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The Science of Multi-Million Dollar Words
by Dr. Donald Moine and Mark Magnacca

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug.”   --Mark Twain

“We rule men with words.”  --Napoleon

How is it possible for a sales superstar to sell five, ten or even twenty times more than the second place person in his or her office or division?  All of the salespeople are selling the same products or services at the same prices.  Some of the other salespeople have educational backgrounds that are superior to that of the superstar, and many work longer hours.  A few of the other salespeople have more product knowledge than the top producer, and yet none can rival his or her success.  What is the sales champion doing that leads to such high levels of success year after year?

How is it possible that one ad on the Internet can be twice or even ten times as effective as another ad when both ads are for the same product at the same price?  Both sales superstars and top-producing ads use higher quality words.  Sales champions, just as much as ad copy writers, are word merchants.  Sales champions live or die by the strength, beauty, grace, elegance, sensitivity, and persuasive power of the words they use.  They understand that the finest product or service in the world will not sell itself, and that it takes a carefully selected artfully-delivered set of words to make that product or service come alive in the client’s mind.

The salesperson with the best words wins.

In the profession of selling, these organized collection of words have become known as “scripts” or “sales scripts.”  Sales scripts are, in essence, person-to-person advertisements which salespeople write, produce and deliver on an individual basis to clients and prospects.

Everyone Uses Scripts

Many beginning salespeople will say, “I don’t use scripts.”  In fact, everyone uses scripts on a daily basis.  A script is simply an organized collection of words.  The alternative to using a script is what psychologists and linguists call “glossolalia” or word salad.  The speech of someone who does not use scripts might sound something like this, “You, benefit, profit, big, derivative, yield, bond, international, me, yes, no, maybe.” Or it might be the reverse of that.  If you don’t speak nonsense, then you are using a script.  A script is simply the way we subconsciously choose and organize the words we speak. Everyone uses scripts.  Even people who give speeches against sales scripts are themselves using scripts!  In sales, the difference between high-quality scripts and lower-quality scripts is the difference between a million dollar year and a thirty-thousand dollar year.  It is impossible to not use scripts in selling.  The only question is, “How good are your scripts?”

Powerful scripts tremendously enhance sales productivity.  While many salespeople are now fully automated and manage all of their client files and prospects via their personal computer, e-Mail and faxes, they are missing a great opportunity for increases sales productivity because they have not organized their sales scripts.  These salespeople are making more calls than ever but their sales have not increased proportionately because they remain relatively unskilled in selecting the right words to use with different clients.  They are calling more people each week but are not getting many more sales because they are flat-footed when dealing with objections such as “I want to think about it,” or “Let me get back to you,” or “I’m not interested at this time” or “All my money is tied up.”  The superstar salespeople who are using higher quality words are selling these same clients--sometimes just minutes after the less effective salespeople have given up on them!

Please do not confuse powerful sales scripts with the amateurish scripts that telephone salespeople use when they call you at home at night.  The scripts of the sales millionaires we work with are totally different than the heavy-handed manipulative scripts of these telemarketers.  In fact, sales millionaires use scripts that are so gentle yet so powerful they are actually “invisible” when in use.  No one knows the salesperson is using a script.  All the prospect or customer knows is that he or she wants to buy!

The Power of Organized Information

To be useful, all knowledge must be organized and accessible.  The purpose of a sales script book is to help the salesperson make more systematic, powerful and persuasive presentations, and to close more sales with less effort. An outstanding sales script book can dramatically increase the effectiveness of any salesperson, no matter how many years experience or how much product knowledge he or she possesses.

Most salespeople have to deal with approximately fifteen to twenty different objections.  Once you have been selling a certain product or service for a few months, you have probably heard almost all of the objections you’ll ever hear.  In any sales environment, the objections are very predictable and, to a large degree, your success depends upon how well you handle the predictable objections you will hear day in and day out.  You probably can’t change the price of your product and you can’t redesign your product.  All you can change is the words you use to sell it--and that is all you need to change to become a sales millionaire.
 
The first step in building a professional sales script book is to identify the exact objections that are preventing you from making more sales.  Listen carefully to your client’s concerns.  If you are not a good listener, you’ll never become highly skilled at creating sales scripts that motivate your clients to buy.  Once you have written those objections down, you should attempt to write down every good response you have to each objection or question.  As you develop or hear great new responses to these objections, add these responses to your script book.

We have found that most average salespeople possess about three to five “canned” responses to any given client objection or question.  Sales superstars, on the other hand, often have fifteen to twenty different responses to each of these predictable objections!  It is this tremendous verbal flexibility and verbal sensitivity that gives sales champions so much power and success in dealing with a wide range of clients.

The narrow range of responses possessed by average salespeople makes them sound “canned,” and the fact that they use these responses over and over leads to boredom in salespeople.  This also leads to client complaints that, “All salespeople sound alike.”  The first rule of advertising is that you have to get the prospect’s attention.  If you sound like all the other salespeople, how can you command the client’s attention and respect?  If your Internet ad looks or sounds like so many other Internet ads, how can you command the attention of a Web browser?

Planned vs. Canned Scripts

Some beginning salespeople object to the use of scripts due to their preconception that scripts sound “canned.”  Poorly delivered scripts, just like poorly delivered speeches, do sound canned.  However, the best sales scripts, properly delivered, are completely undetectable.  The only perception the client has is, “The sounds good to me.  This fits my needs.  This is the kind of purchase I am comfortable with.   This sounds right for me.”  And then he or she makes the decision to buy from you.

An elegantly scripted sales presentation is powerful.  It is a planned presentation rather than a canned one.  Think of your favorite actor or actress.  When he or she is on the screen, are you aware of the fact that scripts are being read from a TelePrompTer or that scripts have been memorized?  Of course not.  You are caught up in the drama and the emotion of the moment.

Exactly the same thing happens when a top-producing salesperson expertly delivers powerful sales scripts.  The client is completely unaware of the use of a script.  When expertly delivered, the script becomes invisible.

An actor or actress may have one opportunity a year to be in a major play or film.  As a sales professional, you have the chance every day to practice and perfect your delivery of scripts, and to make those scripts invisible.   One superstar salesman we work with even scripts “uhmms,” and “ahhs,” into his presentation to make it seem as if he has just spontaneously thought of the most compelling answers in the world.  No one would ever accuse him of using presentations that sound canned, but they are indeed very professionally planned.  In one week recently, his personal income was over $35,000.

The Sales Script Book as a Literary Form

Sales script books are a peculiar literary form, and they are quite diverse in outward appearance.  Some are thin booklets of hand-scrawled notes which become tattered from constant use.  At the other extreme are 120-page indexed encyclopedias of awesomely persuasive sales scripts that are printed in light blue ink on blue paper so that no one can photocopy them.  We have known and worked with some individuals and companies that value their script books so much that they lock them up in a safe every night.  Their biggest fear is that a competitor might get their hands on these words that close tens of millions of dollars worth of sales each year.

Sales script books are sometimes called “mastermind” books because they are the best thinking of the best minds in a given sales environment.  Other companies call them “expert models” of master salesmanship because they are developed in brain-storming sessions with the company’s most expert salespeople.  Whatever their name, these special books have one over-riding purpose:  to provide the exact words needed by one person to quickly convince another human being to change his thinking or to change his actions.

Sales script books are a unique literary form in that they contain no introduction, no conclusion, no theory, no hypotheticals, no company background information and very little product information.  They are lean and mean and contain no fat or fluff of any kind.  These books are the most concentrated forms of sales persuasion in existence.  There is no place for lazy words.  Words in a mastermind sales script book have to earn their keep and pay the rent every day.  The moment a sales script stops working, it should be deleted from your script book.

Script books are also unique in that they are frequently indexed for quick and easy access to the needed information.   A thirty page script book might have 15 index tabs providing instant access to the most effective ways of dealing with fifteen different objections.  When First Federal Savings and Loan of Michigan went public, we helped them develop a mastermind script book to sell their initial public underwriting of stock.  Some of the sections of their script book were:

 1.   Why are They Going Public?
 2.   How to Make the First Phone Call.
 3.   Getting through the Secretary.
 4.   I’m Too Busy.
 5.   I Need More Facts.
 6.   It’s too Complicated.
 7.   It’s too Risky.
 8.   My Money is All Tied Up.
 9.   S & L Stocks Haven’t Been Doing Well.
 10.  I Don’t Have any Money to Invest.
 11.  I Only Invest in Real Estate.
 12.  I Want to Think About It.
 13.  I Want to Talk it Over with my Spouse.
 14.  I Want to Talk to My Accountant.

There were over a dozen powerful ways of handling every objection that might be raised.  The script book included responses for every type of client.  Some of the scripts were soft and friendly and supportive because that is the “sales style” that certain clients respond best to.  Others were much stronger and more direct because strong people respect a direct, get-to-the-point approach.  Some scripts were highly logical and explained the saving and loan’s strong financial position.  Others were more emotional, to provide the comfortable feeling that some clients need.  The salespeople were so well prepared, they feared no objection.  In fact, their confidence level was so high that in many cases, they brought up objections before the prospects did--just to get the objections out of the way!

Using these scripts, a small number of salespeople sold out all of the company’s stock in a few weeks, necessitating a secondary offering which was also successfully sold in a few days.
You will notice from looking at the outline above that the First Federal Script Book contained more than just ways of handling objections and stalls.  The second section presented a number of effective ways of making the very first phone call to a potential stock purchaser.  In fact, many companies are now using sales scripting not to deal with objections, but to have the most organized, persuasive and professional ways of making their initial sales presentations--from the very first words they speak.

Delivering the Scripts

Having highly persuasive words at your finger-tips dramatically increases your odds for success, but it does not guarantee your success.  You must also know how to say those words.  The lines of Shakespeare, delivered by a 12-year old are scarcely as moving as the same lines delivered by Sir Lawrence Olivier.  For this reason, many sales professionals are now studying voice strengthening, phrasing and tonality.

In the past, it was commonly taught that salespeople should speak in a loud, almost bombastic style in order to have maximum persuasive impact.  In fact, there are still some cold-calling courses that teach this approach.  However, recent findings from the psychology of trust indicate the “radio announcer” style of selling is outmoded and ineffective.  The central finding is that we trust and like people who are like we are.  We each think we are normal and judge other people using ourselves as the ultimate referent.  This finding on the true nature of trust is leading to the development of sophisticated new training programs on voice matching techniques.

Slow talkers tend to trust and feel more comfortable with other slow talkers.  On the other hand, louder, more dominant people prefer hearing a stronger delivery.  Matching the speech rate, volume, rhythm, pitch and tempo of the person you are talking with practically guarantees your message will be heard and respected.  When you communicate with other people the way they speak themselves, your words have a mesmerizing effect on the listener.

It is not mere happenstance that some salespeople consistently earn a million dollars or more every year.  They use organized collections of the most powerful sales responses (scripts) and they know exactly how to deliver those scripts for different kinds of clients.  By doing what they do, you can model their success and acquire much of their persuasive power.

The Psycholinguistics of Sales Scripting

Few salespeople understand exactly how sales scripts work.  The sales process seems like magic. A client is disinterested, bored or perhaps even hostile.  You say a few carefully selected words--just the words your client needs to hear at that moment.  His perspective changes, his mood lifts and you can sense across the phone lines that he is now smiling.  “OK, let’s do it,” he says.  Magic?  No.  It is cause and effect when you understand the psycholinguistics of effective sales scripting.
Over the past fifteen years, we have collected hundreds of persuasive sales scripts and stories and have helped write nearly fifty sales script books.  During this time, we have analyzed, categorized and named many of the most powerful linguistic patterns used by sales superstars in different industries.  We will use the objection “I Want to Think About It” to illustrate some of our findings on the rich variety of linguistic patterns (script patterns) that are available for enhancing the persuasive powers of any sales professional.  While we have extracted these linguistic patterns from top salespeople we have worked with over the years, we have never met any one salesperson who previously knew all of these patterns:

Script Patterns for Handling “I Want to Think About It”

Linguistic Pattern Script
Search for Deep Structure“What exactly do you want to think about?”

Sympathy Pattern
“I must have done something wrong.  I apologize for that.  I know that if I had explained this investment properly to you, you’d want to take advantage of it.  What questions do you still have about it?”

Cooperation Pattern
“You need to think about it?  Good.  Let’s think about it out loud.  You know, sometimes two heads are better than one.”

Search for Time Referent
“How long do you need to think about it?  Why don’t you think about it over your lunch hour and I will call you back at 1:00.  OK?”

Loss Avoidance Pattern
“Tax free bonds offering 6% rarely become available.  I may not have any of these bonds available tomorrow.  Why not grab $50,000 of these bonds while they are still available?”

Encouragement Pattern
"OK.  I encourage you to think about it.  Think about how strong this company is.  Think about the fact that they are #1 in their industry.  Think about their PE ratio of 11.  Think about the fact they have no debt. The more you think about it, the more you will realize what a great investment this company is.”

Simplification Pattern
"This isn't a complex decision.  This is a simple decision.  Why not just trust your instincts?"

Both-Choices Pattern
"This is not a matter of either-or.  You can think about it and buy the stock.  Why not start with just a small position, say $2,000 shares and then think about adding more later?"

Cost of Delay Pattern
"Don't think about it too much!  Your time is valuable, isn't it?  Why spend $400 worth of your time on this relatively small decision?  Can't you make a decision now?"

Confronting Pattern
"Do you spend lots of time thinking about every decision you make?  Why waste so much time thinking about it?  You need to take action!  Take the bull by the horns and make a decision now."

Search for Exceptions Pattern
"Have you ever, ever in your life, made a decision quickly that turned out well?  How did you do that?"

Flattery Pattern
"You impress me as a very smart businessman.  You make bigger decisions than this everyday, don't you?  Why don't you take some prompt, positive action on this one?"

Historic Loss Pattern
"Did you make lots of money in the real estate boom of the 1980's?  No?  But, you probably knew lots of people who did, didn't you?  You probably thought about investing, didn't you? However, mere thinking doesn't get you the profits.  Action is what is needed.  Why not take some action today to take advantage of this current opportunity?"

Search for External Referents
"Is there someone else you need to talk to?  Who is that?  Why not let me talk to her?  It will save you a lot of time, and you won't have to try to remember all these facts we discussed. What's her name?  __________  And her number? __________.  Good, I will call her right now."  This is only a small sample of the powerful verbal patterns we have for handling this one objection.  If space permitted, we could present many other linguistic patterns that sales champions use to destroy this objection.

Most salespeople we have worked with have only three or four of the above linguistic patterns in their repertoire.  While they have probably heard many of the above patterns, they have not been able to internalize them.  Modern methods of linguistics enable the salesperson to finally be able to make these patterns explicit and therefore learnable.

Many of the above script patterns can also be very effectively used in social contexts as well as business ones.  We have observed that as sales professionals learn more about script patterns, they inevitably also become much more persuasive in their personal lives with their spouses, children, neighbors and friends.  In addition, they become better at writing letters and advertisements.  These are just a few of the unique self-empowering aspects of scripting.

Of course, many of the most powerful script patterns are industry and even product-specific.  At this point in our work with top salespeople, we have now identified over 30 different script patterns for dealing with the objection, “I want to think about it.”  No salesperson knows all of these patterns, but carefully studying all of these responses can easily double or triple a one’s effectiveness in dealing with this objection.  There are hundreds of other powerful script patterns that we have identified for dealing with other objections salespeople encounter.  The patterns presented above are some of the most general.  Other patterns that we have made explicit are company-specific, product-specific, time-specific and even geographically-specific.

Beginning Your Own Mastermind Script Book

Few salespeople have the time, expertise or resources to write and organize a comprehensive, professional script book.  However, even a few pages of concentrated scripts can dramatically improve your selling effectiveness and significantly raise your income.  One top producing salesperson we worked with had only 10 pages of scripts that had helped him make nearly a million dollars in extra income.  The key is to get started as soon as possible in writing down and organizing your very best ways of handling the objections and stalls that prevent you from closing more sales.  If you don’t write down and organize the best scripts you hear, you will almost certainly forget them over time.

Once you have identified the major stalls, objections and questions you deal with on a daily basis, write down your best responses to them.  Talk with salespeople you trust and admire to learn their most powerful ways of handling these objections.  When you go to a seminar, bring your script book and write down any great new ideas in the appropriate section of your mastermind book.  A client of ours recently attended a sales training seminar and was surprised that, after 3 days of listening to various speakers, he only picked up five new scripts for his mastermind book.  However, he said that if he had not written these scripts down in his book, he would have probably forgotten them the day after the seminar.  His mastermind script book was the main tool that helped him extract value from the seminar.

When you read popular books or magazines on selling, transfer any great scripting ideas you encounter to your mastermind script book.  After all, you will probably never again look at that best-selling book on persuasion techniques.  You will never remember the technique described on page 217, unless you write it into the appropriate section of your mastermind sales script book.  Since you will probably use your script book every day, t hat technique will soon become internalized and part of your sales skill repertoire.  It could help you make another $20,000 or even more this year.
Over time, your mastermind script book will become increasingly powerful.  Know where your book is at all times.  As one of your most powerful sales tools, and one that you have worked hard to develop, you won’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.

Don’t allow your book to become cluttered up with product information, company memos, or generalized information about selling. While this information may be interesting, it does not belong in your script book.  Keep your book lean, focused and disciplined.  Fill it full of pure, powerful, immediately useful scripts and leave all of the fluff out.

When using your scripts, don’t read from them word-for-word.  Use them as templates and feel free to customize them to best fit the unique personality of any given client.  Say your scripts with great sincerity.  Never say anything you don’t believe in 100%.

The Ethics of Scripting

Sales scripts are, by definition, the most persuasive combinations of words in the selling world, and they are therefore very powerful.  They will help you sell more products and services in less time and with less effort.

However, powerful sales scripts are no substitute for getting to know your client.  As previously stated, you must listen closely to your client and ask many questions to uncover his or her needs and interests.  Once you know those needs and interests, you can use your professional scripts to sell the most appropriate products and services to create a client for life.

Powerlessness has an interesting relationship to manipulation and misrepresentation.  The weaker the salesperson, the weaker his scripts, the more he is tempted to exaggerate product benefits, minimize risks and misrepresent what is being offered.  The more powerful the salesperson, the more powerful his or her scripts, and the less need there is to misrepresent.  The most powerful salespeople, who have an awesome command of the English language, have absolutely no need to misrepresent any product or service.  For this reason, the salespeople with the most powerful scripts and most persuasive sales approaches are also the most honest and ethical.

While you can trick or manipulate someone into buying from you once or twice, the only way you can consistently earn their business year-in and year-out is to do what is right by them and in their best interest.

Despite the negative publicity that salesmanship sometimes receives, the real problem in the business world is not that there are legions of salespeople trying to unscrupulously sell bad products and services to unsuspecting clients.  Rather, the problem is that there are legions of salespeople who are unable to sell the finest products and services to clients who truly need these products because the salespeople simply lack the persuasive skills to adequately explain the many benefits of outstanding products and services.

The salespeople have weak, unorganized scripts and end up “shooting from the hip and shooting from the lip.”  As a consequence, billions of dollars of sales are not consummated. The negative effect on our economy is significant. The use of sloppy word patterns and bad scripts in the business community should be considered a form of professional malpractice, and steps need to be taken to correct the damage created by such ignorance of sales linguistics.

You now understand that every time you open your mouth, you are using scripts (organized collections of words).  You use scripts all day at work.  More than the products or services you sell (which are nearly identical to those your associates sell), your choice of words will determine whether you become a superstar in selling or an also-ran.  It is not enough to be a “nice guy” with “nice products.”  Everyone is a nice guy with nice products.  In the white-hot competitive business world of the late 1990’s, nice guys have skinny kids.

Since you are going to be using scripts all day, why not put a little extra thought and work into what you say?  Remember:  the person with the best scripts wins!  And when you go home at night, you continue to use scripts.  As you walk in through the door, is your organized collection of words going to be, “Honey, I love you,” “Baby, I missed you?” “What’s for dinner?” “How was your day?” “What did you do all day?” or “Why is this house such a mess?”  Just as in your business life, your choice of words in your personal life determines how successful you will be.

In fact, your choice of words in life, the scripts you use on a daily basis, determine not only how successful you will be as a professional communicator, but also how happy you will be as a person.  Your life is a Hollywood movie and you are the script writer, the director and the star.  Why not give yourself a magnificent role to play and magnificent, powerful, uplifting dialog?  As Napoleon reminded us, we rule the world with words.  Choose the right words and the right delivery and you will be lightening instead of a lightening bug!