An effective B2B Sales Playbook can energize your sales team and make them more productive in closing new sales. With a playbook, they will have fewer unproductive calls and will reduce time spent in pre-call planning efforts. The sales playbook is an important tool that Marketing often uses to provide invaluable marketing information and sales tips.
Sales playbooks exist in many styles and forms. Below is a list of what I believe are the key features commonly found in those that are the most successful.
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Highlight the easy wins, There is nothing like exposing the low-hanging fruit. Don’t just identify them, but have them flash and stand out. The sales reps and their managers will thank you for it. It’s interesting how often the easy wins are overlooked in the hustle and bustle. - Rank all prospects across the entire sales territory, but only show those that are worthy of a sales call. Leave no stone unturned in looking for opportunities with analytic scoring. Keep the sales rep focused on their best opportunities, minimize the distraction of lower opportunities.
- Identify the most critical single sales objective for each site. To maintain and hold at-risk customers, expand those primed to purchase more, or capture new customers? Keep it simple.
- Identify all relevant sales tactics for each site, What products are they most likely to purchase? What promotions are relevant? Are there any cross-sell opportunities? Are there other silos within an existing customer that may be a prospect? Provide as many sales tactics as possible—you never know which one will click.
- Provide all relevant marketing touch and transactional information about each site. If they are customers, provide product purchase information. Identify all know contacts. If the site is part of a larger company, provide data about the full company. Identify all marketing touches that have occurred in the past. Minimize the need for the sales rep to hunt elsewhere for marketing information when preparing a sales call.
- Provide easy links to your marketing support material. Most organizations have tons of marketing support material, but finding it when it’s needed is often a problem. The better sales playbooks link sales tactics to needed marketing support material. Link relevant information to address the sales opportunity. This way it gets used.
- Teach while enabling with Industry Primers. What are the business issues that your key industries are facing? What are their needs and how do your products address their needs? What wining sales tactics have been deployed in the industry? What are the things that are working well and what pitfalls should be avoided?
Remember to keep your sales playbook simple, make it easily accessed over the Web, and grow into it. Keep the door open to new ideas that will come back to you from a delighted sales team.
About the Author:
Mike Sullivan is the Vice President of Account Development at SIGMA Marketing Group.
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