Why Reps Don’t Take Role Plays Seriously

Why Reps Don’t Take Role Plays Seriously:

The Council frequently refers to a new breed of high-performing reps–Challenger Reps–in our blog posts and research. But do you find yourself wondering—how do I actually build Challenger reps? Because the three key Challenger skills (teaching, tailoring, and asserting control) are tacit skills, typical approaches to upskilling often are insufficient.

Classroom training alone fails to deliver impact because tacit skills are difficult to describe in written materials such as job aids or a how-to manual, and manager coaching also can be inadequate because it’s hard to explain intangible concepts.

Instead, to truly internalize these skills, reps need practice. We’ve all heard a lot about experiential training, but does it actually work?

The answer is yes, tacit and intangible skills are best taught through experiential training. But it must be the right kind of experiential learning. You cannot risk reps practicing new skills with a customer and, as a result, we often see companies using role-plays.

But, how ‘real’ are our role-play programs? Reps almost never take these programs seriously because the programs often seem too fake and artificial.

To solve this problem, St. Jude Medical, a manufacturer of medical devices, developed a realistic role-play program that supports sales reps’ application of knowledge learned in training and builds their confidence in their new skills.

St. Jude includes the following elements in its role-play programs to make them authentic and effective:

1. It uses customer proxies as role-play partners to make the simulations more realistic and safe. 2. St. Jude selects a limited number of different customer scenarios for role-play, which forces reps to adjust their presentation in the moment. 3. St. Jude amplifies reps’ openness to learning by requiring extensive pre-training preparation work, and by videotaping each role-play exercise for post-training debriefing sessions with managers and peers.

This program essentially helps St. Jude break the trade-off between real and safe while ensuring that reps take role-play programs seriously.

We recently spoke with Nicole Montoya and Gabriel Fleres from St. Jude Medical, about the various components of their role-play program.

SEC Members, read excerpts from our conversation with Gabe and Nicole about their experiences building a realistic role-play program.