. You can ask the key questions of your customer to identify the challenge. The alternative is to play a sales version of whack-a-mole in which you're constantly asking, "Is this it?" "Is this it?" You'll bore the client who will much prefer to research on his own since he'll likely perceive that you aren't listening or guiding him. Nobody is taking your B2B sales call without looking at your website first and deciding whether there is something there that catches their attention. You can assume that the prospect has done some research before accepting your call. Cold calling Ned wants sellers to throw away the script in cold calling because there's enough information readily available to sellers that they should have a pretty good story for why they are calling each prospect. When you call a prospect, it's a suspicion rather than a script. you've got a reason for calling. Your customer will have the sense that he isn't just a number on the list. Ned points out that data companies can't fix a broken sales process or a bad product. A data company can give your sellers the information they need at their fingertips to have a 90% story as to why they might be able to help a particular company. Verifiable outcomes Ned asks his managers to focus on verifiable outcomes. They'll know that a rep had a really good discovery call if they understand that the client feels some sort of pain, they understand that the client is in a current state that he'd like to get out of, and he can answer the question, "What would you be able to do tomorrow that you can't do today if you could solve this problem?" One of the worst sales questions we ask is, "If you solved this problem, how much money would you make?" Most people have no idea. Instead, ask, "If you solve this problem, how would you quantify the