Until a few years back, enabling a sales rep meant handing over leads and the required collateral to close the sale. Apart from this, sales reps relied heavily on interpersonal skills and personal experience to face the prospect.
Today, the scenario is more about providing sales reps with tools. In this age of technology (and ever increasing use of it), we cannot leave our sales reps behind. Companies are concerned about their sales teams having the best sales tools, which enable them to function effortlessly and sell more efficiently.
Sales playbooks are one of the most sought-after sales tools today; playbooks are highly adaptable and comprehensive. Adaptable because they can be used for a variety of purposes within the organization and extensive because they can accommodate almost any kind of file or document as part of it.
What are sales playbooks?
Playbooks are a complete package of strategy, content and tools that you want your sales guys to use while pitching to a client. They are the knowledge bucket for your sales teams.
Think of playbooks as user manuals for sales reps. They have specific guidelines on how to use the assets, answer some of the most frequently asked questions and/ or offer best practices on how to use the product.
Types of playbooks
There are two types of playbooks – internal and external playbooks.
Internal playbooks: They are used extensively within the organization. All sales reps, sales team leads and marketing teams have access to these common playbooks.
External playbooks: They are used by the reps when they need any kind of aid when getting in touch or interacting with prospects. They usually contain brochures, emails templates, text templates, eBooks, etc.
Lets take a look at what are the basic elements of a playbook..
What should Playbooks contain?
To get the most out of your playbooks, every playbook should contain a few basic elements. These elements are the ones that define your company’s selling and marketing goals. The key is to keep upgrading them as required.
- Buyer persona:
Your playbooks must explain in detail who your target audience is. Define their demographics, job profiles, their pain points, just about anything that will give the reps an in depth analysis of the buyer. Your reps must have an understanding of the buying behavior of your key buyer personas. - Product info
Quite like the buyer persona, it is imperative that sales reps have an inside out understanding of your products and/or services. The ideal way would be to segment your different categories and list products like an inventory list. You can be creative and design a timeline of the iterations that your product has undergone over the years. - Lead segment information
The Big Data revolution has enabled the modern sales teams to classify and segment leads and prospects based on a variety of factors. Provide descriptions, segment based personalized sales collateral and any important information that needs to be included. - Pitching strategy
Every campaign or product or target audience demands a unique pitching method. This method must form a part of your playbooks. This way your sales reps are in line with your marketing efforts and this practice helps in maintaining your brand consistency. - Pricing and discount information
Are you offering any discounts this season? Any ongoing sale for your premium customers? Or some offers up for your bottom of the funnel leads? Make sure you include all this detail in your playbooks. If your sales reps aren’t able to cash in on your offers, that could cause you some serious damage. Also, you must file your pricing policies so your sales reps know how to handle a bargain situation. - Training material
This is exclusively for your internal playbooks. You can include extensive training materials for your sales reps in these playbooks. From onboarding new reps to refresher skills for the old, from interactive training tests to pre-recorded seminars and conferences you can include almost any file. If your sales reps can access these playbooks on their mobile devices, you will be taking sales enablement to the next level.
Creating a good sales playbooks requires a lot of time and patience. The results however, payoff huge dividends in the form of higher close rates, regulated workflows and highly efficient sale reps.
Have you equipped your reps with playbooks yet?
