Sales Training: Why Role Playing Pays Off
Practice makes perfect
Inspired by a recent deal strategy session with a client of mine and his sales director I wanted to give you three reasons to role play before your next sales call.
Reason #1 – Mulligans are usually better.
If you’re a golfer you can relate to this. After you miss a surely makeable putt (and after you curse a few times) you throw another ball down and strike it right in the heart of the cup! Or after you block slice one out of bounds you re tee another ball and split the fairway. When you make a sales call the second time, or third time - by role playing – for sure you will do something better on each subsequent ‘call’ because you’ll learn from the previous one. By the time you make the actual sales call you’re ready to nail it. If you doubt this think of the last sales call you made where you got to the car and said “I wish I would have…” There’s always something else, something more we wish we would have said or asked or done. So role play and get your second chance the first time.
Reason #2 – You build confidence and confidence helps your customer believe you.
By role playing you gain confidence in what you want to say and ask and how to do that. Then when you’re ‘live’ on the call you’re saying it exactly as you have rehearsed it and your confidence will come through.
Reason #3 – Doing doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes perfect. Role playing is practice. Doing is not.
When you sell, you do. Doing is not practicing. So don’t mislead yourself into thinking that all the doing you do every day when you’re doing what you do when you’re selling is automatically making you a better seller. Do you know which group of motorcycle riders has the highest rate of accidents? The ones that have had their licenses for a long time and have not committed to annual training courses. They get lazy, they take risks, they stop anticipating, they crash their motorcycles.
Don’t crash your motorcycle. Role play.
Good selling,
Mark
