Guest blogger Anis Qizilbash is a coach, writer and motivational speaker on mindful sales and mindfulness. She also creates goofy self-help videos on the side – here’s one of them: Negative news making you ill?

When I started out in sales, I was trained in specific techniques, such as how to get people to open-up and talk; how to get your prospective client to talk about something specific by asking leading questions; how to make your desired fee totally reasonable and valuable; how to get your client to say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘sure, let’s book a zoom call for next Friday at 11am’ – and many more.

Then, there are intangible things you’re supposed to do, like actively listen, care about your prospects and clients, and help them win. With the former activities, you can tell if you’re doing them by what you say. But how can you tell if you’re really listening or that your motives are aligned? How can sales professionals be experientially trained to make others look good and about how the process breaks down if we don’t?

After taking ‘improv’ classes at The Free Association at the beginning of the year, apart from pretending to be a Sumo wrestler in one scene and a farting bee in the next, I was pleasantly surprised to feel how keenly it sharpened my listening skills. A few other things happened too, which got me thinking that improv should have been part of my sales training.

Let me explain by demonstrating four of improvisational comedy’s core principles; there are more, but I’ll focus on these for your attentional purposes.

Say ‘yes, and…’: when opportunities dry up

I was speaking to a Sales Director five months into the pandemic and, like many people, a lot of his sales pipeline had dried up like my hair does after straightening it. Thinking the pandemic would last a couple of months, he didn’t change his sales approach and instead waited for things to snap-back to business as usual. When we spoke, he talked about how all his opportunities and prospects had gone, how things used to be, what he would have been doing, and how frustrated he felt about the situation.

This is where one of the core principles of improvisational comedy, ‘Yes, and…’ could help said Sales Director. To ‘Yes, and…’ means a performer should accept (YES) what another performer has stated and should then expand (AND) on it. For example, one performer begins a scene by gesturing with his hands like he’s trying to fix something and says:

“It’s all bent and it needs to be un-jiggled and glued on to this part so I can fix it.”

To build the scene, the next performer should accept what the person is doing and saying, then expand on it:

“That’s a very clever way of fixing the 3-tier wedding cake, honey. Gosh we would have been in real trouble with our new client, the Patels from across the road.”

The second person tells us that a couple has landed a new client for their wedding cake business, and one of them has saved the day with an ingenious solution. Thanks to this ‘AND’ we have a clearer idea of what’s going on, and therefore a more stable platform for the other performer to continue to build the scene.

But look what happens in an alternative scenario:

“It’s all bent and it needs to be un-jiggled and glued on to this part so I can fix it.” “What are you doing? You’re not holding anything.”

In this scenario, the second performer has not accepted what the first performer offered and the scene now has something of a soggy bottom, as Mary Berry would say.

Going back to the Sales Director, he was frustrated and stuck because he wasn’t saying YES to his current situation. When I asked what sorts of alternative sales approaches he could be doing in this environment, he said he hadn’t really embraced all that LinkedIn had to offer, where he has a pretty good network, and perhaps a refined channel sales strategy. He knew what he could do to rebuild in the new environment, but he stopped himself by not saying YES to the current situation, so that he could expAND.

Be fascinated by your scene partner: don’t push the sale

One time at a conference, during the coffee and networking break, a suited man joined a huddle of three people. He stepped up to each person, shook their hand and introduced himself, while pushing his business card at them. Then, he talked for the next three minutes or so. The expressions of the other attendees noticeably shifted from curiosity to stink face.

He could probably have made a better first impression if he’d adopted another improv comedy principle of being fascinated by your scene partner. In an improv scene, you are taught to pay attention to your scene partner like a thief watching where someone puts their purse. The more you listen, the more you notice ideas and opportunities to ‘Yes, and…’ the scene.

Entering a room trying to be interesting, persuasive and sound intelligent gets you caught up in your head. It might come across as arrogant instead of confident. Instead, focus on being fascinated and curious about those around you, and they will lean into you. Doing so builds connections, trust and relationships, all of which are the foundations of building sales.

Let go of your great idea: forget your pitch and patter

In a sales scenario, when you hold on to your assumptions, your pitch or the benefits you want to talk about, you miss openings and opportunities to probe or unpick a potential objection. And then, when you try to shoehorn in your pitch, or potential benefits, it becomes disjointed or, worse still, you’ll hit a speed bump in the form of an objection.

Calling back the previous example, imagine performer A starts the scene with…

“It’s all bent and it needs to be un-jiggled and glued on to this part so I can fix it.”

…and Performer A is thinking, ‘this is a Transformer toy and you want to un-jiggle and fix on the arm so you can fight the baddies.’

Meanwhile, their scene partner says:

“That’s a very clever way of fixing the 3-tier wedding cake, honey, gosh we would have been in real trouble with our new client, the Patels from across the road”.

Because they are in their head, determined to push on with their great idea, performer A jumps in with:

“There, it’s fixed and now we can fight the baddies in the outer-galactic empire, three moons away!”

A bit disjointed, isn’t it? Instead of listening to their partner, Performer A only listened to their own idea. When you hold onto a supposedly ‘great’ idea in your head, you stop paying attention; you miss what’s going on and what your partner is saying, and it becomes awkward and difficult to continue.

The same happens in a sales conversation; holding on to your ideas might result in missing a tiny thread, which could otherwise unravel a whole new dimension of opportunity. The trouble is, we’re often completely unaware we haven’t listened, so we don’t realize the missed opportunity. You can’t improve what you can’t see.

Instant feedback

In sales, if you don’t accept what’s in front of you and expand on it, don’t listen intently or hold onto a few of your assumptions, you will miss opportunities to uncover powerful motivations or reveal hidden objections. But in sales, the breakdown happens months down the sales-cycle.

Meanwhile, an improv scene unfolds in each moment, where with each new line, a performer gets instant feedback on whether the scene works or crumbles, and immediately realizes whether or not they listened, accepted or expanded. This atmosphere of instant and, crucially, positive feedback makes it the perfect place to practice those intangible skills to up your sales game.

…Of course, after all that, if you mostly feel excited about playing a sumo wrestler or a farting bee, you’ll have the time of your life.