Not sure if a Sales Playbook is right for you? Maybe you’re not sure if your sales team is big enough, or perhaps you don’t yet have a sales team, so what’s the point in creating a playbook, right? Or, it could be that you already have elements of a sales playbook that your customer teams are using, so are wondering how a Sales Playbook could help you.
(Check out the Sales Playbook Template to create your own sales playbook using our templates, guides and playbook resources.)
1. All of your information is scattered across different documents, folders and videos.
Sales Playbooks are a great way to harmonise information into one document. It becomes your sales bible; a repository where everything else is built from. It’s the foundation of all other sales activities and training initiatives and centralises knowledge across your company.
2. You want to grow your sales team but you’re not sure what to do once you’ve hired them.
Too often, companies go on the hiring offensive when they want to grow fast, but then don’t know what to do with the sales reps and account teams they’ve hired. No one knows what they’re doing, there’s no formal collateral to support the sales reps once they’ve finished training and product marketing information goes out of date really quickly.
A sales playbook needs to be a living, breathing document that is regularly updated. If you have a sales playbook in place, then your sales training will be built from that sales playbook content, and then your newly hired reps have a comprehensive document to take with them to support their customer conversations and new sales activities.
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Sales Playbook Template Pack$139.00
3. You don’t have time to train your sales teams.
Some sales teams just don’t like training. Maybe they are keen to be out and about seeing clients or perhaps they’ve been doing this thing for a long time and don’t want to be sat down in a classroom going over the same training they’ve had a year ago.
A sales playbook is a handy resource that lets your B2B sales team find the information they need quickly. Perhaps they’re comfortable with pitching your product but want a bit more information about the customer segment they are selling into, or the market opportunity. They can flick through the playbook and just get the info they need and get on with selling.
4. You’re running a remote sales team.
A bit like point 3, if you’re reps are out and about or based remotely, sales training can be tough. Even online training doesn’t suit lots of different time zones or languages – so a sales playbook (translated into different languages if necessary), can be a good way to train sales teams who aren’t based in one location or where traditional training doesn’t make logistical sense.
Just giving reps the content they need in a way that they can consume how and when they want sometimes makes more sense than getting everyone in a virtual classroom.
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5. It’s usually more cost-effective than arranging training.
Training takes time out of people’s day, which costs you money. You have to hire a trainer, or some of your staff have to dedicate some of their week to creating and delivering the training, which again: costs you money. You might have to hire a room, or even just sort out the logistics for a virtual classroom.
A sales playbook can be created centrally and shared out to your teams – and quickly repurposed into online training content for a more cost-effective approach to B2B sales training.
6. It professionalises your sales processes and training activities.
Having a sales playbook created for your company or each of your product offerings professionalises your sales processes. It creates a degree of consistency in your messaging and ensures you have each part of the sales process, from introducing your product through to handling objections, well thought out.
A sales playbook is a great tool in attracting the sales superstars of your industry because it demonstrates that you’re on top of your game: you understand your customers and you understand how to communicate value.
Take a look at our Sales Playbook Template and resources pack to see how we help you to create a professional and comprehensive sales playbook.
7. It systemises your sales approach.
Sales playbooks help to create a consistent approach to your sales methods across your company. They are a way of putting down in writing how you want sales conversations to be approached, how you want products to be discussed and how you want issues, concerns and queries to be handled.
They ensure you have a standard, systemised methodology in place for when new sales reps join your company, giving them the information they need to get up and running as fast as possible.
8. They protect you from losing valuable sales knowledge across your company.
Your top sales performers often build valuable knowledge about your products and services that goes with them when they leave your company. It’s this knowledge that differentiates top performers from average or poor performers, but it’s often not collected anywhere. Corporate marketing teams create their own sales training information and this ‘tribal’ knowledge is created separately and informally.
Building this knowledge into the sales playbook creation process, by regularly polling teams and top performers for their input, and updating the playbook regularly as new objections, market situations or product features come to light, will help to ensure that valuable tribal sales knowledge stays with your company.
9. If you’ve not yet started a training program, it gets you over the first hurdle.
Creating a sales training program can be a daunting prospect. Where do you start? What should you include? What should you ignore?
A sales playbook is a great foundation for any sales training program – it provides practically all of the content you would need to deliver a comprehensive product training session, or you can split out sections to deliver more focused training activities (such as objection handling or pitching).
10. If you have an existing training program in place, it can be a good check to ensure you’re still delivering valuable, relevant messaging.
Going through the process of creating a sales playbook is a useful experience in itself, regardless of the end result. It brings teams together, across different departments, and forces them to consider some of the pressing questions that need to be answered to sell and market your product.
It helps you to question whether you’re still correct in your assumptions about your customers’ challenges, or whether you need to overhaul some of your wider messaging to suit the current climate.
It’s a good way to double-check you are on the right track, and tweak some of your existing messaging based on the results of your sales playbook creation.
Could a Sales Playbook be the answer for you?
If you think a sales playbook could help your company to drive more sales, consolidate critical knowledge and supercharge your customer conversations, then take a look at our Sales Playbook Template Pack.
It brings together everything you need to create your own sales playbook, drawing on our extensive experience delivering in-depth sales playbook projects for our clients over the years.
The Playbook Template Pack includes:
- Microsoft Word Sales Playbook Template
- Microsoft PowerPoint Sales Playbook Template
- Six different color options in each template format to choose from
- Comprehensive 60 page ebook to guide you step by step through the Sales Playbook creation process – drawing on our decade of experience creating sales playbooks for corporates and startups
- Excel template files to support the playbook creation process:
- Feedback Sheet template
- Questioning Sheet Template
- Additional supporting templates to help you develop your sales messaging and complete your Sales Playbook, including:
- Sales Messaging Template
- Features, Benefits and Outcomes Template
Sales Playbook Template Pack
