Sales Playbook Archives

Seven Sales Playbooks You Need to Scale the Growth of Your B2B Firm

February 17, 2022 by Bernadette Brogan

These 7 playbooks are a crucial part of ensuring your B2B business’ growth

The natural flow of every business is towards growth. It is the sales department that ensures a business grows consistently. Thus, an effective sales process is at the core of the growth of any business. A sales playbook is all about ensuring that for your business.

A sales playbook is a manual that includes everything salespeople need to know about the sales process, such as standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities of salespeople, sales tools, and sales guidance. It is the core document that ensures consistency and efficiency in the sales operations.

Sales Playbook for B2B businesses

A vast range of sales playbooks are available for a business to improve operational efficiency. It can be a regular B2B sales playbook that entails the entire sales process of an organization, or it can be a specific sales playbook on a particular sales strategy.

For example, if you plan to use account-based marketing to target high-worth clients, you can create an ABM sales playbook that provides the framework to develop an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy for your firm. This playbook will help train new salespeople, bring consistency in sales operations, and improve the ROI.

We have shortlisted the seven playbooks from our collection that you may need for your B2B business to scale the operations.

7 Playbooks to Scale the Growth of a B2B Business

1. Sales Playbook

This playbook will act as a living, breathing, working document for your sales department. It provides the framework to create a Sales Playbook for your firm. You can update your sales playbook anytime.

This 53-pages sales playbook framework contains seven critical elements for success in selling professional services. It will walk you through a process that breaks each element into its core components.

The Sales Playbook helps your B2B sales team to understand the sales process, know the potential clients, manage different stages of the sales cycle, handle objections, and achieve the right positioning and messaging. You can also use this sales playbook to establish effective metrics and expectations for sales teams.

You can set a systematic approach of how to sell across your organization using the collection of best practices and strategies using this sales playbook.

2. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Playbook

Account-based marketing is the highly targeted approach used by B2B firms. It has the highest ROI of all the sales strategies.

The Account-Based Marketing playbook provides the framework to develop an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy for your firm. It is a 71-pages playbook that will allow you to develop an ABM manual for your firm that can help you with the following:

Select target accounts for the account-based marketing
Determine market attractiveness and competitors assets
Score the key accounts based on the market attractiveness and competitors assets
Find the best data on your accounts
Divide the accounts into tiers for effective targeting

With the help of this sales playbook, your sales team can create highly personalized marketing campaigns based on a targeted account’s specific needs, and allow the sales team to establish deeper connections with current & future customers. This will result in a complete ABM strategy that reaps a better ROI.

3. Account Management Playbook

Account management is the process of managing the existing accounts of a business to nurture the relationship. It includes providing efficient customer support to the accounts to retain or increase the consumption of a product or service.

The Account Management playbook provides you with the framework to develop a standardized Account Management strategy for your professional services firm. It defines and illustrates the best way to nurture, develop, and grow your most important clients.

With the help of this playbook, your sales team or customer success team will be able to follow a thorough Account Management strategy to cultivate and grow relationships with the company’s most important clients.

The playbook framework can help you with the following:

Capturing, codifying, and institutionalizing the best practice behaviors of top performers
Help consolidate decentralized sales, marketing, and account management information in one place
Create scalable processes to drive predictable revenue and build stronger relationships.

4. Sales Segmentation

Sales segmentation is the process of dividing your target audience into approachable groups based on needs, interests, budgets, or other attributes. This allows a business to efficiently market to individual consumers or clients.

The Sales Segmentation playbook provides the framework to develop a systematic and proven approach for sales segmentation. Adopting an in-depth and analytical approach to sales segmentation helps B2B professional services firms flourish and dramatically increase close ratios and results.

This playbook will help you with the following:

Data-driven sales segmentation using a unique set of criteria/weighting
Provide tools to bring in detailed market data to provide you with a complete picture of your target audience
Scoring prospects based on the criteria to compare them against one another
Prioritize communication strategy according to the likelihood of the prospects to purchase your product or service

5. Designing and Executing Sales Campaigns

Most newly established professional services firms do not have a standardized and proven strategy to design and execute the sales campaign. This playbook will help professional service firms’ executives, directors, and staff to develop a systematic sales campaign strategy. In addition, it helps businesses to develop the degree of sophistication surrounding their sales campaigns.

This playbook can help you with the following:

Adopting a methodical approach to design and execute your sales campaigns
Identify the goals and objectives for your sales campaigns
Identifying the target audience
Explaining how to reach your leads
Strategies to nurture relationships, develop trust

A well-designed sales campaign can help you achieve your goals, whether it is increasing revenue, penetrating new markets, or strengthening a relationship with a key stakeholder.

6. Competitive Analysis

Competitor analysis is the process of critically assessing your company’s competitor. Most B2B companies use competitor analysis to research their competitors’ different marketing strategies to use the information to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses relative to each competitor.

The Competitive Analysis playbook provides a B2B firm with a framework to assess its key competitors. Understanding your competitive environment is crucial to developing the sales strategy of your B2B professional service firm.

The Competitive Analysis playbook will help you with the following:

Determine the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors within your market
Provide insights into barriers to prevent competition from entering your market
Inform strategies to provide you with a distinct advantage
Assess a potential acquisition
Highlight certain risks and provide critical information for your sales and marketing staff

7. Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy

A Go-To-Market strategy is a short and crisp plan of how a company will engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service. It can be focused on launching one specific product, service, expansion, or venture.

The Go-To-Market Strategy playbook helps you develop a powerful GTM strategy. This playbook will help you with the following:

Defining the purpose of your GTM strategy
Finding your target audience
Defining what you are selling
Creating strategy on how to position yourself to those targets through sales and marketing
The time to launch the product, service, expansion, or venture.

Why Company Expert?

Company Expert is a leading B2B growth services firm that helps professional services firms with B2B advisors, B2B tools such as B2B playbooks and proprietary software, and aB2B professional network.

We manage the largest network of B2B professional service leaders globally, with over 100,000+ members.

In addition, we have developed proprietary software to help grow and scale professional service firms. Check out our collection of B2B Sales Playbooks.

How Can a Winning B2B Sales Playbook Contribute to Your Business Growth?

February 14, 2022 by

Learn why an effective sales playbook is crucial to your B2B business

A salesperson cannot convert prospects into clients without an effective and efficient strategy. The strategy may vary for every business, but unfortunately, many business owners don’t understand it. They think that the sales team can work according to their skills, knowledge, experience, and expertise and deliver desired results. With this attitude, you might get expected results once or twice, but it will not benefit you in the longer run. It is the reason that even after investing in sales training, there is a performance gap between top salespeople and the rest.

The B2B sales playbook can help cover this gap. It introduces your salesperson to your business objective, winning techniques, and helps the sales team achieve their goals.

When you don’t have clear guidelines, every salesperson uses their own methods, which may affect the unity of the team. A playbook can eliminate this problem because it assists the sales team in developing sales processes and methods. But, even after so many benefits, it’s shocking to know that almost 50% of the sales teams don’t have a playbook. However, leading companies have this secret weapon called a business playbook, which increases the chance of winning each deal. So, read this blog post to learn more about the B2B sales playbook, its key elements, and to understand how it can contribute to the growth of your B2B business.

What is a B2B Sales Playbook?

A B2B sales playbook can be defined as the collection of resources and a framework for the sales team. It is not a simple sales sheet. Rather it includes essential information about the sales process, methodology, sales target, and more. It is the ultimate guide for a new salesperson and the roadmap for the B2B sales strategy of your business.

When you have a sales playbook for your business, it puts effective strategies and tools at the fingertips of your sales team. Earlier B2B sales playbooks used to be a collection of documents kept on a shelf of the training room. But, now, this is the digital era where millennials are entering the workforce. So, businesses need to enhance their playbooks by having them hosted on the cloud and handled internally.

Image courtesy of Highspot.

Essential Elements of a Successful B2B Sales Playbook

Though the sales playbook may vary for every business, it should have some necessary key elements. Having a sales playbook is crucial, but you should have a good sales playbook if you want to achieve your business objective. Here we have listed the objective of a sales playbook.

It should define the sale process methodology and explain how to execute them.
Identify the process maps to the customer’s buying process.
It must tell how to engage with prospective customers.
A good sales playbook helps accelerate sales effectiveness and accuracy.

Now, let’s have a look at the essential elements that you must integrate into your sales playbook.

Buying Process – It should include adequate information about the buying process and the behavior of qualified leads. In addition, it must help the salesperson identify the conditions or events that trigger consideration, evaluation, and purchase.
Customer Analysis – Understanding the pain points of the customers is helpful to the salesperson. A sales playbook must help understand the market, key trends, buyers, and the preferences of the customers. It should include the profile of an ideal customer.
Company Offer and Value Proposition – A salesperson must have enough knowledge about the company, its offers, and how it addresses the business issues. So include all these things in the playbook and explain how your services and products can make a difference to customers and in the market.
Competitive Analysis – Another important thing that playbooks should include is competitive analysis. Explain how your competitors position themselves, what strategies they are using, and how you can counter them.

Sales Methodology – One of the most important things of the sales playbook is sales methodology. Outline your sales process and the standard set of critical steps in the sale cycle. It should also explain how to analyze customers in the buying process, and anticipate what they might do next.

Image courtesy of Bain and Company.

Buyer Persona – This section explains an ideal prospect. It helps the salesperson understand who is a good fit for your product or service.
Best Practices – The sale playbook must include proven tips and techniques that a salesperson can use. Along with it, also mention when and how to use them.
Countering Objections – There are some common objections that sales might encounter. So, guide how to address and counter such objections.

How Can a B2B Sales Playbook Help Your Business?

If you want your sales team to take the right action at the right time with the right people, a sales playbook can make it possible. A B2B business should not hesitate to invest in a sales playbook because it can result in more leads becoming the customers. Let’s find out why every professional services firm should have a B2B sales playbook.

Successful Selling Techniques

Identifying the right sales techniques is a crucial task. There is no golden rule because a strategy that is working for others might not deliver the same results for your business. But, there is a way to outline effective strategies. You can closely analyze the sales techniques of your salesperson and note the effective and successful strategies. After that, you can include them in the business playbook and make them part of your business standard of operation. In this way, a B2B sales playbook can help your sales team with effective selling techniques.

Help Save Time to Make Sales

Most salespeople waste their time awaiting the consent of the sales manager, searching for proper material, and creating resources. Rather than making sales, they have to spend their most time on other tasks. You can eliminate this problem with the help of a playbook that includes ready-made questions, messages, and resources. So, you can use a playbook to save the time of your sales team so that they can perform better and faster.

Image courtesy of Interrupt Media.

Quick and Easy Training for New Team Members

Your business might have to invest a lot of time and money in the training of the new salespersons. It is important because you can’t afford any mistakes in the sales process because they have to deal with the clients directly. Often businesses fail to provide proper training, and the new members learn from the others and grab incorrect techniques. The B2B sales playbook streamlines the onboarding process and provides quick and easy training for new sales members.

Allow Sales And Marketing Teams to Work Collaboratively

Unity is strength, and you can make it possible in your firm by bringing the sales and marketing team together. Now, you must be wondering how it is possible. Most organizations struggle to find common ground between both departments. But, when you clearly mention the roles and responsibilities of both the team in the playbook, the problem gets solved. Both departments will work collaboratively towards a common objective which ultimately helps in the growth of the business.

According to a study, 50% of high-performance sales firms have highly monitored sales playbooks. Your B2B business should also have a playbook so that your sales team can perform its best.

The Bottom Line

Now you understand the importance of the B2B sales playbook for the performance of your sales team. A sales playbook guides your team to handle the various sales situations with ease and deliver expected results. It has a plethora of benefits, so it is worth it to invest in an effective playbook and let your sales team access it. Building a sales playbook is a time-consuming and complex task, so you can seek expert assistance for developing an effective sales playbook for your business.

You can also rely on the playbook products of Company Expert to accelerate the sales of your business. We can help you develop and execute an effective sales plan, sales model, and sales channel strategies. So, partner with us to transform your sales processes, talent, and tools for immediate and sustainable sales growth.