Roleplay has long been used a training tool in the world of sales and customer service. In fact, one of the first articles to come up if you search the topic is an article from the May 1987 issue of the Harvard Business Review. In fact, this concept originates with Howard Barrows, a physician and educator, who developed the idea in 1963 to simulate doctor-patient interactions. By the 1980s, professional roleplay had extended out from medical training all the way into everything from the military to law enforcement to business leadership.
As a tool, roleplay offers several distinct benefits, including the opportunity for an employee to practice his or her skills without the risk of failure. As the adage goes, practice makes perfect, so roleplay scenarios are ideal for making mistakes and learning from them without worrying about lost sales or angry customers. Here are some scenarios each sales office should tackle:
Greet and welcome: The first impression is hardest to overcome, so it’s important that employees become familiar and comfortable with approaching your guests to initiate conversation. With practice, they’ll learn how to do so in a genuine way that will set your guests at ease and make them feel welcome. Such a roleplay would do well to focus on natural-sounding icebreakers.
Uncover needs: One of the most common mistakes a new salesperson will make is to list off every product in a given category like a robotic sales catalogue. Instead, employees must learn to ask the right kinds of questions to get the customer talking. These roleplays should focus on open-ended questions and general conversation skills to learn as much about the customer as possible so as to help the employee direct him or her to the right product.
Educate and demonstrate: Presentation skills are some of the hardest to develop for salespeople, so these roleplays will be critical for developing your staff. These are good opportunities to discover how well they understand the products they’re selling, as well as their comfort with explaining complex subjects. This is also a good time for salespeople to learn how to transition from demonstrating something to having the customer put his or her hands on it, as it’s been shown that when customers simply touch a product, they develop a sense of ownership for it.
Overcome objections: Your staff will be challenged in all manner of ways, like “This costs more than I want to spend” or “This is too complicated for me to learn.” To counter, employees have to build value. They must practice their sales pitches to stress why a purchase with your business is a good investment. Everything from quality to product support is key here. Even so, customers will still raise objections, and your employees have to be ready to take them on one by one in an understanding but confidant way.
Resolve a problem: Salespeople have to deal with problems, just like support staff. If a customer is unhappy with a product, you know full well he or she is going to come in to speak directly with the person who sold it. It’s thus important to practice patience, empathy, and leadership here. Even when your employee has to defer a problem to a manager or to support staff, he or she can still take charge connecting the customer with the right person. In the end, you want customers to see your employees as trustworthy.
We often think of roleplay as having the manager pretend to be the customer so that he or she can test the employee; but don’t be afraid to reverse the roles. Allow the employee to test you so that he or she can learn from a seasoned professional. If you have senior staff or multiple managers, they can perform these scenarios themselves in front of the sales staff so they can take notes without feeling the pressure of feeling tested.
Roleplay is but one of many training tools out there, but it’s one everyone should try. Roleplaying itself requires practice (even beyond the scenarios you’re covering), as it’s easy to feel a bit silly playing a part, as though you’re parodying a customer. But the more you use this tool to engage your employees, the more comfortable you’ll feel with it, and the better they’ll ultimately learn from you.
Once you’re ready to put this training into practice, let us at The Brandt Group know. Our mystery shoppers will put your staff into roleplay scenarios without their even knowing, which will allow you to see just how well your staff development is progressing. After all, a well-trained staff is the kind you can see as trustworthy.
