Enterprise sales can be a long and tiring process. From prospects having varying expectations to budgets, sales teams have a lot to handle. On average, salespeople spend up to 3 months or more to close a sale.
But what if they had a one-stop guide for all things sales? That’s what an enterprise sales playbook is for.
In this guide, we’ll talk about how to free up your sales reps' time and bring out the best in them by creating a go-to enterprise sales playbook.
An enterprise sales playbook is a document that B2B sales teams use to follow sales best practices and outline strategies and tactics across the various sales funnel stages. For example, it outlines steps a sales rep must take during prospecting, follow-up, negotiating, lead nurturing, etc.
A sales playbook can include the following information:
Sales playbooks are a must-have for modern sales teams for the following reasons:
1. Onboarding and training new salespeople is easier and faster
A sales playbook clearly outlines your target customers' pain points, what to offer, how to reach out to them, and more. Moreover, straightforward sales tactics and best practices curated into a handy guide will give your new hires a quick push.
2. Frees up sales reps’ time for selling
A lack of effective sales-ready content can force your sales reps to spend too much time searching for or curating content rather than working on business-critical activities, such as personalized outreach, lead nurturing, and closing deals.
A sales playbook, on the other hand, offers them ready-made content so they can focus on selling.
3. Centralize the processes
A sales playbook highlights every sales methodology, process, tool, resource, and technology used. Thus, every sales rep finds it easier to review and incorporate each component into their daily work.
4. Best place to collect and share the most effective selling techniques
Say you notice your top-performing sales reps doing email outreach differently. You can encourage them to add their tips and techniques to the playbook and share them with the rest of the team. This way, your sales playbook can be used as a manual filled with high-performing sales techniques.
Although there’s no single blueprint of elements forming a sales playbook, the following components remain the same, irrespective of the industry:
Start your sales playbook by briefing the company’s activities, mission, and how the sales team contributes to the overall dynamic.
Company information can be broken down into crucial elements like:
Cover your products in and out in this section.
For example:
Sales methodologies are a collection of frameworks to explain how your sales team engages, nurtures, and converts potential customers.
Add what made you choose a specific methodology to help sales reps navigate their daily tasks.
Sales processes form the central crux of the playbook. Your goal is to cover every step salespeople take, from identifying prospects to converting them across every touchpoint.
This section gives reps a better understanding of the following:
Don’t leave any room for doubts about who your target customers are. Use this section to clarify who your ideal customers are, their pain points, preferences, etc.
For example, a B2B buyer persona may include data such as the industry, job position, geographical region, company size, goals, needs, and more.
These data points can be gathered via:
Sales play provides a stepwise guide on a typical set of actions in a specific situation, such as lead qualification, outreach, etc.
Some sample sales plays are:
Introduce the sales team to your internal tool stack and explain how to use the right tool at the right time in a sales funnel stage.
If you’re using a digital assistant like Docket, break down the many use cases of using the tool with real-time examples. For instance, how and when can it be used to answer customer or prospect queries and verify answers.
KPIs outline the sales metrics and objectives your team must aim for. These data points help measure success, dictate sales efforts, and highlight problem areas.
This section can include key metrics to target, like the average deal size, conversion rate, lead response time, CLV, and customer satisfaction scores.
The messaging section in a sales playbook tells your team how to handle questions regarding your products or services and how to approach prospects by hitting the right brand tone.
What should be inside the messaging section:
A sales playbook must have the right resources and sales enablement materials for effective hand-holding throughout the sales process.
Resources can be internal to educate sales reps and support their work, and external content, such as whitepapers, case studies, product presentations, etc., to attract potential customers.
The following steps can help you build a successful enterprise sales playbook, irrespective of your industry:
The first step in creating a sales playbook is ensuring an up-to-date sales process that seamlessly integrates with the playbook. So, review and update your sales process if necessary.
An updated sales process complements your sales goals, reps’ selling styles, products, targeted ICP, and more.
Have concrete playbook goals so your reps quickly adapt and stay focused. Keep the goals precise instead of long and complex.
For example, if your goal is to increase product demo sign-ups, the playbook should explain product benefits, cover messaging related to the product’s features, and mention various value propositions.
Pulling together a practical sales playbook from scratch needs the right collaborators.
Some of the major teams and individuals who can make this happen are:
We have already seen how content and sales enablement material play a significant role in building a sales playbook. Marketing is one team that can contribute to sales and educational content.
Maintain constant collaboration between both sales and marketing. This way, sales can inform marketing of the necessary materials to improve their selling process, while marketing can reach out to sales for the latest campaign information.
Sales reps must know their target audience by examining buyer personas. This information helps them navigate messaging and build better prospect relationships.
Remember, as your business and products evolve, so will your buyer personas. So, it’s best to continuously update your sales playbook with the necessary changes.
Understanding how each prospect navigates the buying and selling processes can help sales reps better comprehend prospects’ needs and pain points.
Here are some steps you can take:
Mapping out the buying and selling processes can help sales reps improve the buyer experience.
For example, most prospects enquire about the product’s specific feature in detail before booking a product demo. Then, sales reps can send FAQ emails proactively to give prospects firsthand information.
Choose your sales plays based on your playbook’s focus. It can depend on factors like:
Upload your sales playbook online and allow access to every sales rep. Sales managers, directors, VPs, and the marketing and customer service teams should also have seamless access to the playbook.
Once your playbook has been implemented and shared among users, you must analyze your work to monitor its success, such as how relevant or helpful the content was.
You can ask reps for direct feedback via surveys or one-on-one interviews.
A sales playbook is not a one-off document. Changes in buying behavior, market trends, and industry dynamics are inevitable. So, consider your sales playbook a dynamic tool needing regular updates.
The following tips can keep your sales playbook up to date:
Templates can help you create and share a sales playbook quickly. You can include multiple templates to create a full-fledged sales playbook. For example, combining a call scripts template, an email template, and a closing template into a playbook.
Below are some templates to use in your playbook:
These script templates ensure your sales reps are ready to tackle prospect and customer interactions.
Your sales call script template can include scripts for calls like:
Each template should explain its best use case and give various routes the prospect may take during the conversation.
A good find: Sales call script templates
Emails come with multiple scenarios, such as:
Writing emails from scratch can be physically and mentally taxing. Sales email templates save your team hours, which they can spend on more productive activities.
A good find: Sales email templates and examples
Asking your leads the right questions lets you nurture the most promising, high-intent ones. You can understand their current budget limits, awareness levels, expectations, challenges, etc.
A good find: 12 qualifying questions for sales
Handy objection handling tips for every possible objection can help your sales reps face pushback and handle it well. When sales reps are confident about their responses, it makes more room for empathy in understanding the prospects’ underlying fears.
A good find: Objection handling templates for B2B sales
This is one of the most critical sections you can add to your sales playbook, as sales closure is the biggest plus a sales rep can have.
Since there is no single way to close a deal, this template can instead be a guide to closing sales through different closure techniques.
A sales playbook is an extensive, single source of truth your sales reps and everyone in the sales process can rely on.
However, the best sales playbooks continuously evolve with your business, products, and target customers. So, it’s highly critical to tweak your sales playbook repeatedly.
Top your efforts with an influential digital sales engineer like Docket.
It learns from knowledge sources across your enterprise and offers instant Q&A assistance to client-facing teams at each sales process step.
