These days, many people associate cold calling with telemarketing or scammers. They assume that the person has obtained or purchased their phone number from a lead generator and that there is a good chance they have no interest whatsoever in what the person on the phone is selling. However, this is not the only context in which cold calls are used. In fact, most people have likely received at least one cold call in the last few months that they found very helpful and relevant to their lives.

Indeed, the industries that use cold calls most frequently today are not people selling time shares and eliciting monetary donations. They are people working in insurance, real estate, banking, healthcare and other industries that are both connected to and necessary in the daily lives of millions. These are also industries in which things are constantly changing and the goalposts are constantly moving and it is critical that customers stay abreast of these changes and how they may affect their use of the industries’ products and services.

To this end, cold calls are still an incredibly important part of many businesses and their relationships with both existing and prospective customers. That’s why making sure your agents are equipped with effective and robust cold call scripts is still so crucial to growing and maintaining your business. Here, we’re offering some tips on how to write the most effective cold call script.

1. Start Strong

The first few seconds of a cold call can make or break how the call will end, or even if it will continue at all. When the customer answers the phone, the agent has a very brief introduction to clearly state who they are and why they are calling. Clarity and directness are of the utmost importance, as vagaries will set off red flags in the customer’s head that the call may be a scam. Right off the bat, the agent needs to state the name of their company, their role, and the reason for their call, including personalization whenever possible (such as if the customer signed up for updates on a particular product or elected to receive a call on that day)—and all of this should be built into the script.

2. Keep End Goals in Mind

These days, cold calls are unlikely to end in a sale. Instead, they almost always serve as the initial step in a transaction or the first building block of a relationship between the company and the customer. Whatever the goal of the cold call is, it should be clearly stated early in the script to set expectations for the customer. People are busy and often answer their phone when they are on the go; they will be much more likely to hear you out if they know that you just want to chat for 5 minutes and potentially set up a time for a follow up as opposed to going through a lengthy process when they are not prepared to do so.

3. Leave Room for Empathy

There are parts of a cold call script, like the introduction, that should be precisely followed in order to maximize the results of the call. But there will be other parts that need to be much more flexible, keeping in mind that every customer is different. Some customers may be waiting for a call they signed up to receive and are eager to dive into all the details with the agent, while others may be caught off guard and having a bad day. Most people will likely fall somewhere in between, which is why the script must allow the agent to be flexible and jump around depending on how the call is going. At the same time, the agent needs to actively listen and understand when it may make sense to go off script and simply talk to the customer human-to-human, before jumping back onto the track laid out in the script.

4. Prepare Rebuttals

After the introduction, having prepared rebuttals is probably the most important part of a cold call script. When your agent receives pushback or rejection, which will happen, you want them to be equipped to handle it with grace and professionalism. At the same time, a rejection during a cold call does not mean the demise of that particular customer relationship. As mentioned in the previous tip, you never know what sort of day your customer is having; they may be very interested in your product or service and you simply caught them at a terrible time. Use the call data that you have collected to compile a list of common objections that agents receive and then write direct rebuttals into your script. This way, if agents do receive one of these objections, they can navigate straight to the appropriate rebuttal without missing a beat.

CallShaper’s easy-to-edit scripting interface makes implementing these tips and creating a winning cold call script effortless. To learn more about how, request a demo today.