How to Build Killer Talk Tracks Your Sales Team Will Use (+ Examples and a Free Template)

How to Build Killer Talk Tracks Your Sales Team Will Use (+ Examples and a Free Template)

Confidence. Poise. Grace. These are qualities that instill trust in your brand and convince prospects to buy.

Unfortunately, cultivating these qualities in your sales team isn't always easy.

If you’re forcing reps to stick to a strict sales script, the result can be robotic and cold. On the other hand, if you’re not giving them enough direction, they may end up stuttering and rambling on sales calls.

Here’s the good news: talk tracks are a happy middle ground where your experienced reps can thrive.

So, what is a talk track, and how do you build one that your team will actually use? Let’s find out.

What is a Sales Talk Track + Why Do You Need One?

Talk tracks are phrases that sales teams can use to communicate complicated ideas or concepts in a simple way. Some teams use these as an outline for sales calls, but the best talk tracks allow reps to answer questions and handle objections in any order, all while keeping their cool and sounding confident in their answer.

“I think of talk tracks like a cheat sheet for describing those complicated concepts, objections, or ideas,” says James Urie, Sr. Partnerships Manager at Close. “When sales reps take these, they come off as being a confident expert, rather than getting stuck in the weeds or fumbling over their words.”

“Having a list of one-line sentences that cohesively describe the feature you’re highlighting is very effective,” adds Kate Petrone, Account Executive at Close. “Instead of running the risk of going on a tangent, these help keep you in check and ensure you’re not taking up most of the space in the conversation.”

As a sales manager, you can work with your team to see who has the best answer to common questions, or who easily overcomes those tough objections. Then, you take the best talk tracks your team has already developed, and create a document that helps all the reps on your team sound more confident. Add this to your sales enablement content to level up your team.


Talk Tracks vs Sales Scripts

Prospects can normally tell when they’re being fed a sales script. The conversation doesn’t feel natural or flow easily.

Talk tracks, on the other hand, feel natural. When done correctly, sales reps sound so confident that it seems like they pulled each of these lines out of their back pocket because they’re the best salesperson on the team.

But just because we love talk tracks, doesn’t mean we’re ready to throw our sales scripts out the window.

In fact, you can use both at the same time for different purposes on your sales team.

Here are some of the key differences:

Sales scripts:

Talk tracks:

  • Introduced when the rep has more familiarity with the product
  • Good for overcoming complicated objections
  • Good for explaining complex or technical concepts in a simple, concise way

So, how do you create your own talk tracks?

Proven Talk Track Template You Can Swipe

Get a head start by downloading this free talk track template, based on the talk tracks that our team uses here at Close.


Here’s how to use this template:

  • Copy the Google Doc into your own Drive
  • Use the examples to fill in your own FAQs, common objections, and technical concepts
  • Start developing talk tracks that your team can use

How To Create a Sales Talk Track Your Team Will Use

Get this right from the start, and your whole team will be enabled to sound more confident on calls and answer questions and objections competently.

How is it done? Let’s talk through the 6 steps you can take to develop talk tracks for sales:

1. Choose Key Pieces of Your Sales Conversation That Need Talk Tracks

Your salespeople are always going to have some complex topic or technical concept that needs to be explained during the sales process. How are your reps currently handling those conversations?

Take time to find out which of these are giving your sales reps the most headaches. Where are they struggling to explain something to prospects in a way that resonates with them?

There are generally four key areas where your team will benefit most from talk tracks:

  • Frequently asked questions
  • Common objections
  • Qualifying or discovery calls
  • Product demo flow

Once you’ve identified the key points of the sales conversation where your reps would benefit most from a talk track, it’s time to start building.

2. Collaborate With Your Team To Discover Top-Performing Talk Tracks

If you’re a working sales manager that’s involved in the day-to-day sales process, you probably have some talk tracks of your own—those simple one-liners that you use to succinctly answer common questions.

“Now, if you’re a sales manager and you’re not in the cockpit,” explains James, “you should rely on your senior reps. They’ll naturally have their own talk tracks that they feel very confident about.”

Each of these senior reps will have stronger or weaker talk tracks for different parts of the sales conversation. Collaborate with them to find the best of the best to share with the rest of the team.

3. Build the Four Essential Talk Track Docs

Now it’s time to build out a documented version of your sales talk tracks so that the whole team can use them. This is as simple as setting up a Google Doc, like the talk track template we created just for you:

GET YOUR TALK TRACK TEMPLATE →

Here are the four key pieces you’ll want to create.

Common objections: Objection management is a key part of the sales process, and having a documented way to manage objections will help your reps overcome these with confidence. Again, your reps know which objections come up most often, so get them involved in creating this documentation.

Frequently asked questions: Identify key questions about your product, pricing, and more that reps commonly hear in sales conversations. You might also ask your customer support team for the questions they commonly hear, or see what people are asking on social media about your product or similar products. This will give you a good place to start to create clear, concise answers.

Qualifying call: When qualifying new leads, a talk track can help your reps make sure they’re asking all of the essential questions and qualifying correctly.

Product demo flow: How do your reps show off your product during a demo? Which features do they show, and how do they describe each of these features? Creating a talk track for your product demos will give reps the advantage of using pre-prepared one-lines that perfectly describe each aspect of your product, rather than coming up with something new every time.

Of course, once you create these documents, you need to make sure your sales team really uses them.

4. Get Buy-In From Your Sales Team

Here at Close, we like to go against the flow. So no, we’re not going to tell you to mandate the use of talk tracks on your team. They should want to use them because they find these talk tracks to be genuinely useful to them as salespeople.

building sales talk tracks

James Urie explains: “If you’ve collaborated with your team to curate those really high-quality talk tracks, and you reiterate to them that this is a cheat sheet for making your job easier and making you look confident, there should be natural high-adoption.”

Show your reps that these talk tracks are their friends. They spend all day on demos and sales conversations and expend a lot of their time and energy trying to figure out the right language to explain the same concepts over and over again.

When your talk tracks provide a simple foundation for these complex but repetitive conversations, your reps will be excited to use them and sound more confident on the phone.

5. Make Your Talk Tracks Easy to Access

One simple, yet key way to make your reps more likely to use the talk tracks you’ve created is to make sure they have easy access to them.

If you’re using a sales enablement tool like Showpad or Highspot, you can include these talk tracks as part of your training and onboarding experience.

“I think talk tracks are especially helpful during onboarding for new reps who are still learning the product and navigating the sales cycle,” says Kate Petrone, Account Executive at Close.

“During my onboarding, James Urie and Nick Persico put together a Sales Qualifying doc that included a list of open-ended questions, plus where to take the conversation based on the prospect’s response. I still include most (if not all) of these questions during my initial calls.”

Another way to use tech to make your talk tracks more accessible is to include them where your reps are working. For example, in Close, you can set up Custom Activities that can act as a guide for reps in different areas of the sales process.

“We have a Custom Activity for Sales Qualifying Calls in Close,” adds Kate. “I love this because it keeps me on track during my calls and ensures I gather all the information I need to determine whether a prospect is qualified or not.”

talk track custom activity Close

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6. Analyze Performance Over Time

Once you’ve created your talk tracks and shared them with your team, you’ll want to keep checking in to make sure these are bringing real value to your reps.

Start by talking to your reps. Do they feel more confident and comfortable in sales conversations? How are they currently using the talk tracks?

If you need to dig deeper, it may be time to start working with some analytics tools. Here are 4 conversation intelligence tools that can help you track the performance of your talk tracks:

  • Chorus.ai: This tool uses AI to track patterns and see which reps are performing better with which talk tracks. With a specific Talk Track dashboard, you can quickly see your best talk tracks, and who’s using them best.
Chorus.ai talk track analysis
  • Gong: A stand-out option for large sales teams, Gong analyzes sales calls and provides revenue intelligence insights, including early warning signs for deals about to go bad, as well as conversation analysis that shows which words, phrases, or talk tracks are working best for your team.
analyze talk tracks with Gong
  • Convin.ai: This robust sales intelligence platform uses AI to discover the topics discussed on the call, understand what’s holding your prospects’ attention, and where you need to improve.
in-depth talk track analysis Convin
  • Fathom: Just starting out with call analytics? Use Zoom a lot? Then Fathom could be a great option for your team—this free Zoom app records, transcribes, and allows you to highlight key moments from your Zoom calls, meaning your reps can focus on the call and worry about analyzing it later.
Fathom talk track analytics for sales

These tools will help you see which talk tracks are working best, monitor adoption among your reps, and also help you curate your talk tracks over time.

What Makes a Sales Talk Track Work? 4 Key Elements

Want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your talk tracks? Let’s discuss four pieces of the puzzle you’ll need for a truly stellar sales talk track.

1. Can Flow Into One Another Easily

While scripts follow a specific conversation flow, a real sales conversation often jumps around to different topics. There’s not always that perfect sequential order we wish for.

Your talk tracks should accommodate this. Reps should be able to jump between different concepts or features while still flowing naturally from one topic to the next.

Use simple, adaptable one-line phrases in your talk tracks. With no strict introduction or conclusion to the topic, it’ll be easier to flow smoothly between topics.

2. Are Simple To Understand and Use

This may seem obvious, but your talk tracks should explain concepts, thoughts, or recommendations in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Just like with sales battle cards, you want to keep things simple.

Talk tracks are meant to guide reps and help them stay on track during conversations. Since the point is to simplify their job, don’t make it hard for them to use or access these talk tracks.

3. Allow Your Reps To Insert Their Own Personality and Voice

As you create your sales talk track documents, remember that this is a foundation for a sales conversation, not something your reps must repeat verbatim. Each rep should be able to take these one-liners and insert their own personality and voice into them.

At first, they may stick closer to the words on the page. But over time, you’ll notice that they introduce their own personality as they use the talk tracks. Accommodate for those adjustments as you create them.

4. Are Evergreen (or Easy To Update)

Don’t get too far in the weeds with your talk tracks that they become out-of-date every week or month.

Think of them as conversational building blocks that evolve over time, and keep them updated as time goes on.

4 Talk Track Examples for High-Performing Sales Teams

Looking for a place to start? Here are 4 proven talk track examples our team has used over the years to overcome objections, explain key concepts, and qualify effectively.

1. Overcoming Price Objections

Got prospects hounding you about pricing? Here’s a simple talk track example for pricing objections:

“Our platform has no hidden costs, no setup or customization fees, no add-ons or other kinds of clever upsells. Plus, if you use it properly, you’ll generate more extra revenue per user than what you pay.”

Why it works: This example spins the conversation away from price and focuses on value. Answer pricing objections by honing in on ROI, and you’ll have a powerful talk track for your reps to use.

2. Explaining Key Features

Do your reps know how to explain the key features of your product? Here’s an example of a talk track used by our team to explain Close’s Inbox feature:

“With the Inbox, you have a single landing page with centralized information about all incoming communications and tasks assigned to you.”

Why it works: This succinct explanation helps reps give just the right amount of detail without going off on a tangent.

3. Overcoming a Feature Objection

Sometimes prospects will object to what they consider ‘missing’ features in your product. Use this talk track example to overcome the objection effectively:

“We’d love to have that feature at some point in the future, but we want to do it right. So, it’s not in the immediate development horizon until we’re able to fully commit the time and resources to make something that works seamlessly.”

You can also include questions in this talk track, such as:

  • What exactly would that feature solve for you?
  • Who on your team would that help most?

Then you can point them to an available workaround that will solve their problem.

Why it works: This talk track is sincere and helpful, pointing the prospect to a solution that still fits their needs while validating their request.

4. Qualifying

Here’s a talk track example for cold calling prospects who signed up for a free trial:

“Hey [prospect name], this is [rep name] from [company]. You signed up for a free trial, so I wanted to reach out and see how your experience has been so far. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

If they answer “Yes”, pick your most important qualifying question and ask that. Then you’ll know whether to schedule another call or demo, or send them an email with what they need to get started.

If they do have time to talk, you can ask your main qualification questions, such as:

  • How did you hear about us?
  • What are you looking for in a [product]?
  • Why are you shopping in the [product] market?
  • What do you need to see in [product] to become a customer of ours?

Why it works: This quick introduction sets a good tone for the call, while asking permission gives you the opening you need to continue.

Take Your Team to the Next Level With Sales Talk Tracks

Ready to enable your reps to sound more confident, answer questions smoothly, and overcome objections like a pro?

Then it’s time to start using talk tracks.

Download the sales talk track template and get started today.