Category Archives: Scripts

You Don’t Have to Memorize Your Entire Presentation – Just These 5 Things

June 19, 2018 Julie Hansen Leave a comment

So you’ve gotten your new deck, perhaps some talking points, or even a full script. You may even have seen another team member deliver the pitch or presentation. Now the challenge you’re facing is not quite the magnitude facing Hamlet, but it can feel quite daunting: To memorize…or not to memorize? Many salespeople tell me they don’t want to memorize their pitch because they want it to be more conversational and fear sounding canned or phony. It’s a common misconception that memorizing lines or too much practice will cause you to sound like you’re performing bad Shakespeare. But if memorization was the cause of bad line readings people wouldn’t shell out millions of dollars to watch actors in film, on television and at the theater. That canned type of delivery you fear has more to do with A) Not investing the time necessary to put the script into your own Read More

Role-play, Scripts

Could you present blind? 4 Lessons in preparation from Olympic champion, Michael Phelps

February 9, 2018 Julie Hansen Leave a comment

Many presenters share the actor’s nightmare of being in front of an audience and not knowing their lines. I lived that nightmare early in my sales career. A Presenter’s nightmare As a new salesperson I was excited when I received a last-minute opportunity to present to an important prospect. Although I didn’t know the product well or have much preparation time, I felt confident. After all, everything I needed was on my slides! I arrived at the prospect’s office, introduced myself, clicked on my PowerPoint and…nothing happened. I clicked, rebooted, prayed. Still nothing. Soon my audience was chiming in with suggestions, all to no avail. (Now mind you, this was before flash drives and the ability to email large files easily.) I decided to forge ahead – sans-slides – since I knew it would be difficult to get this same group of people together any time soon. I wish I Read More

Sales managers, Scripts

Why Salespeople are Ditching Your New Sales Presentation

February 1, 2018 Julie Hansen Leave a comment

Your marketing department just invested a lot of time and money creating a dazzling new presentation for the sales team. So why, three months later, is no one using it?! Here are just a few of the reasons I hear from salespeople: “There’s too much information in it. It’s not my style. It’s already out of date. I can never find what I need…” While there’s some validity to these claims, when salespeople “go rogue,” (i.e., use a hodgepodge of content or throw out the presentation all together), key messages get lost, and quality and accuracy suffer – along with the customer and the opportunity. Sales or Marketing? Who is responsible? Despite all the talk of the disconnect between sales and marketing, both share a common goal: communicating the value of your solution in a way that drives the customer to take action. And sales and marketing also both play Read More

Acting tips, Scripts

Audio Tip: Bring your Sales Script to Life with these Acting Techniques

Audio August 5, 2017 Julie Hansen Leave a comment

Click on link below to listen to this week’s 5 Minute Tip:

Audio Tip: Bring your Sales Script to Life with Acting Tips

Acting tips, Scripts

Make Your Sales Script Sound Authentic with These Acting Tips

August 18, 2014 Julie Hansen Leave a comment

The most common question I was asked when I was working as a professional actor was this: “How do you memorize all of those lines?” But the tougher question is really, “How do you take a script and make other people’s words sound like your own…performance after performance?” Making a script sound authentic is a challenge for both actors and for salespeople, but at least actors have the advantage of learning techniques for taking the words “off the page” and bringing them to life. Sellers, on the other hand, are often given a sales script instructed to memorize it and hit the phones or the streets running. No wonder many salespeople feel as uncomfortable as if they’ve been asked to recite Shakespeare for the first time. In fact, many sellers dislike working with sales scripts so much they end up chucking them entirely. While improvising works for some, for others their Read More