Playbook: an American sports term - it is a book or booklet that diagrams and explains a compilation of strategies a team may use during match games.
Managing a sales team can be difficult. Salespeople, by nature, make thing happen. They move fast, often faster than the business can keep up with them. And there lies a problem. If a salesperson is asked a question, or needs to demonstrate a product, they are quite capable of ‘winging’ it – and in trying to please the customer they might just over-promise, or misquote, or… any number of nightmare scenarios.
You might also have the problem of staff turnover – how can a new salesperson perform as well as an established rep? Does the sales manager have to shadow and coach the new salesperson for the first couple of months before they can be trusted to go out on their own?
You might have a new product launch – and all the sales representatives are expected to hit the road and sell the new product, while appearing to be experts in all the nuances and facts of the product, even though they may not have actually seen the product, or even been aware it existed until a week previously.
Finally, the technical aspects of a product set may be moving so fast in comparison with the competition, with monthly releases, jockeying for position, press releases, press articles and comparison sites all put into the mix that it is difficult for sales people to keep up.
One tactic that can be used to address these problems is to use a Sales Playbook.
A Sales Playbook can be thought of as a guide for a sales team. It contains the living expertise and experience of the organisation in indexed summary format available for use by the sales team as and when they need information at their fingertips.
Content
Sales Playbooks can contain the following information:
- a product description
- positioning messages – customer benefits, customer feedback
- the sales process – with sample documents, letters, etc.
- case studies – where the product has been used for customer benefit
- press articles, favourable reviews, and advertising
- competitive positioning – points of advantage, press articles negative towards the competition
- contact names and numbers of goto people (technical support, pre-sales, marketing communications, etc)
Beware though! As Buckingham and Coffman set out in their ground breaking book – First, Break All the Rules, in many occasions just trying to raise the average performance across the team may not be the right tactic to use. Their argument is that the best performers have a greater potential to improve than the worst performers, and that management coaching is best focused on the better performers across the team rather than those who need to raise their game to the average. The implication – design the sales play book for the best performing team members, mid-level performers should be able to use the book for their benefit, and poor performers may fall by the wayside – yet you should see overall team performance improvement. Designing a sales play book for the worst performers will make it unusable for the best performers, and mid-level performers may not get much benefit from it too.
It is a mistake to polish the playbook so it looks like a professional publication. Keep it rough and ready, so it is clearly an assembly of the best information available at the time. Don’t be afraid to cut and paste, delete whole sections, add new sections, or simply hack it around as needed.
Try the following approach to develop a play book:
- plan – discuss the needs for and from a play book, develop an outline contents list, appoint a content editor, commission the development of a play book
- assemble – prepare an initial set of contents, use whatever material is to hand, complete some of the contents list, publicise the existence, and issue copies to all sales staff
- use – provide training if needed, let sales staff use the play book, capture feedback on effectiveness and needed improvements
- review – at a suitable point, review the feedback, decide if the play book should continue to exist,
- prioritise - decide what updates will be made, prioritise from all possible updates and comments
- update – modify the play book, re-issue, and return to the use step to cycle the process
Sales Playbooks can be developed using any suitable technology. We’d suggest taking a look at:
- paper – in a binder, easy to do, cheap, and can act as a prompt to share with clients
- a Wiki – so it can be available online from any browsing devlce (such as a tablet), and easily updateable
- OneNote – this supports sections, pages and shared updates – ideal for a small sales team
A Sales Playbook can help to raise the performance of sales people in a team by providing easy access to expertise drawn from across the group. It can help reduce the burden placed on sales managers to coach new starters, and under performers.
Further Reading and Links (external sites)
Marketing Profs – How to Write a Sales Playbook - article
How to Create a Killer Sales Playbook - pdf file
If you want to read the book’s reviews then the link below connects to the Amazon website. And for disclosure: if you decide to buy the book after clicking through we get a small commission …
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