★ Sales Training Activities

Sales Training
Activities for Sales Managers

Sales training isn't just for sales reps anymore — customer service and other support staff can also benefit from developing selling skills! Support all of your sales training needs with Sales Training Activities, a mix of over 80 ice breakers, role plays, games, and exercises that are the perfect addition to any type of sales training.

Subject Breakers

These activities are designed to be used at the beginning of a training course, session or meeting. They serve to introduce a subject, topic, or issue. Most will get people working together and create a buzz in the room.

Helping Buyers to Buy

An exercise in empathy in which participants explore selling from the customer’s perspective, by brainstorming how they would like to be sold to.

Sales Presentation — Do’s and Don’ts

Working in small groups, participants brainstorm and then present the key do’s and don’ts of successful selling.

Customer-Focused Selling

Working in small groups, participants brainstorm solutions to two trigger questions about effective closing.

Cold-Calling Blues!

Small group discussion exercise to explore reasons for – and solutions to — call reluctance among salespeople.

The Sales Factory

Using the analogy of a manufacturing process, participants work to record the complete sales process and the key stages within it. The exercise will encourage the sales team to adopt
a structured approach to their own selling.

Who or What Won the Sale?

A sales “whodunit” in which participants identify the factors behind a successful sale and are encouraged to learn from success.

Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something

An exercise in which nonspecialist sales staff (customer service, service engineers, and so forth) can challenge their negative perceptions of selling and build a positive self-image as salespeople.

Models and Methods

This collection of training exercises applies proven sales models to the participants' own situations, with the aim of improving skills and knowledge levels.

Setting Your Own Goals

A facilitated session on personal goal setting, in which participants are encouraged to identify personal and organizational priorities and how to achieve them.

Key Questioning Skills

Short input session on questioning skills.

Selling Benefits

Discussion exercise on identifying and using features, advantages, and benefits.

Most Common Objections

Working in small groups, participants use the Clarify
Listen Empathy Answer Reassure Method for tackling common objections.

Closing Questions

Competitive brainstorming to generate a list of creative closing questions.

Pipeline Planning

Working on their own, participants create a “Sales Pipeline Plan” to help forecast future short-term business.

Customer Fact-Find

A small group exercise in which participants work to identify a list of (only) seven key fact-finding questions for use during sales calls.

Selling by Telephone

Short input session around telephone selling skills.

Rent Payers and Sleeping Giants

A pairs exercise in which participants plot ten accounts on the Account Planning Matrix and learn how to distinguish among the accounts and to prioritize their time.

The John Todd Formula

Participants learn the John Todd formula (Sales Productivity Ratio) based on call rate, order value, and closing percentage, and practice applying it to measure their
own sales performance.

Problem Solving and Planning

A series of activities to facilitate creative thinking around and analysis of current working practices and standards.

Boss for a Day

Working in small groups, participants identify the three key improvements that they would make to their company's product or services if they had the power and the opportunity.

Who Killed the Sale?

The sales equivalent of the post-match review that takes place between sports teams and their coaches.

Cost Effective PR

Group brainstorming exercise to identify imaginative yet practical ways of identifying good public relations opportunities.

SWOT Analysis

A version of the simple but highly effective technique for gaining strategic perspective of a company or product.

Sales Improvement Brainstorm

A brainstorming and action planning exercise for sales improvement.

Referral Planning

A simple exercise to help provide salespeople with some practical ways of overcoming any obstacles they may experience in asking for referrals.

The Sales Doctor

Working in small groups, participants take in turns playing the role of the Sales Doctor to diagnose and solve key sales problems facing their colleagues.

Persuasive Writing Skills #1

Participants work with real samples of business writing to learn what makes for good (and bad) business writing.

Persuasive Writing Skills #2

Participants practice applying what they have learned in the previous exercise.

Preparing for a Sales Call

Participants develop their own preparation plan and sales kit for preparing for future sales calls.

Role Plays, Practice Sessions, and Case Studies

A collection of generic role-play activities and practice sessions.

Appointment Making

A simple practice session on making sales appointments over the phone.

Thirty-Second Presentations

Participants develop and practice their own 30-second sales presentation.

Chance Encounter

A practice session with a difference. Participants get the opportunity to try to get the most out of a chance encounter with a busy managing director.

Negotiation Skills

A version of the classic negotiating skills game sometimes called "Red/Blue", "Prisoner's Dilemma", or "The Zulus and the Phalanx".

Needs Analysis

A chance for participants to practice the skills of identifying customer needs.

Think Positive!

A practice session that gives the participants the opportunity to experience the different effects of what they do, say, or think, in a sales call.

The Big Presentation

A presentation planning and practice session that gives participants the chance to revolutionize their own sales presentation style.

Telling Is Not Selling

Participants practice selling with "one arm behind their backs" --- no questions or benefits allowed in the exchange!

Presenting with Power

Working in small groups, participants identify the most important technical and emotional levers in selling their particular products or services.

Closing and Trial Closing

A practice session around the techniques of closing the sale.

Skill Boosters

A collection of trigger questions, tasks, and ideas to liven up any training or coaching session.