Role-plays as a Successful Sales Training Tool

Role-playing games or role-plays are a very effective yet easy and inexpensive method of training sales staff on all levels: from beginners to advanced. Let us start with definition. Encyclopedia Wikipedia define role-plays as “type of a game in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories." Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely.

The educational advantage of this type of training is achieved by the fact that trainees determine themselves the outcome of the role play, based on their knowledge, experience and imagination. They are not told what to do, they learn by doing it. As a result these experiences will stay much longer in their memory versus formal lectures, presentations, etc.

Another advantage of role-plays is that they work well in all cultures. In our corporate experience we conducted role-plays training in London with participants from nearly a dozen European countries and we put together a similar training in Russia as consultants several years earlier. In both cases the training was well receieved and the feedback from participants about the format, content and value was all positive.

The role-plays are conducted in the following way: all praticipants receive 2 pieces of paper: one with the rules of the play (the same for both) and one with the description of the assigned role (usually a sales person and a customer) – different for each participant. The key to success is to keep the roles secret from one another and stick to your own role till the end. The moderator facilitates the flow of the play.

Here are some types of role-plays that can be used for training sales personnel:

1. “CUSTOMER TYPE” role-play: this is a pretty simple role play where the sales person is just given a task to finalize a deal and the person playing customer is given a discription of his customer character. Usual characters are “difficult” customers: rude, annoying, undecisive, forgetful, etc. The aim of this game is to train excellent customer service, patience, empathy, understanding, self-composure and generally the ability to get out of difficult situations that are not product/service based but defined by human nature. Length: 7-10 minutes.

2. FAQ role-play: this play is good for entry level staff because it’s aim is to build the excellent knowledge of the product/service, company rules and procedures and also learn how to behave in a situation where you don’t know the answer or cannot disclose information. The sales person is given a task to accommodate the customer and the person playing the customer is given a task to ask as many questions as possible about the product, service, company, etc. Some of the “tricky” questions may be prompted on the sheet describing the role. These may include unethical questions, questions that prompt a sales person to disclose confidential information (which he must not disclose), etc. Length: 10-15 minutes.

3. NEGOTIATIONS role-play: this can be used on all levels and the course can be taken several times. The aim of these role-plays is to develop good selling and negotiation skills. The sales person is usually given a financial target he has to achieve as a result of negotiations (income, price, discount, etc.) and the items he/she can compromise on. The “customer” is given his financial target and the items he/she can compromise on, which are obviously not in line with those of a sales person. The negotiation will go on till the point where an agreement can be reached between the two parties. This is an excellent role-play because both participants learn negotiation skills at the same time while in the first two role-plays one is playing a more secondary, supportive role to the primary learner. Length: 15-20 minutes (excluding preparation).

4. COMPLEX DEAL CLOSURE. This is the most complicated type of role-play and should be used on more advanced levels. In this play each party is given an extra sheet with general information about the other party, its assumed goals and objectives, strong and week points. However this information is either incomplete or contradictory or not entirely true. Only the moderator of the role-play has correct information about the both parties. The goal of this role-play is to develop listening and questioning skills to be able to obtain the missing information and make a proposal based on correct information that can be acceptable to the other party. In this role-play there can be two participants on each side since it is quite common in real world that there is more than one person present at a meeting from each company. Length: 20-30 minutes (excluding preparations).

While the first two role-plays do not need time for preparation, in the third and fourth role-plays the trainees are given 10-30 minutes (depending on the complexity of the play) to read the materials and prepare for the negotiations.

Typically a role-pay should take place in front of the audience of other trainees so that they can see, learn and discuss the play after it is over. It is important to draw their attention to what was done well, not so good and what could have been done in a different way.

It is very useful to videotape some of these plays so that participants can look at their own performance afterwards and analyze it.

The material for the role-plays can be imaginary as well as real case scenarios from the company’s previous experience. The sharing of these experiences should be encouraged within sales teams on regular basis and best practices should be determined, rewarded and implemented by all of the sales personnel.

Article Source: http://www.mycontentbuilder.com

About the author: EMAdvice = Emerging Markets Advice (www.emadvice.com) provides consulting services in the field of international marketing, sales and busiess development. We are your Navigator in the uncharted territory!

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated