Memorize the script, then drill it in role play

1. Memorize it; do not read it

Why not read it. Some of you might ask why reps should not simply read the script off the page. The answer: they will sound like someone reading a script. How familiar the words have to be before a script stops sounding read is SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality, section 3.

Blacking out the script. Keep blacking out one more word and reading it again, and carry on like that until no word of the script is left showing.

What goes with the memorizing. Beyond that comes shadowing and listening to game tape (studying recorded calls), every single day, "until you close". That, in the view here, is how you memorize anything at all.

2. Role play comes first

The emphasis here. Of everything about training sales, the one thing to take away is how to run role play. If your team does no role play, it is hard to see how a sales team gets trained at all. Without it, in the view here, you are just hoping the reps work it out for themselves.

Most people run it wrong. Most people get it wrong, as one sales manager did for the longest time. Sections 3 to 5 follow that manager's practice. Learning the other way drastically cut the time it took that manager to get a rep up to speed.

3. The usual way, and what it costs

How it goes. Two people go back and forth, one as the closer and one as the prospect, and the manager lets the whole exchange run to the end. Say it is discovery they are practicing. When discovery is over, the manager tells the rep what they did really well and how to do it next time. The next chance the rep gets to try it is maybe five days later.

Why it fails. The learning does not stick, and the loop between trying something and hearing about it is very slow.

What the manager noticed. Training this way, the manager would walk past a rep on a live call and wonder why they were still saying a certain thing like that, then saw that it had never been trained: the manager had been busy pushing all the other points.

4. The way one team runs it: stop, show, repeat

This is the way the manager's team likes to do it, and it has helped the manager enormously.

• Warn them first. Reps freak out the first time they go through it, so tell them beforehand what is coming: they will be interrupted many times.
• Praise the process while they follow it. Let's say the session is on Zoom. The manager leans forward, eyes big, smiling, and says "nice job" and "great job" each time they follow the process and the script. The process, in this view, is everything.
• Stop them when they leave the script. The moment they go off it, stop them, send them back and ask them to try it again this way.
• Model it. Say the line yourself, the way it should sound; for example, a request for permission to ask something.
• Have them repeat it word for word, then again. When they get it, they do it once more, and once more after that, until it is locked in.
• Never tell them they got it wrong. Stop them and show them the right way. In this view, that part is so important.

How often. When they first train a rep, they interrupt so many times that the manager will literally sit there and break in 50, 60, 70 times in one session, chipping away bit by bit and correcting along the way, modeling each time.

What it costs and what it buys. The process is called extremely painful, and it eats a ton of energy. The view here is that it is well worth it, because you can hand over what you know and train people far faster than the usual way lets you.

When one team does it. The manager's team runs it every single day, every morning. That is how that team works, not a rule set for you.

5. Rotate through the parts of the call

The tactic. They always rotate through the parts of the call. Across a week, if you have one, that means intro, discovery, pitch, then close, working through each part in turn.

Why it matters. One company's team told them it had got really bad at discovery. Listening to the calls, they asked what the team trained in the morning, and the answer was only the close, every single day. What the manager told them: make sure each part gets hit every day.

Which of the two. The parts are laid out across a week, and then each part is asked for every day. This page does not settle which reading is right.

The verdict. Having tried all sorts of training, the team finds role play comes out as like the most valuable kind; you just have to make sure you run it right.

SOP 108 — Drill a team on closing, section 3, has a team drill its most common closing obstacle day after day and then the next one.

6. If a rep is not coachable

Asked what to do with a rep who is not coachable, the answer is that the team screens for it at the front end. Beyond that, the view offered is about the kind of person you need: someone whose insecurity runs deep, not on the surface. Insecurity on the surface, in that view, shows up as arrogance, and those people end up useless; the deep kind will do anything it takes to win. How the screening is done is not covered on this page.

7. A session, in order

The same ground, summed up in order.

What role play is. The sales conversation gets acted out. One person takes the prospect's part and the other sells to them. The prospect brings the problems that real calls bring, and the seller's job is to answer with the right scripts and techniques.

The order.

• Frame it. The manager says what is being practiced, how it is done and why. For discovery, that means what discovery is for and how it should sound.
• Model it. The manager shows it, then tells the rep to copy.
• Practice it. The rep does it in role play, with fast feedback loops, again and again until it comes out right.
• Do it once more. When it is right, the rep does it again so that it is locked in. "Lock it in" is the term used.
• Recap and move on. Recap the role play, then go to the next person on the same part: discovery with one rep, then the next, then the next.

What it gets you. Do this with your sales team, or maybe just for yourself if you sell alone, and you will sell better.

8. The manager is a trainer

The sales manager is really a sales trainer: the job is training sales. Training is a skill set of its own, not necessarily found alongside another; sometimes a person can do both, and some can do only one or the other.

9. The test before a rep goes live

Nobody starts on the phone until they have passed tone, recaps and objection looping; with each test passed, a rep can go live. Tone is SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality. The loop through the closes is SOP 249 — Keep asking with the general closes, then book the next meeting. When each test falls in the first weeks is SOP 255, named above.

10. Shadowing and game tape

Shadowing. It is really obvious: a ride-along. The new rep sees how the day actually runs. It is also how the people on the team get to know one another and build camaraderie from early on, and that is the reason given for doing it.

Game tape. Game tape means studying recordings of calls. You start specific and widen out as the script is mastered. What "specific" means here: Not established on this page.

Why the calls have to match the script. The reps listen with the script in hand. If the whole team keeps to it, the calls sound like the script. If they do not, a rep holding the script finds that the call in their ears has nothing to do with the page in front of them, and decides it must be trash. That is why keeping this up matters so much.

11. Where this sits

• Learning a script until the words stop needing any thought: SOP 237 — Mark a script for tonality, section 3.
• The same handover move at its simplest, showing someone the job and then watching them do it: SOP 43 — Document, demonstrate, duplicate, section 3.
• Coaching each new rep on their own weak spot by role play, typically on a rhythm through the early weeks, with team game tape alongside: SOP 157, section 5, on the sales function of a growing business.
• SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short: its section 5 has you keep to your own script before you ask anyone else to.
• Sales, marketing and customer success reviewing one recorded call each week: SOP 135 — Run the cross-department call review.

12. What this page does not decide for you

• A day for each part of the call, or every part every day. The wording allows both. This page does not settle which reading is right.
• What "start specific" means for game tape. Not established on this page.
• How long a role play session runs. This page gives no figure for the length of a session.

13. The checklist

When	What you do
Teaching a script	Have reps memorize it, not read it
Memorizing	Keep blacking out one more word and reading it again, until no word is left showing
Every day	Shadowing and game tape, "until you close"
Before the first role play	Tell reps they will be interrupted many times
While they follow the script	Praise it as it happens
When they leave the script	Stop them, send them back, model the line, have them repeat it
When they get it	Once more, then once more, to lock it in
Correcting	Show the right way; do not tell them they got it wrong
Planning the drills	Rotate intro, discovery, pitch and close so each part gets hit
Each session	Frame it, show it, practice with quick correction until right, do it once more, recap, move to the next rep
The manager's job	Treat the job as training sales, a skill set of its own
Before a rep goes live	Pass tone, recaps and objection looping
Game tape	Begin specific and broaden as the script is mastered; hold the script while listening

14. What this page does not cover

Daily and weekly training once reps are live, and screening hires for coachability, are not covered on this page. For training a live team, see SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps. For the group interview, see SOP 253 — Run a group interview for high-volume roles.