How to Build Killer Talk Tracks Your Sales Team Will Use (+ Examples and a Free Template)

Confidence, poise, and grace are qualities that instill trust in your brand and convince prospects to buy.

Unfortunately, cultivating these qualities in your sales team isn't always easy.

If reps are forced to follow a strict sales script, the result can be robotic and cold. On the other hand, if you don’t give them enough direction, they may stutter and ramble on sales calls.

Here’s the good news: talk tracks are a happy middle ground where your experienced reps can thrive.

So, what is a talk track, and how do you build one that your team will use? Let’s find out.

What is a Sales Talk Track + Why Do You Need One?

“I think of talk tracks like a cheat sheet for describing those complicated concepts, objections, or ideas,” says James Urie, Sr. Partnerships Manager at Close. “When sales reps take these, they come off as a confident expert, rather than getting stuck in the weeds or fumbling over their words.”

“Having a list of one-line sentences that cohesively describe the feature you’re highlighting is very effective,” adds Kate Petrone, Account Executive at Close. “Instead of running the risk of going on a tangent, these help keep you in check and ensure you’re not taking up most of the space in the conversation.”

As a sales manager, you can work with your team to see who has the best answer to common questions or who easily overcomes those tough objections. Then, you take the best talk tracks your team has already developed and create a document that helps all the reps on your team sound more confident. Add this to your sales enablement content to level up your team.

Talk Tracks vs. Sales Scripts

Prospects can normally tell when they’re being fed a sales script. The conversation doesn’t feel natural or flow easily.

Talk tracks, on the other hand, feel natural. When done correctly, sales reps sound so confident that it seems like they pulled each of these lines out of their back pocket because they’re the best salesperson on the team.

But just because we love talk tracks doesn’t mean we’re ready to abandon our sales scripts.

You can use both at the same time for different purposes on your sales team.

Here are some of the key differences:

Sales scripts:

• Good for onboarding new reps at scale
• Good for reps with zero product knowledge
• Good for high volume, short sales cycles
• Good for leaving voicemails

Talk tracks:

• Introduced when the rep has more familiarity with the product
• Good for overcoming complicated objections
• Good for explaining complex or technical concepts in a simple, concise way

So, how do you create your own talk tracks?

Proven Talk Track Template You Can Swipe

Get a head start by downloading this free talk track template based on the talk tracks that our team uses here at Close.

Here’s how to use this template:

• Copy the Google Doc into your Drive
• Use the examples to fill in your FAQs, common objections, and technical concepts
• Start developing talk tracks that your team can use

How to Create a Sales Talk Track Your Team Will Use

Get this right from the start, and your whole team will be enabled to sound more confident on calls and answer questions and objections competently.

How is it done? Let’s talk through the six steps you can take to develop talk tracks for sales:

1. Choose Key Pieces of Your Sales Conversation That Need Talk Tracks

Your salespeople will always have some complex topic or technical concept that needs to be explained during the sales process. How are your reps currently handling those conversations?

Take time to find out which of these is giving your sales reps the most headaches. Where are they struggling to explain something to prospects in a way that resonates with them?

There are generally four key areas where your team will benefit most from talk tracks:

• Frequently asked questions
• Common objections
• Qualifying or discovery calls
• Product demo flow

Once you’ve identified the key points of the sales conversation where your reps would benefit most from a talk track, it’s time to start building.

2. Collaborate with Your Team to Discover Top-Performing Talk Tracks

If you’re a working sales manager involved in the day-to-day sales process, you probably have some talk tracks of your own—those simple one-liners that you use to answer common questions succinctly.

“Now, if you’re a sales manager and you’re not in the cockpit,” explains James, “you should rely on your senior reps. They’ll naturally have their own talk tracks they feel very confident about.”

These senior reps will have stronger or weaker talk tracks for different parts of the sales conversation. Collaborate with them to find the best tracks to share with the rest of the team.

3. Build the Four Essential Talk Track Docs

Now it’s time to build a documented version of your sales talk tracks so the whole team can use them. This is as simple as setting up a Google Doc, like the talk track template we created just for you:

Here are the four key pieces you’ll want to create.

Common objections: Objection management is a key part of the sales process, and having a documented way to manage objections will help your reps overcome them confidently. Again, your reps know which objections come up most often, so get them involved in creating this documentation.

Frequently asked questions: Identify the key questions that sales representatives frequently encounter during conversations about your product, pricing, and other relevant topics. You might also ask your customer support team for the questions they commonly hear or see what people are asking on social media about your product or similar products. This will give you a good place to start to create clear, concise answers.

Qualifying call: When qualifying new leads, a talk track can help your reps make sure they’re asking all of the essential questions and qualifying correctly.

Product demo flow: How do your reps show off your product during a demo? Which features do they show, and how do they describe each of these features? Creating a talk track for your product demos will give reps the advantage of using pre-prepared one-lines that perfectly describe each aspect of your product rather than coming up with something new every time.

Of course, once you create these documents, you need to ensure that your sales team uses them.

4. Get Buy-In from Your Sales Team

Here at Close, we like to go against the flow. So, no, we won’t tell you to mandate the use of talk tracks on your team. They should want to use them because they find these talk tracks genuinely valuable for them as salespeople.

James Urie explains: “If you’ve collaborated with your team to curate those high-quality talk tracks, and you reiterate to them that this is a cheat sheet for making your job easier and making you look confident, there should be natural high-adoption.”

Show your reps that these talk tracks are their friends. They spend all day on demos and sales conversations and expend a lot of their time and energy trying to figure out the right language to explain the same concepts repeatedly.

When your talk tracks provide a simple foundation for these complex but repetitive conversations, your reps will be excited to use them and sound more confident on the phone.

5. Make Your Talk Tracks Easy to Access

One simple, yet key way to make your reps more likely to use the talk tracks you’ve created is to make sure they have easy access to them.

If you’re using a sales enablement tool like Showpad or Highspot, you can include these talk tracks as part of your training and onboarding experience.

“I think talk tracks are beneficial during onboarding for new reps who are still learning the product and navigating the sales cycle,” says Kate Petrone, Account Executive at Close.

“During my onboarding, James Urie and Nick Persico put together a Sales Qualifying doc that included a list of open-ended questions, plus where to take the conversation based on the prospect’s response. I still include most (if not all) of these questions during my initial calls.”

Another way to use tech to make your talk tracks more accessible is to include them where your reps work. For example, in Close, you can set up Custom Activities that can guide reps in different areas of the sales process.

“We have a Custom Activity for Sales Qualifying Calls in Close,” adds Kate. “I love this because it keeps me on track during my calls and ensures I gather all the information I need to determine whether a prospect is qualified or not.”

6. Analyze Performance Over Time

Once you’ve created your talk tracks and shared them with your team, you’ll want to keep checking in to ensure that they are bringing real value to your reps.

Start by talking to your reps. Do they feel more confident and comfortable in sales conversations? How are they currently using the talk tracks?

If you need to dig deeper, it may be time to start working with some analytics tools. Here are four conversation intelligence tools that can help you track the performance of your talk tracks:

• Chorus.ai: This tool uses AI to track patterns and see which reps perform better with which talk tracks. With a specific Talk Track dashboard, you can quickly see your best talk tracks and who’s using them best.

• Gong: A stand-out option for large sales teams, Gong analyzes sales calls and provides revenue intelligence insights, including early warning signs for deals about to go bad, as well as conversation analysis that shows which words, phrases, or talk tracks are working best for your team.

• Convin.ai: This robust sales intelligence platform uses AI to discover the topics discussed on the call, understand what’s holding your prospects’ attention, and where you need to improve.

• Fathom: Just starting out with call analytics? Use Zoom a lot? Then Fathom could be a great option for your team—this free Zoom app record transcribes and allows you to highlight key moments from your Zoom calls, meaning your reps can focus on the call and worry about analyzing it later.

These tools will help you see which talk tracks are working best, monitor adoption among your reps, and curate your talk tracks over time.

What Makes a Sales Talk Track Work? 4 Key Elements

Want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your talk tracks? Let’s discuss four puzzle pieces for a genuinely stellar sales talk track.

1. Can Flow into One Another Easily

While scripts follow a specific conversation flow, a real sales conversation often involves different topics. There’s not always that perfect sequential order we wish for.

Your talk tracks should accommodate this. Reps should be able to jump between different concepts or features while still flowing naturally from one topic to the next.

Use simple, adaptable one-line phrases in your talk tracks. With no strict introduction or conclusion to the topic, it’ll be easier to flow smoothly between topics.

2. Are Simple to Understand and Use

This may seem obvious, but your talk tracks should explain concepts, thoughts, or recommendations in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Just like with sales battle cards, you want to keep things simple.

Talk tracks are meant to guide reps and help them stay on track during conversations. Since the point is to simplify their job, don’t make it hard for them to use or access these talk tracks.

3. Allow Your Reps to Insert Their Personality and Voice

As you create your sales talk track documents, remember that this is a foundation for a sales conversation, not something your reps must repeat verbatim. Each rep should be able to take these one-liners and insert their personality and voice into them.

At first, they may stick closer to the words on the page. But over time, you’ll notice that they introduce their personality as they use the talk tracks. Accommodate for those adjustments as you create them.

4. Are Evergreen (or Easy to Update)

Don’t get too far in the weeds with your talk tracks that they become out-of-date every week or month.

Think of them as conversational building blocks that evolve, and keep them updated as time goes on.

4 Talk Track Examples for High-Performing Sales Teams

Looking for a place to start? Here are four proven talk track examples our team has used over the years to overcome objections, explain key concepts, and qualify effectively.

1. Overcoming Price Objections

Got prospects hounding you about pricing? Here’s a simple talk track example for pricing objections:

“Our platform has no hidden costs, setup or customization fees, add-ons, or other clever upsells. Plus, if you use it properly, you’ll generate more revenue per user than you pay.”

Why it works: This example spins the conversation away from price and focuses on value. Answer pricing objections by honing in on ROI, and you’ll have a powerful talk track for your reps to use.

2. Explaining Key Features

Do your reps know how to explain the key features of your product? Here’s an example of a talk track used by our team to explain Close’s Inbox feature:

“With the Inbox, you have a single landing page with centralized information about all incoming communications and tasks assigned to you.”

Why it works: This succinct explanation helps reps give the right amount of detail without going off on a tangent.

3. Overcoming a Feature Objection

Sometimes, prospects will object to what they consider ‘missing’ features in your product. Use this talk track example to overcome the objection effectively:

“We’d love to have that feature at some point in the future, but we want to do it right. So, it’s not in the immediate development horizon until we can fully commit the time and resources to make something that works seamlessly.”

You can also include questions in this talk track, such as:

• What exactly would that feature solve for you?
• Who on your team would that help most?

Then, you can point them to an available workaround that will solve their problem.

Why it works: This talk track is sincere and helpful. It points the prospect to a solution that still fits their needs while validating their request.

4. Qualifying

Here’s a talk track example for cold calling prospects who signed up for a free trial:

“Hey [prospect name], this is [rep name] from [company]. You signed up for a free trial, so I wanted to reach out and see how your experience has been so far. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

If they answer “Yes,” pick your most important qualifying question and ask it. Then, you’ll know whether to schedule another call or demo or send them an email with what they need to get started.

If they do have time to talk, you can ask your main qualification questions, such as:

• How did you hear about us?
• What are you looking for in a [product]?
• Why are you shopping in the [product] market?
• What do you need to see in [product] to become our customer?

Why it works: This quick introduction sets a good tone for the call while asking permission gives you the opening you need to continue.

Take Your Team to the Next Level with Sales Talk Tracks

Are you ready to help your reps sound more confident, answer questions smoothly, and overcome objections like pros?

Then, it’s time to start using talk tracks.

Download the sales talk track template and get started today.