7 Key Elements of a Great Sales Playbook

It’s Fall. The temperature is dropping, leaves are changing, and there is a lot of uncertainty about the economy and politics, both locally and globally. No matter what your sales performance has been in 2023, one thing is certain, you will be at a disadvantage if you don’t start to put together your sales playbook and growth plan for 2024.

What is a sales playbook?

A sales playbook is a resource that outlines your sales strategy, processes, and best practices. It provides your team members with relevant information about your growth goals, sales process, and sales activities/plays to execute during each stage of the selling cycle.

Why is a playbook important?

A sales playbook is vital to your company’s sales success in several ways, especially during uncertain times.

• Provides standardization, alignment, and scalability: Every member is more efficient, spends more time selling and less time searching for tools and answers, and is focused, consistent and effective executing your sales strategy.
• Supports launch of new products or services: Develop a standard play for your team to sell new products and use existing process and tools to build each new sales play.
• Use to hire and train: New hires usually have a lot to learn. Having a playbook in place will make it easier for them to get some foundational knowledge about your firm, and find answers themselves, reducing time spent searching and asking questions.
• Provides a better customer experience: Consistency across the organization in engaging, responding to, and answering customer questions is important to the customer experience. When a new best practice is developed, quickly scale it to support customers across the business.
• Reduces risk if you lose key sales leadership or personnel:  When best practices are captured in the playbook, they can be reused across the team.

7 Key elements of a great playbook

Your sales playbook should be customized specifically for your company and team. It can be as detailed as you want but should include information necessary to execute your growth strategy. In general, a playbook should include:

1. Company Overview: History, mission, value proposition, and goals.
2. Products and Services Information: What exactly are you selling?
3. Buyer Personas: Who are you selling each product or service to and in what channels?
4. Sales Process Steps: Include all stages from finding leads, to qualification, to closing, and post-sale account management steps.
5. Resources and sales-enablement materials- CRM, templates, etc.
6. KPIs and metrics:  Lead generation statistics, time to close, conversion percentage, etc.
7. Commission Structure: What do your reps get if they go beyond their quotas.

What can you do to get started?

Whether you are a small company developing your first playbook or larger company updating your plays as you grow or diversify your product offerings, it is important to be prepared. Having a sales playbook that outlines your goals, plan, and plays ensures alignment across the organization and that your team will execute more consistently to thrive in 2024 regardless of broader market forces. The results of which support capabilities to sustain and further enhance growth in the long term.

Learn more about Fahrenheit Advisors’ Sales Advisory Capabilities

About the Author

Selena Sanderson leads Fahrenheit’s Sales Advisory and Growth Practice. She is a strategic, thoughtful leader who helps clients solve growth problems by seeking to understand their goals, issues, and resources, and then leverages her experience, analytical, and problem-solving skills to focus on the top levers to drive results. As a former Executive Vice President of Strategy and General Manager for a North American food manufacturer, Chief Revenue, Business Development officer, and Advisor for businesses across the technology, professional services, and consumer products industries, Selena has had a successful career developing and leading teams to accelerate revenue growth and improve profit. At Fahrenheit Advisors she leads a team of experienced sales operators that partners with CEOs and leadership of mid-market companies to accelerate growth. Services include developing and refining go-to-market strategy, organizational structure, implementing scalable processes, coaching, and operationalizing best practices to achieve targeted goals.