The HTM leader mentioned 3 things that I need to get onto her team. She is happy with everything I mentioned in our chat except that I had no experience with closing yet. So I am role playing away and booked in some time with my accountability leader.
I was the closer and she was the prospect. The call was beyond bad. I was completely demolished and felt like a failure. Not that I couldn't close, it was I don't know what went wrong - the feeling that I got, was like I was walking into an exam and my mind went blank. Fantastic.
After pausing multiple times and getting feedback, and I still couldn't progress and the conversation just stuck. We have to either restart and ended it there. 2nd attempt, same thing. Its like it was doomed from the beginning!
As my accountability leader had to go to do some stuff with her kids, she suggest that I practice with my peers for a bit and touch base later to reverse the role play.
I jumped on the platform and started role playing with a guy that I previously did role play with. Again, the conversation went down the toilet the moment we started. At the end of the role play, my counterpart just did not know what to say to give me feedback.
Then just like that, I heard a voice saying "may I give you some feed back?" which was the godsend. He suggested a few technicalities that I need to work on and most importantly, do a sales script and rehearse it everyday so that it comes out naturally. I should also record the call and review it. How the hell do I write a sales script? (That is me being in sales but in consultative sales which no one will ever do a script for that!)
The answer surfaced itself just an hour later - when my accountability leader called back to test her script on me. Hallelujah! At the end of the call, she asked me for feedback and the only thing I said that is her script is so good that I need to copy it! Obviously I will need to make it mine.
Lesson for myself: Do not be arrogant and dismissive on certain things that you don't approve. I always thought that sales scripts are for call centre cold calling and there is no need to use them in closing calls. The sales scripts gives you structure and greatly help you with the direction of the conversation and call control. Sometimes, there is a reason that things are done a certain way.
