What if your sales team had access to not only the guide that could help them move faster and smarter in any given sales situation? How might this impact your conversion rates and new business development? 

That's where a Sales Playbook comes in... It’s a customized approach to your unique sales process that puts the right strategy, best practices, content, and resources at the fingertips of your salespeople so they can take the right steps, at the right time, with the right people. 

But, once you've got a Sales Playbook, how do you use it to effectively drive revenue and improve sales performance?

Sales Playbook Framework

In a previous blog post, I shared key components of a Sales Playbook, some of which include: 

• How to follow-up with a top of the funnel (TOFU) inbound lead
• How to approach a cold prospect that fits your ideal business profile 
• What steps to take and questions to ask in order to conduct a thorough needs analysis
• What to do/say when you hear certain objections
• Plus, many, many more!  

With each Sales Play included in a Sales Playbook, your sales team receives the recommended steps, time frame, and any related content or resources to go with those steps, such as: 

• Email templates
• Call scripts
• Links to articles
• Guides
• One-sheets
• Videos
• Checklists
• Best practices 

So, with all of this helpful information included in a Sales Playbook, how can you best implement it into your organization so that it's adopted and used? 

How to Implement and Use a Sales Playbook 

Ensure All Upper-Level Management is On Board  

As you finalize your Sales Playbook, it’s vital to your success that you have buy-in and agreement from all upper-level management who have a hand in revenue generation, sales, and marketing decisions. They should not only see the value in a Sales Playbook but truly understand how it works and can easily support their sales team in the implementation and use of it. 

Introduce the Sales Playbook to Your Team 

What a waste it would be to put time, energy, budget, and resources into creating a Sales Playbook that existed just to sit around and collect (digital) dust. This is why it's incredibly important to have a thorough and strategic rollout and training plan ready to execute, as well as a plan to involve them in the development of your playbook.  

Tips to Ensure Adoption 

• Involve the sales team during creation, getting their feedback on content and resources they need in the sales process
• Ensure the Sales Playbook is easy to use. Make sure it’s clear, organized, and fits your company’s sales and marketing structure and processes.
• Once your Sales Playbook is complete, host a meeting to review, go through, and dig into all of the chapters, content, and resources. 
• Continue to conduct regular trainings on a regular basis that help your salespeople dive into individual chapters and plays in the Sales Playbook 
• A few months after the Sales Playbook is introduced, check back in with the team, asking what resources have been useful and assess how it fits into the sales process and workflow.
• Utilize the Sales Playbook in one-on-one meetings between salespeople and managers so that it's always top-of-mind. 

Keep Evolving 

It’s vital that your leadership teams assess the performance of a Sales Playbook, checking in to review workflow, update content, improve on resources, add Sales Plays, update technology references, and more.  

A Sales Playbook is not a one-and-done project. As teams grow, technology evolves, target audiences change, best practices evolve, and workflows evolve, so should this resource.  

Check out a Sample Play from one of LeadG2’s custom Sales Playbooks here!