Sales Role-Play Scenarios for 2023

The more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in a war” is an age-old saying and is still true in the sales war as well! In this blog, we will discuss 12 “Must Have” Sales Role-Play Scenarios for 2023 in order to achieve sales excellence.

Putting yours sales team to more and more of Sales Role – Plays, enhances the professional (product knowledge and software skills) of your team.

There is an upper limit to how much, onboarding content or training material you can take your sales person through. The real advantages are seen when we use Sales Role – Plays to perfect the craft.

The mental context changes a lot when you are reading vs when you are speaking. Final sales engagement is more “brick and mortar”, and at times sales team member may loose the content. Hence Sales Role – Play exercises becomes imperative.

Just like in a gym you have different endurance level, your Sales Role – Plays can start at easy / medium levels and then enter into combat levels.

Traditional (Synchronous) vs SalesPlus Video (Asynchronous) Sales Role-Play Scenarios

Traditional Sales Role – Play has its own advantage that a human coach is able to ask a question in a sequence and react to the answer give by the sales agent.

However its comes with a severe limitation as follows

1. Synchronous / Non scalable – You are limited by the number of coaches available and it requires 1:1 locking of sales agent and coach in the same space and time.
   
2. Monolith – While doing a pure reactive sales play has its own merit but its a monolith flow. But many people in sports analogy do drills, mini sprints and kathas. In case of self paced video based, a sales agent can work on various mini Sales role-play scenarios and build up that muscle.

Top 12 sales role-plays

We’ve highlighted our eight tried-and-true favorites if you’re a manager or leader seeking sales role-play ideas that can help your team learn new scenarios and think on their feet.

It’s a good idea to first identify the major areas where representatives frequently struggle or encounter difficulties, and then provide them with the resources they need to prepare for those circumstances in the field, as you consider the various types of Sales role-play scenarios to rehearse with your team.

The best role-play situations are included here, along with advice on how to carry them out successfully in a remote setting.

1 Handling Objections of Various Types

Being able to handle objections and pushbacks is one of the most important art to master for a sales team. It requires a great deal of experience or practice to handle objections.

The company should list out the top 4 Sales role-play scenarios given the past history and work out Sales Role – Plays in those areas.

It could that for example

1. The client is not interested
2. Pushback in terms of asking to send emails
3. Already have something similar and hence have no need
4. We can look at it later

Then the sales reps can be made to prepare on the same.

2 Rapport Building Scenario – Trust and Rapport is everything

Gaining customer’s trust is an super crucial in the entire sales process. Many a times likability of the sales agent works as a lubricant to the entire customer / sales relationship.

Humans (customers) can in a “blink” pick up emotions like boredom, low confidence or hurry. To be conversing in a manner that creates human connect, is required. How you introduce yourself, say hello, how to made an eye contact, where you smiled and where you were not, all goes into the process of rapport building.

Working with your team on the rapport building Sales Role – Play is super essential and here the main performance  traits would be the softskill or relationship building, more than product knowledge

3 Product Demonstration – Sticking with Demo Plan

All mature setup create standard product demos, and if properly designed and delivered as per the guidelines, it does a part of the job.

Sales Role – Play can check for adherence to the standard script

4 Product Demonstration – Sharp Client Questions

Taking it further, it could be that, say on slide 7 that talked about Product features, a client raises a query. Sales rep have to prepare and be able to answer those deftly.

Being able to handle deeper incisions by client, is something that properly designed product demonstration Sales Role – Play should handle

5 Handling Competitive Scenario

We live in a connected and informed world, many a times customer would have done enough research on the competitive offering and would raise competitive comparison to your sales team.

Handling two levels of Sales role-play scenarios should be trained

1. Straight cut and known comparison – Handling known comparison and mostly using the script has to be tested
2. Tough comparison – An are where sales team finds itself vulnerable, how they are able to be able to gracefully handle the vulnerable zone while navigating the discussion back on the unique strength of our current offerings

6 Cold Calling Scenarios

In cold calling, the very sentence uttered by the sales rep set the positioning of the call.  A role-play exercise where these parameters are trained upon

1. Able to gain the attention of the prospect
2. Being able to set identity in front of the prospect
3. Set a reason for calling
4. Build a bridge
5. Listening
6. Closing the call

All these sub steps should be Sales Role – Played and for each agent the bottleneck would be different and those have to be strengthened one step at a time

7 Customer Discovery

To be able to discover customers, its important to identify customers where your solution is a painkiller. Team involved in this process should be aware of the key pain areas for a given segment and then be able to map the solution using the product / services of the organization.

Sales Role – Play involving different customer segment, persona of decision maker and context of pain area and then the team member is made to identify the key value proposition of the solution that would alleviate the pains of the prospect.

8 Informed Customer Scenarios

Customers who are well informed or very data oriented can create a lot of good / bad back and forth in the sales process. Some of the scenario sales rep should be prepared on are

1. Sales rep should appear well informed themselves on deeper aspect of the product / services
2. Client asking for customer references, how to handle the same
3. Discussion on unique selling props and competitive advantages

9 Difficult to handle Prospect

Difficult to handle prospect can test the emotional level and a lot of important soft skill traits come into play

Sales Role – Play should be planned for

1. Very repulsive client who claims to know everything
2. We can do this internally, guess we dont need you
3. We have not heard about your company / brand
4. There are bad reviews that I have read

10 – 2 mins Pitch

The sales team should be made to Sales Role – Play and speak out as the elevator pitch. Its typically a small paragraph that has to be spoken in 2 mins to get the attention and provide clarity on what you are offering or solving.

Being precise also shows clarity of understanding of what you are selling.

2 mins pitch questions can be provided for various scenarios like

1. Explaining about the services or products of your company
2. Stating the mission/vision statement of your team
3. Talking about the value proposition of the tool
4. Explaining the competitive advantages

Sales folks are expected to be chatty, but at time brevity is what cuts the deal.

11 Price Negotiation

To put the final nail on the deal, negotiation is an important part. Bestseller books have been written on the same topic and it’s an art that requires a lot of mental and emotional control.

Sales Role – Plays involving

1. Sales reps be able to explain the specific benefits the product/ service is going to provide
2. How to handle objections around cost
3. How to bring closure to the discussion so that it does not go into a stale state

Using sales plus, a sales coach can identify people who are doing well in the Sales Role – Play and they can then do a peer learning of other folks who are yet to cut it.

12 Non-Responsive Prospect

Silence is the biggest killer, and there are fancy terms for it “client ghosting”. Sales Role – Plays involving how to UnGhost the client is very key to business success. The pain of seeing a dead client in CRM is known to many top sales leaders.

Sales Role – Play where a client on call who is not showing interest in moving forward should be practicing.

1. How to ease the client from the pressure of buying and getting into let us support you mode
2. When it’s sure the client is not going to respond, how to handle it gracefully

Practicing the above scenarios leads to huge success if it’s done through a video mode. Tools like Bytecasting sales plus provide the above features to automate the above scenarios. Reach out to us on prasoon@bytecasting.com to learn and we would be happy to discuss.

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