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Dave Hershman[/caption]
You can facilitate the process by conducting role-playing exercise that approximate real life situations. Let your leaders be your role players and allow everyone to analyze responses.
Here are a few factors to consider with regard to role-playing:
- You will not get better if you don’t practice. Ever hang up the phone and say to yourself “I should have said….” Well, you don’t get “do-overs” over the phone. You need to practice again and again.
- Practicing the wrong way will make you worse! If you are saying the wrong things or saying the right things in the wrong way or at the wrong time, doing it more often will only make you
comfortable at losing the opportunities you have to increase your income. - Practice in front of observers–experts can help you get better. They don’t even have to be from your chosen field. You need feedback in order to improve. Without feedback you will never get better and those who do not improve every day will stay stagnant.
- Try out new techniques in different situations. You must practice different situations, such as those who need help urgently and those who are procrastinators. The more you practice different situations, the less you will be surprised by anything.
- Confidence is the key word. Those who are great over the phone can react quickly to just about any situation. The real key to sales over the phone is confidence. Your prospect or customer wants to hear confidence in your voice.
You just need to be prepared–and role-playing in the right way will do just that. Even when the loan officer doesn’t know an answer, they should confidently answer why they don’t know, as well as the fact that they will find out. Remember, a prospect will take note of how a loan officer says something as much as remembering what they said. Being confident and upbeat is a large part of the equation.
When role playing it is important to practice different situations, here are “lead call situations” one might make part of role-playing exercises:
- An ardent rate shopper who only wants the rates
- A rate shopper who is more open to learning
- A first time buyer
- Refinance calls
- Strong referrals from previous customers
- Strong referrals from real estate agents
- Weaker referrals from agents who recommended three companies
- Calls from expressive people who want to talk
- Calls from those who have credit issues
- Overcoming different types of objections
This does not mean that role-playing should be restricted to phone sales. You should also direct-role play meetings with agents, networking situations, recruiting calls and more.
In today’s busy world, when can a manager find the time to role-play? The manager does not have to lead the role-play, but they must make sure it gets done. It can be made part of a sales meeting so everyone can learn and contribute.
Schedule sessions in your calendar early in the morning before the day gets too busy. If you don’t schedule it, you won’t do it. It is that simple.
Dave Hershman is Senior VP of Sales of Weichert Financial and has published seven books, as well as hundreds of articles. He is the founder of the OriginationPro Marketing System and Mortgage School. His site is www.OriginationPro.com and he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
