Exercises to Train Managers on Your Own
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 6:48 am
How can you conduct a workshop on your own that will bring practical benefits to your employees? If you can't afford a full-fledged sales training, then ask employees to do exercises that will help them gain new skills or improve existing ones.
Samurai salesman .
This task teaches successful interaction with the client and promotes the development of creativity.
The exercise can be performed for as long as desired. The optimal number of participants is 12 to 16 people. It is necessary to select three or four people who will portray samurai hotel email list sellers. All the rest play the roles of buyers.
Read also!
"Sales Analysis: Overview of Methods + Instructions for Conducting"
Read more
Instructions for samurai salespeople: “Imagine that you are preparing to become a samurai. You need to develop a useful skill: the ability to remain unperturbed when communicating with your interlocutor. Your task is to look at a person as if he were a distant mountain peak and remain absolutely calm, but answer any of his questions. This is how an ideal sales manager should behave.”
Those who portray customers are given a different instruction: "You are the buyers. Ask about the product you are going to buy, negotiate the price. Your main task is to determine how you feel when communicating with this seller."
At the end of the exercise, you should discuss what techniques and tools allowed managers to interact most effectively with customers.
Difficult client .
This task is especially recommended for employees who make sales over the phone.
The duration of the exercise is 40–45 minutes. The number of participants is from eight to ten people.
Each employee writes on paper (or on a board) which client is the most difficult for them. Then two chairs are placed in the center of the room with their backs to each other. This technique helps to simulate a telephone conversation. Two participants are invited to sit on the chairs. One of them plays the difficult customer.
It is best to invite someone for whom this type of client is a problem to this place. Another person plays the role of a seller, his task is to understand what kind of buyer this is, find an approach to him, deal with objections and close the deal. If the manager does not cope with the dialogue, then another employee should be invited to this role.
After each conversation, it is worth analyzing how difficult it was to contact the client, what things were the most difficult, what you would do in a similar situation in reality, and what involuntary reactions you had to give up.
Chair of objection .
The purpose of the exercise is to acquire or improve the skill of working with objections, depending on the level of professionalism.
The duration can be any, the number of participants is not limited, but it is optimal if there are from six to ten people.
One of the managers sits on a chair in the center of the room and will work with objections. All the others stand around him and take turns saying phrases: "Too expensive", "I don't have time", "I want to think about it", etc. The task of the one sitting on the chair is to think carefully and work through all the objections. In doing so, he must observe two conditions: he must not say "no" and argue.
Samurai salesman .
This task teaches successful interaction with the client and promotes the development of creativity.
The exercise can be performed for as long as desired. The optimal number of participants is 12 to 16 people. It is necessary to select three or four people who will portray samurai hotel email list sellers. All the rest play the roles of buyers.
Read also!
"Sales Analysis: Overview of Methods + Instructions for Conducting"
Read more
Instructions for samurai salespeople: “Imagine that you are preparing to become a samurai. You need to develop a useful skill: the ability to remain unperturbed when communicating with your interlocutor. Your task is to look at a person as if he were a distant mountain peak and remain absolutely calm, but answer any of his questions. This is how an ideal sales manager should behave.”
Those who portray customers are given a different instruction: "You are the buyers. Ask about the product you are going to buy, negotiate the price. Your main task is to determine how you feel when communicating with this seller."
At the end of the exercise, you should discuss what techniques and tools allowed managers to interact most effectively with customers.
Difficult client .
This task is especially recommended for employees who make sales over the phone.
The duration of the exercise is 40–45 minutes. The number of participants is from eight to ten people.
Each employee writes on paper (or on a board) which client is the most difficult for them. Then two chairs are placed in the center of the room with their backs to each other. This technique helps to simulate a telephone conversation. Two participants are invited to sit on the chairs. One of them plays the difficult customer.
It is best to invite someone for whom this type of client is a problem to this place. Another person plays the role of a seller, his task is to understand what kind of buyer this is, find an approach to him, deal with objections and close the deal. If the manager does not cope with the dialogue, then another employee should be invited to this role.
After each conversation, it is worth analyzing how difficult it was to contact the client, what things were the most difficult, what you would do in a similar situation in reality, and what involuntary reactions you had to give up.
Chair of objection .
The purpose of the exercise is to acquire or improve the skill of working with objections, depending on the level of professionalism.
The duration can be any, the number of participants is not limited, but it is optimal if there are from six to ten people.
One of the managers sits on a chair in the center of the room and will work with objections. All the others stand around him and take turns saying phrases: "Too expensive", "I don't have time", "I want to think about it", etc. The task of the one sitting on the chair is to think carefully and work through all the objections. In doing so, he must observe two conditions: he must not say "no" and argue.