Solar Sales Roleplay: 7 Scenario Cards to Train Your Team

It is Thursday, 5 pm, and your team is doing role-play. One rep plays the customer and says "bahut mehanga hai." The other answers with the line from last month's training, word for word. Everyone claps. Nobody learnt anything, because the "customer" had no reason behind the words.

Real customers do. A price objection is often a cousin's bad experience, a father who has not been asked, or a rival quote that leaves out the net meter. The rep who answers only the words loses the deal politely, with a "sochte hain."

This is a facilitator's kit for the sales head who runs that Thursday session. It gives you a 60-minute format, a score sheet and seven ready-to-run cards from Indian rooftop situations: subsidy doubt, a stuck DISCOM file, a cheaper quote, a joint-family decision, a housing society, a loan and a C&I CFO. It does not repeat scripts. For wording, use the 10 common solar objections, the residential sales script and the Indian solar sales pitch. The rep onboarding plan has a Say week of objection drills. This kit is what you run every month after it.

The Sealed Envelope Drill: run a solar sales roleplay in 60 minutes

The Sealed Envelope Drill needs three people, 20 minutes a round and three rounds an hour. Everyone plays the rep, the customer and the observer once. The customer actor holds a sealed part of the card with a hidden objection, and the rep finds it only by asking the right kind of question.

Team role-plays usually fail in three ways. The actor states the whole objection in the first line, so there is nothing to find. Or the actor is harsh, and reps learn to fear the exercise. Or nobody scores, so feedback becomes mood: "achha tha", "thoda confidence badhao." The envelope fixes the first, the time box the second and the score sheet the third.

1. 1

   Brief, 5 minutes

   The rep reads only the front of the card. The observer reads the whole card and the score sheet. The actor reads the sealed part and decides how to say it.

2. 2

   Play, 8 minutes, hard stop

   A timer everyone can see. The observer writes down the rep's questions and every promise, in the rep's own words.

3. 3

   Score, 2 minutes

   The observer scores in silence. The rep scores themselves on a separate slip, so the two numbers can be compared.

4. 4

   Debrief, 5 minutes

   The rep goes first: one thing to keep, one to change. Then the observer, from the notes. Then the actor says what they would have done next as a real customer.

The actor has four rules.

1. Open with the surface objection from the card, in your own mix of Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi or English.
2. Reveal the hidden reason only when the rep asks an open question near the trigger. A closed question such as "price ki problem hai?" gets a "haan" and nothing more.
3. Use the curveball once, after minute 4, and only if the rep is doing well.
4. Do not help. If the rep never finds the reason, end with "theek hai, sochte hain." That is the realistic result, and it scores a Find of 0.

The sales head picks the scenario, ideally from last month's lost leads, and keeps the time. Print the sealed part on a separate half sheet.

One debrief rule matters most: talk about what was said and asked, never about the person. "You asked about the bill before the price" is feedback. "You lack confidence" is not. Kluger and DeNisi's 1996 meta-analysis of 607 effect sizes found that feedback helped on average, but over a third of the time it lowered performance, and it worked less well as attention moved from the task toward the self (Psychological Bulletin, 1996). It is general workplace research, not solar research, but it is a good reason to keep comments on the words when colleagues are watching.

The 3-4-2-1 score sheet, with a red-line cap

Score every round out of 10: Find 3, Cover 4, Next step 2, Manner 1. Any red-line promise caps the total at 4, however good the rest was. A pass is 7 or more with no red line, achieved twice on two different days.

Six red lines apply to every card. They are the never-promise list from the onboarding plan, turned into a scoring rule.

1. A date for the subsidy credit, a DISCOM approval or a society NOC.
2. A zero bill or a fixed saving, instead of an estimate.
3. A discount or free extra the rep is not allowed to give. The Give-Get-Log Rule covers who may approve what.
4. A tax, legal or loan-approval opinion stated as fact.
5. Running down a rival or the DISCOM by name.
6. Any promise the company has not agreed in writing.

One illustrative score. A rep on the cheaper-quote card asks to read the rival's quote and spots the missing net-meter line after a hint (Find 2), covers three of four items (Cover 3), agrees a dated callback with the owner's answer pending (Next step 2) and does not interrupt (Manner 1). Total 8, a pass. Had the rep said "main ₹20,000 kam kar deta hoon" before asking the owner, the total would be capped at 4.

Each card has a front the rep reads, a sealed part for the actor and observer, and four must-include items that give the Cover score. Scheme details change, so check the facts on each card before you run it.

Scenario 1: Subsidy doubt, "aati kisi ko nahi"

Run this when reps lose trust at the subsidy step rather than the price step. It tests whether they can answer with a dated source and put the customer in control.

The weak answer is a speech about how big the scheme is. Listen for a question about what he has heard, and for the moment the rep hands him the phone.

Scenario 2: DISCOM delay, "meter kab lagega?"

A service role-play for whoever answers the angry call after installation. Every file that sits at the DISCOM produces one of these calls.

The weak answer explains the DISCOM process for two minutes. Listen for the order: silence, status, owner, callback. For the steps and who moves each, see the DISCOM approval process and the subsidy credit timeline.

Scenario 3: The cheaper quote, "₹35,000 kam mein mil raha hai"

This is the commonest source of a discount nobody needed. It tests whether a rep reads before reacting. For the line-by-line explanation behind this card, see why solar prices vary.

Listen for "main aapka quote bhi dekh leta hoon." A rep who says it has won the first minute. The objections guide has price scripts. This card tests the habit before the script.

Scenario 4: Joint-family decision, "papa se baat karni padegi"

Use this for the lead who loves the numbers and then disappears into a family. The decision-maker question is in the residential script, and reps still skip it.

The common failure is a polished proposal sent into a silence. Listen for the three names. How to qualify solar leads covers where the decision-maker question sits.

Scenario 5: Housing society, "society se NOC lena padega"

At the first meeting the rep's job is not to solve the society. It is to find out what the society needs.

The weak answer is "NOC main karwa dunga." Listen for questions about the terrace, the committee and the last vendor.

Scenario 6: Loan and EMI, "EMI ka bojh rahega"

This card tests whether a rep can show an EMI honestly, with the subsidy gap, and leave the loan decision to the lender.

See showing EMI in a solar proposal, the bank loan process and solar loan interest rates for layouts and lender detail.

Scenario 7: C&I CFO, "mere paas paise ke aur use hain"

Commercial deals are lost in the second meeting, when a finance person joins. Save this card for reps who already sell to businesses.

The commercial sales script has CFO answers, and the commercial ROI guide and accelerated depreciation guide hold the background. This card trains the question that comes before the answer. We left tax rates off it on purpose, because the customer's CA gets the last word.

Build scenario eight from your own lost deals

The best scenario is one your team lost last month. Take your last ten lost or stalled leads, write the reason the customer gave and the reason you now believe, and turn the gap into a card.

A CRM makes this easy if reps write a reason on every lost lead. Filter last month's lost leads by reason, and the commonest one is your next card. Whatever tool you use, the test is whether you can pull those leads in a minute. If not, the reason lives in people's heads.

Three sessions cover the seven cards. Session A: scenarios 1, 3 and 4, the new-lead conversations. Session B: scenarios 2, 5 and 6, which are about trust and money. Session C: scenario 7 plus a card of your own. Keep a simple grid of scores, and clear a scenario for a rep only after two passes on different days.

How QuickEstimate fits

Every card ends in a dated next step, so the lead itself should show one. Quickest Solar CRM lets you set your own lead stages, put a label on a lead, log each call or visit as an activity, set follow-up reminders and filter the lead list. A label for the reason a lead was lost gives you the raw material for your next card. Team members with permissions mean each rep works from their own login.

It does not run role-play, score reps or find the hidden objection. That is the Thursday session. It can make the leads honest enough to train on.

• Pipeline Management, your own stages, labels and follow-up reminders, so the dated next step from a drill has a place to live on the lead.
• Activities and filters, to log what the customer said and to pull last month's lost leads by label when you write the next card.
• Book a demo, to see how stages, labels and filters would look with your own sales process.

Pair the drill with the weekly pipeline review, where lost-reason labels get a decision, and the daily sales report.

What to do this week

1. Pull ten lost leads (30 minutes). Write the stated reason and the reason you now believe. Where they differ, you have a hidden objection for a card.
2. Print scenarios 1, 3 and 4 (20 minutes). Fold the sealed part separately. Check the subsidy figures on the national portal first.
3. Book 60 minutes on Thursday. Three people, three rounds, one timer. Use the score sheet and let nobody skip the debrief.
4. Carry it into the field. After each session, ask every rep to put a dated next step on one real lead that week.

Frequently asked questions

What is a solar sales roleplay?

A solar sales roleplay is a timed practice conversation: one person plays the rep, another plays a customer and a third scores. It is most useful when the customer holds a hidden objection the rep must find by asking. Scripts teach wording. A role-play shows whether the rep finds the real reason before answering.

How long should a solar sales role-play session be?

Sixty minutes suits a team of three or more: three rounds of 20 minutes, each with a 5-minute brief, an 8-minute play, a 2-minute score and a 5-minute debrief. Everyone plays rep, customer and observer once. Shorter rounds teach little, and longer ones tempt the actor to help.

How often should a solar sales team run role-play?

Once a fortnight is a good rhythm after onboarding, with a fresh card each time. The seven cards here fit three sessions. After that, write new cards from your own lost leads, so practice follows what customers said that month.

How do you score a sales role-play?

Use a fixed sheet. This kit uses the 3-4-2-1 score: Find 3, Cover 4, Next step 2, Manner 1, with a cap of 4 for any red-line promise. A pass is 7 or more, twice, on two different days.

What should a rep say about subsidy timing in a role-play?

Give the past average, not a promise. PIB reported on 12 February 2025 that, with correct portal details, processing averaged around 15 days after the redemption request. The rep says it is an average, that the customer's own steps matter, and that updates will come at each step.

Can we run a role-play over a phone call for a remote team?

Yes. It suits first-call scenarios because nobody can see a script. Put the actor and rep on a voice call, with the observer typing notes, and use the same timer and score sheet. Cards that need a drawing room, such as the family and society cards, work better in person.