Should sales agents follow a script or use their own words?

What a script has to carry

Some lines are not up to the agent. In the United States, the FTC’s guide to the Telemarketing Sales Rule says an outbound sales call must tell the person, promptly and before any pitch, who the seller is, that the purpose of the call is to sell something, and what is being offered. The rule also bars misleading statements made to get a sale. Products such as insurance and credit carry rules of their own on top.

So the script has to carry the required disclosures, the offer as it truly is (price, terms, cancellation), and any confirmation wording a sale needs. Which lines are read exactly is for your compliance team and counsel; BestPair does not provide legal or compliance advice, and it does not change scripts or offers.

What the research on scripted talk found

Two experiments by Liana Victorino, Rohit Verma and colleagues tested scripts directly. They are about service encounters shown on video, not sales calls; in our view the findings carry over to the phone.

• Customers can tell. In "Can Customers Detect Script Usage in Service Encounters?" (Journal of Service Research, 2012), viewers could detect different degrees of script use, in standardised and in tailored encounters alike.
• It matters most when the service is tailored. In a second study (Production and Operations Management, dated 2012), more verbal scripting made no difference to perceived service quality in standardised encounters. In tailored ones, a mostly scripted encounter rated lowest.

On a sales floor, a renewal confirmation is close to a standardised encounter. A needs-based sale, where the agent finds out what the buyer has and what they need, is a tailored one. That is where reading every line costs most.

What practitioners recommend

Call Centre Helper’s list of mistakes to avoid with call scripting, compiled by its editor from industry contributors, points the same way. Use the script as a guide rather than reading it word for word. Involve agents in writing it. Leave room for agents to think on their feet and to handle questions the script does not cover. Test the wording, and update it often.

MaxContact’s analysis of objection calls on its own platform, published on Call Centre Helper, adds one more: review the script against the objections buyers actually raise, and change it based on what has worked.

It is a common question among telesales agents: script the presentation, or wing it? For collection floors, see whether a collection call script raises collections.

Fixed route, own words

A practical split for an outbound call:

SPIN-style questions are a good fit for the middle of the call: the script names the situation, problem, implication and need-payoff questions, and the agent asks them as a person would. What SPIN, Cialdini and empathy say about sales calls.

Test a script change like any other change

A script change is a change to how leads are worked, and it can be measured the same way. Split leads at random before the first call, run the old and new script in the same weeks, and compare sales per contact. Have the same agents work both groups, or the test measures who is on the call rather than the script. How to prove a change raised sales.

Even with one script, agents will not close at the same rate. In our view, the words set what is said, and the person sets how it lands. Why agents close at different rates on the same leads.

Sources

• FTC, "Complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule": the regulator’s guide, including the disclosures an outbound sales call must make before the pitch.
• Victorino, Verma, Bonner and Wardell, "Can Customers Detect Script Usage in Service Encounters?": Journal of Service Research; an experimental video study, record at Cornell eCommons.
• Victorino, Wardell and Verma, "Script Usage in Standardized and Customized Service Encounters": Production and Operations Management; a video experiment on scripting and perceived service quality.
• Call Centre Helper, "16 Mistakes to Avoid With Call Scripting": a practitioner list compiled from industry contributors.
• Call Centre Helper, "What 800,000 Sales Calls Taught Us About Handling Objections": MaxContact’s analysis of objection calls on its own platform.