Improv Sales Training
Often, when we discuss sales training with clients we mention that as a part of every bespoke sales training program we stage we offer improv sales training as an effective, engaging component. But why do we do that? What can improv sales training do to help your sales team become better, more productive sellers?
As we have been able to demonstrate to clients from all kinds of niches, improv sales training offers a great deal. Not only does this exciting, live and engaging sales training component offer something new that many other offerings do not, it helps to make our sales training far more effective in both the long and short term. Which is exactly what you are looking for from sales training, right?
What is Improv Sales Training?
You might think of comedians or sitcoms like Who’s Line Is It Anyway or Curb Your Enthusiasm when you think about improv. “There’s no way I could do that!” you might think unless you’ve studied acting or spent countless hours at open mic nights honing your comedic chops.
But improv isn’t about being humorous, which may come as a surprise.
It’s a method of learning to think on your feet and react quickly. It’s a technique for boosting and maintaining self-assurance even when you don’t have complete control. It’s a strategy to cope with fear, uncertainty, and worry while also learning to accept failure.
In a nutshell, it’s a highly successful sales training method that offers long-lasting benefits.
Improv’s foundations and goals are eerily similar to the fundamentals and goals of selling. There is an improv teaching for each of the skills required in sales.
Improv can be used to entice people in, provide context for challenges, strengthen connections, and gain customer buy-in. It can assist you in enhancing the quality of your interactions and executions during the sales process. You can acquire practical strategies for sustaining urgency, dealing with objections, negotiating, and closing agreements through improv.
Unlike most company-based sales training, which teaches you how to sell a particular product or service, improv teaches you a set of skills that you can use in a variety of settings.
What You Can Learn From Improv Sales Training
We won’t reveal all of the details here – you can’t completely grasp the ideas of improv sales training by just reading about them – but here are some of the most important sales-related lessons you’ll learn during improv sales training classes from Pearl Lemon Sales.
All About “Yes…and”
This is possibly one of the most well-known improv lessons. It’s a strategy for keeping the conversation moving, staying open to whatever comes your way, learning more about the idea, and adapting to objections and ambiguity. If a prospect complains that your product or service is too costly, for example, you can utilize the “yes, and…” approach to look into other ways to make the product/service fit the prospect’s budget.
All About C.R.O.W.
No, we are not going to teach you about birds.
Character Relationship Objective Where is abbreviated as C.R.O.W. Any improv scene, as well as any sales pitch or meeting, contains these four elements. Recognising them is a fantastic strategy to earn the trust of potential customers.
The character you’ll portray in the improv session or sales meeting refers to your character. It’s not about being a phony; it’s about knowing enough about the circumstance to know if you should handle it as an educator or a hero, for example.
The term “relationship” refers to the bond that exists between characters in an improv scene or between you and a prospective customer as it develops during a sales meeting. You’ll need to change how you create the relationship based on the characteristics of the prospect. So you need to know how to identify them.
The where and objective are simple enough. They represent what you and the prospective customer want to achieve, as well as the type of meeting setting that will facilitate a successful sale. Improv sales training scenarios allow you to hone both of these aspects of a sales pitch.
Listening and Adjusting
Listening and taking cues from the circumstances are essential for a successful improv scene. While you’ll focus on the characters in improv workshops, you can easily apply these techniques to sales by swapping sales meeting attendees for characters in improv sales training.
You can learn about a prospect’s personality, status, objectives, challenges, and external factors by listening to them. Once you understand these traits, you can change your approach to the proposition in order to foster consensus and create a solution that benefits everyone.
There’s more involved too, and we’ll be happy to explain if you contact us. But, in a nutshell, the sales process is constantly evolving in real time in the improv model of sales. The seller must be present and active, listening, learning and building the relationship.
Scripts – which rarely work in modern sales anyway – go out of the window and the dialogue evolves throughout the conversation. That dialogue has never taken place before, and it will never take place again. We’ll show you how to use key improvisation abilities to stay in the moment with a prospect and adjust to whatever they throw at you.
The Pearl Lemon Sales Difference
Improv sales training is just one of the elements we build into our customized sales training programs.
Unlike many other sales training companies, we take the time to listen to what our clients need, what particular challenges their sales teams are facing and just what they hope to get from formal sales training. Then, we build a bespoke product that meets those needs.
Our sales trainers are not academics, they are seasoned salespeople who are still active in the field today. This gives them first-hand knowledge of the challenges and roadblocks the modern salesperson is facing, so their teachings are presented from a real world point of view.
Ready to learn more about improv sales training from Pearl Lemon Sales?
Contact us today and let’s get that conversation started.
Improv Sales Training FAQs
The most obvious outcome is an improvement in sales skills.
From here it branches out to:
-Improved communication skills
-Increased ability to carry on conversations organically
-Higher confidence in sales
-Become a better listening
-Increase creativity
-and more…
Improv sales training helps you become an overall more successful sales person…but a MAJOR advantage is it extends far beyond just the sales floor.
Improve sales training helps you become more mindful, can increase your risk tolerance, and teaches you how to go with the flow.
Improve sales training is needed because all of us, especially sales people, could use improvement in terms of how to keep conversations flowing.
Improv helps you roll with the punches and speak as topics arise.
In sales this helps you avoid sounding rigid or scripted.
Improv loosens you up to perform better in all environments. It gives you the ability to occasionally turn off your brain and just say what you mean and think on your toes. Being fast on your toes, with tact, makes you more capable of navigating the sales role.
Contact us. We’d love to hear from you!
If you have any questions, please do get in touch with us! If you’d prefer to speak directly to a consultant, book a call!