Every company wants to increase sales, but only some know how to do it. That’s exactly where the need for a sales playbook creation comes in.
As per stats, companies that adopt better practices like team collaboration experience 2.5x growth than those that don’t. But the pressing question is: how do you create a sales playbook? Let’s check it out.
What is a Sales Playbook?
The sales playbook refers to the documentation guide that outlines the company’s best sales plans and strategies that are proven to be successful. The main aim of every sales playbook is to provide guidance to the team to achieve the team’s goals. It frees up the time to prevent work burnout of senior managers during the onboarding process by acting as a guide for new executives.
Also Read: What Are The 7 Proven Strategies To Retain Your Customers
5 Simple Steps to Create A Sales Playbook
Most companies refrain from setting up playbook sales from scratch due to the complexities involved. Here is a step-by-step guide to simplify the process:
1. Analyze Your Process Flow
The first step to creating a sales operations playbook is to review your current sales process. Sales is one of the most dynamic fields in the business. So, check out whether your strategies are still relevant and produce results. In this step, try to include the sales executives, as they can share valuable strategies related to the process flow.
In case your sales process is not documented, take time to record it. Conduct a meeting with the marketing team to explain each stage of the process clearly so that they can create the content in-depth.
2. Determine The Goals
Figure out what you want to achieve from your sales playbook. You must have clear-cut answers to important points such as:
- The problems addressed and solutions offered through the sales playbook.
- Overlooked yet helpful strategies that are to be included in the guide.
- The most challenging stages in the sales process that require more in-depth explanation.
At this step, it is also better to call meetings to source ideas from sales executives on what should be included in the guide. Curate all the striking ideas in a sheet.
3. Set the Team
As the saying goes, “too many cooks can spoil the broth.” Therefore, form a team of the most important team members who will be involved in the sales playbook content creation process. Select the members based on their expertise, experience, interest, etc.
You can use a sales playbook automation tool like Onstro CRM to optimize the process. It lets you create a custom workflow and divide it into smaller tasks to allocate to individual team members. Similarly, you can even have a task board overview to check the progress of the process regularly.
4. Design the Playbook
Based on the prior decisions, determine what all you need to cover through the document. Here is the most common sales playbook table of contents format:
- Company Overview: Give the most crucial information, like your company’s objectives, mission, vision, etc.
- Product Overview: In-depth information about your product, including the features, how-to guides, etc.
- Pricing: Mention the pricing structure of the product or service.
- Sales Process: Outline the sales process that customers must go through to buy your product.
- Goals: The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with which your management measures your team’s success.
Similarly, you must also have an idea of how to create maximum value from it. For that, consider adding real examples, checklists, etc. You can refer to similar sales playbook templates to improve the creation process.
5. Launch and Track
Once created, give access to the digital sales playbook version to everybody in your company, from executives to top-level managers. Consider hosting a survey to get feedback from your stakeholders and identify the improvement points to consider for the future playbook creation process.
But that’s not the end. You must track it regularly to ensure it sets the standard perfectly. If something goes wrong, feel free to refine the guide.
Conclusion
Sales playbook creation is often challenging due to the complex series of steps with the involvement of multiple teams. What if you can make it way easier with effective collaboration?
Onstro CRM is an all-in-one software solution that can optimize your sales playbook creation process. It provides various cutting-edge collaboration features to streamline communication between team members and departments. You can assign tasks to individual members, track the progress, and even set deadline reminders to ensure time-bound submission. Contact us now!
