LeaderCoreAIAI role-play for SPIN® Selling practitioners
Give your reps a buyer who will not tell them what is wrong.
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. Every one of them has something they have not mentioned and will not offer it unless the rep asks the right questions.
LeaderCoreAI is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Huthwaite Research Group Limited or Korn Ferry. Full trademark notice
Every scenario has a fact the buyer is holding back
Behind every scenario there is a fact the buyer has and the rep does not, such as the real reason a decision keeps slipping, a colleague who will veto it, or a number that made someone senior start asking questions. The buyer knows it, and in a normal meeting it never comes up.
A rep gets to it by asking, then building the next question out of what the buyer just said. Reps cannot practice this with a colleague, because a colleague has nothing to hide and hands it over in the first two minutes.
A problem the buyer has named is not yet a problem they feel
Most reps get a problem out of the buyer and treat that as the job done, but until the buyer has worked through what the problem leads to and what it is costing them, they have no reason to spend money on it and will end the meeting happy.
Winning is a next step the buyer commits to
No scenario is won by closing on the day, because real meetings like these do not end that way. What the rep is playing for is something specific the buyer agrees to do next, with a date on it. A friendly meeting that ends without one is graded down, however well it went.
How role-play sessions for SPIN Selling practitioners are graded
A sales manager can say that a call felt good, but often cannot point to the moment it went wrong, such as the buyer naming a problem and the rep writing it down and moving on to the next question.
The report shows that moment. A few seconds after the rep ends the session, they get a score out of ten on each of the five skills listed below, along with what they did well, what they got wrong, and what to do differently next time.
- 01
Implication Development
Making the buyer feel what the problem is costing them, rather than just getting them to name it. A problem nobody has added up is not one anyone spends money to fix.
- 02
Need-Payoff Facilitation
Getting the buyer to say out loud what solving it would be worth. If the rep says it for them it does not count, however well they put it.
- 03
Listening & Adaptive Questioning
Building the next question out of the answer the buyer just gave, instead of working down a list written before the meeting.
- 04
Discovery Discipline
Getting the situation and the problem straight first, developing what the problem leads to next, and holding the solution back until the buyer has actually asked for one.
- 05
Securing a Concrete Next Step
Turning a need the buyer now feels into something specific they agree to do, with a date on it. Agreeing to stay in touch earns nothing in the grading.
The habit this grading punishes hardest is answering a problem the moment the buyer mentions it, which is what a confident salesperson does by default. Pitching before the buyer has asked for a solution is a primary failure here. A harder difficulty level gives the rep a tougher buyer, and the marking rules are the same at every level.
What the rep is graded on in the need-payoff stage
In these conversations the rep can see the whole answer before the buyer can, and the natural move is to state it by telling the buyer what the problem costs them every month and what the rep would do about it. That earns a lower mark.
The grading rewards the question that makes the buyer do the arithmetic out loud. Reps find this the hardest habit to break and are often surprised by it on their first report, which can show a technically good call and a clear, persuasive case for the value alongside a poor score on Need-Payoff Facilitation, because the buyer never said any of it.
What the buyer knows before the session starts
Every scenario is written with a fact the buyer has and the rep does not, and the grading engine is given that fact before the session starts. The report therefore says whether the rep asked good questions, whether they reached that fact, and where in the conversation they walked past it.
Example scenarios from the practice library for SPIN 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. The industries run from energy and freight to hospitals, banks, universities and public-sector procurement. None of them ends in a signature on the day, because meetings like these do not.
Fifteen Minutes with Finance
A freight company's finance director has given you fifteen minutes between two other meetings. He knows the fleet has problems and treats them as an operational annoyance. Nobody has ever put a number on what those problems take off the bottom line, and he is the one person in the building who could.
The Complacent Account
A regional bank is happy with the fraud screening it already has, so as far as your contact is concerned there is nothing to discuss. The problems are real, but he has been living with them long enough to stop noticing them.
The Brand Story
The general manager of a fast-growing skincare brand will happily spend the whole meeting on positioning, packaging and the founder's story. Somewhere inside it is a problem costing real money. She has not connected the two, and she will not unless someone asks her the right question.
What a failed call looks like
The rep asks a lot of questions and the buyer answers all of them, politely and at length. The rep comes away with a page of notes and no idea why this company would ever spend money on this. The call goes into the CRM as a good meeting, and nothing happens after it.
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 and worries and their own way of behaving when the pressure goes up. Three of them are below. Some scenarios put more than one in the room, and then the rep has to deal with interruptions, two people siding against them, and conversations that carry on without them.
The Skeptical CFO
Watches the money, hates risk, has no time, and wants proof of everything.
The Status-Quo Skeptic
Thinks what they have works fine, likes the supplier they already use, and never counts what doing nothing costs.
The Time-Poor Executive
Senior, decisive, and watching the clock. Wants the outcome and has no patience for the route to it.
The full cast is larger. Request a demo to meet the rest.
How the practice works
Read the brief
The rep reads who they are, what has happened with this account before today, and what this meeting has to achieve. Then they choose a difficulty level, from Simple to Extreme.
Hold the meeting
A live conversation with one or more AI buyers who stay in character and never put words in the rep's mouth. A coach is one message away for a hint.
Read the report
The rep ends the session and the report arrives a few seconds later: the overall score, the five skill scores, what they did well, what to fix and what to try next time. Every report they have done is kept in one place, so they can see whether they are getting better.
The five-minute refresher inside the app
The library comes with a short refresher inside the app: the four question types with examples, the difference between a problem the buyer mentions and one they ask you to solve, and the mistakes the grading watches for. It is written in our own words and points reps to Neil Rackham's books for the full method, and it does not replace the training your team was given.
How the five difficulty levels work
There are five levels, from Simple to Extreme, and each buyer character has its own way of getting harder. At higher levels the buyer volunteers less, loses patience sooner, and a question they have half-answered gets treated as answered. The account and the objective stay the same at every level.
The same behaviors are required and graded the same way at every level, so nobody gets an easier ride by moving up.
A good score is worth more at a higher level. Getting a busy, unconvinced buyer to work out the cost of their own problem is much harder than getting a cooperative one to do it, so certificates rank by difficulty before score, and a strong result high up the ladder outranks a bigger number at Simple. Working up the levels shows that a rep has 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 before the buyer has said they want something
- Getting the buyer to name a problem and then moving straight on
- Making the value argument yourself instead of getting the buyer to make it
- Interrogating the buyer instead of discovering with them
- Working down a prepared list instead of following what the buyer just said
International sales teams practice SPIN 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 only how the team is doing overall. 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 SPIN Selling practitioners: frequently asked questions
Is this an official SPIN Selling course?
No. LeaderCoreAI is an independent product. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Huthwaite Research Group Limited or Korn Ferry, 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 SPIN 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 can still use it, and the library comes with a five-minute orientation covering the four question types, the difference between a problem the buyer mentions and one they ask you to solve, and the mistakes the grading watches for. That orientation is written in our own words and points reps to Neil Rackham's books for the full method. It does not replace the training.
How is a role-play session graded?
Out of ten on each of five skills: Implication Development, Need-Payoff Facilitation, Listening & Adaptive Questioning, Discovery Discipline, and Securing a Concrete Next Step. The report also gives an overall score, what the rep did well, what to fix and what to do differently next time. It arrives a few seconds after they finish.
What happens if a rep pitches too early?
It is graded as a primary failure. The grading looks at whether the rep followed the method, so a well-made pitch given too early still costs marks.
Why would a rep lose marks for explaining the value well?
Because the buyer was supposed to explain it. Need-Payoff Facilitation grades whether the buyer said out loud what solving the problem would be worth. A rep can make that case clearly and persuasively themselves and still score badly on it, because a buyer who worked the number out for themselves will repeat it to their colleagues when the rep is not in the room, and one who was handed it will not.
Does a higher difficulty level mean easier marking?
No. There are five levels, from Simple to Extreme, and a higher level gives the rep a harder buyer. The marking rules are the same at every level, with the same behaviors required and graded the same way. A score is worth more at a higher level, so an eight earned at Extreme counts for more than an eight at Simple. Certificates rank by difficulty before score, and harder levels are worth more on the leaderboard.
How is this different from your diagnose-before-prescribe library?
The two libraries grade different things. Here, one of the five skills we grade is whether the rep got the buyer to commit to a specific next step. The diagnose-before-prescribe library does not grade that at all. It grades whether the buyer ended up describing a fixed version of their situation. 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 diagnose-before-prescribe, pain-focused 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.
Diagnose-before-prescribe practice
Our other library available now, for teams trained to diagnose the problem and its cost before proposing anything.
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.
SPIN® is a registered trademark of Huthwaite Research Group Limited, trading as Huthwaite International. SPIN SELLING® is a registered trademark of Korn Ferry (US) in the United States. LeaderCoreAI is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of these organizations.