Going to the Sales Gym 💪-Step 4: Stretching (Role Playing)

When I talk about roleplaying sales scenarios with new clients they almost always want to run away from me as if I were carrying a lit stick of dynamite🧨 that I’m about to hand to them. Sales people hate roleplaying in the same sense that many people just hate stretching before they start their exercise routine. Even though you know it won’t hurt, even though you know it is good for you, even though you know it will improve your performance, you still refuse. The excuses for not roleplaying are the same for not stretching in the gym. I don’t have enough time today. I don’t need it (I’m clever enough to wing it). I find it boring and awkward. I’d rather be using my time to lift weights anyway.

People who stretch perform better, get better results and exercise with much greater ease. The same is true with salespeople who roleplay essential sales scenarios such as running a sales presentation, asking for the business and managing sales objections. In fact, based on experience, I would let a new salesperson that I had been training and roleplaying with for 6 months go toe to toe with a 10 years sales veteran that does not roleplay and watch the new and highly trained salesperson devastate that veteran that does not do his stretches. Perhaps the same would be true for boxers as well.

Roleplaying keeps us physically and mentally prepared for almost any sales scenario because we condition ourselves with sales muscle memory. Muscle memory is when you repeat a movement or exercise so often that it becomes hardwired into your subconscious that it no longer requires you to think through the motion. Your body takes over and allows you mind to complete other tasks. There is no greater example of this than when you roleplay sales objections such as: “Your price is too high”, “I’m too busy”, and “Let me get back to you”. If you really want to get serious about these essential sales stretches, check out Scorecard’s Sales Management Objection Training and learn how to turn your disability into your competitive advantage.

When you don’t stretch when you go to the gym before your exercise, your muscles will cramp and become sore.😒 You’ll feel stiff for days and regret not doing that essential stage of exercise. When we don’t rehearse before going into important sales presentations, you almost always find yourself getting some kind of sales muscle cramp before it’s over that you’ll replay over and over and regret for several days. You think to yourself " I wish I would have been prepared for what they were going to say". "I wish I would have rehearsed those slides because I didn’t realize the PowerPoint would take 85 minutes instead of the allowed 30 minutes". "I wish I would have had something prepared when I realized that the decision maker wasn’t even there". It’s happened to the best of you and it is going to keep happening if you don’t do your sales stretches. Start roleplaying; no more excuses.