Adam Bensman breaks down how sales reps build self-awareness through role play, after-action reports, and video review. The SLAP approach isolates door-knocking into four steps: say hi, break the ice, let them know you're there, ask an open-ended question. Repetition and focused feedback turn small improvements into habits.
How do you develop a level of self awareness as a sales rep? So you identify what you're doing, what's working and what's not. Fantastic question. In sales, self awareness is one of the most powerful skill sets that we can develop. It's also the thing that most of us struggle with, especially when we're new, we're in the house and we're doing our thing and we are like our zipper could be down and we have no idea. Have you ever shadowed someone in the house and then watch them do something totally stupid? They think they're doing something so great and then you have to talk about it later and they're like, I had no idea. They're just blind to it. The best way to develop self awareness, there's a few methods. Number one, role play. The way that I like to do role play is I isolate the skill set that we're practicing. For example, I'm going to isolate door knocking. What do we say at the door? I'm not going to let the whole thing go. What do I need? What does a sales rep need to know how, how to start the conversation? That's number one. So all I'm going to practice in my slap formula is the sla. Say hi, break the ice, let them know I'm there, ask an open ended question. Until they can do that just supernaturally. For every single true to life scenario that they're going to face in the field. That's all I care about. Because the number one thing that sales reps struggle with is I don't know what to say as I approach the door. I'm nervous about it. So we isolate, we go through it. Hey, my name's Adam. The reason I'm stopping by today, we're doing Peggy's roof tomorrow. While I was in the neighborhood, I couldn't help but notice that your roof's about the same age as hers. Where are you guys at in the process? That's it. And then what we do is we then do an after action report which looks like this. First, the sales rep is going to identify what they did well. We make a list. What do you do well, they're going to critique themselves. And you'll notice that when you ask a sales rep what they did well, they immediately talk about what they did really poorly. Pause. Don't do that. Talk about what you did well. You'll have people screwed up. They get nervous. What they did well is they gave it a shot. They got up there. It could be tonality, it could be their body language. Or posture. Okay, so we're going to go through that. Then they're going to self critique what they could do better next time. And they're going to make a list. So what did I do well? What could I do better next time? This is how they develop the level of self awareness and coachability. After they self critique, you turn to the group, hey, team, what did he do well? Feed it. What could they do better next time? And then they'll work on that. And then we repeat. So each person will get 5, 10, 15, 20 repetitions. And right there on the fly, they're developing that self awareness. That's method one. Method number two is doing after action reports. I do these. My team does them every single Friday. So after every single one of these events, I do one of these after action reports. What I did well and what I could do better next time. And what's interesting is most of my growth has actually come from focusing on what I do well. There's two or three things that I highlight that I didn't do that well. It reinforces what you need to continue doing. Then after you do the after action report, I look at what could I do better? And I focus on one, maybe two things and I turn those into a plan. For example, in the sales side, if my after action report was, hey, what I did really well is I was confident, I had good body language, I had good cadence in my speak. I got up there and I did it. But what I need to do better is ask my question more clearly. Because a lot of people use filler words and make it too long as opposed to, hey, where are you at? In the process. So all I'm going to work on is asking the question and it just allows that path to focus, turning one thing that you could do better just into a plan. Next time I'm just going to ask this question this way. Where are you at in the process? So role play and then an after action report, which is the same feedback loop. And then the third method is videoing yourself. Ultimately, self awareness is learning to view yourself from an outside lens. And the easiest way to do that is to film yourself. There's one of the top TV show hosts, Letterman, one of those guys, they watch every single one of their episodes. When I was on my run this morning, I was listening to a podcast and the host said that he's done a couple hundred episodes and he listens to every single one to see how he can improve. And now I've been doing that with my videos where I watch him, and I'm like, dude, my hands look super stupid there. What was I doing? I realized if I slowed down or I had a better intro, it would be smoother. So again, filming yourself and watching. It's the same reason that athletes study game tape. Very good question. You bet.
