If I had fifty bucks for every time someone has asked me to write a telemarketing script, I’d be wealthier than Bill Gates.

Ok, maybe not that wealthy.

I would think that readers of my best-selling books, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Reach Out & Sell Someone®, could do it for themselves; at least a rough draft.

Anyway, what I’ve told these script seekers is scripts are next to worthless, if you don’t know how to bring them to life. You need instruction in how to use them.

Today, I trained a telemarketer at one of my coaching clients’ sites, and he is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. He’s a typical READER.

What I mean by this is he sounds flat, bored, canned, and robotic. Isn’t this how most of us sounded in English classes when we were forced to recite poems that we had to memorize?

(Longfellow may have been a great poet, but that experience taught me to hate the word, daffodils, ever since!)

My point is this: three things need to come together for a script to succeed:

(1) Text

(2) Tone &

(3) Timing.

I call this, no surprise here, The Three T’s.

Leave out one T, and your script fails.

Of course the fourth T, the one that gets the other three into action, stands for Training.

People need training in precisely how to use a script, and this includes specific instruction in where and how long to pause. Hint: It’s NOT at the punctuation marks!

You could have a wonderful script, but without the training in delivery it can fail, miserably; while excellent training with a mediocre script can support at least passable success.

So, please don’t overvalue words on a page or a computer screen. In the final analysis, they do not and cannot sell for us; only we can!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.