5-Step Guide to Creating Better Sales Playbooks

April 19th, 2022

When sales teams have a ready-made sales playbook at their fingertips, they are better equipped to engage potential customers and make the sale.

What Is a Sales Playbook?

A sales book is an essential enablement tool for your sales team to optimize sales conversions and rally around a core set of objectives and goals. It is a comprehensive reference guide that contains critical information on how to execute a company’s sales enablement strategies and best practices. Usually, a sales playbook has high-level content as well as practical, specific, play-by-play instructions for the sales process.

A sales playbook may contain training materials, call scripts, buyer personas, an overview of the sales process, email templates, key performance indicators (KPIs), lead qualifications, product demos, negotiation tactics, best practices, and more. Further, a sales playbook provides details on the company, the brand, products and services, sales philosophies, product offerings, and a guide to the customer relations management (CRM) platform.

5 Steps to Creating an Effective Sales Playbook

Not all sales playbooks are created equal, however. As a sales enablement tool, sales playbooks need to be created with the right content and be updated periodically to reflect feedback, changing scenarios (e.g., a global pandemic), and improve sales tactics in an increasingly digital world. Here are 5 key steps you can take to create a better sales playbook for your sales team.

Step 1 – Brainstorm Ideas With Your Teams

Assuming your company has not created a sales playbook, or even if it has, brainstorming with your sales and marketing teams is a precursor to making a strong, effective document. You will need all the creative, sales-oriented, and business minds in one room to brainstorm ideas, such as thinking about your main selling points, what are the company’s mission and goals, identify your target customers, what are your best practices, how does social media help or hurt sales, and who are your rainmakers.

It shouldn’t only be the marketing team or the C-Suite coming up with ideas. This process needs the all-hands-on deck in order to capture the widest spectrum of information to assist your sales team. Additionally, someone on your team should talk to your salespeople to ask them about their best practices, tips and tricks, and any other pertinent information. Your sales team are the frontline so their input is crucial.

Step 2 – Provide Necessary Training Materials On-Demand

Incorporating training materials into your company’s sales playbook will not only help your new employees during the onboarding process, but it will also enable your current sales team to brush up on their skills. On-boarding new employees need a lot of training so they are well-informed on your company’s products and services in addition to sales goals, ethics, best sales practices, how to buy the service/product, customer personas, the pain points experienced, what to say to clients, and more. With a sales playbook, training for new employees will be quicker, easier, and more effective with clear and detailed information about these topics. Otherwise, they have to learn this information ad hoc, which can lead to lost sales.

Also, products and services may change frequently, so all employees will need additional training at some point to get up to speed. Many employees joined your company months or even years ago, so their training might be very outdated and needs refreshing. Salespeople need to know the product or service they are selling inside and out so they can sell with knowledge and confidence to make the deal.

Step 3 – Determine and Write Up Sales Plays

A sales playbook should also contain information about sales plays so your teams have this crucial information readily available. A sales play is a set of repeatable steps, actions, and best practices that salespeople can use at different points during the sales process. It helps your sales team know what to do to progress a potential sale without having to improvise on the spot. When creating sales plays, your sales team has valuable information as to what outreach method might work best (email vs. phone call), or how to approach uncertain customers, or how to best close a deal. Also, sales plays can be written up for specific scenarios and situations, so your sales team will not be in the dark throughout the sales process.

Step 4 – Make Your Sales Playbook Digital for On-Demand Access

With more companies going totally remote or with a hybrid approach, having your sales playbook live on a cloud-based platform where employees can log onto it 24/7 is essential. Traditional sales playbooks are typically paper copies or pieces of paper in a binder, usually collecting dust on the shelf or tucked away in someone’s desk drawer. Not very useful for on-the-go sales reps!

Digitizing your sales playbook enables all of your sales team and company information to be organized into one centralized folder that can be accessed at any time, anywhere. When your salespeople are on-the-go and out of the office, they can still refer to their digital sales playbooks to close the sale and increase their conversion rates. If your sales playbook is also digitized, then your teams will be able to access it via the cloud, on-demand.

Step 5 – Review and Revise Your Sales Playbook

A sales playbook is a key part of the sales process and an asset for your sales team. Yet, a sales playbook should not be sitting on the shelf gathering dust. It needs to be updated in order to keep up with selling trends, changes in the company’s policies and procedures, and the selling environment. A sales playbook is a written format of the company’s sales process, CRM, trainings, policies, and philosophies. It will need to be revisited and revised periodically to ensure its updated with the company’s current marketing and sales goals, adoption of new technology, new methods for selling products or services, buyer personas, new training materials, and any other key information that will assist your salespeople to make the sale.

Klyck is Here for the Digital Sales Playbook Revolution

We live in the digital age that’s constantly evolving into a new age of sales. It’s time to throw away those dust-covered, outdated binders. Your playbooks just got digitized. Take your team to the next level with KlyckBooks, the easy, one-stop-shop for delivering content and information on-demand. Our digital sales playbooks easily integrate with CRM software and other business platforms for a more effective and efficient sales team. Digitizing your sales playbook will be the best sales enablement tool for your sales reps.

Bring playbooks to life with KlyckBooks. Contact us today to learn more how we can digitize and revolutionize your sales performance.