Innovative sales training exercises using Conversation Intelligence
Gone are the days when “sell me the pen” was the first sales training activity.
Training exercises have evolved dramatically with the advancement in internet facilities and technology such as sales conversational intelligence.
If you are a user of a conversational intelligence tool or about to purchase one, then you are in for a fun ride. Not alone. With the sales team.
You can do the following sales activities on the platform and record every conversation to understand the performance of your newbies and new hires. You can also create sales playbooks out of the most engaging and power-packed sessions.
Here are some tips to help you make an effective sales training session using Conversation Intelligence:
Play Mr. Detective
Part of being a sales rep is to learn and understand the audience.
You may interview people, look at them on LinkedIn, catch up for a cup of coffee, and what more.
However, the basic details of any buyer are available on the internet.
Before you get on a call with your new hire, intimate them about a meeting with the CEO and VP of XYZ organization and ask them to come prepared about them within a restricted timeline (for ex.: half a day).
Get on your meeting platform and add the conversational intelligence assistant and start a role play. Check for minute details impersonating the CEO and VP. Try and assess the depth of their research and conclude if they have gained enough knowledge. The reason we add the recording assistance is to ensure the new hire can listen to the conversation and self-evaluate their meeting and identify improvement areas.
The idea is that research shouldn’t take a backseat. Knowing your customer better will help you to close the deal better.
Solve My Problem
Ever tried playing the role of an annoying VP of Sales who’s unhappy with his team’s performance?
Well, this is your chance.
Participate in a conversation with your new rep and fire away problems the sales team is facing. Describe as specifically as possible.
Notice how the rep sells the product. Is it solution-selling or pushing a product?
Again, recording the meetings develops a fab training kit for your new guys to listen and identify what can be done differently.
Grill Them Till They Grill You
Objection handling has never been easy.
The seasoned guys have faced enough bashing and humiliation in countering questions in their initial years.
Occasionally you are asked something you never expected, often a counter-question, simply to test your knowledge and patience.
So, go ahead and get as intense as you can. Get your reps’ on the call and start grilling them on product knowledge, pricing, additional charges, warranty, and anything that can be a showstopper in your industry.
There’ll be a point where they start cross-questioning you on the relevance of the question, more context, and park the question for the product team. You’ll know they are ready.
Are you reading between the lines?
You must have had a collection of sales calls recorded. Do you? If not, check out the impact of conversation intelligence.
So, here’s what we want your reps to do. Plug into a few recorded meetings(use filters to search for the most training-worthy meetings) and ask the reps to give their feedback on what could be improved or done differently by the rep handling the call.
You’ll be more than happy to do this exercise. You’ll be accidentally creating a sales best practices playbook for the rest of the team.
Our favorite- Watch Those Badass Clever Movies
Hands down, this is our favorite.
Have your team watch these epic movies and get into a Friday eve discussion to know what they can make out of these movies.
Here’s the list of our favorite movies:
- Moneyball
- The Pursuit Of Happiness
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Big Short
- The Founder
Why don’t you try using these tips in combination with your sales enablement tool- conversation intelligence software and find out which technique works best for you?
