Sales Playbook

Now that I’ve spent the month writing about sales playbooks, it seemed like the time for a quick roundup. If you were to ask me three things I attribute to my sales team’s success, our sales playbook would be on the list. That’s because the sales playbook contained so much of what made us great. […]

When I was creating my first sales playbook I spent a lot of time wondering what was actually in one. As a new sales leader, I had never actually seen a sales playbook. And web searches weren’t much help. A few of my salespeople were kind enough to show me playbooks they had from previous jobs, […]

Bottom line: sales playbooks help create a high performing team with repeatable processes and more predictable results. And that’s why I love them so much. The benefit is two fold. Yes, for reps it gives a single destination for everything. But it also forces you to have discipline around how you manage and lead your team. 

A sales playbook is a collection of everything a sales team needs to sell. To me that means a single destination for everything that touches the sales team.

I’ve seen, and even created, some very bad playbooks. And some pretty bad playbooks.  And some not-so-terrible playbooks. And a handful of good playbooks (to be honest, the good ones are rare—most playbooks are just flat out awful). Along the way, I’ve learned a few lessons….

Creating a sales playbook is a big undertaking. And once you have it launched, it doesn’t guarantee adoption. And it needs to be updated very regularly. And reviewed for accuracy. It’s just a lot of freaking work to get the ball rolling and keep it in motion. But it’s so worth it. Once we had our playbook in an ideal state I found we referenced it all the time, used it as a jumping off point for many coaching sessions, used it to onboard and ramp reps faster, developed educational workshops for the team from it, etc.