Create a Sales Playbook, Increase Sales
First, let’s define what we mean when we say ‘Playbook’: Simply put, a playbook is what people use to understand how to do their job.
Now, likely no matter where you’ve worked, at some point you’ve heard the ‘sales are down’ rattling along down the halls or on Zoom calls. Typically, this sentiment is quickly followed by a flurry of cranking up demand generation tactics across sales enablement and marketing that often rely on pulling more people in.
While this can definitely help to increase sales, leaders often forget there is another route—a less reactive path—that could be just as successful: better sales operations.
Unifying sales across a tried-and-tested playbook not only aligns all your sales people toward a coordinated effort, but it also allows you to pivot more quickly in the future as you’ll have a centralized way to measure and evolve what’s working and what’s not.
For example, many of these common operational inefficiencies can lead to slowed sales potential:
Poor Communication between Departments: Lack of coordination between sales, marketing, and other departments can lead to misalignment of goals and missed opportunities for cross-selling, upselling or capturing future leads.
Limited Access to Information: Sales teams lacking access to up-to-date product information, pricing, or customer data may struggle to effectively address customer needs and close deals.
Lack of CRM Integration: Not utilizing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or having a poorly integrated one can result in missed follow-ups and lost leads.
Inefficient Lead Generation: Relying on outdated or ineffective methods for lead generation can result in wasted time and resources chasing low-quality leads.
Inadequate Training: Insufficient training for sales teams can result in lower productivity and missed sales opportunities due to a lack of understanding of products/services or sales techniques.
How-to Get Started on your Sales Playbook:
A sales playbook doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul to be effective. It’s easy to start small and make incremental improvements that over time move you toward increased sales and a more fulfilled sales team.
Look for inefficiencies (objectively!): Don’t be afraid to go looking for trouble, because that is where the opportunity lies. Likely most of you already have an idea of where less friction would be welcomed—regardless, it’s good to start with an objective audit and analysis of the current system to uncover clear opportunities for improvement. We find qualitative interviews across all levels gets at the heart of where people struggle in being as successful as they could be in their roles. Don’t forget to also focus on understanding the feelings behind inefficiency. While process and tools are important, the people are the ones that move you forward.
Make sure your strategic plan is clear and operational. If you don’t have a strategic plan, build one—ideally in partnership with marketing and product that aligns to business goals. If you do have one, make sure it’s operational, i.e., not words on a page but rather a how-to plan that teams can implement in their day-to-day jobs. Oftentimes the strategic plan remains a conceptual presentation given by leadership once a year vs. a clear and articulate blueprint that the entire company should be operating against daily. While it may feel daunting to take on revamping the organization’s entire approach to strategic planning, you can start with just adding clarity around where you want people to focus and why.
Revise at least one part of your process and try it out. It’s likely that you’ll find a few points of inefficiency which can be overwhelming in terms of where to start. You could start by improving how you unify people across goals or build a toolkit that centralizes the sales team that gets measured and optimized. Bringing people together under a unified way of working (with customization options of course) allows you faster onboarding and a quicker path to optimize what’s working. No matter where you start, you’ll be able to measure the outcome based on your changes. Once you start to see the change in the bottom line, you can scale your evolution.
Benefits you’ll see from creating a sales playbook
Increased sales because people and how they work together equals profit. Don’t believe us? Listen to this.
Reduced workload because when you can see everything operating in unison, you’ll notice you might not need it all
Increased retention because people like to know what they are doing and where they are headed
Happier existence because when things are clear and measurable, it reduces the anxiety that comes with not knowing what the problem is therefore not knowing how to fix it.
Need support or simply don’t have the capacity to get this going on your own? Schedule some time with us and let us help you find more efficiency within your sales team.