The Wisdom of Role Playing (Shhh!, Not So Loud) for Sales Success, Part II (please read Part I first)

In Part I of this article, I explained why sales people should role play. Here in Part II, I offer the following guidelines for structuring productive and skill-based developmental role plays:

The Rehearsal: Developmental Role Playing Guidelines

1. Identify challenging client situations.

Common sales challenges might include:

• Responding to tough objections
• Differentiating yourself and organization
• Selling value over price
• Positioning products and services
• Asking need-based questions
• Gaining an appointment with a prospect
• Closing business or gaining action steps

2. Ask a colleague or manager to play the role of a client or prospect, depending on the situation.

This person will also be the “coach” who provides feedback after the role play. This is a good time to agree on role play and feedback ground rules:

• Feedback should be balanced with strengths and areas for development. The coach should be prepared to provide both.
• The role play should be viewed as a developmental process and not a performance evaluation. It’s a perfect time to go out of the comfort zone and try something new.

3. Verbally set-up the sales situation and the events leading up to the practice moment.

For example, you might use a set-up that reflects a first meeting with a prospect who has a tough objection:

Right now we are meeting for the first time. You got the meeting using a third party referral. After a brief introduction and agreement on a meeting agenda, the prospect says: “I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me, but I just want you to understand that we have been with our current provider for several years and we are quite satisfied with our relationship.”

4. Start the role play at the moment the prospect makes the statement.

5. Conduct the role play until you feel you’ve completed the dialogue with the prospect role.

The role play most likely will take 5 to 10 minutes. Do not interrupt the role play, unless it goes way off course.

6. After the role play, use the following feedback process.

• The person in the role of the sales person provides a self-assessment of strengths and areas for improvement, providing specific examples of each.
• The coach provides balanced feedback on strength and areas for improvement, providing specific examples of each.
• Both discuss the key learning points and how to apply them to real life.

7. Re-do the role play to rehearse learning points.

Remember, role play is rehearsal, your practice before the big game or race. It creates patterns in the brain that you can rely on during stressful or challenging sales situations, giving you a been there, done that confidence. Now, go rehearse your next sales call!

The Wisdom of Role Playing (Shhh!, Not So Loud) for Sales Success, Part I

OK, here they are, the dreaded words: role playing. You may be tempted to skip this article because you detest the thought of role playing and dismiss its value as a training technique. Role playing has such a bad reputation that I’ve had clients ask me to refer to it as skill practice on sales training agendas. Based on my experience with thousands of sales professionals, role playing is the training tool most often met with fear and dread.

Just the thought of role playing can cause heart rates to increase and temperatures to rise. I’ve heard salespeople say it can make them do and say things they claim they never would in real life. Playing roles, many complain, is not real-life. Remarks such as, I don’t like to act, or, it doesn’t happen like this in real life, are common.

I agree that role playing makes sales people nervous, uncomfortable, say strange things, and that it is not real life. That’s why it’s called role playing.

Despite the complaints, it’s remarkable how often sales people who were initially resistant to role playing later comment that they would have liked more role playing. After the training, they admit they like the practice and feedback and that it’s useful to have the opportunity to practice and refine how they will say things during sales calls.

The question then is why should sales people role play? The answer is simple. It’s a fact that you will perform better in real life after you’ve rehearsed.

Let’s look at why and how role play rehearsals can give you a competitive advantage.

Role playing is a process requiring reflection and self-assessment. If designed with the right objectives and with as realistic as possible situations, role playing gives people the opportunity to experience scenarios they may face in the future. As a rehearsal for real encounters, role playing allows sales people to make mistakes in a safe environment. It is an invaluable tool for testing multiple and successful sales strategies.

According to Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, the brain works by pattern recognition and when it’s in an extremely frightening situation it sorts through a database for a script. Even though sales transactions are not usually considered extremely frightening, the brain responds in a similar way, looking for a memory or script to use in a challenging situation. Ripley further states: Your brain relies on that memory and responds to it much more quickly and fully than words. Rehearsing with role play creates the pattern the brain needs to trigger a successful response.

Think about how and why athletes practice (does practice makes perfect sound familar?). A football team will scout each opponent, learning all they can about their schemes and personnel. In practice, the team will simulate playing their opponent, familiarizing themselves on how to react to different situations until it becomes second nature for game day.

The repetitive nature of athletic training also produces muscle memory, the process of creating increased accuracy through repetition. Similarly, a runner will incorporate speed workouts into their training (running at or faster than their race pace), allowing their muscles, lungs and heart to be accustomed to running at a fast pace. Additionally, many athletes use visualization to mentally rehearse their event. None of this is real life, but an important simulation (role play?) for real life.

Of course, not all role playing is productive and valuable. It has a bad reputation because of how it has been misused as a tool. Sales people dread it because their experience has been that it was used as a method to expose their weaknesses in front of colleagues or management, causing embarrassment and pain. Some managers think this is the right way to learn, but I completely disagree.

In Part II of this article, I will offer guidelines for structuring productive and skill-based developmental role plays.

Three Key Questions to Mortgage Originator Survival

You are in the mortgage origination business during one of the most adverse mortgage environments for buyers we've seen in a long time. As credit standards tighten and financial markets wrestle with losses and bad press, your ability to build trust, help the home buyer understand fewer and changing options, and obtain an affordable mortgage, has never been more critical. How can mortgage originators not only survive this market, but achieve new levels of success? Now is the time to reflect on ways to adopt new strategies and tactics to make sure you can be as successful as possible.

Three Key Questions

To help you achieve new approaches and fresh ideas, let's use the power of self-reflection and assessment to gain a current perspective on your mortgage origination business. Please take a moment and answer the three key questions below before you read the text that follows them:

1. What business are you in?
2. What are you doing well that's helping you achieve success today?
3. What do you need to change to achieve greater success?

What Business Are You In?

This question should elicit a client-centered response and not a technical response. If you answered, I am in the relationship business, or a similar answer such as customer service, the American Dream business, you are client-focused. Your answers "speak" from the client's perspective. If you answered I am in the mortgage business, or a similar answer with a focus on your products, you are product-focused with a more technical perspective.

Your perspective, whether client or product focused, matters more today than ever before. However, when you are client-centered, you build and foster trust. Buyers today need you to have their needs and struggles on your mind while you help them. They want you to understand and consider their goals, values and priorities before you offer a mortgage option.

What Are You Doing Well?

It's time to self-assess and really know what's working for you. You should be able to cite at least five strengths that are helping you succeed in this market. For example, one mortgage originator I interviewed answered this question as follows:

1. I am following-up more frequently on all my leads.
2. I am taking time to get to know the needs of my referral business partners.
3. I am joining more professional networking groups to build my presence.
4. I am re-thinking how I market to my niche solutions and building new strategies.
5. I am sharpening my ability to create dialogue with buyers and listen more intently.

What Do You Need To Change to Create More Success?

This question is tough because it requires full knowledge of what's working and what's not working and sometimes we have a "blind spot" preventing us from seeing our limitations. Remember, this question is not about what wrong with the market or your company, it's about you and what you could be doing better or differently to change your results. This is what I often hear when I ask mortgage originators this question:

1. I need better time management.
2. I need to figure out what to say to a buyer who says: "I'm not interested in your option."
3. I need to ask more insightful questions to understand needs.
4. I need to be more persistent.
5. I don't know what I need to change.

The last response is both sad and insightful. The sad truth is that many people don't know what to change. In this case, it is critical to get another person's perspective. I recommend asking colleagues, buyers, referral partners, and sales managers for help. Ask them to provide feedback on what they observe about your sales process and skills. Ask for strengths and areas for improvement. When you hear something you disagree with, don't defend yourself, but thank everyone who gives you feedback.

There will always be challenging times and change in the mortgage industry; it's part of the package, so to speak. As a mortgage originator you only have control over your process, activities and skills. The important thing is to make sure they are ever-adapting to change. Use the three key questions as a tool to sharpen your game and build your business.

Measuring Training's Value: Metrics Lite

Being a sales consulting and training company, clients and prospects often ask if we can measure the impact of our training, and occasionally whether we can guarantee increased sales. While we have confidence in our consulting, instructional design and facilitation abilities, and understand the importance of these questions from both management and training perspectives, quantifying training’s impact can be a slippery slope for any training company.

Isolating training from the many factors that may positively and negatively impact its success is a major pitfall in the evaluation process. Most training professionals recognize that the best training in the world may not be able to overcome the impact of poor management, low morale, unsatisfactory compensation structures, unreasonable sales goals, and a variety of other factors. Conversely, all too often mediocre training appears superb when supported with a marketing blitz, product price reductions, or economic upswings.

Despite these inherent challenges, we agree that evaluating training is wise and a necessary process. However, the process doesn’t need to become a science project with empirical evidence to “prove” that the training intervention was solely responsible for the results.

Many organizations want to measure results, but are unable to provide the resources in time and money to support the process. To help those organizations, we suggest a lighter (tastes great, less filling) approach: “Metrics Lite.” “Metrics Lite” employs Donald L. Kirkpatrick’s 4 Levels of Evaluating Training Programs process as simply stated below:

Level 1: Reaction - Participant reaction to the training
Level 2: Learning - Change or increase in knowledge or skills
Level 3: Behavior - Extent of the application of learning
Level 4: Results - Effect on the business resulting from the training

To illustrate the “Metrics Lite” approach we offer a real-life case study and our self-evaluation: what worked well, what we learned, and what might be a slippery slope.

We were contacted by a leading mortgage lender’s Call Center training department interested in helping transform their agents from reactive “order takers” to proactive, needs-based solution performers. Additionally, it was important to them that there be a “measurement” on training’s effectiveness.

We proposed Kirkpatrick’s model designing and executing Levels, 1, 2, and 3, and because of monetary, time and resource constraints, we would support the design of Level 4 only.

Level 1

Action: Immediately following the training workshops, participants rated the relevance and effectiveness of the training, and the training methods and techniques employed.

Result: Participants viewed the training as highly effective and relevant to their jobs, with many offering specific positive comments.

Self-evaluation: Participants rated all questions high, with the highest areas on content relevancy and ability to transfer skills to the job. We learned that participants wanted more coverage on resolving objections and closing (definitely linked concepts!).

Level 2

Action: Participants completed written Pre and Post-Tests (20 questions), testing their knowledge and the application of skills learned in the workshops. We used realistic customer situations to test the ability to apply knowledge about learned skills.

Result: Participant’s Post-Test scores were higher than their Pre-Test scores, indicating increased knowledge and skill application.

Self-evaluation: The questionnaire was designed to be challenging, but may have been too easy as there wasn’t a significant increase in scores due to relatively high grades on the Pre test. Our training philosophy is that people learn by doing (I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. - Confucius). Accordingly, we believe passing a written test does have some limited merit in assessing skills learning, but it’s certainly not a true indication of mastery of the training objectives.

Level 3

Action: Using a random approach of training and non-training participants, we monitored two to four recorded calls with the training department. Using a customized 22 sales behavior checklist, we rated the degree participants and non-participants applied the skills. We also conducted an on-line “perception” survey two months following training, asking for feedback regarding the impact and usefulness of the training and materials.

Result: Participants applied the learned skills during calls more often following training. Participants continue to refer to the training materials very often.

Self-evaluation: We believe that assessing a participant’s actual performance to be the most important assessment. We were thrilled to notice distinct improvement in participant’s skills. It was also valuable to learn that the materials were still relevant two months after the training.

We do have two comments, though. First, we are concerned that we and training department personnel conducted the monitoring. We know that we were as objective as possible, but the monitoring should impartially be done by a party who isn’t a stakeholder in the success of the training. Secondly, the success of the training is predicated on not just the training workshop, but also other ongoing factors such as coaching by Sales Managers and the support of management.

Level 4

Action: The Call Center’s training department compared participant and non-participant conversion rates (the ability to convert a qualified caller’s interest in mortgage information into a closed mortgage) and cross-sales levels for two months following training to prior periods.

Result: Sales Agents who went through training had increased conversion rates and cross sales following training compared to prior periods, and higher overall levels than those who did not go through training.

Self-evaluation: This is obviously the bottom-line to any client. However, as stated earlier, there are many other factors that can make the numbers better or worse, regardless of the quality of the training. Given the training department’s need to spend considerable hours on call monitoring, it’s questionable whether the cost in time and manpower is worth the effort. Secondly, while the assessment appears very objective (the assessment is purely statistics), the results were compiled by those with a stake in the training’s success, the client’s training department. We believe that if a Level 4 evaluation is to be done, it should be done by a third party, either a different area of the company, or an outside expert vender.

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) found that 45 percent of surveyed organizations only gauged trainees’ reactions to courses (Bassi & van Buren, 1999). Overall, 93% of training courses are evaluated at Level 1, 52% at Level 2, 31% at Level 3 and 28% at Level 4. The data illustrates a preference to conduct simple evaluations. We believe this is partly due to the difficulty of conducting objective in-depth evaluations, and partly due to monetary, time and resource constraints.

Despite the inherent challenges and pitfalls of the evaluation process, we strongly urge organizations to attempt it, even though it’s not foolproof. After all, despite the “Metrics Lite” approach being less filling, it does taste great.

Coaching For Success: It's The How, Not The What

Most Sales Managers accept the premise that the majority of salespeople will achieve their sales goals if they follow a focused and disciplined sales process combined with flawlessly executed consultative sales skills. Unfortunately, based on my experience working with hundreds of sales professionals, there isn’t a lot of evidence to suggest that Sales Managers are providing direction and feedback on anything but the sales process (“what to do/not to do” - goals, priorities, reports, etc.), leaving salespeople isolated to figure out “the how to” execute the process using their existing sales strategies and skills.

I’ve often heard the argument that “experienced” salespeople don’t need to be coached on “the how” because they are hired and paid for their existing sales skills. This way of thinking can lead to not only frustrated salespeople, but also average results with salespeople stuck in the “comfort zone,” unable to adapt to a dynamic, highly competitive landscape.

A recent conversation I had with a Sales Manager highlights the nature of the problem and his lack of understanding of how salespeople develop, refine their skills and achieve breakthrough sales results:

Me: How are you coaching your salespeople?
Sales Manager: I have weekly meetings.

What happens at the meetings?
I put up the results, you know the pipeline, and everyone gets to see how well they are doing relative to each other.

How do you see this as coaching?
The salesperson who’s at the bottom knows where he stands; can see that his performance is, you know, “light.”

OK, I agree some “peer pressure” can motivate, but what do you think he’ll do differently as a result of his ranking at the bottom?
I’m hoping he’ll fill his pipeline.

How do you think he’ll do that?
He’s got to get better on execution.

What type of execution?
Prospecting. We are unknown in this marketplace and he’s not very good at getting in the door with prospects.

Have you coached him on this?
Yes, I told him he needs to see at least five prospects per week.

In the above example, the Sales Manager tells the salesperson “what to do” (make five prospect calls per week), but fails to address the more likely underlying problem: the salesperson’s struggle with the same old obstacles, using old habits and ineffective strategies and skills. Obviously, the salesperson will try harder because he is under greater pressure to fill the pipeline, but he may not succeed if he doesn’t have the skills to gain meetings with prospects.

I’m flabbergasted during sales training when I hear I’m the ONLY person who provides skills development feedback. After skills coaching, it’s not unusual for me to hear a resounding “thank you” and comments such as:

“I don’t get any coaching, except when my numbers are down, and then my manager sends me an email saying that I need to quickly improve.”
“No one ever tells me what I’m doing right.”
“I wish I had this feedback years ago. It’s nice to know that I can improve, because I’ve been so frustrated.”

If you are a Sales Manager, you need to hear this! The “what to do” is not the “how to do it.” Salespeople are starving for developmental skills coaching! Now I don’t mean that they need feedback on sales goals, results, wins, losses, etc., you probably already provide enough of that. Salespeople are hungry for direct, specific and practical coaching on what they are doing that’s effective, and what they ought to be doing to increase effectiveness. This type of coaching is skills development coaching.

Success in today’s dynamic marketplace requires a greater focus on skills, such as effectively persuading prospects to meet, determining needs and priorities, focused listening, differentiating the organization beyond price, sales planning and negotiation skills. Sales Managers who can help their salespeople develop these skills accept their full responsibility to ensure salespeople have the focus, discipline, and highly refined strategies and skills to thrive.

A New Way of Life in the Call Center: From Service to Sales

We’ve just received another training request to “support a culture shift,” transitioning inbound customer service representatives to proactive, outbound sales professionals. The stated business goal is to deepen client relationships with a large number of targeted clients that may not get enough attention from outside sales people. We’ve also found that many of our clients are in various stages of transforming their Call Centers from cost to revenue centers by adding cross-sales goals to existing service goals. These changes represent a new way of life in the Call Center.

We know that it can be difficult for many Call Center employees to successfully make the transition from skills needed to handle routine customer requests, questions, and problems to proactive sales skills, the ability to quickly identify customer needs and offer differentiated product solutions. While some are adjusting to their new responsibilities, it’s been an unwelcome and frustrating change for many, with some employees unable to meet challenging sales goals.

The problem involves several factors, including recruitment, management, compensation and training, but the biggest pitfall we see is that many service reps have negative impressions of selling and are fearful of it because they don’t know how to do it. We hear comments such as:

“I enjoy helping people who call in, but I wasn’t hired to sell.”
“We’re just pushing products on the customers.”
“They haven’t taught us enough about the products to sell them.”

And then there’s the friend of mine who remarked: “So you teach people to how to be annoying and sell people things they don’t need or want.”

Few people, Call Center service reps and customers alike, are thrilled with the sales experience. In fact, because of negative reactions to the sales process, one of our clients has replaced the word “sales” with “solution” as a way to instill the impression in service reps that sales should be needs-based, not “pushy” and manipulative. On the customer side, I’ve heard customers try to pre-empt the sales process by immediately stating to the service rep: “Now don’t try to sell me anything today!”

We know that when you provide the right sales strategies and skills to increase confidence and comfort with selling, service reps will more likely embrace sales as a way of life in the Call Center. Whether being expected to cross-sell during a service call or make outbound calls to targeted prospects or clients, the right product and sales training can dramatically reduce negativity and frustrations in making a successful transition to selling.

We suggest the following five key sales strategies:

1. Check Confidence

How people feel about selling affects their desire to do it and ultimately their success. Lack of confidence is the most common contributor to problems with motivation and the ability to close business. A sales person’s voice presence including tone, inflection, volume, pace and energy often reveal his or her mindset and confidence level. Customers are tuned into voice presence more than any other element so it is worth a self-assessment.

2. Do Client Preparation

Reviewing available client information and records helps to build confidence and rapport. Clients expect us to have a client-centered context for a recommendation or call purpose; without a context they will most likely view the call as “pushy” or as an intrusion, not needs-based. Transition statements help link a product or service idea to the customer’s immediate situation and should include a brief link to information available or something the customer said.

3. Do Sales Preparation

Like face-to-face-sales people, telephone salespeople are more likely to achieve their sales goals if they establish specific achievable objectives and back-up objectives for the call. “Winging it” is not a sales objective or strategy. While it is critical to maintain a focus on the client, having a clear sales objective and action step be it closing, referring, or sending information, helps create sales momentum.

Preparation also involves the process of ensuring the sales dialogue is client-centered. Many sales people spend too much time preparing for what they want to say to a client versus preparing a strategy for achieving client dialogue and uncovering their needs and priorities. We recommend preparing questions around the central theme, “What do I want to learn from the client?”

4. Learn the Client’s Point of View

Clients have a point of view. Uncovering and selling to the client’s point of view is incredibly persuasive. Now keep in mind that a client’s point of view is often stated as an objection or implied in a question. That’s a good sign! Because objections provide an opportunity to ask deeper questions and listen, they can be the dialogue path to building relationships and increasing the salesperson’s ability to be persuasive.

5. Build Trust

Don’t assume that trust exists because you are speaking with an existing client. Trust is earned during every contact through your ability to demonstrate your needs-based intent. The unintended consequence of a goal-oriented sales focus is that too often it makes customers feel manipulated and used, resulting in shallow relationships and long-term distrust.

Sales Sight: Open Eyes

The failure to "see" is one of the most lethal sales pitfalls. It causes sales people to miss targets completely, hit targets by accident, or somehow lose sight of targets altogether.

Last summer I had a lesson on "seeing" that in many respects relates to the topic of selling and how we develop as sales professionals.

I signed up for a course through the New Hampshire Institute of Art on landscape painting in pastels. Let me say right now that I do not define myself as an artist, but agreed to take the course as a way to spend time with two of my artistic sisters and niece. My artistic outlet is photography and I have recently begun to photograph trees. (See Photo Insert)

The landscape pastels course was offered plein-air (outside) so we set up our easels in front of a landscape selected by our instructor. Our instructor, a highly accomplished New Hampshire landscape artist, pointed out that she selected the location because it had all the values (as defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a shape or area) needed for a "good" pastel painting. Here's what I saw: A pond surrounded by assorted grasses, bushes and pine trees with shades of greens (the bushes and trees) and blues and grays (the sky and pond water). That's it. After squinting to see values, and getting some initial instruction on how to sketch values, we proceeded to draw and paint.

After what seemed to be a few hours, I overheard the instructor critiquing my niece's work. She said, "I really like what you are doing here with the layers of color; the pinks, greens and reds you selected are outstanding." I glanced over at my niece's work and saw the beginning of the most beautiful pastel composition with layers of striking color (pink!) and value. It was obvious that we weren't seeing the same scene.

I heard the instructor step up to my easel. She was silent for several minutes before she spoke. During the silence, I tensed up. I heard a sigh. Then she spoke. Here's the conversation:

Instructor: What are you doing?
Me: Painting the scene.
Instructor: Show me what you see.
Me: I'm not sure what you mean.
Instructor: What is this right here (She pointed to the mass of green on my paper)
Me: The bushes over there.
Instructor: I'm not seeing what you see.
Me: OK. What should I do about that?
Instructor: Start painting what you really see.

The instructor was right. My first painting did not look like the landscape in front of us; it appeared flat and dull as the greens and blues took on the appearance of mud. My first excuse was to blame the the landscape. I started to say that it was "uninteresting" with only trees, bushes and a pond, but as the words were forming, I knew they were ridiculous. After all, my sisters and niece had painted the same scene with awesome results. Through additional coaching and feedback from the instructor, I learned that the problem with my painting had nothing to do with the subject, but everything to do with with my lack of artistic skills, especially the ability to see.

Pablo Picasso said it well, "There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into the sun."

When sales professionals fail to step back and see different perspectives they run the risk of developing lethal "blind spots". The following illustrates how important seeing is to sales people.

I recently worked with a group of low performing Small Business Bankers, those who were in the bottom quartile of a bank-wide ranking system, barely hitting their Scorecard targets. The goal of the training was to help them recognize the root causes of their sales performance discrepancies and coach them on strategies and skills that help could them improve and succeed.

Before we got started I tested their sales sight by asking the question, "What factors do you feel are causing you to under perform?" As I went around the room I was astonished to hear the Business Bankers blame their "bad' markets, the unattainable Scorecard goals, uncompetitive interest rates, client indecision, lack of marketing, and other external forces. I did not hear the Business Bankers blame their own lack of skill as indicated by statements such as "I could be doing a better job of managing my sales process" or "I need to learn how to gain appointments with prospects" or "I need to deepen relationships with my current clients." It was readily apparent that these Business Bankers had lost an important perspective; they could not see how their own behavior and skills, not the external environment, were the root causes of their performance gaps. I knew I had to change their perspective before we could change their behavior and skills.

The sales landscape is changing all the time. It is difficult to see and recognize the target in all the confusion. Frequent, objective self-assessment and coaching are ways sales people, even the most successful ones, can increase their sales sight to prevent and reduce sales "blind spots." Before placing blame sales people need to first ask, "What could I be doing better to increase my success?"

Since the landscape painting in pastels course, I've been studying the landscapes more closely and seeing more, really seeing more form, more color, more value, and more beauty. Perhaps I can turn a green spot into a tree.