Create the Ultimate Inbound Sales Script: Templates & Tips
It’s the stuff dreams are made of for sales professionals: Your prospect organically found you and started a free trial of your product. Their attributes seem to match your ideal customer profile.
However, you still need to address some of their questions before they buy. How should you prepare for such inbound sales calls?
For starters, you should try to pick up the phone within 5 minutes of a user signing up for a trial of your product. But you also need to find the right words to gradually move the prospect to the next step in the buying process.
It can feel daunting. Don’t worry. In this article, we’ll go through a few compelling script examples and actionable tips to create a persuasive inbound sales call script.
Elements of an Inbound Sales Call
An inbound phone call from a prospect indicates a strong interest in buying your product/service. But what should be your company’s goals around it? Here’s what an inbound call involves:
- Determining the intention of your prospect and meeting them where they are: You may end up addressing the common objections you repeatedly hear on discovery calls or just directing them to a competitor (because they are a bad fit). Be ready to solve your prospect’s problems and offer personalized help.
- Profiling the prospect and evaluating their fit: If you know your ideal customers, you can compare the attributes of an inbound caller against them and qualify the leads.
- Progressing prospects through your sales process: Aggressively selling your product to every inbound lead will ruin your brand. A better strategy is to sell the next step in your sales process. It can include taking a product demo, accepting an invitation to a webinar, setting up a meeting for follow-up questions, etc.
- Making a strong impression: While the prospect knows about you and is interested in your product, you need to reassure them. Use this opportunity to make them feel welcome and leave a lasting impact that makes them want to do business with your brand.
Compared with inbound sales, cold calling may require a thicker skin. As it involves proactive outreach to find new customers, you may end up with more frequent redirects to voicemails and being hung up by prospects. You will also need to share the value proposition of your products and social proof around it to persuade prospects.
Ultimately, both sales calls will require you to stay relevant to your prospects. Cold calling scripts can still serve as great inspiration for your inbound calls in different contexts. Here’s Steli explaining the difference between the two:
Successful Inbound SaaS Sales Call Script
A persuasive inbound sales call script is brief, easygoing, and adapts quickly to the needs of your prospects. You start with a warm welcome of your prospects, answer their questions, request contact information, and wrap the conversation by closing the deal or establishing the next steps. Here are the scripts for different stages of your call:
Opening
A prospect signed up for a trial of your SaaS product. Here’s a script you can model to start building rapport with them.
“Hey, [prospect’s name], My name is _________. I saw that you just signed up for our product _________ and wanted to personally reach out and say ‘hi.’
I know you are just starting your trial, and I wanted to see if you had any questions or if there is anything I can do to help you get the most out of your trial?”
Once the caller responds, answer questions and continue interacting with them (we’ll talk about the questions you can ask later in the article).
Qualifying
Below is a script with a few qualifying questions you can use at this stage. Remember to not go overboard in probing the prospect, or they will get turned off.
“I also wanted to ensure that we are a good fit for you and that you’ll succeed with [your company name]. I’m curious.
- How did you hear about us in the first place?
- What are your main challenges/goals regarding _________?
- How many people in your team would use __________?
- [Other product-specific questions]?
- What other solutions are you checking out?
- How will you decide if we’re a good fit?”
Closing (If Qualified)
Woohoo! The prospect ticks most boxes and seems like a fit for your product. Here’s a sample script of trying to close them.
“Great. It sounds like our product _________ is the perfect fit for you.
Take the next week to give it a good test run and do _________ and then let’s set a time to chat so I can hear how things are going and answer any more in-depth questions for you. Would next week same day/time work?”
From here, you should set a follow-up time and send a calendar invite. SavvyCal integrates with Close, so your meetings and contacts will be automatically updated in the CRM.
Psst... Want a free, ready-to-use fill-in-the-blanks sales script?
Example of a Successful Inbound Sales Call
How do you plan a sales pitch with a potential customer that expressed an interest in your offerings? How does it differ from outbound sales calls? Below is a live phone call of an inbound SEO services lead for a marketing agency.
The prospect emailed the agency requesting further information on their services and a callback. It’s the only call they had that led to a sale worth $9k in about 20 minutes:
Looking for more examples? Check out these top cold-calling videos.
6 Tips for an Inbound Sales Call
Now that you have seen a successful sales call script example, let’s look at a few quick tips to improve the conversion rates of your inbound sales calls.
1. Always Ask for Your Prospect’s Contact Info
What if a bad signal leads you to lose connection with your prospect? It's important that you find a way to reach them in case of such mishaps. Consider beginning your call with a question like: “What’s the best way to reach you if we get disconnected?”
Old sales call scripts at call centers used to be focused on getting an alternate phone number. However, the above question aims to uncover additional and unobvious ways to connect with the prospect. They will share details they are comfortable sharing, such as their email, LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media accounts, etc.
With Close CRM, you can store your lead’s history of all of your touchpoints with them. You can also use custom fields for unique data points that come from you requesting contact information.
2. Verify Your Prospect’s Reason for Calling
Top-performing sales reps aim to surface the unspoken concerns and objections of potential customers so that they can proactively address them. The best way to gather such sales intelligence is by asking open-ended questions. One example is: “Is this the first time you’re considering a product or service like this?”
Such questions give space to your prospect to talk freely. They help you gather vital info such as their pain points, industry, the key decision-makers at their company, etc.
While on the call, don’t forget to make brief call notes in your CRM, so you don’t miss important info.
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3. Repeat Your Prospect’s Needs Back to Them
Your best customers know that you’ll try to sell them your product. They share their problem with you to evaluate if you can help them. You need to show that you understand their needs.
A simple tactic to do the same is repeating the problem your prospect shares. For instance, “It seems like you’re happy with your current email marketing tool, but you’re looking for something more scalable.”
A summary will reaffirm your prospect that you’re listening intently. It will help build rapport, and your prospect may share further insights.
4. Offer a Specific Solution for Their Problems
Tethr built a predictive sales model based on 2.5M sales calls from a dozen companies. Their research found that high-performing sales reps focus more on prescribing solutions and less on diagnosing customer needs.
You may need to ditch the script templates you worked on during preparation for the sales call. Instead, pay close attention to the prospect while they discuss their needs, then share personalized advice that solves their problems. Something as simple as, “Personally, I recommend this pricing plan for your company.”
Assume that the average buyer today has already done their research before calling your company. They want to hear what they need to fix their problems.
5. Aim for a Consistent Brand Experience
Prospects that call you have a certain perception of your brand before calling you. Salespeople at SMBs struggle to ensure they provide an experience consistent with their branding while conducting inbound calls.
The reason the goals of inbound prospects can vary substantially. Some folks may be in the discovery phase needing additional information, few others may want to buy your product right away, or even have another agenda.
So your inbound sales call script has to stay flexible. As a sales rep, allow the prospect to drive the conversation forward. And while you help your prospects achieve their goals, your conversations should stay consistent with the brand values your business stands on.
6. Always End With the Next Steps
You’ve addressed your prospect's questions, scored the lead, and know the value of the opportunity. Before you end the call, clearly establish the next steps.
Has your prospect struck the deal? Awesome. Share your contract or the subsequent steps involved in your sales process.
Do they need more education before buying? Then you can send them some sales enablement content catering to their needs. And schedule a follow-up call for the next week.
To improve your chances of closing the deal, have a friendly but strong selling style. If their needs match your ideal buyer personas, hold steady on recommending your product as the best one. If they don’t fit, then guide them in the right direction.
Getting Ready for the First Call
Sales teams must stay consistent in handling phone calls from their inbound lead generation efforts. An inbound sales call script could be a great addition to your sales strategy for helping provide a consistent customer experience with your brand.
A sales CRM tuned for inbound sales, such as Close, can help here. Once you have script templates, it lets you call, text, email, and Zoom call from a single platform. You can get rid of tedious and administrative tasks with its automation features.
Sales managers can also access built-in call coaching for reps and improve sales performance. And the tool even highlights your “hot leads” (based on chosen criteria) so that your team can focus efforts where it matters.
Start a free Close trial and test run our features for 14 days, or watch our on-demand demo.