If you’re tired of the same old sales training exercises, we’ve got five more options for you!
Role playing is the most fundamental skill a salesperson should learn during sales training exercises. When you’re looking for fun ways to energize your sales team and improve their product knowledge, it’s important to step away from standard and into exceptional.
Here are 5 innovative and effective sales training exercises that won’t bore your sales staff.
1. Superior Sleuth
Part of being a great salesperson is knowing your audience, but many sales professionals are already overwhelmed, and research often takes a backseat. However, the better you know your customer, the better prepared you’ll be to close the deal.
Teach your team to be detectives. Give your employees a short timeline (10-15 minutes), and see who can learn more about a specific customer in that timeframe. There’s two ways to play Superior Sleuth. First, you can hand out fake leads to your team. Choose “leads” that are easy enough to find information on (think CEOs or upper-management), but not too easy (A-list celebrities). Your other option is to pass out ideal prospects to your employees. If you know your targeted prospects, why not do a little detective work during training?
Ensure they each have a private place to conduct research online or by phone. Allow your team to be as creative as possible. Award the person who learns the most, especially if they discover a unique channel of information. This is a lesson in being resourceful.
One more note: if you do choose to find out information on your targeted, ideal customers, use it! Take the momentum you’ve gained from this training exercise, and get in touch to see if you can pitch them; don’t forget to personalize it.
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2. Whose pitch is best?
Getting a new customer is highly contingent on the sales pitch. A good pitch has a hook and is persuasive. Do you have a customer you really want to acquire, but can’t seem to grab? Try the following sales training exercise to sharpen pitching skills and perhaps land on the perfect way to entice a much-needed connection.
During your next team meeting, gather your sales team together and have them each individually write out a pitch for your hard-to-reach lead. Once their pitch is outlined, have them present it to the entire team.
Grade responses on:
- Audience knowledge
- Product knowledge
- Originality
- Persuasiveness
- Articulation of problem and solution
- Clarity and delivery of pitch
3. Best cold call conversation starter
When you call a potential customer out of the blue, it can be very challenging to migrate that cold call into a true sales call. Creating a conversation starter is the perfect way to warm up the call and make it a satisfying two-way engagement.
Pick a prospect. Outline her current situation and why she is a relevant target. Have each salesperson write up a great opening line for when they get her on the phone. Just remember that one line isn’t all you need. Come up with a few different ways to keep the conversation going. You’ll need to do some research on the customer beforehand to give the sales team ammunition and ideas (or, maybe you can have them do it themselves with the second sales training exercise!).
Grade the team on originality, persuasiveness, and relevance. Award a prize to the most engaging opener. Take notes, you may find more than one conversation starter to use down the road.
4. Are you listening?
Often times, sales people resort to the habit of doing all the talking. Customers, or potential customers, want to be heard. Try this unique exercise to see if your team’s listening skills are engaged and to remind them of the importance of lending an ear when speaking with customers or prospects. How it works:
Prepare a script in advance of your sales meeting where you outline a client communicating information about their company. Mix up personal information and mundane conversation with important facts about the company. Make it relative to pain points relevant your audience actually experiences. The script should be long and rambling.
Read the monologue without allowing the salespeople to take notes. See who can recall the most relevant information about the prospect, especially facts they can use as an icebreaker when following up. Have them independently write down their recall a full two minutes after hearing the monologue. In real life, salespeople don’t have the opportunity to take notes when engaging with a customer and would need to recall information after the meeting when they are in their car or have left the premises.
Score by how many relevant facts each person retains. Award whoever has the best score.
5. Company Jeopardy
How much does your sales team really know about your company and products? Playing company Jeopardy is an innovative way to expose important facts about your organization and products so that your sales team will be in the field armed with knowledge afterward. Break company facts and product or services information into categories and set up a jeopardy game scenario in your meeting space.
Tips for a successful training session:
- Keep sales training exercises short.
- Have prizes, and make it fun.
- Include refreshments during the training.
- Throughout the exercises, share success stories and real-life examples to motivate your team.
No matter the technique, implementing innovative and fun sales training exercises is easy, and has been proven to be effective in providing tools and better retention than standard role play. Use these to energize, inform, and train your sales staff.
While you’re busy with these sales training exercises, Blitz could be automating all of your processes for you. Schedule a free demo of our lead management software and gain loyal customers with less work!
What sales training exercises do you use with your employees? Let us know in the comments!