How roleplay works

A roleplay is a live spoken practice conversation against a buyer, graded afterwards against your organisation's own standard.

It belongs in the prepare part of the week: the call you have on Thursday, rehearsed on Wednesday. It is not a separate training product you visit once a quarter, and it does not replace bringing the live deal to your coach.

#What a roleplay is made of

Every roleplay is a binding of three or four configured objects. Knowing the parts explains why one feels sharp and another feels flat.

PersonaRequired. The buyer: their role, what they respond well to, what makes them defensive, and how much they know about your category. See Personas.

ScorecardRequired. The standard the conversation is graded against, built from your methodology. See Scorecards.

ProductOptional. What is being sold, so the buyer's objections are about your actual offer rather than a generic one.

ScenarioThe situation itself, carried as the buyer's starting sentiment, how that sentiment moves during the conversation, and any specific instructions for the encounter.

#Sentiment drift is the thing to understand

A buyer does not hold one attitude for twenty minutes. A roleplay carries both a starting sentiment and a drift: which way the buyer moves as the conversation goes on.

That is what makes a rehearsal feel like a real call. A buyer who starts sceptical and warms if you quantify their problem is a different exercise from one who starts polite and cools as you push. Neither is "harder"; they teach different things.

#Why the persona decides everything

The single factor determining whether a roleplay is worth the twenty minutes is who is on the other side of it.

A generic hostile prospect teaches nothing, because nobody sells to a generic hostile prospect. Personas here are built from real material: the buyers your organisation actually meets, the objections that actually land, and where relevant the history of a specific opportunity.

Practising the CFO conversation against a persona built from that CFO's deal is a categorically different exercise from practising against "a difficult CFO".

#How it fits with deal coaching

1Coach the dealWork out what the next conversation has to achieve.

2Rehearse itRun the roleplay against the buyer you are about to meet.

3Read the scoreFind the criterion that let you down.

4Take it backBring the weak criterion to your coach rather than immediately re-running the roleplay.

Then have the real conversation, and bring that back too. The loop is the product; the roleplay on its own is a practice app.

#Deployed roleplays

An administrator can publish a roleplay across a team, which is how an organisation runs everyone through the same scenario and gets comparable results. If a roleplay appears in your list that you did not choose, that is why.

Comparable is the operative word: results are only comparable while the scorecard behind them is unchanged. See Reading your score.