Phone scripts are a transformative strategy for dealerships looking to maximize their appointment rates and exceed their sales goals. They ensure that every team member who picks up the phone is professional, helpful, and capitalizes on all your sales opportunities.
But great scripts don’t just give your people a roadmap to a sale. Each section is built on carefully constructed word tracks designed to overcome objections, answer common questions, and efficiently set appointments.
Are your phone scripts full of generic language that sounds like every other dealership out there, or are they custom tools with precise word tracks that boost performance and lock down competitive appointment rates? Here’s how you can tell the difference.
What’s a Word Track?
Word tracks are single phrases, sentences, or short paragraphs designed to keep a conversation in focus and provide a clear, confident response that moves a sale forward.
For instance, if a customer pushes back against a vehicle’s price, this could easily create an uncomfortable moment of friction in a sales interaction. If an associate handles it poorly, it will likely jeopardize the sale, or worse, drive the customer away.
The following word track in a phone script provides a respectful, practical response to the customer’s objection.
Customer: I feel like this is on the high side for what I’ve seen these cars go for.
Sales Rep: It is a little higher than many models, and I’d want to know where that value comes from too. This car is priced a bit higher because it has X and Y extra features and is also in Z condition.
This word track acknowledges that the customer is correct in their assessment and also provides information that will be helpful for them to understand why the car is priced as it is. It also gives a somewhat general response that the user can craft to match the specifics of the transaction while providing a concrete framework for the response.
How Are Word Tracks Designed?
Each word track is carefully shaped to achieve four key goals:
- Acknowledge the customer. Whether the customer has a question about a specific aspect of the car or an objection to a feature, a great word track always prompts the user to acknowledge the customer’s concern.
- Provide information. Word tracks are effective tools because they build value for customers by adding the right information at the right time.
- Flexibility. Every sales call is different, and word tracks need to make space for customization within a solid sales framework.
- Call to action. Whether it’s setting an appointment, prompting a customer for information, or closing a deal, word tracks help users remain aware of where they are in the sales process and move the caller toward a desired action.
Scenarios Where Word Tracks Win
Not everything in a phone script is a word track. These clutch responses show up during very specific parts of a script when sales teams need to build value or gather key information.
- Overcoming objections. The last place an employee should go off script is when a customer is hesitant to engage or pushing back—in fact, it’s where most calls go wrong. Whether a customer is “just looking” or skeptical about the sticker price, word tracks give your people a clear roadmap forward.
- Answering Common Questions. Even a veteran who’s heard it all before can benefit from a perfectly worded response. And your new hires will be grateful for solid responses that quickly boost their commissions.
- Setting appointments. There are lots of steps to successfully setting an appointment—picking the right moment to ask, coming back if a customer is hesitant, gathering customer information, and confirming that there will be a follow-up from your manager. And the number one reason you need a word track that asks for an appointment? Without one, many employees simply forget to ask!
Where You Won’t Find Word Tracks in a Phone Script
Not everything in a phone script is a word track. Many sections are naturally dynamic, flexible, or highly customizable, and don’t lend well to pre-determined language. These include:
- Openings and closings. This is where your people can establish rapport and make the most of their opportunities using their natural sales skills. Of course, there are fundamentals to these components that should be there, but word tracks usually aren’t one of them.
- Unusual scenarios. No phone script can account for everything, and from time to time, employees need to step away from the script to handle a unique situation.
- Problem-solving situations. This is a key skill for anyone in sales, and may involve customized elements of financing or other complex sales situations. Word tracks may come into play at certain points in the process, but this is where an employee’s creativity needs to shine.
- Summaries of the call. Each sales interaction is different, and word tracks aren’t
designed to summarize that experience.
- Product and service explanations. These are often boilerplate statements that deliver facts about a vehicle or service line.
Script Training with Word Tracks
Because word tracks show up at key points in the sales process, they are often focal points of training. Employees will need to know exactly what they are designed to do, how they are constructed, and when to use them for maximum effectiveness.
However, word tracks aren’t often static phrases. Employees will need to be extremely comfortable with them—ideally by memorization—so they can naturally incorporate variable prices, models, and customer information.
The key to success is working with a coaching partner who focuses on repetition, positive feedback using real sales calls, and knows the tricks to making the most of these phrases. These industry professionals can draw on decades of sales call experience to deliver short, powerful training sessions that highlight these critical moments. In fact, the very best automotive training partners can take care of this type of training without ever involving busy GMs or owners in the process.
Crafting the Perfect Phone Script Strategy
Automotive phone sales have become a highly sophisticated strategy that most dealership GMs don’t have time to learn on their own. It takes years of dedicated work to learn how to use word tracks to build winning phone scripts—and that’s before training even starts.
At Phone Ninjas, we have decades of combined experience developing custom scripts for top dealers around the country. We also employ active coaching with instructor-led training that dials in a sales team’s skills so they extract the maximum value from every opportunity.
To find out how Phone Ninjas can supercharge your appointment rates to 60-80% like our top-performing clients, set up a 15-minute demo with two free mystery shops today.
