Sales Exercise: May I Help You?

Purpose

This quick and fun sales exercise helps delegates avoid using remarks that are deemed cliché and instead use alternative statements. It also helps delegates to add variety to their roles and their interactions with customers on a daily basis.

Objective

Replace the phrase “May I help you?” with something else that provides the same meaning.

What You Need

• A soft ball

Setup

• Ask delegates to stand in a circle. If this is not possible they can remain seated but arrange them so that they are roughly in a circle and everyone can easily see and interact with everyone else.
• Explain that the objective of the game is very simple; they should come up with an alternative to the statement, “May I help you?”
• Once a person receives the ball, he or she should state an alternative straight away and then throw the ball to someone else at random. The sequence should then continue.
• Throw the ball at someone to kick start the exercise.
• Continue the exercise for about 10 minutes until everyone has stated an alternative statement once or twice.
• Follow with a quick discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes

Activity: 10 minutes

Group Feedback: 5 minutes

Discussion

Was it easy to come up with an alternative? Were you inspired by other people’s suggestions (To Trainer: You can ask the delegates to record these for future reference)? Was it more difficult at the end to come up with something that was not stated already?

Variations

You can use the same structure and template in this exercise to encourage using alternative statements to other frequently used statements that can be taken as cliché.