Practice is essential to increasing success on sales calls, and one excellent way to practice is to have a “dress rehearsal” with a coworker or trusted peer. There are certain things you can do to make the role-playing situation the most helpful preparation for the sales call.
- Set a clear objective. Setting a defined objective for what you want to get out of the practice call, what skills you’d like to improve, and what you’ll have as a goal in a similar real call.
- If you’re role-playing with a mentor, have them model the skills you’d like to work on in that session. You can also try to model the individual skills you’d like to work on, and then practice putting them all together in a full simulated situation.
- Remove the fear of failure. Role-playing helps remove the fear of failure in the real-life situation by creating a space to practice various techniques. If a method doesn’t work, you can then use the role-play situation to workshop what went wrong and how to change it. This allows you to fail and learn from it without jeopardizing a sale or relationship with a customer.
- Role playing can also be helpful in the role of observer or customer, because you are able to see how various techniques play out and what it’s like to be on the other side of the sale. It can help you to identify what you’d like change about your current sales presentation – either by offering new techniques to incorporate or showing you what doesn’t work and should be removed.
- You can also provide and receive open, objective, and constructive feedback from your partner in the role-play exercise. This feedback is an essential part of the process, and a huge benefit of role-playing and “dress rehearsals”