You’ve determined that sales playbooks are the right way to go for your company and now you need your sales playbook questions answered. We have the answers.
- Who are sales playbooks for?
- I don’t have time to create a sales playbook, what now?
- Sales playbooks are a lot of work, where should I start?
- How can I make sure everybody is using the sales playbook?
- Should I strictly keep working according to the playbook or is there room for people’s own input?
- How do I keep my sales playbook up-to-date?
- What KPIs should I track in my playbook?
- What templates should I include in the sales playbook?
- How big should my organization be before I start with my sales playbook?
- Can I use a playbook when I don’t have ‘fixed’ products or services?
1. Who are sales playbooks for?
A sales playbook is the container of a company’s standards, therefore it needs to be shared with everyone. Sales playbooks help align all departments’ visions and goals. Thus, they have the best strategy and approach to close deals, allowing them to bring more revenue to the company. It allows teams to communicate and understand each other more effectively by giving them a shared language.
If you can’t bring different departments together in terms of vision and strategy, the different understandings between departments only contribute to misalignment. As a result, friction builds up and further alienation takes place.
A great example of this problem is between the sales and marketing department. Friction can build between these two departments because marketing works hard to generate leads and sales works hard to close them. However, if things aren’t going well for either department, it can be easy to point the finger. On the one hand, marketing may complain that sales is following up poorly with the leads and is unable to convert them, on the other hand, sales may argue that they can’t close the leads because the quality of them is low and they’re not ready to buy.
But these departments can have different interpretations of leads, such as MQL (marketing qualified leads) or SQL (sales qualified leads). Therefore, we need a playbook to not only create alignment and speak the same language but also to implement a productive feedback loop.
2. I don’t have time to create a sales playbook, what now?
There are many companies out there that offer sales playbooks, however, none of these companies are able to offer you a project manager to work side-by-side with your team to create a tailor-made sales playbook framework that is constantly updated. Salesplaybook.pro provides you with a project manager that creates customized content for you, as well as unlimited continuous updates. We even created this FREE extensive 73-page sales playbook template doc to provide you with a basis of what you should include.Schedule a call
3. Sales playbooks are a lot of work, where should I start?
As highlighted above, you should start with our guide so that you know what to include in your sales playbook framework. After that, you can schedule a discovery call with us and talk to an expert who will show you how you can benefit from your own playbook.
4. How can I make sure everybody is using the sales playbook?
You have to ask yourself this crucial question: Did everybody play a part in building the sales enablement playbook? If you can’t answer this with confidence then the answer is: you can never be sure if everybody is using it. Some members of your team may not even see the value that it brings.
If they’re not involved in the development of it, how can you expect them to be passionate about it? You need to create ownership and involvement by facilitating engagement. One way that will benefit you all is to update the B2B sales playbook together as a team. Additionally, all new sales reps should have onboarding with the sales playbook because it will quickly get them up-to-date with the key information they need to know about the organisation.
5. Should I strictly keep working according to the playbook or is there room for people’s own input?
You should try and work according to the playbook as much as possible because this creates consistency throughout the sales department. There will be some situations where you will have a unique case that may need people’s own input, but in the majority of cases, it outlines all the key information you need such as information about the product/service you sell, details about the people you sell to, proven best practices that work, steps in your sales process, sales scripts, competitive and industry intelligence, KPIs for your team, and more.
6. How do I keep my sales playbook up to date?
Your playbook may have been great when you originally made it, however, if you’re not constantly updating it then your data quickly becomes outdated. You start seeing split ends, so maybe it’s time to give your playbook a trim? First, remove your outdated content. You should see if everything is working and if it’s not, remove it. That leads to the next step which is to refresh your playbook content.
Have you had any recent success stories? You should get your sales reps to document them, even set them targets for how many they should document each month based on deals that they’ve closed. An alternative to this approach would be to get sales reps to ask other members of the department for their success stories to put into the playbook, therefore they are learning whilst updating; and not only will your existing members be able to expand their list of stories to share with prospects, but your new hires will quickly learn about what is expected from them and have a library of stories to share as well.
Have there been any new lessons learned? Speak to your sales reps about specific deals they’ve lost. If it’s a lesson that hasn’t been learned previously, get them to document it and fill gaps for other team members; then the whole team can learn from past mistakes and what went wrong.
