How to practice sales on your own: Eubrics’ 20-minute daily routine

How to practice sales on your own comes down to a 20-minute daily routine of four steps, not a list of tips: warm-up, skill drill, full call and review. It applies deliberate practice principles and is a starting point, not a standard. Eubrics sells AI sales roleplay software for enterprise sales teams.

By Maxim Dsouza,

Key takeaways

• The routine has four steps: warm-up (3 minutes), skill drill (5 minutes), full call (8 minutes) and review (4 minutes), for 20 minutes in total.

• The routine draws on deliberate practice: a clear goal, a task pitched at your level and quick feedback that stays on the task.

• Record the full call and listen back for one thing chosen in advance; that is the review step.

• AI roleplay can supply the buyer for the full call step, and our evidence review found no peer-reviewed controlled study of AI roleplay with salespeople.

• No study we found sets a daily practice time for sales reps.

Contents

1. What does research say about how to practice sales?

2. How can I practice sales by myself in 20 minutes a day?

3. How do I record myself practicing a sales call?

4. How to practice sales with AI roleplay?

5. How do I make daily sales practice harder each week?

6. How much practice do reps need?

7. Frequently asked questions

8. Conclusion

Research from medicine and other fields points to deliberate practice, which Ericsson (2016) described as individualized practice on tasks a teacher selects, with a clear goal and immediate, informative feedback. Three principles follow, and they also show how to get better at sales calls:

• Set a clear goal for each session.

• Choose a task pitched at your level.

• Get feedback fast and keep it on the task. Across 607 effect sizes, feedback raised performance on average (effect size 0.41), but over a third of feedback interventions lowered it (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996).

In 14 medical studies, simulation with deliberate practice beat traditional clinical teaching (effect size 0.71; McGaghie et al., 2011). Across 88 studies, deliberate practice explained 14% of the differences in performance, and the authors call it important but not as important as has been argued (Macnamara, Hambrick and Oswald, 2014, corrected 2018). This evidence comes mainly from medicine, not selling, and the McGaghie authors call their number of reports small. A solo routine has no teacher, so a recording and a written goal stand in. Our evidence review covers each study in more detail.

To practice sales by yourself in 20 minutes a day, follow four steps in order: warm-up, skill drill, full call and review. This is Eubrics’ suggested routine, our own design and not a study finding.

Use your phone’s voice recorder. In the routine’s four steps (warm-up, skill drill, full call and review), start it before the full call step and, in the review step, play back only the moment you chose to check. Before you start, choose one thing to listen for, such as how soon you ask your first question, and listen only for that. Without a teacher, a recording is a simple way to get feedback on your own call. Listening back is the review step. Judge the call, not yourself, and write down one change to try tomorrow.

AI roleplay gives you a simulated buyer to talk to in the full call step, so you do not need a second person. On its product page, Eubrics says its AI roleplay bots simulate real customer conversations, including cold calls, and give reps instant coaching on objection handling, discovery and closing. It is still practice, not a live call. Our evidence review of AI roleplay found no peer-reviewed controlled study of AI roleplay with salespeople, so use it for repetitions and keep the review step.

Keep the same four steps (warm-up, skill drill, full call and review) and make the full call a little harder each week.

1. Week 1: Use a friendly buyer and a familiar scenario.

2. Week 2: Add a harder objection to the skill drill and the full call.

3. Week 3: Use a less friendly buyer who interrupts more.

4. Week 4: Try a new scenario, such as a different product or buyer type.

If you manage a team, a manager-led drill session is a different format from this solo routine.

We searched the open web with a general search engine and found no study that sets a daily practice time for sales reps. We did not search PubMed or Google Scholar directly, so this describes what we found, not what exists. Without such a study, any sales practice schedule, ours included, rests on judgment rather than evidence, so adjust the 20-minute routine to fit your day.

How can I practice sales by myself?

Follow a 20-minute daily routine of four steps: warm-up, skill drill, full call and review. Set a goal for the day, repeat one skill, run one call out loud, then listen back and write down one change for tomorrow. Eubrics suggests this routine for one person practicing alone.

How do you get better at sales calls?

Apply the principles of deliberate practice: set a clear goal, choose a task pitched at your level, and get quick feedback that stays on the call rather than on you. In the routine, the skill drill builds one skill, the full call tests it, and the review step gives you the feedback.

How much practice do reps need?

We found no study setting a daily practice time for sales reps. Our search used a general search engine on the open web, not PubMed or Google Scholar directly. So the 20-minute routine rests on judgment, not on a study of sales reps.

How do I practice cold calling?

Use the full call step. Rehearse your opener and your first objection out loud, with a buyer script or an AI buyer, and record the call. In the review step, listen for one thing chosen in advance and write down one change to try on your next call.

What is deliberate practice?

Ericsson described deliberate practice in 2016 as individualized practice on tasks a teacher selects, with a clear goal and immediate, informative feedback. Researchers still debate how much it explains about performance, so the routine uses its principles without promising results.

How do I record myself practicing a sales call?

Start your phone’s voice recorder before the full call step. Choose one thing to listen for in advance, then play back the moment you picked in the review step. Judge the call rather than yourself, and write down one change to try tomorrow.

How to practice sales on your own comes down to four steps in 20 minutes a day: warm-up, skill drill, full call and review. The routine applies deliberate practice principles and is a starting point to adjust, not a standard. To add a simulated buyer to the full call step, see Eubrics’ AI sales roleplay software or Get a demo.