What Is a Sales Call Talk Track?

A sales call talk track definition is:

“A checklist designed to assist you during a call with a prospect. The purpose of the Talk Track is to ensure that you leave the sales call with all the critical information required to qualify the opportunity and move the sales process forward.”

What Are the Benefits of a Sales Call Talk Track?

The benefits of having a sales call talk track are massive. It’s almost impossible to scale without one. And if you’re not looking to scale but want to get more revenue out of your individual or small sales team, having a sales call talk track can be the difference between hitting or missing quota month after month.

The alternative to not having a sales call talk track means you’re paying sales staff to be “Captain Wing-its” – Everyone doing their own thing on the phone, call after call. Good luck with that.

Not having a talk track is also the #1 reason for call reluctance. Without having a proven step-by-step checklist to follow, salespeople have to “wing it” on each call, which leads to inconsistency. The only thing consistent about using the “captain wing-it” method is that your team will burn out and produce less revenue.

How can you expect a sales team to produce consistent revenue when they change what they say every time they dial the phone?

How many people want to pick up the phone and make cold calls when they have no idea what to say to pique interest, or how to get the prospect to open up, or what questions to ask and why even to ask them?

Without a sales call talk track, your team is just flying blind with every call they make. Is it any wonder the team only hits quota once in a while?

Having a talk track checklist is the answer to most sales directors’ challenges. After all, if a sales rep cannot follow a step-by-step talk track after a bit of practice, you have a hiring issue, not a training issue.

What Is in the Sales Call Talk Track Checklist?

The sales call talk track checklist has four quadrants, and each quadrant has multiple “mini-steps” within each quadrant.

Here are the four quadrants to the sales call talk track:

• Openers
• Qualifying
• Presentation
• Closing

Sales Call Talk Track Example

Here’s an example of what a sales call talk track would look like from the perspective of making a cold call:

1. Opening Value Statement:
   • Pique Interest
   • Gain Permission to Continue the Call

If we break this down, using this example of making a cold call, the first thing a sales rep has to do is pique the prospect’s interest in the first few seconds of the sales call.

Nothing else matters if you can not accomplish this first step.

Don’t believe me?

The old way of selling by trying to build false rapport, asking a probing question to try and establish control, get short one-word responses from your prospect (because their guard is still up and not sure what the call is about), and then you soon hear “no thanks, not interested” or “just send me some info” and the prospect is happy to give you their email address so they can politely get off the phone and never speak to you again.

But when you use a sales call talk track checklist and educate the sales reps that the first thing we have to do is “pique the prospects interest” and show them how to do that, once that is done, they work on the 2nd part, which is “gain permission to continue the call” which is stupidly easy once you pique a prospect’s interest.

And now that their interest is piqued and they permitted you to continue the call, their guard is down, their ears are up, and now it’s time for the next step in the sales call talk track.

And guess what, if your team doesn’t have a sales call talk track list after they pique interest and gain permission to continue the call, they will be lost and will start pulling random sales questions out of the air. You will, in most cases, quickly hear the prospect lose interest—another wasted opportunity.

But with a talk track checklist that they have role-played and mastered, they now know exactly which question(s) to ask next, why to ask them, and how to ask them.

Before you know it, your entire sales team has their phones “buzzing” (pun intended) and their setting more appointments, having better sales conversations, and closing more deals.

If you feel it’s high time your sales team learns how to master a sales call talk track, the biggest and best sales teams in the world use our online sales training course to help their teams build a winning talk track – and so can you.

Check it out for yourself.

– Michael Pedone

Michael Pedone teaches inside sales teams how to pick up the phone and close business. He is the CEO/FOUNDER of SalesBuzz.com – An online sales training company.