Imagine a sales call where you confidently guide the conversation, anticipate objections, and close the deal with ease. Call mapping makes this possible. It’s like a roadmap for your sales call, ensuring you hit all the key points and navigate towards your desired outcome. Whether you’re a seasoned salesperson or just starting out, call mapping can be the secret weapon that boosts your conversion rates and fuels your sales success.
What is Call Mapping?
Call mapping is the strategic planning of your entire sales conversation. Think of it like a detailed itinerary for a journey. Just as a trip requires planning destinations, transportation, and potential detours, your call map outlines the flow of your conversation. It includes key topics you want to cover, questions to ask your prospect, and even potential responses to address their concerns. This structured approach ensures you don’t miss crucial information or get sidetracked during the call, keeping the conversation focused and moving towards your defined objective.
But don’t confuse this with “mapping call” – that refers to calls that help a sales person or a customer success person map out a prospect’s organization. Here’s a fun illustration what call mapping may look like for a typical discovery call:
How is Call Mapping Different from a Sales Script?
Call mapping and sales scripts serve different purposes in a salesperson’s toolkit. While both aim to guide the sales conversation, they differ in flexibility and focus.
A call map is like a roadmap for your call, outlining key topics, questions, and potential responses. It’s flexible, allowing for adaptation based on the prospect’s needs. Think of it as a strategic plan with room for improvisation. In contrast, a sales script is a word-for-word outline of what to say. It offers consistency but can sound robotic and hinder genuine connection. Scripts focus on features, while call maps emphasize addressing the prospect’s specific challenges and benefits.
To put it simply, call mapping empowers thoughtful conversation, while sales scripts prioritize a controlled presentation.
Common Mistakes in Call Mapping
Dodge these pitfalls to ensure your call mapping strategy steers you towards success:
Unclear Call Objectives:
Why it happens: Rushing into the call without a specific goal can lead to aimless conversations.
When it happens: This often occurs when salespeople prioritize quantity of calls over quality.
How to avoid: Define a measurable objective before crafting your map. Is it to secure a meeting, gather information, or qualify a lead?
One-Size-Fits-All Call Maps:
Why it happens: Salespeople might rely on generic templates without considering the prospect’s unique situation.
When it happens: This can occur with high call volume or a lack of emphasis on prospect research.
How to avoid: Research your prospect and personalize the map with relevant talking points and questions that address their specific needs.
Overly Scripted Conversations:
Why it happens: Relying solely on a script can make the conversation sound robotic and inauthentic.
When it happens: This often arises from a fear of improvisation or lack of confidence in handling objections.
How to avoid: Use the map as a guide, not a script. Practice natural conversational flow and adapt your responses based on the conversation’s direction.
Failing to Adapt to the Prospect:
Why it happens: Being inflexible during the call can lead to missed opportunities to address specific concerns.
When it happens: This occurs when salespeople prioritize sticking to the script over actively listening to the prospect.
How to avoid: Actively listen and adapt your map based on the prospect’s responses. Ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into their needs and tailor your value proposition accordingly.
Feature-Focused Pitch:
Why it happens: Focusing on product features can overlook the bigger picture of solving the prospect’s problems.
When it happens: This often occurs when the sales pitch prioritizes product details over customer benefits.
How to avoid: Highlight how your product or service solves the prospect’s specific challenges. Focus on the benefits that resonate with their unique situation.
Skipping the Practice Phase:
Why it happens: Neglecting to rehearse the call map can lead to fumbling over talking points and missing key opportunities.
When it happens: This often occurs due to time constraints or a lack of emphasis on call preparation.
How to avoid: Rehearse your call map to ensure a smooth flow and comfortable delivery. Practice can also help you anticipate potential objections and responses.
How to Do Call Mapping
Before we talk about how to do call mapping, let’s quickly remind ourselves why:
Now that we have the full context, let’s get started on how to actually go about doing call mapping:
Call mapping doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s a simple 5-step process to map out any sales conversation:
Prospect Research and Goal Setting
Before crafting your map, gather intel on your prospect. Research their company, industry trends, and potential challenges. This allows you to tailor your conversation and identify talking points that resonate with their specific needs. Once you understand the prospect’s landscape, define a clear and measurable objective for your call. Do you want to schedule a demo, gather specific information, or qualify them as a potential lead?
Crafting Your Call Map
Think of your call map as a blueprint for the conversation. Here’s a common structure to follow:
Introduction & Rapport Building: Start by establishing a friendly connection and introducing yourself and your company.
Qualifying Questions: Ask targeted questions to understand the prospect’s current situation, challenges, and decision-making process. Use Rafiki’s Lead Scoring to automatically score every lead based on the qualification methodology you use. Additionally, this score is automatically synced to your CRM for easy lead prioritization.
Value Proposition: Highlight how your product or service directly addresses their specific pain points and needs. Focus on the benefits they’ll experience.
Objection Handling: Anticipate potential objections and prepare clear, concise responses that address their concerns.
Next Steps: Clearly outline the next steps based on the call’s outcome. This could be scheduling a follow-up meeting or proposing a trial. Use Rafiki’s Smart Follow Up to automatically take care of your follow ups. Rafiki can craft highly personalized follow ups for each call, highlighting key moments with time-stamped links to the call recording. This enables highly contextual communication with your prospects.
For each section, include talking points, relevant questions, and potential responses you might encounter.
Practice Makes Perfect
Rehearsing your call map is crucial. Record yourself practicing or role-play the conversation with a colleague. This helps you refine your delivery, identify areas for improvement, and build confidence in your responses.
Leverage Technology
Consider using call mapping software or templates to streamline the process. These tools can provide pre-built frameworks and features to help you build your call maps more efficiently. Using Rafiki can help in understanding how your calls usually go, map that out and identify where exactly detours are happening and require course correction.
Adapting and Improvising
Keep in mind, your call map is a guide, not a rigid script. Actively listen to your prospect and adapt your conversation based on their responses. Don’t be afraid to improvise and delve deeper into topics that emerge during the call.
Chart Your Course to Sales Success
Call mapping empowers you to navigate sales conversations with confidence and purpose. By implementing these steps, you’ll be equipped to tailor your approach, address prospect needs effectively, and ultimately close more deals.
Ready to gain a deeper understanding of sales conversations and craft winning call maps? Sign up for your free 14-day trial of Rafiki and discover how our powerful conversation intelligence platform can take your sales game to the next level!
