Rule #17 Role-Plays

In sales training classes I have proctored, we role-play constantly!

“Ugh,” you say? Nonsense! Role-plays reveal leadership: who has it and

who doesn’t.

Has anyone ever watched Top Gun and failed to think that it looked like

the most exhilarating thing in the world? Top Gun is just a role-play! What

game of scrimmage wasn’t fun? The scoreboard wasn’t even turned on, but

the big play still got oohs and aahs. And the star athletes still made sure

they got noticed.

When I was a teenage lifeguard, the Life Flight helicopter came out of

Pittsburgh and landed at our pool in the suburbs on a practice drill. We

had to evacuate 300 people, collect every towel and scrap of trash, move

pool chairs, etc.—in twelve minutes from the time we made the 911 call.

There was also a volunteer “victim” with a suspected serious injury to rescue

out of the pool, which required the most intense and rigorous aspects

of our lifeguard training we could muster. It was a rush knowing that the

helicopter was coming and the clock was ticking. Then it landed. The cool

factor was off the charts! It was completely fake, but it was awesome!

Sales is very special in that it comes with a scoreboard in the form of sales

quotas and other awards and measures. And we get to role-play, or scrimmage,

or whatever you like to call it.

In the role-plays, we look to see if candidates are struggling to avoid

devolving into adversarial conversations with customers. When seasoned

salespeople take a new position, they really struggle to be deferential

and unintimidating. Their own frustration with “rookie-itis” takes

a toll. They are so used to being the expert that being the newbie again

is maddening. It has been my experience that failure to set expectations

and agendas at the beginning of the conversation can lead to confusion

and dead ends. Adversarial conversations, however, often result because

we fail to say things that express the fact that we are on the customer’s

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side. There simply was nothing positive stated about the customer before

we began to attack their current state of affairs (which we feel need to

change).

The positive things you say must not be canned or insincere. You must

present a win-win. A statement that conveys a win for them alone, while

selfless, is disingenuous and leaves the customer wary of a hidden agenda.

A win for you alone is not compelling to customers either.

In my pharma days, we would role-play as large groups at almost every

meeting. As a manager of new-hire training, I got to observe 500 roleplays

in one week. In both settings trends emerged, failures jumped out,

great verbiage was noted, thought patterns emerged, and winning techniques

became obvious. The unique opportunity of seeing so many salespeople

in such a condensed time frame was illuminating and insightful.

Capitalize on this dynamic every time you get to role-play in groups at

meetings. Role-plays distinguish professionals, just like scrimmages distinguish

starters from bench warmers.

Elite execution demands that salespeople value and exploit role-play

opportunities as learning laboratories.