What is a Sales Mock Up Call

How to ramp up a new SDR effectively?

How to train the specific skills of an SDR without having to risk losing a customer?

These questions might be in your head if you, as a sales team's manager or team leader, want to develop and train your sales team.

A very simple and easy way is a role play – also known as a mock-up call.

Read on!

A sales mock-up call is a practice session where a salesperson simulates a sales call with a potential customer or client. It is typically used as a training tool to help salespeople improve their sales skills and techniques.

During a sales mock-up call, the BDR will typically role-play with another team member or manager who acts as the potential customer. The goal of the practice session is to simulate a real-world cold call as closely as possible, allowing the salesperson to practice their pitch, answer common objections, and build rapport with the customer.

In whatever you want your SDRs to get better in. A mock up session can help to overcome specific challenges that an SDR has.

Additionally, for inexperienced sales reps, mock ups can help a new SDR to get a foot in the door and to get comfortable with this outreach method.

After the call, the salesperson and their manager or team member will typically review the call and provide feedback on areas where the salesperson excelled and areas where they could improve.

This feedback can help the salesperson refine their sales approach and become more effective at closing deals.

Before the actual mock up call starts, it's recommended to set goals or outcomes that the SDR should achieve.

For example, The goal is to overcome certain objections that prospects can confront with the SDR.

After the goals are defined, and it's clear why the mock up should be conducted, the roles and conditions need to be defined.

There's on one side the prospect role and on the other side the SDR role.

Questions that should be considered are:

- Who is the prospect? (name, company, background info)

- What is the role and position of the prospect?

- What are his daily tasks?

- Which challenges is the prospect facing?

If the SDR is new to cold calling, it's important to define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and to give them a clear understanding of the value proposition, and products or services of your company.

If the sales rep is still unfamiliar with cold calling, it can be helpful to provide a quiet and low-traffic space in your office to avoid interruptions.

For remote working sales reps this means finding a quiet place at home or in a co-working space where no other people can interrupt the SDR.

Also important: the sales rep should already use the equipment that is required to do cold calling later on in the day-to-day operations. This makes the SDR gets used in working with headsets/microphones, software, etc.

After the first mock up calls are made, and the sales rep could get familiar with cold calling or the specific task, the environment can be changed. This means the salesperson can be in the office where other SDRs are and where the sales calls are usually conducted.

Let each call go as it may. Analyze how your salespeople respond when they are agitated or made to work harder.

You can't stop every now and again to give suggestions, compliments, or criticisms because these calls need to be as realistic as possible if you want to get the most out of them.

Once more, your SDRs are receiving these calls in order to advance their professions and gain experience. When they make a genuine sales call, they won't have you watching over their shoulder providing in-the-moment intelligence.

Give them room to succeed or fail as they naturally would. Following the exercise, you'll have time to offer sage advice.

The call recording will benefit both you and your reps greatly. It helps to have the caller's real content in front of you when you offer praise and criticism. You don't have to rely on memory for your evaluation or take copious notes throughout the process that can obstruct the exercise's flow.

Having a clear guide for where they need to make the biggest improvements can also be beneficial for reps. It's helpful for them to clearly understand the words they used most successfully, the queries and subjects that caused them to stumble, and the phrases they should avoid using while speaking to actual prospects.

You can use a CRM to record sales, though sometimes you'll need to use a separate call recording program depending on your CRM.

As your salespeople continue developing their abilities and taking on new responsibilities, your mock calls should become increasingly difficult and high-stakes. Also, practice different sales mock-up scenarios.

Keep that pattern in mind, as overselling or underselling a rep's aptitudes during a mock call won't do much to advance their development.

The basic sales call is used as a "cold mock call" to train sales representatives on general cold call scripts.

The first unexpected call to a potential customer is referred to as a "cold call." This kind of simulation call seeks to help the trainee or beginner become comfortable with the details of a sales call.

Sales representatives can practice introducing themselves, identifying customer problems, resolving objections, and rapidly getting to the point.

But a mock call can also be conducted for further sales calls the SDRs of your sales team have to face.

After the first outreach to a prospect comes the follow up call.

A mock up call can help to give the sales reps the skills to get information about the prospect and simultaneously have an interactive conversation.

Also, the SDR can learn how to ask for specific things without being too intrusive.

Usually, the first call with a prospect is to get warm by learning more about them and their pain point. Asking for an appointment for a product demo is often done in the follow-up calls with the prospect when chances are higher that they will be interested in it.

This call will have the content that the rep is planning to offer the client. Learning how to overcome objections is a crucial part at this stage and can be easily done in a mock up call.

A warm call is when the prospect is already aware of your company. Often warm leads are generated through inbound sales, such as newsletters, free trials, type from, etc.

A mock up call should train the SDR to get the conversation going by considering the way how the lead was generated. This means if the lead signed up for a free trial, it's important to talk about the lead's experience with it, questions, and how the product or service can help to solve the lead's problems.

Personalization with the given info the SDR can have is a crucial point.

Mock up calls are a great way to train new SDRs and to continue developing your sales rep's skills.

The advantage is they don't require much time since you, as the manager/team leader, already have the info about ICP, customers' pain points, etc.

If you're looking for SDRs experienced in cold calling, be sure to get in touch.