Sales Playbook can be defined as...
A sales playbook is a collection of tactics or methods that characterize the roles and responsibilities for you (and your sales team), lays out clear objectives, identifies metrics for measurement, and provides a common framework and approach for closing sales.
The playbook helps you implement a common sales methodology that leverages the processes used by high performers. The outcome? You can sell more effectively and handle different selling situations, position against a particular competitor, or communicate the value proposition to each person in the buying process.
https://www.nimble.com/blog/writing-a-killer-sales-playbook/
The playbook is important especially when you're looking to grow your sales team from one person to a larger team. Writing a Sales Playbook forces us to look at how we sale as a repeatable process.
- Day 1: Email/InMail
- Day 3: Email in the morning, call in the afternoon
- Day 5: Call in the morning, call with a voicemail in the afternoon
- Day 7: Email in the morning, call in the afternoon with a voicemail
- Day 10: Email and call in the morning
Above is a brief example of a sequence from a sales playbook.
What should be in a Sales Playbook?
A sales playbook for this type of salesperson might include (or in some cases, link to):
- A guide for what external material to gather and where to find them during the research phase
- Thought leadership materials and PowerPoints for gaining access to executives (or links to these)
- A summary of key roles and typical titles
- Email and phone scripts
- Qualification questions and criteria (including trigger events)
- Messaging sheets by prospect type and buyer role (prospect's pain, solution capability, benefit to prospect)
- A quantification guide to help salespeople assess - with prospect participation and buy-in - the potential impact of the solution
- A company introduction PowerPoint and leave-behinds
- Customer case studies and success stories
- Competitors to expect by segment and how to undermine them
- How to overcome key objections
- A pricing guide
http://precisionthinking.com/articles/Sales%20Playbook%20Essentials%20in%20Brief.pdf
Not all of these are necessary, but most are useful.
Another great guide to start off...
1.) Strategy: The strategy in a sales playbook sets the tone and positioning. The best plays that I use on a daily basis have a clear strategy with themes that recur throughout the rest of the play. Plays with clear strategies are also more inviting to leverage.
2.) Goals: Once you have an understanding of the purpose of the play, the goals provide insights on when and how you can leverage the content and information. Having sales and marketing collateral is super beneficial as an ADR, but it can quickly turn into a burden if it is not organized and recommended in a way that makes sense to the rep. The goals in a sales play do a great job of creating the framework for not only what to say, but how to say it and when to leverage templates and different materials.
3.) Talking Points: I enjoy leveraging specific talking points because they work in a number of different use cases that are staples in my daily workflow. For example, if I am looking to tailor an email to a specific persona, I can pull a talking point that would be most relevant to the prospect. When I am doing cold calls, I always keep talking points on my desktop, because they add value quickly when leaving voicemails and help guide me to have conversations that are meaningful and will quickly resonate with my prospect.
https://www.highspot.com/blog/7-essential-elements-of-a-winning-sales-playbook-template/
Visit the link above for the other 4 ideas.
With a customer-centric marketing and sales approach, we really need to focus on the next section
Sales reps have to get inside the buyer’s head to sell, and the first step is understanding your company’s ideal buyer personas. Every sales organization has a different focus, so if your company targets CEOs at small companies in the tech industry, this is information your reps need to know. You must outline the typical buyer’s journey, including the steps buyers take to research and then buy the product.
https://www.insightsquared.com/2014/07/the-10-chapters-your-sales-playbook-must-have/