Can a stupid recording really help me sell more?

Is role playing and videoing a good tool to use for sales people? This is often a questio I am asked when meeting prospective clients who are looking at the possibility of running some sales training courses. Well think of it this way, it’s a Monday morning after the big match at the weekend and the premier league football coach brings the team in to review the match. On goes the video and the coach and players watch, each move is analysed, the tape is stopped and the coach asks the group what was good, what was poor and what can they do different next time. If video evidence is good enough for coaching and training multi million $ and £ premiership footballers to see their strengths and their development needs then surely it is a tool that should also be used for sales training courses. All too often we talk about the lack of professionalism in sales and how we should try to raise our game. There is nothing better to help you analyse your strengths and your development needs than to see it for yourself. I was in Spain recently and I decided I would go and get some golf lessons. I used to play a lot of golf but moved home a number of years ago and really got out of the habit. I decided now is my chance to get back into it, and guess what, the first thing the professional golf teacher did was admire my swing (I wish) and then video it. The video was then played back and the professional golfer slowed each part of the swing down and analysed each part—he pointed out the good bits and then the areas I need to work on, the amazing thing about it was that I did not need him to point out I moved my head as I saw it myself. It is only through video evidence that we actually see what is happening. I suppose the real point of this article is to say we all need to take a step away from what we do every day and analyse the good points and the areas we need to work on. It is a known fact in sales training that even the best of salespeople and the experienced top salespeople sit down and analyse what they do, they will find areas where they can improve. I used the golf story for another reason-- here we are the Saturday and Sunday golfers who never touch a club or a golf ball during the week and then expect to go and hit a drive 300 yards down the middle of the fairway off the first tee box. We then get annoyed with ourselves when the ball slices to the right and wonder why it happened. On about the 5th hole we make a cracking drive and think we are brilliant, the reality is out of the 100 shots on the golf course we probably only connected right for 5 of them. The questio I ask all salespeople is ‘out of how many prospects we speak to do we get it right’? The only way Tiger Woods and other professionals can get their game right is to practice, practice and practice. But all too often as salespeople we say ‘that practice stuff that’s not for me, I know what I am doing’—how wrong you may be! The truth is we do not know what we said on each call, we do not always pick up on the buying signals and we definitely don’t always know what was right in our sales pitch and what was wrong. On sales training courses it is stressed that we really do need to take stock every now and again and check are we cutting corners, are we missing opportunities for up selling are we really dealing with objections as effectively as we can, are we missing buying signals etc. So to answer the question is it a good idea to video role plays on sales interviews? I again say if it helps professional footballers and helps professional golfers then surely it will help professional salespeople