Originally Posted Here.

The best teams work from a sales playbook, right? You develop a winning strategy, write it down, and disseminate it. Now everybody’s on the same page and you win!

Well, it’s not that easy. Things change: companies change, products change, and even markets change. The power of playbooks (plural) lies in their ability to deal with change efficiently and effectively. Not just one time, but every time.

We built UpLevel to serve as a best practices tool – we just happen to organize that information into playbooks. As we’ve gone away from the mindset of having that one sales playbook and expanded the definition of a playbook within our own team and with our clients, we’ve found some great ideas we’d like to share. (By the way, access is free when you sign up here.)

Key Benefits

No matter what your team looks like, consider
how you can turn your processes into actionable
playbooks. They will always ensure you:

• Identify the most compelling message for your market
• Enable new sales hires at greater speed
• Create more consistency across sales reps
• Consistently improve & fine-tune your sales engine
• Set proper customer expectations from day 1
• Build a brand people come to recognize & trust

Key Playbooks

Here’s a breakdown of the playbooks you should have for your team to achieve success consistently:

Playbook #1: Company Overview

Purpose: Defines what problems you solve, who you solve them for, and how you package and deliver your solutions.

Audience: Everyone, but especially newer team members who need to have a go-to document in preparing for and executing sales conversations. Pro Tip: Make sure the marketing team has the same materials to reference and you’ll have better alignment!

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD: Company Overview”

Playbook #2: Onboarding New Hires

Purpose: Describes your company history, vision, market position, product overview, competitors, team & reporting structure, etc.

Audience: New sales hires (or new hires of any kind) in their first week. Pro Tip: Share with a new hire before their first day and see who stands out as an early bird/overachiever.

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD: Onboarding New Sales Hires”

Playbook #3: Specific Campaigns

Purpose: Successfully launch a new campaign or refocus an existing campaign. Should Include campaign goal, target audience, qualification criteria, messaging, and any additional resources.

Audience: Anyone involved with the campaign across both sales and marketing.

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD: The Ultimate Outbound Campaign”

Playbook #4: Event Prep

Purpose: If you run/attend/sponsor events, get your team aligned on location information,
booth pitches, goals, expectations, etc.

Audience: Anyone participating in the event, its preparation, or follow up afterward (definitely include sales and marketing team members).

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD: Event Prep Playbook”

Playbook #5: Sales Skills

Purpose: Collect internal best practices around a specific sales skill like overcoming objections or managing discovery calls. You also can include practice exercises to run alone or in teams.

Audience: All sales team members & leadership.

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD Partner: Vidyard’s Video for Sales Playbook”

BONUS PLAYBOOK: Client Specific

Purpose: If you run a service on behalf of your clients, have a playbook for each one. It can be like your company overview playbook, but specific to each client.

Audience: Anyone working on the client account. Provide access to your client as well so they can enhance your team’s understanding and so you can manage their expectations effectively by referencing the same information.

Free Example in UpLevel: “TSD: Client Specific Template”

You can create your first playbook for free using UpLevel. By signing up for free, you get an account fully loaded with best practice sales content created by thought leaders in the industry (like Vidyard and Keenan), plus free guides and templates.

Once you login, just look for the playbook, “TSD: How To Use UpLevel” to learn more. This resource is provided by AA-ISP Partner, The Sales Developers.