Everyone must be on a same page once you have a sales team and a sales strategy. A sales playbook gives your team the tools and information they need to execute your strategy successfully. With a sales playbook, your sales reps know exactly what to do when selling your services—no matter the situation. Learn more about how to create a sales playbook that’ll help you win over even the most difficult customers.
Sales Playbook - is a collection of best practices for your sales team. It as a standard operation procedure (SOP) for selling your products/services. It outlines the entire selling process from prospecting to pitching. It can include sales scripts, guides and buyer personas that’ll help reps close a deal. They can also use it to learn more about the company’s goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) so they know how their performance will be measured.
A sales playbook includes all your sales plays so your reps know how to react during every stage of the selling process.
What Is a Sales Play - A sales play is basically a set of steps for a given situation. Your organization may have unique sales plays for different products or buyer personas. You can even create a sales play for each step in the sales pipeline. Sales plays are especially important because they’re what your reps will refer to on any given conversion. Ideally, you’ll have plays available for every situation they might encounter so they’ll be prepared for anything.
Why Sales Playbooks Are Important - Sales playbooks are vital for your sales team’s success for a number of reasons. A sales playbook can help you unify your sales team, save your sales team time, make it easy to hire and train new sales reps, and even help simplify the process of launching new products.
(a) They create unity across the sales team. Everyone will be using the same sales approach based on proven best practices. When everyone uses the same tools, it can make your team feel more confident and less like they’re flying solo. This can even help foster team growth if you regularly pull in new suggestions and recommendations from your reps.
(b) They can make it easy to roll out new products. Rather than start from scratch with an entirely new marketing and sales plan, you can use your existing sales playbook to build a new sales play. Chances are, your existing sales practices will work just fine with a few tweaks.
(c) They can make it easy to hire and train new reps. New hires already have a ton to learn—so why not make it easier for them? A sales playbook has everything they’ll need to succeed. This also means they’ll be able to find answers themselves, reducing the time spent asking senior reps questions.
(d) They can save your existing reps time. Even the most veteran sales rep won’t have every detail of your sales plan memorized. Having a complete guide at their fingertips makes it easy for them to double-check details before interacting with clients. Also, it saves them from creating new sales content because it’s all there for them already.
(e) They can provide a better customer experience. With a sales playbook in place, customers don’t have to be the test subjects for new approaches. Instead, reps will be able to use proven practices to provide a solution tailored to the customers’ needs.
Components of a Sales Playbook
(a) Provide a clear and simple overview of your company. Longtime veterans will likely know all of this, but it can be a good way to help onboard newer reps. Include information on the industry and where your company fits in. Inckude basic summary of your company’s history and offerings, information on your mission and values. This helps guide sales efforts and ensure your reps stay in line with the company vision when promoting your products.
Provide a quick summary of your sales strategy. Obviously, you’ll go into more detail throughout the playbook, but use this space to specifically explain how the sales strategy works into the overall business strategy. Finally, also include a list of roles and responsibilities with an organizational chart. This gives your sales team good context on where they fit into the organization—and who they report to with questions.
(b) Products and Services - What exactly is your company selling? Your sales team needs to know your products intimately, and this is the space to explain it all. Include a robust primer on your offerings and their details. Highlight what makes your products so unique—and let your reps know what buyers would find appealing about them. It may help to attach product documentation or guides, but only if it doesn’t make the section too long and cumbersome.
Finally, you’ll want this section to also include details on pricing. Your sales reps should know the cost to make/manufacture the product as well as the cost you intend on selling it for. That way, if they’re offering a client a deal or bundle, they’ll be able to still make sure you’re turning a profit.
(c) Buyer Personas - If you don’t know who your buyers are, you’ll have a hard time marketing products to them. Crafting a good buyer persona takes a bit of research into your sales statistics, but the results are worth it.
First, you’ll want to see the basic demographics of the majority of your customers. With this information, you can start narrowing down a target audience. After you determine your audience, you can start thinking about their pain points. What are the problems they’re facing—and how can your products solve those issues?
Don’t forget to further segment your audience based on whether you’re selling B2B or B2C, as these customers usually have different motivations when buying products.
(d) Sales Methodology/Process - The sales methodology you choose will act as a framework for the entire sales process, so nail it down before getting too deep into your sales playbook. You’ll want to explain your reasoning behind choosing this methodology and then give reps tips on how they can follow it from prospecting to post-sales follow-up.
- Lead prospecting: You’ll want to explain how a rep should find leads. Do you have certain tools you’d like them to use? Or do you have instructions for cold calling?
- Lead qualification: Qualifying leads can make sure you don’t waste your time chasing down people who’ll never convert. What are your processes for going about this? Do you have lead qualification criteria or software?
- Closing sales: When a sale is looming on the horizon, there are likely some steps you’d like a rep to take. For example, do you have any policies on upselling or cross-selling products? Do you allow your reps to create custom quotes based on what combination of products the customer wants? Outline all of this in detail so there’s no ambiguity when it comes to signing on the dotted line.
- Post sales: Your sales rep isn’t done once the sale is closed. It’s always important to follow up—not just to make sure the customer is happy with the product, but also to see if there’s an opportunity to sell them anything else. However, you don’t want reps harassing customers, so create clear guidelines for how post-sales contact should go.
(e) Resources and Sales Enablement Materials - Everyone can benefit from the use of marketing materials, guides or resources. This is an important part of any sales playbook because it lets you create a library of pre-made content for agents. This section can include everything from voicemail scripts to social media content. Overall, think of this more as a database reps can come to if they get stuck or need more support on a sale.
(f) KPIs and Goals - Having set goals can help motivate your sales team. It also sets clear guidelines for what you expect from them. When establishing KPIs - consider the numbers of your top performers. Would it make sense to establish these as goals for the whole team?
Some KPIs you might want to measure include: Average profit margin
- Monthly sales growth
- Average cost per lead
- Sales per rep
- Product performance
- Quote-to-close ratio
- Average conversion time
Include clear information on how often you’ll measure performance and what consequences there are for not meeting the set goals.
(g) Commission Structure - The most important to a sales rep—establish clear rules on how commission works. What exactly will your reps get if they go above and beyond their established quotas? Include details on the base salary, and then explain with some examples how bonuses work. You’ll need to decide if you’re basing them on the number of sales or the highest-grossing sales.
Putting Together an Effective Sales Playbook
(a) Use Advice and Recommendation From the Sales Team - Your sales reps are your frontline warriors—so chances are, they’re an invaluable resource when deciding how to build your sales framework. They know which approaches work—and which don’t work. They’ve also likely heard every possible objection a person could have. Don’t let this knowledge go to waste. Pull in your sales team from the very beginning so this can be a collaborative process. Not only will this help you build a stronger playbook, but it’ll also help build a stronger team.
(b) Include a Framework for How To Align Sales and Marketing Teams - Your sales and marketing teams are two separate groups. But in reality, they share many of the same goals. There’s no reason why your playbook can’t take this into account. Your company will have stronger messaging on a united front, which could be more impressive to customers as they progress through the sales funnel.
(c) Choose a Specific Sales Methodology - Without a specific sales methodology, your playbook becomes a bit scattered and disorganized. To keep your company aligned and ensure you’re using proven methods, stick with an established framework. Some of the most common methodologies to consider includes:
- SPIN selling
- N.E.A.T. selling
- Conceptual selling
- SNAP selling
(d) Provide Training for Sales Reps - Before you test out your new sales playbook, have a training session for your sales reps. Just throwing a massive document at them and telling them to start using isn’t exactly the best way to ease into a new system. Instead, have a few different sessions where you talk through each section of the playbook. Use this time to answer any questions. Your reps might even have valuable insights you can add to the playbook before releasing the final version.
