Practice sessions and Role-play

How important are practice sessions and role-play in our everyday business? Are they really useful? Can you really improve your skills and your income by practicing? Absolutely!

In fact, absence of practice and role-play condemns you to your actual results. Your current level of competence provides you with: your actual income, your lifestyle and your overall success. If you want more, you have to change something. For Real Estate brokers practice sessions and role-play are difficult concepts to grasp, I can make this statement as a coach and president of OSE Coaching because it is fundamentally an area where there is much resistance. Most brokers including some we coach have tremendous resistance to “practice”.

Why is it so? “I don’t have time, it’s not for me, I don’t like to do this, I’d rather be natural in front of clients” are some of the answers I hear. I could add: complacency, lack of discipline and lack of organisational skills. Whatever the reason my first statement to you is: if what you do works for you, if you are happy with your results; don’t change a thing. If not, why is it so hard to get down to business and learn?

If you were once an athlete or a musician or in the military, you understood and adhered to the importance of learning and practicing. If your children are athletes or musicians or simply students, you are 100% convinced of the importance of them practicing. Why is it different?

You might say, “Samir this feels odd, I’m too old to go back to school”. The truth is practice sessions and role-play sessions are key basic elements for all professionals. Be they athletes, police squads, musicians (even Celine Dion) and definitely all top salespersons; all these individuals practice daily.

The great violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman used to say: “when I miss one day of practice, I hear the difference, when I miss two days, my teacher hears the difference and when I miss three days, my public hears the difference”. What would your career be like, how much less stress would you feel, how much more pleasure and results would you achieve… if you were a sale virtuoso?

Here is a great technique I’ve been using and still use after 30 years in sales whenever I want to master a script or a presentation. First I break it down in parts, maybe a sentence or two, sometimes a whole section; and I memorize it. I may even start with the end because I want to finish powerfully and… it’s not always easy. I also practice to transition; to move smoothly from one section of my presentation to another… because that too is not always easy.

Role-plays consist of practicing with one or more colleagues. It can be a script or a presentation. The actual practice has to be tougher than real life, meaning that you master your trade in practice so that the real intervention with clients is actually smoother and easier.