A sales playbook is a document that outlines tactics, best practices and strategies to tackle each stage of the selling process effectively.
This detailed document should be tailored to your company and sales team, covering buyer personas, KPIs, discovery call questions, sample scripts, negotiations and anything else a sales rep would need to know to close successfully.
Why Write a Sales Playbook?
Taking the time to create a sales playbook is an excellent investment, as it will yield the following benefits.
- Make the training process more efficient — When you clearly explain who your customers are, what their pain points are and how they buy products, this makes the training process much easier. This step benefits both the sales team and the company.
- Make sales reps more productive — A strategic playbook frees up time for selling, which is more time to nurture leads and close deals.
- Highlight the most effective selling techniques — Share the most effective selling strategies and plays used by successful team members.
- Tip: Think of your sales playbook as a manual and a sales play as a tutorial. You can create these plays for specific stages in the sales pipeline or varying types of customers.
How to Create a Sales Playbook
The following steps are meant to guide you toward a sales playbook that will support your sales team. Remember to adjust each step based on your customers, goals and overall business model.
- Review and update your sales process. Focus on your latest products and features, how your reps sell, goals, buyer personas and so on.
- Outline your goals when creating a sales playbook — what do you want to achieve?
- Determine who will be involved in the process of creating a sales playbook, such as sales reps, marketing team members, managers, etc.
- Align your marketing and sales teams, focusing on communication and collaboration.
- Collect critical information on your buyer personas to share with reps (update as your business grows).
- Provide education on products and features. Reps need a deep understanding of what they are selling.
- Choose your plays to determine the focus of your sales playbook.
- Share and then track the success of your sales playbook.
Don’t forget to include:
- An overview of your company, providing details about the sales organization, including how manages the team and the targets reps are expected to hit.
- Selected plays, ranging from a demo play to a lead qualification play, use case play to a closing play.
- Product or service overview, which is easy to read and reference. This overview should include core value points, use cases, pricing, etc.
- Explain each step of the sales process so that reps can easily refer to each phase.
- Specific KPIs and goals, sharing the most important metrics.
- Buyer personas so that reps can target unique needs and pain points.
- Resources to support reps every step of the way, sharing sample case studies, demo videos, etc.
Are you in the market for a sales engagement platform? Conquer can help. Get in touch with us today to chat about your business needs.
