Role play

A role play is a rehearsal. One person plays the seller, another plays the customer, and they run a short piece of a real conversation. The goal is to try the words aloud where a mistake costs nothing.

It does not live in the CRM, but its material does. Take the situation from a real deal. It can be an objection, a question that stalled a proposal, or a price raised too early. Keep a short list of these scenes, so practice always matches what customers actually say.

For example, the customer will compare prices on the next call. The seller practices the answer three times, and each round the customer gets tougher.

Run short role plays, ten to fifteen minutes, as part of the weekly team meeting or the 1:1. One scene, one skill. Play it, stop, discuss what worked, play it again. The head of sales or another seller plays the customer and keeps the pressure realistic.

It changes what a seller does in the next real conversation. Call review finds the moment that went wrong. The role play is where the seller repeats a better version until it sounds natural. Then the next real call shows whether it held. If it did not, go back to the call review and look for the moment again.

Role play is central to onboarding: new sellers rehearse the main objections before meeting customers. It also tests the script. If nobody can say a line naturally in practice, rewrite the line.

• Playing a customer who gives in too easily. The seller learns nothing about real pressure. Play the customer from the actual deal, with their actual words.
• Running long scenes from the first hello. Time runs out before the hard part. Start right at the moment you want to practice.
• Doing it once and moving on. A single run changes little. Repeat the same scene until the seller handles it without notes, then check it on a real call.
• Turning practice into a performance in front of the team. Sellers freeze and stop taking risks. Start in pairs, and move to the group once it feels normal.

By Friday, the head of sales picks the objection that cost the team the most deals recently. Write it as a short scene: who the customer is, what they say, what the seller needs to achieve. In the next team meeting, run it in pairs for ten minutes, swap roles, and note the answers that worked. Add the best answer to the playbook, so new sellers learn it too.

A weekly meeting on stuck deals that ends with a decision and an owner for each.