Anders Rasmussen from Young Enterprise was recently in Israel at an education conference with 70 colleagues from the global organization Junior Achievement – Young Enterprise that works for the advancement of entrepreneurship in education all over the world.

“Three things at once!” Many may recognize this excited outburst from TV advertising, in which a child rejoices that a chocolate egg contains more than one surprise.

Maybe it is a bit excessive to credit this egg with ability to fulfil all the children’s wishes for excitement, toys and chocolate. Instead, you will get the story of a simple Dialoogle exercise that actually produced five surprisingly effective results in record time.

“The first morning, I was responsible for the first training session, in which the participants was learning how to gain support for their ideas. In short: SALES,” Anders says.

None of the participants knew each other yet and everything was in English, even though only a few of the participants had English as their native language. Therefore, the atmosphere among the many participants was hesitant. However, Anders came prepared with an icebreaker for the group.

“I started by showing a little training video called “How to create the perfect pitch”, and afterwards I used my Dialoogle cards. I gave all participants four Magnum cards each – face down – and asked them to stand in an inner circle and an outer circle facing each other. Then I asked the people in the inner circle to flip a card and in no more than one minute sell the first product that came to their minds to their partner in the outer circle. It could be an object, a travel, an idea, a service – anything. Then the partner in the outer circle flipped one of their cards and do the same thing. After the presentations, I asked the partners to thank each other and move one step to the right.”

Now everyone faced a new partner and the process could be repeated. After four rounds, all the cards had been used and everyone had trained selling their ideas four times.

“With a picture card in your hand, you do what the psychologists call externalizing,” Anders explains. “That means that you push something outside. The participants were selling and for most of them expressing themselves in a foreign language. But they did not need to sell themselves. They could talk from the pictures. This way it becomes much easier to find the words because you don’t have to commit yourself fully, and in a foreign language you have to figure out creative ways of expressing yourself when you don’t know an expression – this is great language training.”

In less than 20 minutes, the ice was broken and the mood was high. Everyone had presented four times. They quickly overcame the language barrier and spoke a lot of English. Everyone formed new relationships. And we all had a laugh and a good time.