How to Improve Inside Sales Success Through Sales Role Playing

From their desks every morning, our reps responsible for making outbound calls, we call them Business Developement Reps (BDRs) pick up their phones and dial. Just a few seconds later you can hear a phone ring, and a voice you recognize from the other side of the room kicks off the role playing.

Since we started role playing back in April of this year, some of our BDRs reps have doubled their numbers. Peter, manager of the BDR team, introduced this training technique based on his experience during a university broadcasting class. The advantage of role playing is repetition, creating something similar to muscle memory.

In our inside sales department, two different approaches are used each morning or afternoon during role playing.  One approach is calling each other on the phone; the other is face to face.

With the face to face approach, the reps gather in one of the larger conference rooms and in round robin fashion, go around the room playing out the scenario for that day. After the run through of the scenarios, the reps discuss what they liked or didn’t like about how their “calls” went.

Our outbound reps participate in the activity for about 15 to 20 minutes each day, depending on available time. Setting when role play practice takes place depends largely on the lists they are working that day and when the best time to attempt contact is. This is knowledge our managers have at their finger tips generated from the XANT reports.

If your organization wants to improve performance and accelerate the transfer of knowledge from your best inside sales reps to your newest reps, role playing is definitely a best practice your team needs to consider.  

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