Want to make your salespeople more autonomous, reduce ramp-up time, and improve productivity? Simple! Craft a custom sales playbook.
According to Highspot's State of Sales Enablement Report 2021, 70% of respondents reported that their companies' sales processes were becoming more challenging. 55% of survey respondents further added that sales process complexity adversely affected their sales performance.
When your sales reps do not have a playbook, they are forced to come up with new angles each time they talk to a prospect. Why not consolidate all successful pitches, tactics, email messages, and call scripts? Wouldn't it be great if you’d send it to everyone on your team in one easy-to-read document?
That's the purpose of a sales playbook. This will improve your company's bottom line, allowing you and your staff to sell more efficiently. Our rigorously crafted guide will walk you through the creation of a playbook, play ideas, and a template to assist you with the process. Let’s get started then!
This article covers;
- How to build a Custom Sales Playbook
- Elaborate Purpose of Sales Playbook
- Add Your Company’s Overview
- Talk about Products & Services
- Define Sales Methodology and Process
- Elaborate Sales Goals & KPIs
- Define Your Required Sales Audience
- Bonus Section: Connect to a Handful of Additional Resources
- Templates
Let’s delve into them one-by-one;
How to Build a Custom Sales Playbook?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach for creating your business's sales playbook, but the following steps can be applied almost anywhere.
Elaborate Purpose of Sales Playbook
Writing a sales playbook begins with determining the objective of your sales playbook. Don't get caught up in the minute when defining your objectives. Questions such as these might guide these goals:
- What's in the playbook?
- What specific aspects of the buyer's journey and sales process should you cover?
- Is there anything in the playbook that reps are struggling with?
- Is there anything you expect to gain from the playbook?
- What is the deadline for finalizing the playbook?
A short, focused, relevant playbook will be more likely to be adopted by reps than a long, complicated, multi-faceted one.
For example, if your primary objective is to improve the quality of your product demos, your playbook should include presentation strategies, value propositions, and sample messaging that relate directly to your product.
Add Your Company’s Overview
The founding story, mission, USP, brand identity, and overall purpose should all be included in this section. A description of the company's hierarchy and the structure of the sales department may also be included.
The more an individual knows about the organization's structure, and the teams that are working together, the more effective their collaborative efforts will be.
Give an overview of each department's responsibilities and the day-to-day activities of each member. By understanding who to approach during any stage of the sales process, your sales reps can help close more sales by spending less time searching for problem solvers and more time collaborating with teams who can provide impactful resources.
Talk about Products & Services
Your salespeople will be more confident when handling prospect conversations or product demonstrations when they have expert knowledge of the services or products you sell.
It is important that you emphasize the benefits of your product and explain why customers should buy it. Also, prepare to answer any questions or objections they may have. Cover all major aspects of your product knowledge training, including price points, unique use cases, core benefits, customer success stories, etc.
When time is of the essence, it is important for sellers to focus on the most important points of their pitches and communicate the value to prospects.
There’s no need to go into excessive technical details about how your product works or how your service works. Consider giving an overview of what the product does and why it matters. It allows you to describe your product through a feature-benefit perspective that speaks directly to your customer's needs.
Define Sales Methodology and Process
From the first contact to the closing, describe your sales process. Your sales process outlines the steps your sellers must take to close a prospect. Provide best practices and helpful tips for each step of your sales process, from initial outreach to closing the deal. The sales process can be outlined in your playbook or linked to your sales process document so reps and managers can easily access it.
Define your sales methodology in your sales playbook to influence your reps' sales approach. All salespeople should follow the same methodology to deliver a consistent message.
For instance, you can introduce Slender Selling System to handle the objection stage. You can also define Miller’s idea of Conceptual Selling which deals with understanding a prospect’s concept about a product. Introducing SPIN Selling can also be a huge win! Just add and define one or more selling processes to take a unified strategy.
Elaborate Sales Goals & KPIs
In your company, what metrics do sales managers monitor closely? Which should the salesperson focus on? Do they need to know any baseline numbers? All these questions should be asked when selecting metrics to measure performance.
Everyone concentrates on revenue, but don't forget to consider other metrics that show how valuable your product or service is. The more clearly your team understands how performance is measured, the more likely they are to achieve their objectives.
For instance, some KPIs for sales teams can be;
- Total Pipeline Value
- New Qualified Leads
- Sales Volume by Area or Platform
- Average growth value
Define Your Required Sales Audience
Giving your reps an idea of what a qualified lead looks like will help them target them. Give details about ideal buyers' industries, positions, and pain points. To maintain a healthy pipeline and avoid wasting time on dead leads, create a list of criteria reps can use to qualify leads.
You should also develop buyer journeys for each of your buyer personas. There are three important stages in this process: awareness, consideration, and decision.
Bonus Section: Connect to a Handful of Additional Resources
It is important to have ample resources and sales enablement materials for your reps to create a successful sales playbook. This requires strong relationships between the sales and marketing teams. The reps should also be educated about available resources and materials (e.g., case studies, social content, product pages, demo videos, CRM, sales technology, sales software, etc.). Include those resources as well.
Conclusion
Looking for an all-in-one tool to help you create a custom sales playbook? You'll love Waybook. You can also get hands-on off-the-rack sales playbook templates that you can customize according to your needs. In addition to creating a playbook, the platform provides important training resources as well. Your readymade sales playbook is just a click away!
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