LeaderCoreAIAI role-play for Solution Selling® practitioners
Give your reps a buyer who makes them do the work.
Your reps will sell to realistic and complex buying personas and archetypes. They stay in character, remember everything that has been said, and push back. Each buyer knows what is causing their problem and what it is costing the business, and will not say either unless the rep asks properly. Until then, the buyer will not discuss your product.
LeaderCoreAI is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Sales Performance International. Full trademark notice
What the buyer requires before a rep can pitch
Every scenario runs on one rule. Until the buyer has said what is causing their problem and what it is costing them, they will not engage with anything the rep offers. If the rep mentions a feature too early, the buyer asks what it costs, says they are a long way from that decision, takes a polite note and lets the meeting end.
The buyer opens up when the rep keeps asking until the buyer explains the problem themselves. After that they take the rep seriously and will discuss anything the rep connects back to something they said. Reps cannot practice this with a colleague, who will usually let them off.
Every scenario starts at the second meeting
The buyer has already admitted they have a problem. Asking them to explain it again from the beginning wastes the meeting, and they will say so. Starting here leaves the rep enough time to find the real cause, agree what a fix would look like, and connect the right parts of your product to it.
What counts as a win
The rep wins by getting the buyer to describe what a fixed version of their situation looks like, and by connecting only the relevant parts of your product to it. A warm, friendly meeting that ends without any of that is graded down.
How role-play sessions for Solution Selling® practitioners are graded
A sales manager can tell a rep that a call felt good, but often has no precise way to say where it went wrong, for example that the rep pitched a solution before understanding the problem.
The report does that. A few seconds after the rep ends the session, they get a score out of ten on each of the five skills listed below, and each skill counts the same toward the overall score. The report also says what the rep did well, what they got wrong, and what to do differently next time. Every score comes with the quote from the conversation that earned it.
- 01
Pain Diagnosis Before Prescription
Working out exactly what is going wrong and what it is costing the business, before suggesting anything. Finding the problem but never pricing it counts as half a job.
- 02
Solution Co-creation
Getting the buyer to describe what a fixed version of their situation looks like, instead of handing them a finished answer and asking whether they like it.
- 03
Capability-to-Pain Alignment
Connecting everything the rep offers back to something the buyer said. A run through the full feature list is graded down here by definition, however good the features are.
- 04
Stakeholder Awareness
Working out who else is affected by the problem and who else has a say in the decision, then selling to them too, rather than only to the person doing the talking.
- 05
Avoiding Feature-Led Selling
Not leading with features, specifications or a demo before the problem has been understood and priced.
The grading penalizes two habits most heavily: jumping to the solution and showing the buyer everything the rep has to offer. Pitching before the problem is understood costs the rep marks on two of the five skills at once. A harder difficulty level gives the buyers a tougher problem, and the marking rules stay the same.
The rep is graded on which features they leave out
Before the meeting starts, the rep is given six real features they could offer. Two or three of them solve this buyer's problem and the rest are not relevant to it. A rep who works through all six loses marks, and the buyer responds with “That's interesting, but it isn't the problem I have.”
Most sales role-play rewards covering everything you sell. This one grades the rep on knowing what to leave out, and after the session the rep is asked about it directly: “Your offer had six parts to it. Which ones did you deliberately keep out of the conversation, and how did you decide?”
Every rep is also given a real problem with their own product
Real products have drawbacks, so the practice ones do too. Examples include a six-month approval process the customer's team has to sit through, a service garage fifteen miles outside the city, and retraining for every clinician who touches the device. The rep still has to win the buyer over.
Example scenarios from the practice library for Solution Selling® practitioners
Here are three of them. Every scenario is a specific company with named people in real jobs, and the rep reads a briefing before it starts. There are always two buyers in the room and they want different things. Neither is an obstacle to get past, because both have a fair point, and a rep who sides with one will lose the other. In one of the three below, one buyer is keeping something from the other, for reasons anyone would recognize.
The Sunset Device
A hospital's implanted cardiac devices lose manufacturer support in six months. The CFO accepts there is a problem and wants a price for replacements. The head of cardiology is in the meeting for the first time, and knows why this was missed. It is not the reason the CFO would give.
The RFP Matrix
A city's fleet-maintenance contract goes out to tender next quarter. The procurement manager has invited you in to help write the specification, and tells you plainly she is asking two other bidders the same questions. She has already decided what the fix should be, and it would cause the same problem again.
The Paper Trail
A four-day delay releasing a batch made a pharmaceutical shipment late and put the plant's paper records under scrutiny. The quality manager knows what happened. The plant director, who has spent a month answering head office's questions, does not.
What a failed call looks like
A rep who has not done the work gets a friendly buyer who asks them to send a full written proposal for the team to review. It feels like progress and goes into the CRM as progress, but the deal is over.
These three are examples only. Request a demo to be walked through the rest of the library.
The buyers your reps will be up against
Every buyer comes from a cast of B2B characters, each with their own priorities, their own worries, and their own way of behaving when the pressure goes up. Three of them are below. Because there are always two in the room, your reps have to handle both at once: being interrupted, being ganged up on, and being pulled in two directions.
The Skeptical CFO
Watches the money, hates risk, has no time, and wants proof of everything.
The Procurement Negotiator
Runs a process, pushes on price, and reads every line about terms and risk.
The Hands-On End User
Has to use the thing every day, and has been let down by a change before.
The full cast is larger. Request a demo to meet the rest.
How the practice works
Read the brief
The rep reads what happened with this account before today, what the buyer has already admitted, the six things they can offer, and the one real drawback of their product. Then they choose a difficulty level, from Simple to Extreme.
Hold the meeting
A live conversation with two AI buyers who stay in character and never put words in the rep's mouth. Events part-way through tempt the rep into mistakes, such as a deadline that invites them to quote a price early or a competitor's quote slid across the desk. A coach is one message away for a hint.
Read the report
The rep ends the session and a few seconds later the report arrives with the overall score, the five skill scores with quotes to back them up, what to fix, and the question about what they chose to leave out. Every report they have done is kept in one place, so they can see whether they are getting better.
How the five difficulty levels work
At the lower levels, the buyer has a reasonable-sounding explanation for what went wrong and sticks to it unless the rep digs. Higher up, they push for a price or a decision before they have explained the problem at all.
Higher still, the buyer arrives having already decided what to buy, usually from a competitor, and is proud of the decision. Here the rep should get them talking about what their chosen answer would not fix.
At the top level the two buyers openly disagree with each other, and nothing the rep is carrying will suit them both. The best they can do is get the two buyers to agree on what the problem is, offer the one feature that speaks to it, and say plainly that the rest of the offer can wait for another meeting.
The marking rules are the same at every level, with the same behaviors required and graded the same way.
A good score is worth more at a higher level. Selling well to a buyer who has already picked a competitor is harder than selling well to one who is cautious, and certificates rank by difficulty before score, so a strong result high up the ladder outranks a bigger number at Simple. Working up the levels is how a rep shows they have mastered the method.
What counts as getting it wrong
Each of these is written into the grading, along with the skills it costs the rep marks on.
- Pitching a solution before understanding the problem
- Finding the problem but never asking what it costs the business
- Asking about the consequences but never about the cause
- Offering features the buyer never asked about
- Arguing against the competitor the buyer has already picked, instead of reopening the problem
- Treating the person doing the talking as the only one who matters
International sales teams practice Solution Selling® in 43 languages
Reps can hold the conversation in one of 43 languages and read the report in another. A rep's scores and transcripts are private to them, and L&D sees how the team is doing overall rather than any one person's results. All AI processing happens in the EU, and the platform was built for GDPR from the start. Spoken practice, where the rep talks and each buyer answers in their own voice, is available as an add-on.
Role-play practice for Solution Selling® practitioners: frequently asked questions
Is this an official Solution Selling® course?
No. LeaderCoreAI is an independent product. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Sales Performance International, and finishing our scenarios does not certify anyone in the methodology. Your training provider teaches your team how to sell this way. We give them somewhere to practice it as often as they like, and a way to find out how they are doing.
Do our reps need to be trained on Solution Selling® before using it?
It is built for teams who have already had the training, because the grading assumes the rep is trying to sell this way. A rep who has not been trained still gets a full report with quotes and advice, but it is worth most when the practice matches the training the team was given.
How is a role-play session graded?
Out of ten on each of five skills, each worth the same: Pain Diagnosis Before Prescription, Solution Co-creation, Capability-to-Pain Alignment, Stakeholder Awareness, and Avoiding Feature-Led Selling. Those five are built from a list of specific things we look for, good and bad, and every score has to be backed by a quote from the conversation. The report also gives an overall score, what the rep did well, what to fix, and what to try next time. It arrives a few seconds after they finish.
What happens if a rep pitches before understanding the problem?
They lose marks on two of the five skills at once, however good the pitch was. The grading looks at whether the rep followed the method.
Why would a rep lose marks for offering a good feature?
Because it did not solve this buyer's problem. Each rep is given six real features they could offer, and only two or three of them fit. Working through all six comes across as not listening, and the buyer says so. Afterwards the rep is asked which parts of the offer they left out on purpose, and why they decided that.
Does a higher difficulty level mean easier marking?
No. There are five levels, from Simple to Extreme. A higher level gives the buyer a harder problem and makes them tougher to sell to. The marking rules are the same at every level, with the same behaviors required and graded the same way. What changes is what the score is worth: certificates rank by difficulty before score, so an eight earned at Extreme ranks above an eight at Simple, and harder levels are worth more on the leaderboard.
How is this different from your question-led discovery library?
The two libraries grade different things. In the question-led discovery library, getting the buyer to commit to a specific next step is one of the five skills we grade. Here that skill is not graded, and the grading looks at whether the buyer ended up describing what a fixed situation looks like, with only the relevant parts of your product attached to it. Each customer gets whichever library matches the training their team had.
Can a rep practice a real deal they are working on?
Yes. A rep describes a conversation they have coming up, answers some questions about it, and gets a scenario built from it. It is private to them and stays off the leaderboard.
Who can see an individual rep's scores?
Only that rep. Managers, HR and L&D can see how the team is doing as a whole, never one person's scores or transcripts. The leaderboard only ranks people against colleagues in their own company, and uses made-up display names unless someone chooses to show their real one.
Do you have libraries for other sales methodologies?
We have one for question-led discovery selling as well, and libraries for insight-led selling and mutual-qualification selling are being built.
How do we get access?
Through a company subscription. You can also start a free trial, which includes example sales scenarios, or ask for a demo and we will walk you through the library.
Explore LeaderCore:Sales
LeaderCore:Sales
How the whole product works, across every sales method we cover.
Question-led discovery practice
Our other library available now, for teams trained to build the need through questioning.
All sales methodology libraries
One library per method, so the practice matches the training your team was actually given.
Practice makes the method stick.
Without practice, reps try a new method out on real buyers, and every mistake can cost a live opportunity. Give them somewhere to practice what their sales training taught them before it counts. Start with one team and decide on the results.
Solution Selling® is a registered trademark of Sales Performance International, LLC. LeaderCoreAI is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by that organization.