Earlier this week we discussed sales playbooks- what they are and why they’re essential. In case you missed that post, you can find it here. Today we’re discussing how to develop your own sales playbook using 4 simple steps, and conclude with some common mistakes to watch out for when it comes to creating your playbook.
Building an effective digital sales playbook will make it easier for your sales reps to find, customize, and distribute content on the go (Source: Open View Labs, 2014). So how do you actually build a playbook? To answer this we’ve outlined 4 simple steps:
- Planning your structure;
- Bringing your playbook to life;
- Launching your playbook; and
- Reviewing your playbook.
1. Plan & Organize Your Playbook Structure
Before you can even begin to put your playbook together, you must plan what your playbook is going to consist of and how your sales reps are going to use it.
Ensure Cross Collaboration with Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing alignment will be very important to your planning at this stage. We detail 4 ways to create sales and marketing alignment here, but essentially marketing shouldn’t be creating sales playbooks on their own. It’s crucialthat sales is a part of the development process in order to ensure that their needs are being met (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013).
The purpose of creating a sales playbook is to trigger, support, and enhance the quality of conversations that your sales reps are having with prospects (Source: B2C, 2015). Therefore, it is important that the digital content included in your playbook prepares sales reps with all of the information they will need to effectively communicate with prospects (Source: B2C, 2015).
The crucial components are:
- To understand the core challenges the sales team faces in using digital content; and
- To ensure that sales reps and marketers have a seamless and delightful MQL acquisition to nurturing process.
When it comes to content, remember that you shouldn’t be creating materials that are product-centric. Your customer, their problems/needs, and meaningful business solutions/outcomes should always be the primary focus (Source: B2C, 2014).
[RELATED CONTENT] Did you know sales and marketing alignment is only one of four essential strategies we detail in our eBook on the changing state of sales? Click the link below for a FREE download and learn out the strategies that win for 2016.
Organize Content
Three of the most substantial reasons sales reps choose to avoid digital content relate directly to content organization. Though research and collaboration boost the value & quality of content, making sure content reaches the right people is always a challenge with a growing library.
-By Buyer Personas
Your playbook isn’t going to cater to each individual buyer, of course, but it will allow you to sort and organize your material to buyer personas with similar needs & challenges.
- By Decision Journey Stages
As your sales and marketing teams collaborate, playbooks may be further refined to address the individual decision journey stages of those buyer personas. The outcome is a digital content library optimized for any sales interaction with any buyer.
Each stage of the decision journey has a unique set of issues & challenges influencing the prospect. By addressing customer concerns through content, you’ll create more engaging conversations, move away from product-centric discussion, and establish valuable trust.
-Don’t Forget Sub-Sections
At this stage in planning your playbook you should also take into consideration the organization of the content within your playbook. When organizing content, it is important to consider questions such as: “Is it better to have separate sections for each sales stage and subsections by industry? Or industry sections with subsections for each stage?”(Source: Marketo, 2011). Circumstances like this are exactly why sales and marketing must work in tandem to create effective playbooks.
Did you know that our brains react differently to visual content? Find out how in our post, “The Science Behind Visually Appealing Content Marketing”.
2. Bring Your Sales Playbook to Life
Now that you’ve organized and planned the content you want to use in your sales playbook, it’s time to bring it to life! Success is measured by how well you can apply the information from the previous section to the creation of your playbooks (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013).
During the organizing phase, you should have determined what information you want to include, how many playbooks you will need, and how you want to set up each playbook. The beauty of playbooks, though, is that they’re flexible. Changes may occur often, and both internal and external influences will shape playbook design.
Playbooks don’t need to be complicated. For a smaller firm, or perhaps a sales rep trying out this strategy for the first time, playbooks can be as simple as file folders on your PC with named headings for your target personas and copied files across each section.
As always, growing libraries complicate this process, and the best practice for worthwhile playbooks is a sales enablement platform that integrates playbooks with both a sales force and a marketing automation software system. A sales enablement platform also allows for real time digital content consumption feedback. (See section 4 – Review & Improve)
Your sales reps are the face of your company and customers value their knowledge. In our previous post, we discuss “How to Optimize your Sales Process with Subject Matter Experts”.
3. Launch Your Sales Playbook
Now that you have your sales playbook complete, it’s time to distribute it to your sales teams. Your playbook is only going to be successful if it is actively used by sales reps so how do you make sure that your playbook is in the hands of your salespeople? First, you will most likely need support from senior management to implement your playbook (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013).
If you’re making changes to a legacy sales process, be prepared to deal with some unhappy sales reps. When you make any kind of change to your processes you’ll inevitably receive some resistance from those who use it, even if it improves the sales process (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013).
When planning to launch your playbook, ensure that there is positive support and commentary around it (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013). Starting these conversations before the launch will help you to address any issues management or your sales reps may have early on (Source: Pipeline Sales, 2013).
Traditional sales training tactics aren’t cutting it anymore. Find out why in our post, “How Sales Enablement Helps Create Stronger Sales Training”.
4. Review and Improve
Like any marketing and sales strategy, it is important to review your efforts periodically. Reviewing your sales playbook will allow you to see what content is working, what needs to be changed, and the overall effectiveness of your strategy. Once a playbook is out in the field, it is important to get feedback from sales reps for any insight they may have on how to improve or develop it (Source: B2C, 2014). Doing so will allow you to remove inadequate content and add new techniques that will get to the results you wish to achieve (Source: B2C, 2014).
It is also important to review your sales playbook to ensure that content is up to date. The last thing you want to do is arm your sales reps with digital content that is no longer relevant or current. If sales teams notice that you’re investing time in keeping content up to date, your playbook will be seen as a more credible, valuable, and up to date source of information (Source: B2C, 2014).
Did you know that the channel you use to distribute your message can actually impact how audiences interpret your message? Find out why and how in our post, “The Influence of Channels on Digital Content Management & Communications”.
(Image Source: Sales Initiative, 2014)
Common Errors to Avoid
Too Generic
The point of creating a sales playbook is to help your salespeople stand out in a crowd, rather then blend in. Your playbooks are meant to help inspire more engaging conversations that keep your prospects interested. Using generic content and information will only make you blend in with your competition. Your sales playbook should reflect the type of sales force you have (Source: Marketo, 2011).
Did you know 80% of content created by marketing isn’t being used by sales reps? Find out why in our post, ‘Sales Reps are using Digital Content Created by Marketing”.
Too Much Information
Think you can never arm your sales reps with too much information? Think again. Though you may uncover a lot of valuable information while developing your playbook, content placed in playbooks should be tactical (Source: Marketo, 2011).
Filling your playbook with too much information can actually defeat its purpose. The sales playbook is meant to provide reps with easy access to information in one location. Over-filling your playbook can make it hard for sales reps to find the information that they need.
More playbook variety is preferable to overflowing playbooks.
Buyers shop a lot differently today. We break down how this impacts your selling process in our post, “How an Empowered Buyer Impacts the Sales Process”.
Not Focused Enough
Sales playbooks allow you to consolidate content tailored to certain audiences and even specific decision journey stages. Creating playbooks that are very broad in focus defeats this purpose. For example, if you have already created buyer personas, playbooks are an excellent way to organize content for each persona. If you’re too broad in focus, your playbook is essentially useless as it is just storing content that may or may not bear relevance.
Don’t know what buyer personas are? Find out in our post, “What is a Buyer Persona and How does it Influence Digital Content”.
Building an effective sales playbook takes a lot of time, effort, collaboration, and planning; however, if done correctly, the benefit that it has on your sales and marketing teams is tremendous.
[RELATED CONTENT] Are you interested in learning more about why sales playbooks are so crucial to success in 2016 and beyond? Click the link below for a FREE eBook that details the changing state of sales, trends influencing success, and essential tactics for continued sales growth in any B2B role.
