Kadient has worked with over a thousand B2B sales teams over the last 15 years, and has captured this experience in an easy four step process for creating Sales Playbooks that lets you get started quickly and easily keep up with change. We call this ABLE..png)
Assess
Start by identifying recurring selling situations where you want to drive repeatable behavior. Pick a situation, and profile winning sales engagements that fit that situation. Interview a few of those successful sales people and find out:
- What were the buyer’s information needs at each stage of their problem solving process?
- What tools and materials did the reps use, and when?
- What objections did they have to overcome?
- What activities caused the deal to advance?
- What experts did the rep bring in to help work the deal, and what role did they play?
Look for the patterns of activities performed and resources used across multiple sales engagements, and align these with your sales process to determine the stages and activities for the playbook.
Build
Organize the content, tools, and resources you identified in the Assess stage into Sales Playbooks and activities.
- Identify gaps where new information needs to be created, and assign ownership for filling the gaps.
- Surround the playbook activities with coaching and tips that help the reps know how to perform the activities.
- Since Sales Playbooks are meant to be guides rather than handcuffs for the salesperson, carefully determine which activities are recommended and which are required.
Launch
Roll out the Sales Playbooks to the sales team:
- Start with a pilot group to get feedback. Make sure there are well-respected sales professionals who are opinion leaders in that pilot group
- Expand usage to the larger team with the support of sales management, marketing, and the opinion leaders in sales
Evolve
Monitor usage of the Sales Playbook and measure the impact. Use these metrics to optimize the playbooks over time. You will find opportunities to:
- Refine the activities within the playbooks.
- Find additional actions that should be performed
- Improve the content and messaging
- Find areas for new sales playbooks
Learn more. Download the free guide, How to Create a Killer Sales Playbook now.