[E53] Q&A Week: What if I don’t like the sales script?

In this episode, I answer:

• What do I do if I do not like the script my company is making me use?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send me a message through the contact page or via LinkedIn.

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Episode 53 – Transcript

[Coming Soon]

Hi, and welcome to Episode 53 of The Sales Experience Podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. Hopefully, you’re having a great week, closing lots of sales, having fun doing it, giving your customers the best sales experience possible.

I am going to tackle some more questions and do my best to answer them in general for everyone listening as I go through these. Now, these are questions that I’ve seen online, people have asked me directly or I’ve seen in the normal routine of running a sales team or working with sales team, working with clients and these kind of things come up.

So if you have questions, make sure to send me a message use the website, LinkedIn, two great places to find me at. But let’s dive into some questions.

So the first one, what do I do if I don’t like the script that my company is making me use?

Now this one has many different facets to tackle, depending on where you’re at in your sales career. Now, if you’re brand new, and your company just gave you a script, use that script. Always remember, they’re in the business of making money and closing deals, and so they wouldn’t give you anything that they didn’t think would work. Okay

So, always keep that in mind. Now, a lot of people, especially sales people, they come into a sales role, especially if they have experienced doing sales in the past and they think, “Hey, I know better. I know what it takes to close deals. And so I don’t need your script, I don’t need anything, I’m just going to do it my way.”

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that once you know what you’re doing if the company allows you to take that latitude with what you say or do in the sales process. However, when you’re brand new, you need to trust the company, you need to trust their process, you need to trust that they wouldn’t give you anything that wouldn’t help you close deals.

Keep in mind, depending on if you’re on a dialer, making outbound calls, your company is buying inbound leads that you’re taking, all of that cost money. The infrastructure, your phone system, the CRM, you’re using the seat in the office, the managers, the trainers; everything involved costs money and they need a return on you closing deals.

So, kind of set aside that ego, set aside any thoughts you have of how a script may work or may not work and just trust the process and use the script as you’re being trained. Now, there’s some caveats to this.

The first one is, is that if you see everyone around you using the script, and you generally see nobody at the company making any money or staying very long. And there’s a terrible amount of turnover from people who are using the script, then you need to question whether that script or that company is the right place to be.

Now, with that being said, the flip side is if you see a lot of people failing, and you see a lot of people not making money, and/or quitting or being let go or put on a performance improvement plans, and they’re not using the script, and all of them are coming in thinking they know best, they’re just going to do it their way. Be careful not to be part of the mob that wants to do a mutiny and say that the script sucks or the company sucks.

If you’re not using the script, and no one else is using the script and nobody is getting results, then that might be you and your co-workers who are not following the process. So, you’ve got to let go and you’ve got to trust the company that they’re going to give you something that works.

And over time, generally what happens is you have a script that you use in the beginning, it is successful, it helps you close deals, it helps you kind of take the training wheels off of your sales experience while at that company. And then at some point, you make it your own or you memorize it, or you use it as part of your normal flow and then you keep running with it.

So, try to separate whether the script is effective or not. If you don’t like the script, but it works like everyone around you is closing deals but you just don’t like the script, then maybe that’s also a sign that the company or the product or the service, the process isn’t for you.

If you just don’t jive with that script, you don’t like it, you don’t like using a script, and everybody else is successful with it, then maybe that’s not for you as well. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

A lot of people kind of go into a job, they get a job, they go into it, they don’t want to feel like a quitter if they were to leave early or to give up on it, they think I’m in a force this I can make this work. But sometimes literally, it’s a square peg in a round hole.

Sometimes a sales position just isn’t for you whether that company has changed their process, gone to a new script, a new product or service that’s being sold a different approach different marketing, lead sources, sometimes that job just isn’t for you.

And I’ll tell you, after having done many different jobs in my life, gone through different careers and all different scope of different vertical sales operations, many different things I’ve done. If something is not a good fit, and you’re not happy at it, then go.

Just leave, you know, give your notice, move on and find something that makes you happy. Keep in mind, if you’re working, that’s 40-50 plus hours a week and commuting and your time thinking about it.

If you have that feeling on Sunday night where you are getting that anxious feeling and you’re not excited about Monday or you’re worried about Monday, every week, and you’re just not looking forward to Monday, then take that as a sign that maybe it’s not the right place for you to be, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

I’ll tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than getting to the point in your life where you know yourself, I talked about it a lot on the show before. You’re self aware, you know what you like what you don’t like what you’re really good at, what’s literally a home run where all time just melts away.

You forget to eat, you forget to drink water, you forget to do everything else because you’re just in the zone at something where you can get paid for, right. Not just working on your car in the garage, but doing something work wise, unless that is your work and you can turn that into something you get paid for.

But if we’re talking about sales related, if you’re we’re in a roll, and it seems like time’s going by and you’re just unhappy, and it’s not the right fit, then life is too short to do that for very long. So hopefully, that helps address this using the script.

Now, if your company has not required to use the script, and then they make a change, they roll out something different. Also fully embraced that script. It can be tough, maybe you’ve done the same thing for years, or months or weeks, and you’ve done it your way and you’re kind of in the zone and you think it works.

If the company again, is giving you a new script, they’re giving you a process, keep in mind that they’re doing it for a reason. Companies don’t just changed things to see what would happen and see if they could possibly get better results.

There’s a lot of decisions, if you’ve never been a part of it, there’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes before a salesperson would even see a script or a new process or anything. All of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes with ownership, stakeholders, shareholders, whatever it might be, there’s so much that goes into any kind of decision.

Because any wrong move could cause complete financial ruin for a company and so they only going to do it if it makes sense. And if your company is giving a new script, a new process, a new lead source, there’s a good reason.

And just try to let go and trust that they’re doing it for something that will help you find more success, help the company find more success. Just remember, at the end of the day, businesses are there to make money, to make revenue, to generate profit.

And if they give you something, it’s a tool to help you get there yourself and to help them get there. The only way the company’s going to win is if you’re winning. And so just take their script, whatever it is, and run with it.

Now, I know that was a long winded answer for this, I get this a lot. A lot of people resist scripts. They put their hands up, they let their egos get in. They try to raise kind of a mob on the floor and other people getting on their side about how much the script sucks or how much they don’t want to change or how much they just think they know better. And they should just get to do whatever they want because they’re salesperson.

And so I get this one a lot. I’ve seen this so many times over and over again and it literally baffles me how much salespeople are people who call themselves salespeople, right, that maybe they call themselves a salesperson. But they’re not really a sales professional because they’re resisting everything that companies putting in place.

Now again, on the flip, flip, flip side of all this, there are times where a company is just constantly changing, constantly making it difficult for salespeople to be successful, that kind of places toxic. But otherwise, if they’re giving you tools, make sure you run with it, and this is so important.

If you find yourself resisting, again, just embrace it or leave. Those are the two options. Might sound harsh, but it’s definitely true is you can either embrace it and go with it and understand the company is paying you for your time and your effort.

And so if they give you something they’re expecting you to do it, or if they’re asking you to do something, they’re expecting you to do it and not resist. I mean down to the fact that if a company is paying you, and they say “hey, we need you to help with this, or we need you to move that or we need you to dump this garbage.”

Fundamentally, they’re paying you for your time you have a choice to either do it and have it be a part of why you’re there, or put in your notice and quit and leave and go somewhere else. But don’t stay and be negative, or cancer or toxic on the floor. Make one of those two decisions, either go all in, or go all out and that’s basically it.

So, that’s it for this episode. I got through one question, but it was an important one. I wanted to spend as much time as possible on this because it’s so critical. I see this so many times.

If you’re in an organization, and your company requires you to use a script or you’ve seen this a lot and you struggle with it, take all this to heart and just understand you have a choice. So, this isn’t putting anybody down who resist it.

It’s just really allowing you to have some self reflection and say, “Why do I resist it? What’s going on? And where do I really want to be?” And if there’s other sales people at your organization who are constantly resisting scripts, so it’s not you, but it’s other people share this episode with them.

Share this with your team leads, your managers, the owner of your company, anyone you know who’s in sales, who’s dealing with sales, people who struggle with scripting or processes or objections or filling out forms or doing anything, they’re asked to; share this as much as possible because let’s see what we can do to help sales people just embrace the tools they’re given.

And that’s it for another episode of The Sales Experience Podcast. And as always, remember that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.