Teleprospectors are the vital link between Marketing and Sales; they are responsible for transforming Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) into Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Teleprospectors work with your prospects through the qualification process until they are ready to be handed over to your sales team. Therefore, it is important that their engagement methods, messaging, and targeting is spot on. To ensure this, your company’s marketing and sales experts should provide Teleprospectors with sales tools to help them effectively navigate the lead qualification process. One such tool is a call guide or script.

A call guide or script is used to meet the following objectives:

• Provide a quick introduction of your company to prospect (30-second commercial)
• Give prospect insights into issues you have solved for your clients (select 1 great client story)
• Uncover prospect pain/need and additional qualifiers
• Determine if prospect is ready now or within your company’s established timeframe (typically under 6-months)
• Generate a first meeting or demo (either on the phone, web or in-person)
• Generate a Sales Qualified Lead

The script will have an opening statement, as well as the qualification questions that you want answered.  The opening of the call guide is very important.  Literally, in 30-60 seconds, the Teleprospector has to share who they are representing and why they are calling.

Call Guide Opening

The Call Guide Opening has the following basic parts: the 30-second commercial, a customer story, and segue into qualification questions. Here’s an example of each of the sections:

30-second Commercial:  SOMAmetrics is a sales and marketing consulting practice and we help our clients accelerate growth.

Customer Story:  In 2011, we assisted a $50 million dollar Tech company, which had lost half of its revenue and customers. The CEO brought us in to implement our Sales and Marketing Best Practices and as a result, 2012 revenues increased by 57%. The client has been working with us for over 18 months and we expect 2013 revenues to increase by an additional 35-40%.

Segue into Qualifying Questions:  Perhaps your company has similar challenges? Is now a good time to ask you a few brief questions, to get an understanding of how we might work together? (If no, get a date/time).

Create distinct call guides and openings for each of your Targets (CXO, VP/Director, and Manager). The Teleprospector will have fewer than 60-seconds to engage the prospect. Consequently, the messaging needs to be spot on to keep prospects interested and to give your Reps the opportunity to share more information about your product or service.