It’s said that from failure comes experience. However, when it comes to sales negotiations, you want there to be as few failures as possible. That being said, how are you supposed to get the amount of practice you need and still close the majority of your sales? Michael Pici, writing for HubSpot, suggests finding another salesperson and role playing. Here are a few scenarios Pici suggests you run through:

The Extreme

Hopefully you won’t experience too many extreme situations in your negotiations, but trial by fire will make any situation less than extreme seem like a walk in the park. So, take the extreme negatives you could encounter and write them on pieces of paper. Select one person to play the prospect and have them draw a scenario. Whether you end up making the fictional sale or not, run through the interaction with your acting partner. Then analyze how it went. Whether you end up making the fictional sale or not, run through the interaction with your acting partner. What could you have done better? What worked well? When you’re more prepared for a difficult negotiation, you’ll have a better chance of succeeding.

The Stall

There will always be prospects who dodge closing a sale, even if they seem to be all in. What should you do? For this scene, you need to write down the possible reasons that a client would have for avoiding signing a contract (limited budget, you haven’t actually been talking to the decision maker, etc.) and have the person playing the prospect draw a random reason. During act-​through, work on your question asking and persuasive skills to get the prospect to be honest with you. After you get the truth, you can start figuring out how to solve the problem that’s blocking the sale.

These are just two of the eight acting exercises Pici suggests and details. Check out his article to become even more prepared for your next sales negotiation.