You will practise layered questions, silence and note-taking in a recorded role-play and review it.
Reading about listening is one thing. Hearing yourself on a recording is another. Most people who play back a practice meeting for the first time are surprised by the same things: how much they talked, how quickly they moved to a new topic, and how many times they filled a silence that the buyer was about to fill.
This exercise puts the whole module into one recorded role-play. You will use the opener from module 1, a question funnel and follow-up layers from module 2, and the listening, silence and notes from this module. Then you will review the recording against a short list of measures. Allow thirty minutes: about five to brief your partner, twenty for the role-play, and the rest for the review.
Find a partner who can play a buyer. A colleague is ideal, but a friend will do. Write them a short brief on a card, and do not let yourself read it.
The brief has two parts. A surface complaint, which they should mention early and freely. And a hidden root problem, which they should reveal only if you ask good follow-up questions, listen to what they skip, and give them silence. Tell your partner to answer honestly but not to volunteer the root problem.
Here is the brief Wei Ling wrote for a colleague practising with her. "You're a 34-year-old teacher. Surface complaint: you feel you should be saving more but never seem to manage it. Hidden root: your younger brother has borrowed money from you three times this year and you haven't told your husband. Only bring it up if the adviser notices you hesitating about family or asks gently about where the money goes."
Good briefs make the hidden problem reachable, but not obvious. If your partner is not sure how to play it, suggest they pause or go quiet when the conversation gets near it, the way people do in real life, as described in lesson 6.1, Hear what the buyer does not say.
Set up your phone to record the audio, or video if you can, and run a twenty-minute discovery meeting as if the buyer were real, using your note template from lesson 6.3, Take notes without losing the room.
During the role-play, aim to use these:
Your opener from lesson 1.4, Write and rehearse your discovery opener, with all four parts At least one question funnel from lesson 2.2, The question funnel: from wide to specific, moving from wide to specific At least two follow-up layers on one topic, using the buyer's own words Silence after every answer, counting to three as in lesson 6.2, Use silence instead of filling it Notes in your template, with signals in the margin
Do not stop to restart if something goes wrong. Real meetings do not restart, and the mistakes are what you will learn from.
Play the recording back, with your notes and a pen. Measure three things.
The first is talk time. Roughly how much of the twenty minutes were you speaking? You do not need a stopwatch on every sentence. Note the stretches where you spoke for more than half a minute without a pause and add them up. There is no correct figure to hit. What matters is whether the buyer did most of the talking, and how your share changes from one recording to the next.
The second is your follow-up count. Count every question that went down into the buyer's previous answer, as in lesson 2.1, Open, layered and follow-up questions, as opposed to across to a new topic, and write the number down. Then count how many times you changed topic. A conversation with more follow-ups than topic changes is usually going in the right direction.
The third is whether you found the hidden problem. If you did, find the moment on the recording where it came out and listen to what you did just before. If you did not, ask your partner where they were waiting for you to go and listen to that part of the recording again.
On her first recording, Wei Ling spoke for long stretches while she explained how savings plans work, which she had promised herself she would not do. She asked six follow-up questions and changed topic eleven times. She did not find the hidden problem.
When her colleague pointed to the moment, it was obvious on playback. Asked where her money goes each month, the "teacher" had said, "Oh, you know, family things," and paused. Wei Ling had filled the pause with her next question about insurance. On her second recording a week later, she counted to three after that answer. The brother came out within a minute.
You have a recording of a twenty-minute role-play and a short written note with three items: your talk time, your follow-up count against topic changes, and whether you found the hidden problem, with the moment it came out or the moment you missed it. Keep the recording, because the next time you run this drill the comparison will tell you more than either recording alone.
Find a partner, write their brief on a card without showing it to anyone, and set up a quiet room before you start the activity below.
Run and record a twenty-minute role-play, then write your talk time, follow-up count and whether you found the hidden problem.
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