The Power of Playbooks: Execute Your Sales Vision

Sales executives often lack the ability to execute their vision for the new go-to-customer strategy. Sales playbooks enable their vision to become a reality.

Many sales organizations struggle to develop and train their sales forces to use a consistent set of proven strategies. Shorter seller onboarding and training programs contrast with more sophisticated buyers and solutions. Increased complexity and proliferation of roles and channels require more sales cohesion across a greater number of team members than ever before. A guided selling framework facilitates the cohesion that fast-growing Sales departments struggle to achieve. When done right, sales playbooks help sales leaders realize increased productivity from their teams.

What Is a Sales Playbook?

A sales playbook is a set of policies and situational strategies. Sellers use playbooks as a guide in the pursuit of their quotas. A playbook can unite your sellers around common techniques, called plays. The plays help sellers usher customers to the next stage in the sales funnel.

Sales playbooks document specific steps that sellers can use and when they should use them. Written guidelines of sales plays are essential for creating a smooth onboarding or training process. These manuals document best practices for selling products and services.

When sellers follow the same steps consistently, a team can set daily quotas and meet them more reliably. Clear expectations help everyone work toward a shared vision and overall goal.

Key Elements of a Sales Playbook

The most effective sales playbooks incorporate a few core elements. Each core element narrows the Sales department’s focus and refines seller strategies. The following are some of the most critical sales playbook elements:

• Sales department overview: A summary of the Sales department’s structure that defines key roles and the chain of command.
• Buyer personas: Personifications that use target buyer traits to draft realistic example customers that Sales departments can form strategies around.
• Sales processes: A broad overview of the sales funnel that describes the ideal customer journey.
• Sales plays: Specific tactics that sellers use to advance a customer’s buyer journey.
• Use cases: Descriptions of when each sales play is applicable and how it helps finalize the sale.
• Playbook performance metrics: Department-wide revenue goals that quantify the playbook’s success
• Sales team performance metrics: Seller key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure playbook adherence and sales outcomes.

Importance of Sales Playbooks

Every business has to discover what works and doesn’t work well for its target audience. Fine-tuning sales techniques takes time and effort. Imagine you’ve identified exactly what converts potential customers into buyers—wouldn’t you want to document and implement that strategy across your whole team? A sales playbook achieves that to numerous gainful ends.

Benefits of Sales Playbooks

Implementing a sales playbook provides benefits at many levels of the organization. Individual sellers, the full Sales department and the entire enterprise can experience improvements.

Sales Playbooks Establish Uniformity

Consistency is valuable for the seller and customer alike. Using a sales playbook can help your organization align around effective strategies that encapsulate your brand’s image. Such sales alignment facilitates a succinct customer experience, contributing to sales and customer retention goals.

Sales Playbooks Boost Seller Performance

Sales playbooks empower each seller to exhibit the same techniques as your top performers. The positive results are measurable. Research conducted by Aberdeen Group found that companies that document and distribute their high-performer best practices experienced quantifiable benefits:

• Sales cycles become 10% shorter.
• Sellers achieve 4% higher quota attainment.
• Revenue growth becomes 7.9% better than peer companies.

Sales Playbooks Simplify Department Management

With greater uniformity and a deeper understanding of successful sales plays, your organization can streamline seller management. Sales playbooks simplify onboarding and training by providing a comprehensive sales guide complete with proven, situation-specific strategies. The playbook also helps managers coach existing sellers. Department managers can more easily identify coaching opportunities at each sales funnel stage.

Types of Sales Playbooks

Sales playbooks revolve around sales fulfillment, advocacy and innovation. There are several common forms that a sales playbook can take.

Sales Process Playbooks

Sales process playbooks use a sales process playbook to provide specific sales process details. Sellers receive a plan for accessing buyers, incorporating marketing collateral and effectively utilizing vignettes. By improving access to case studies and scripts, sales leaders foster consistent seller execution.

Product Launch Playbooks

Product launch playbooks support the sale of new or upcoming products. Use this type of playbook to identify the target audience. You can also use product launch playbooks to establish messaging guidelines and delineate effective plays.

Jump-Start Playbooks

A jump-start playbook includes strategies for navigating various Sales department changes. This playbook can include product launch playbook elements, dictating new sales strategies for a new product launch. However, jump-start playbooks address other types of organizational change, such as sales transformation or a merger. The playbook incorporates strategies for identifying what the seller needs to stop doing. It then maps out ways to improve the Sales department.

Manager Coaching Playbooks

Manager coaching playbooks create guidelines for managers to promote rigor and consistency. You can design the coaching playbook to address three key aspects of the management role:

• People management
• Region or district development
• Business improvement

New Buyer Role Engagement Playbooks

A new buyer role engagement playbook provides a framework for adapting to new stakeholder interactions. Many customers’ purchasing decisions depend on numerous individuals in disparate roles. This playbook helps sellers optimize their approach when interacting with a new stakeholder in a new role.

Onboarding Playbooks

An onboarding playbook generates strategies for accelerating the new hire ramp-up process. Its key elements guide managers and representatives as they train new sellers. Establishing onboarding plays can reduce the time to benefit so new hires are fully productive faster.

Compete Playbooks

A compete playbook helps sellers succeed in competitive markets. Sellers receive sales guidelines and helpful product information to reference when interacting with customers. The playbook helps sellers present the product more persuasively to customers considering alternatives.

Dynamic vs. Static Playbooks

As you create a sales playbook, you can incorporate either a dynamic or static structure. The difference between dynamic and static playbooks is in how they treat updates.

Under a dynamic playbook model, your business updates the playbook frequently. Change becomes a core aspect of the playbook. Those with a dynamic sales playbook see value in flexibility. They make adopting trends, incorporating real-time data and adapting to the market’s changes top priorities.

A static sales playbook is rigid. The playbook’s guidelines, strategies and underlying logic rarely change. Businesses that use static sales playbooks trust their core identities. They believe their product or service’s marketability transcends micro-level market fluctuations.

Dynamic playbooks have grown more prominent over time. However, some companies continue using static structures effectively.

What Are Sales Plays?

Sales plays are the situational strategies that a sales playbook provides. Each sales play describes how representatives should approach communication, tasks and strategies. Documentation outlines the steps and practices your team should follow to meet different customer needs.

The information should offer guidance at different points in the sales cycle with details of what to say, show and do during interactions. Each strategy aims to successfully sell a product or service.

Types of Sales Plays

Employees can revisit the information to refresh their memory or gain clarification when needed. Here are some sales plays to cover in your manual:

• Personalized content play: Identify how sales representatives can tailor their interactions and the content they share toward specific leads and prospects throughout the buyer’s journey.
• Lead qualification play: Give detailed descriptions of how to identify highly qualified leads or prospects who are likely to convert into customers.
• Demo play: Provide clear instructions on how your sales team should demonstrate specific products and services to potential buyers.
• Use case play: Describe a success story, evidence or data highlighting how products and services have benefited customers in the past.
• Prospecting play: Offer an overview of how to complete the first stage of the sales cycle for identifying potential buyers via channels such as cold emailing, cold calling and social selling.
• Closing play: Provide instruction on how sales reps should overcome objections, gain commitment and persuade potential customers to finalize a purchase.
• Follow-up play: Identify how sales reps should follow up with a potential customer after interactions to build engagement, develop trust, provide additional information and guide the lead toward a purchase.

Sales Playbook Examples

Sales playbooks have positively impacted companies across industries.

In one example, Alexander Group helped a medical device company update its selling model, incorporating a new playbook. The new playbook brought sales improvements that surpassed expectations by over 20% in the first two years.

In another instance, our sales playbook support helped a Fortune 500 manufacturing company accommodate global customers. The manufacturer gained a seven-stage sales process playbook and a sales coaching playbook. Using these playbooks oriented sellers around specific role guidelines that facilitated a global sales process. Customer experience improved across the manufacturer’s international base.

3 Steps to Implement a Successful Sales Play

Playbooks should offer helpful information in a concise format. Offering the right amount of detail can facilitate quick training and fact-checking processes. Follow these steps to have your sales reps work toward shared goals:

Step 1: Assemble Your Winning Team

Do you have motivated and hardworking employees? Having a team with the right mindset goes a long way. Look for professionals who demonstrate an ability to work efficiently and adapt when adjustments are made. Aim to assemble a small, diverse group across your sales, marketing and leadership roles.

Step 2: Aim for Continuous Improvement

The marketing world continues to transform with new techniques and technologies—your sales strategies should shift too. Instill a positive mindset for continuous changes. Create a playbook with a basic framework that welcomes modifications. Offer exciting challenges and rewards to keep your team improving as the new practices emerge over time. Consider offering performance recognition to boost employee engagement, motivation and performance.

Step 3: Turn Plans Into Actionable Results

If you want to succeed, you have to plan. Prepare to plan around four to eight weeks ahead before implementing a new playbook. Conduct trials to ensure the sales team understands the tasks involved. Most importantly, test to ensure the process brings value to your customer. Ask for feedback and make adjustments to keep improving and develop a winning sales process.

Lessons to Learn From Sales Plays

Creating a playbook tailored to your strengths and goals involves trial and error, with many lessons to learn. Ultimately, your playbooks should provide the right value propositions and coaching messages. Getting everyone on the same page is essential to your team’s success.

Aim to make your documentation specific without being too detailed. Your sales team should be able to quickly scan the key stages of a play, identify the most important activities within a stage and follow directions in real time.

Implementing Your Sales Plays

Have sales reps integrate the playbook into their daily routine, which can reinforce the right activities and eliminate other habits. Having a focused and productive workspace is essential for implementing new strategies.

Coaching can create a positive work environment and ensure everyone feels confident working on the same page. Managers should assess how sales progress, identify what causes reps to stall and determine when to add more resources.

How Alexander Group Can Help

Alexander Group has helped sellers from various industries implement sales playbooks. Our support drives sales growth and better customer experiences by refining seller processes. Interested in learning more about how Alexander Group can help you design, implement and get the most out of sales playbooks within your organization? Contact us online today for more on how we can help you create a sales playbook.