3 Ways to Improve Your Sales Role Plays - Learned from Escape Rooms

It's the time of year that a lot of companies are doing their Sales Kick Offs (SKOs). A lot of them are going to be doing roles plays where sales leaders and others play the roles of prospective clients. A lot of them aren't going to be very good at it, but they could be if they treat their role play like an escape room. 

Here is why.

1. Escape rooms have a solid, well-thought out premise and have built out environments that supports that premise. If you're in a Sherlock Holmes escape room it looks like you're in a sitting room in Victorian England. The clues are written in the language of the time. To put it simply, you're immersed in an environment that keeps you thinking about the scenario.
2. The scenario is carefully crafted while being challenging, but not impossible. It has been well thought out to both hold together logically and to have enough clues and mysteries that draw the attendees into it and encourage them to push along.
3. It seems "real", and by real I mean that it's consistent and there is nothing to distract the people in the room from the task at hand.

If Sales leaders can create their Sales Role Plays more like Escape Rooms they will have more involved and meaningful scenarios.

1. Build out your example prospect companies with details about the people, market, challenges, and products. The more immersive and detailed the better
2. Make your questions just hard enough to be challenging and include a flow that leads to a conclusion. Remember, these role plays are short, so a skilled hand in creating these questions is vital.
3. Have your "role-players" stay in character. Your Sales leaders aren't actors, but they need to have the right information, training, and preparation so that when they are in front of a rep they can keep the scenario focused to totally involve that person. If the scenario isn't taken seriously it will have less value.

Roles plays are valuable because they simulate new scenarios in a safe environment and enable leaders to provide feedback and reps to learn best practices. The more real the scenario, the better they are. To do that you need to prep, have the right detailed scenarios, and have role-players that are properly coached to keep it real.

Because winning is sales is a little more important than just bragging rights.