What is a Sales Playbook?

A sales playbook is your sales master plan that contains everything sales reps need to win a deal.

A sales playbook is a document that outlines your sales process and strategies, target buyer personas, call scripts, email templates, sequences, and contact patterns, as well as buyer requirements. The playbook details exactly what should be accomplished on discovery, qualification, and demos or how to handle competitors, specific objections, and negotiations.

Sales playbooks provide several benefits and advantages for sales teams. They help new reps onboard and ramp quicker, make existing reps more productive and effective, and it provides a library for sales best practices.

The average tenure of a sales rep is only 1.5 years and with a typical ramp time of 3 months. That means that they only produce at their full capacity for approximately one year. A sales playbook helps new hires ramp faster so sales teams get more ROI on their new hire.

Sales playbooks also provide a single source for all of your winning sales content, scripts, and templates that are easily accessible and organized. This means that even your most successful reps will become more productive and effective since they won’t have to spend time searching for the right message to use and will have central access to winning sales content.

There are seven elements that every successful sales playbook has. They are:

1. Buyer personas

Buyer persons give your reps the who, what, and why behind their prospects.

2. Messaging

One of the most important pieces of your sales playbook is messaging, this helps reps stay consistent with your company’s value proposition, culture, and tone.

3. Activity metrics

Set expectations on exactly how many calls, emails, messages, and meetings should be set each day. Also, include how they can achieve it.

4. Sales technology

Your sales playbook should include a list of every tool in your sales stack, what it should be used for, and how.

5. Sales plays

What sales sequences to use, how to make the perfect handoff, what content to send, how to address specific competitors, how to handle pricing negotiations, and so on.

6. Service Level Agreements

Your sales playbook should also include agreements between the sales team and leadership about response times, lead follow up, and so on.

7. The role of marketing

How sales should interact with and leverage marketing