Q. What do people dislike the most about sales training?
- Boring, shoot-me-now, trainer
- Cheap, you-gotta-be-kidding-me tricks
- OMG! Role play
“All the above” might be a fair response but I suspect that’s just the larger excuse. At Sandler Training Trustpointe we know the answer is C, the much-despised role play. In fact, here at our training center, if we want people to move up to the front, we simply put pieces of paper on the back-of-the-room chairs and tables that read, “Reserved for Role Play Participants.” My word, how quickly people gather ‘round the camp fire.
Role play is Catch-22. Your craft needs practice but “it’s not the real thing.” If I had a buck for every time I heard, “Role play is stupid,” I’d be delivering sessions from a well-appointed island. Role play has its limitations. Got it. You win. But it can pay huge dividends – and you know it. Don’t get it and you lose.
So why all the eye rolls at the very mention of role play? Peer fear. Pure and simple. Too many of our otherwise gifted sales brothers and sisters suffer anxiety attacks and a little known sales condition called FOLS – Fear of Looking Stupid. It’s horrible, I tell you; an awful disease. FOLS rears its anxious head at the very thought of role play.
An eye roll, however, is revealing to the trained eye. Besides contempt, it suggests a less than healthy self-esteem and a little known inner tape within all of us called an Adaptive Child Ego State. It’s the little you that still fears embarrassment.
Best-of-class performers have no such fear and no such limitation on their self-esteem. They understand that doing things the same way and getting the same result is futile. They’d rather embrace the laughter of their peers than be an unwitting partner to a botched sales deal.
They enjoy the laughs on the way to the bank.
At Sandler Training Trustpointe we develop skill. To learn more about huge dividends, self-limiting inner voices, and laugh-out-loud bank trips, contact Tim Roberts at 317-845-0041 or tim.roberts@sandler.com.
Salesman, O salesman, wherefore art thou, salesman?
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