7 Essential Sales Roleplays to Try with Your Team

Participating in sales roleplays is an undervalued way to take your sales reps to the next level. Having a safe, controlled environment where reps can practice and build on their existing skills can make the difference between a successful close. 

We’ll give you an overview of what these roleplays are, why they’re so beneficial, and seven essential sales roleplays you should try with your team.

What Is a Sales Roleplay?

A sales roleplay is a risk-free way to practice and improve your sales skills in a practical  scenario. Instead of practicing with a potential customer, sales reps can practice in a safe yet realistic setting and gain the experience of handling cold calls, pitches, outbound customer discovery, and other situations they could encounter later on.

Why are sales roleplays so helpful?

The main benefit of sales roleplays is that it allows reps to use their skills as they would in a real client call without the risk of losing a potential deal. 

If a sales rep were to practice their skills with a potential customer, for example, there’s always the risk that they could fail to close the deal. With sales roleplays, that risk doesn’t exist. Plus, it gives them a realistic environment where they can experiment and try new things — things they might not be ready to try in an actual sales conversation. 

Even the best sales training companies endorse the benefits of sales roleplays.

7 Sales Roleplays to Try With Your Team

One of the best parts of sales roleplays is their versatility. There’s not one, singular sales roleplay but an endless amount of scenarios. For best results, have your team try as many different scenarios as they can, with different objectives. Roleplaying is a simple sales enablement tool all teams should invest in.

For some inspiration, here are seven essential sales roleplays you can try with your team to boost their confidence and improve their skills.

1. Cold calling

Cold calling is one of the most challenging (but essential) types of sales calls. It’s difficult because calling someone who hasn’t previously shown interest in the service or product you’re offering doesn’t often yield results. There’s about a 2% success rate with cold calling, even for the most seasoned salespeople. 

This type of sales roleplay — though challenging — can be extremely fruitful and well worth your team’s time. Some of the specific skills sales reps can practice during this type of roleplay include: 

• Establishing trust and rapport from the get-go
• Building interest in your service or product
• Handling rejection

Some common cold calling scenarios include speaking folks who “don’t have a budget,” are too busy, or are simply not interested. It’s an effective sales roleplay scenario because practicing during actual cold calls isn’t realistic.  

2. Negotiation

In a negotiation, the goal is to reach an agreement with the client. Negotiation sales roleplays allow your team’s reps to practice some of the most essential sales skills they need to succeed — namely effective communication, building rapport, active listening — in a safe environment. 

For example, you could have your team practice specific negotiation sales roleplays such as:

• Contract negotiations
• Package or bundle deal negotiations
• Price reduction or discount negotiations

3. Inbound and outbound customer discovery

Inbound and outbound customer discovery sales roleplays are distinct from each other and both worth practicing. With inbound customer discovery, your sales reps will practice having a conversation with a prospect who made first contact.

In these types of inbound discovery scenarios, have your sales reps hone in on the client’s needs, the issue needing a solution, establishing a sense of trust, and qualifying the lead. 

Outbound customer discovery scenarios, on the other hand, focus on the aforementioned cold calls. The difference is, your reps will need to emphasize creating interest and engaging the prospect much more than someone who’s already interested.

Both these types of sales roleplays are essential scenarios that any rep needs to be able to handle.

4. Objection handling

Objection handling is another worthy scenario that proves difficult for many salespeople. It’s only natural for reps to run into resistance or concerns from clients at some point, and the best way to handle it is head on (ideally, in a safe environment first, with a roleplay). 

Engaging in objection handling scenarios allows leaders to better train their reps in skills like active listening, empathy, efficient communication, and most importantly, reframing the customer’s concern as an opportunity. 

For example, some common objection handling scenarios could involve things like resistance over the cost or even just bad timing. Unseasoned reps sometimes freeze when they face resistance, especially from a potential client, and practicing these kinds of scenarios helps give them more confidence to handle the situation.

5. Sales pitches

Everyone in the industry, no matter how experienced, can practice sales pitching. It’s an essential skill and arguably one of the simplest scenarios to practice, whether it’s for a new client or a sales kickoff pitch contest. In just a minute or two, a sales rep should be able to effectively pitch a product or service to a prospect. 

The most important considerations in sales pitch roleplays include understanding your target audience, knowing the product or service inside and out, and, of course, appropriate closing techniques. 

Sales reps who have existing pitches can further refine them through this type of sales roleplay.

6. Product demos

A product demo is very similar to a regular sales pitch but with the addition of demonstrating the product. These types of roleplays are critical for sharpening a rep’s ability to generate interest and highlight the product’s specs, benefits, and overall value for the prospect. 

For example, some specific product demo scenarios could include: 

• Addressing nuanced or complicated questions about the product
• Giving a live or virtual demo of the product
• Managing concerns about pricing
• Showing how your product stands out from the competition

7. Follow-up interactions

One of the underrated types of sales roleplays is follow-up interactions. This type focuses on the follow-up conversations with clients after they’ve already heard a sales pitch or have otherwise already been contacted. 

Some of the specific skills your reps can practice during this type of sales roleplay include: 

• Explaining next steps
• Addressing any follow-up questions, concerns, or objections
• Managing any new challenges brought up by the customer
• Effectively closing deals

Regardless of the type of sales roleplay you and your team want to hone in on, the benefits remain the same: improving your sales skills in a safe, risk-free environment. You can even leverage AI to make these scenarios that more realistic. 

How to Use AI for Sales Roleplays

The benefits of sales roleplays for GMT teams are essentially endless. It’s a safe space for reps to practice everything from sales pitching to cold sales calls and customer discovery. And there’s no better tool for sales roleplays than Yoodli. 

Yoodli is an AI-powered sales coach that allows leaders to train their team at scale with realistic sales roleplays. Brands can get their reps up to speed with their company’s own methodology, branding, and verbiage.

Using generative AI, Yoodli provides a realistic sales roleplay experience that’s completely customizable. Not only that, but team members get actionable, data-backed feedback from Yoodli on how they can improve their skills based on the roleplay. 

Ensuring your salespeople use the appropriate, brand-specific language at scale has never been easier. 

Reps can choose from a number of pre-selected sales roleplay scenarios, including inbound and outbound customer discovery, as well as cold sales calls, among others. 

However, Yoodli also gives folks the opportunity to completely customize their sales roleplay scenario from start to finish, too. You can select an existing scenario or type in your own before then choosing an AI partner (say, a client or another salesperson) and their corresponding personality. 

In the real world, sales reps encounter all types of customers and prospects, and it’s no different with Yoodli’s AI sales roleplays. Reps can choose from a number of personalities that will affect the responses, keeping reps on their toes and exploding them to a plethora of personality types in a risk-free environment. 

Learn more about how you can use Yoodli for at-scale sales roleplays and more at https://yoodli.ai/. 

The Main Takeaway

Engaging in various types of sales roleplays is an underrated way to elevate your sales team and, at the end of the day, close more deals. Practicing your sales skills in a realistic setting gives reps the confidence they need to handle even the toughest prospect interactions.

Yoodli’s sales roleplay capabilities will get your GTM team shipshape in no time. Don’t wait to leverage its AI-powered sales scenarios to train your organization’s teams, at scale. 

Sources

• MindTickle: “8 Must-Try Sales Role-Plays That Will Prepare Your Team for Every Selling Situation.”
• Investopedia: “Cold Calling: Definition, How It Works, Examples, and Difficulties.” 
• HubSpot: “10 Sales Role Play Exercises & Scenarios To Prep for Negotiations.”
• PitchMonster: “12 Sales Role Play Scenarios & Exercises to Sharpen Your Team’s Skills.”