A sales playbook is a comprehensive guide for your sales team that contains everything one needs to know to succeed at your company. It is an easily accessible, living document with categorized and searchable information that eliminates bottlenecks regarding policies and processes while also providing several essential tools.
When you implement a sales playbook into your practices, you streamline communication pipelines, reduce errors, and equip each salesperson on your team with the knowledge they need to operate at their full potential.
Landing Page - This is the first page your team sees when they open the playbook. It should notify team members of any changes recently made to the playbook and contain a company calendar of events, along with motivational quotes. Remind your team to visit this page regularly to stay in the loop!
Job Descriptions - A simple and concise job description for each team member with a hierarchy chart of roles and titles will serve as a guiding light for salespeople.
Sales Process - A compilation of your top performers’ best practices and habits. It should include steps to closing deals, helpful tips and tricks, benchmarks, templates, and means and modes of communication while prospecting.
Announcements - Include a section that is dedicated to posting announcements such as meeting information, events, congratulatory messages, and more to keep your team up-to-date and engaged.
Company Credo - Post your company credo in a place your team visits regularly to remind everyone of their purpose within the company and keep the team focused on a central goal.
Mission & Motto - The sales team's mission and motto is another aspect of the playbook that will keep the team aligned with goals and can serve as a source of motivation for growth.
Sales Policies – This will list the “Do’s and Don’ts” of selling for your team. It should contain protocols that inform team members about what they can and cannot do when selling your various products and services. This may include deals they can offer, statements they may or may not make when speaking to clients, and any other rules you wish to implement.
Templates - Create templates for different types of emails, demos, customer questions, and customer onboarding to save your sales team valuable time and energy.
Contact Information - Your team will have easy access to contact information for department members they interact with daily.
Protocol Information - Ensure that your sales team knows the appropriate practices for interacting with the accounting, marketing, and operations teams.
Tool Information - A guide to utilizing features such as the CRM, e-signatures, payment tools, and accounting tools, which also includes a list of login credentials for any accounts your team may need to access.
Common Pitfalls - We learn by making mistakes. However, preventing them can save valuable time that is better spent selling. Include a list of common pitfalls your sales reps have encountered so that the team may continue to learn from one another.
Implementing these elements into your sales playbook will ensure that your entire team can quickly find important answers and information. When executed effectively, the playbook will also provide your team with the knowledge and tools necessary to improve their workflows. This will give them more time to spend on hunting leads and closing deals.
There are many benefits to implementing a sales playbook into your sales team’s day-to-day operations. It is a critical component of successful sales enablement programs and sets the team up for success.
One benefit to a sales playbook is that it evolves alongside your company. It is a living document that can easily be updated as policies and procedures change to provide the sales team with up-to-date information, ensuring that everyone has been notified of important changes.
A sales playbook helps your sales management team maximize their time by eliminating the constant questions they typically field from sales reps, as well as the need to make policy announcements that get lost in the shuffle of emails and other modes of communication. It also increases sales rep productivity, as information they typically seek from employees across departments can be found right in the playbook.
Aside from providing the team with direction, a playbook also dramatically minimizes the risk of errors. When expectations are laid out clearly, they are much easier to understand and result in fewer mistakes. A playbook provides team members with the knowledge they need to work with confidence and spend less time correcting errors.
The sales playbook benefits every sales team member, from the newest hires to the most tenured reps. It’s a powerful tool for onboarding new team members, as it helps them become accustomed to the team’s operations quickly and provides them with a guide to refer to throughout their training journey. By including tips and tricks and other helpful material in your playbook, you encourage your whole sales team to adopt the best practices of your top performers.
The TigerLRM platform includes a built-in sales playbook, as well as a professional team to help you customize and maintain it. With decades of experience providing sales enablement services, the team at TigerLRM is dedicated to assisting businesses with organizing and optimizing their sales teams to become more successful.
Often overlooked and underestimated, a sales playbook can be instrumental in enabling your sales team. It simplifies operations for team members by providing valuable information and tools that they can access instantly in one place. With a comprehensive sales playbook, your sales team can maximize their potential for success.