Have you ever used a customer testimonial to sell?
Nick Belcher says that by using role-plays sales people can practise talking about customer testimonials to win new business.
Sales skills and behaviours develop over time and they are modified through experience along the way. I recall a comment from my sales manager about a sales training workshop; he said “They seemed to enjoy themselves but a couple of weeks later we saw very little change”
So it’s a real challenge for trainers to change participants’ well established ways of doing things to new ones within a short space of time. Our guiding principle is that people learn from experience; they need time to try out new techniques to develop real skill especially when it comes to presenting customer testimonials and using them to sell.
So let’s assume that you wish to run a sales training programme to help sales people use customer testimonials to improve conversion rates and sales performance. Now you need to produce a training format and that produces impactful learning and uses customer testimonials.
One of the most effective learning experiences is role-play. The concept was originally developed by Jacob Moreno, a Viennese psychologist who argued that people could gain more learning from acting out their problems than talking about them. Since then role-plays have been an important part of many training interventions. They allow sales professionals to think about difficult situations before they happen and to practise appropriate responses.
Role-plays work but there are issues that you need to take account of.
• In a role play a person has to pretend he or she is someone that they are not in reality.
• Delegates get nervous about participating in a role-play and they focus on that rather than the other sessions.
• People in a peer to peer role play will sometimes treat it as a game and aim to catch each other out thus reducing learning effectiveness.
• In a peer to peer role-play the feedback given to one from the other can be misunderstood and not effectively given
A way of addressing these issues is to engage professional role-players with corporate acting experience. It is affordable with an easy ROI calculation because the learning experience is so impactful, memorable and delivers results quicker than a traditional one facilitator training workshop. Professional role-players offer the following advantages.
• A role-play actor uses their acting skills to maintain a role-play character throughout the event.
• They can easily create a tense and awkward conversation that can challenge their delegate role-player.
• They are skilled in moving a conversation to a particular learning point and will confidently respond to anything the delegate has to say.
• Role-play actors are perceived as being outside the organisation so they are not constrained by internal politics or personalities.
• An important benefit is that delegates will relax more during the training event safe in the knowledge that they will not be role-playing against a manager.
• Role-play actors are skilled at retaining their characters and holding conversations which are the same for all participants in terms of enthusiasm and consistency.
• Vitally important is the role-player’s skill in giving their partner helpful feedback, many role-plays are spoiled because feedback was useless.
When role-playing sessions are implemented badly they can alienate sales people and wipe out learning. On the other hand if implemented properly they can identify competency gaps and increase your sales team success.
The combination of testimonials and role-playing is very powerful in stimulating sales performance; testimonials provide the proof to prospects of the quality of your service and role-play training gives your sales people the ammunition with which to convert prospects to paying customers.
Role-playing sales situations with customer testimonials is an underrated and underused sales training tool. According to US management consultant and author Paul DiModica, it is estimated that only 21% of sales teams actually role play sales issues and objections during the sales year.
When will you plan a role-play session for your sales people?