A well-established sales process ensures there is efficiency, revenue growth, and predictability in the entire process. Teams that use sales playbooks adopt best practices, strategies, and tactics in each sales phase. The document provides an outline of the activity each representative must fulfill in various selling situations.
Knowing the key components to add to a sales playbook ensures the representative provides a perfect experience to customers and leads, irrespective of the phase they are in. Here are the key components that should be added to a sales playbook.
Sales People
The purpose of a sales playbook is to help sales teams adapt best practices that increase sales. The people who help you achieve every sales goal are the sales team. They require to be oriented about the company through an effective onboarding process. Orient them on the company products and what a successful sales process looks like.
Help them understand what is expected from them based on company goals. Many managers and reps might not have an idea of what a sales playbook looks like even though they know its contents. Explore a sample outline of a sales playbook on Revenue Grid to see what its templates look like and how to add key components.
Company Overview
Company overview helps the reps understand how the organization is structured. They get knowledgeable about the functions of each department and who is responsible. It helps to know the key points of contact for important issues such as:
- Billing
- IT/technology support
- Renewal applications
- Information sources for campaigns/leads
- Product knowledge
- Customer testimonials and case studies
Prospecting tactics
Prospecting is a dynamic process that requires reps to understand the best practices that go with it. They must understand strategies for developing leads, networking, referrals, emails/phone conversations, and commercials.
Sales Process
The sales process is what culminates in conversions and revenue generation. It must be done in the right way to ensure the entire process is successful. It starts with.
- Sourcing for leads
- Reaching out with a sales story
- Organizing meetings for product descriptions
- Nurturing leads to becoming customers
Buyer persona
A sales rep does well in prospecting and reaching out. However, their effort might fail if they do not understand the ideal client or target audience they are dealing with. If the sales team creates a full picture of the people or organizations they are marketing to, it becomes easier to create content and stories that speak directly to the prospect’s needs, goals, and challenges.
KPIs
Measuring the success of each sales activity is crucial in preparing for the next phase. The team requires a detailed list of metrics that help them measure failure or success rate. It provides the team with knowledge of how their performance will be evaluated based on sales best practices. KPIs are dynamic as market needs evolve and buying behavior changes.
Sales team support
No department in an organization is independent, but each needs the other to succeed. The team needs to work closely with the marketing, delivery, accounting, store, customer, service, and every other department. It makes it easy for the team to know where to go if they need support in their work.
Product use cases
It is one thing for the sales team to understand the benefits of a product but another case to know its use cases. Use cases are what give customers confidence that the product will meet their needs. When they hear stories of how the product has been used by another client, they desire to get the same benefits.
Sales tools
Sales teams leverage a list of tools to help them achieve their goals fast. Some of the tools help them work with automated systems, keep records, create content, and develop calendars. They use key tools such as CRM, sales analytics, marketing automation, and data connecting/integration tools. The team needs to understand how to use the tools and their impact on the sales process.
Conclusion
For a sales team to be successful, it requires different tools, support, and knowledge of the sales process. The sales playbook is an integral document that helps the team employ best practices, strategies, and tactics in a sales process.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
