PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales
managers and WIN MORE DEALS!
D O N A L DA LY
CEO AND FOUNDER OF THE TAS GROUP
AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLER ACCOUNT PLANNING IN SALESFORCE
2
2
INTRODUCTION
The implementation of a sales playbook can be one of the
most impactful initiatives for any sales organization. There are
two reasons for this tremendous ROI.
First, by following some simple guidelines, it can be a
remarkably easy initiative to implement, and second, research
shows that this results in 33% additional revenue.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
3
In today’s flattened world, competitive pressures mount,
market cycles shorten, buyers are more informed, and
sales leaders and their teams are subject to more scrutiny,
stress and anxiety than ever before.
In the last 5 years the world has experienced economic
turmoil, financial meltdown, and the explosive rise of social
media. The screw has been tightened a few turns on the
sales role, businesses have been turned upside down, and
constant change is the new constant.
At the same time, tremendous opportunities have
emerged for sales organizations that can nail their go-tomarket strategies. Sales playbooks can be the catalyst to
remarkable improvement in sales velocity.
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4
CONTENTS
THE 12 ELEMENTS OF A GREAT SALES PLAYBOOK
ONE
Repeatable Winning Sales Processes
6
TWO
Customized to the Buying Cycle
9
THREE
Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage
12
FOUR
Industry Sales Process Templates
14
FIVE
Many Simple and Complex Processes
17
SIX
Process Benchmarks and Insight
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
20
5
CRM
SEVEN
Team Visibility for the Sales Manager
24
EIGHT
Integrates with CRM System
27
NINE
Informs Sales Forecast Visibility
30
TEN
Motivational and Visual
34
ELEVEN
Social and Collaborative
38
TWELVE
Mobile and Cloud
41
DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK
45
ABOUT THE TAS GROUP
51
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
52
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6
ONE
Repeatable Winning Sales Processes
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
7
REPEATABLE
WINNING
SALES PROCESSES
THE KEY WORD HERE IS ‘REPEATABLE’
When everyone performs the same winning behaviors all of
the time, the sales team can achieve remarkable sales velocity.
A winning sales process is a sequence of best practices from
your top performers (or learned from external observation)
that ensures your salespeople are repeating the actions that
result in success.
A repeatable sales process provides your teams with a
defined, systematic and measurable way to sell, and makes
sure every salesperson knows the buying signs that occur
when you are winning, or the activities that will ensure they
succeed.
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8
THERE IS A COMMON LANGUAGE
THAT IS UNDERSTOOD
The result is an increase in productivity, a shorter sales cycle,
quicker on-boarding for new salespeople and more wins for
the sales team overall.
When everyone adopts the same sales process, there is a
common language that is understood, not just by sales, but
by the whole organization. Recent research shows that while
only 60% of sales teams have a sales process that is well
defined, and well executed – those who do are 33% more
likely to be High Performers.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
9
TWO
Customized to the Buying Cycle
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10
CUSTOMIZED TO
THE BUYING CYCLE
TWITTER, LINKEDIN AND OTHER SOCIAL
NETWORKS... ‘THE DEVIL YOU KNOW’
Customers buy in lots of different ways; some purchases
are guided by a single decision maker, while in other cases
there can be a large buying committee. Some issue RFPs,
others invite recognized suppliers to discuss their issues,
an increasing number learn through Social Networks networking with their peers and your competitors on Twitter,
LinkedIn and other social channels - and just a few remain
with the incumbent supplier, trading ‘the devil you know’ for
potentially more advanced or competitive solutions.
In every case, customers know every step they want to take
in the buying cycle. They have a business problem to solve,
alternatives to consider, decision criteria they deem critical,
and a procurement process that is unlikely to be overturned.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
11
In short, they have a detailed project plan, with hurdles and
obstacles you have to scale. So, it makes sense to ensure that
your selling activities are fully aligned with your customer’s
buying activities.
Unless you visualize the journey the customer wants to take,
you won’t be with them when they reach their destination. The
job of today’s sales professional is to help the customer buy,
not to sell to them. Understand your customer’s plan and their
approach.
Once you do, you can align your sales cycle, and plot your way
to success.
DID YOU KNOW?
Win rate exceeds
50% for two-thirds of
companies that have a
defined sales process.
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12
THREE
Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
13
SALES TOOLS
IN CONTEXT AT
EACH STAGE
A B2B SALE IS NOT A SINGLE EVENT
At each stage of the buying process, salespeople need to
employ the right tools at the right time to advance the sales
to the next stage in the process. A B2B sale is not a single
event. In fact it is a collection of micro-sales events, each
crafted to move closer to the eventual goal – closing the deal.
Salespeople are frequently faced with a myriad of sales tools
and overwhelmed by a torrent of information.
Salespeople are busy and often don’t know which tool they
need, where to find it or how to use it at the specific point in
the micro-sale. Integrating sales tools into the playbook as
part of the sales process is the solution.
It means sellers can easily and quickly self-serve, get what
they need, when they need it to advance the sale. Not only
will that help increase their win rate and drive sales velocity,
but it will also drive higher usage and the right outcome at the
right time.
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14
FOUR
Industry Sales Process Templates
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
15
INDUSTRY
SALES PROCESS
TEMPLATES
LEVERAGING WHAT HAS WORKED BEFORE
It is widely accepted that tailoring your sales process to the
specific needs of an industry will increase your chances for
success. It makes sense to incorporate the best practices that
are specifically applicable to your target market.
As you build your playbook, look for a partner who can
bring expertise for your industry, ideally based on empirical
evidence, gathered from others who are active in your market.
Leveraging what has worked before in your industry will give
you an advantage.
Your playbook templates should be cognizant of industry
differences. If you sell to multi-market segments, then the
activities of your sales team should reflect that.
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16
PROVIDE A GO-TO LOCATION
FOR SALESPEOPLE
The playbook(s) must provide a go-to location for
salespeople to quickly access the research and knowledge
they need to bring pertinent insight to the sales, based on
proven industry-specific templates.
That way, the sales team will win more deals. Third party
industry sales templates are readily available from suppliers
who have been tracking and analyzing millions of sales cycles.
That is the catalyst you need to
get started.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
17
FIVE
Many Simple and Complex Processes
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18
MANY SIMPLE
AND COMPLEX
PROCESSES
NOT ALL SALES TRAVEL AT THE SAME SPEED
One playbook or sales process does not fit all. Sometimes
you are pursuing a brand new customer or a very large deal
that demands a complex and sophisticated set of ‘plays’ to
win the deal. In other cases, the transaction might be quick,
one that suggests a different rhythm.
It is likely that not all sales in your organization travel at the
same speed. Inside sales, field sales, renewal, maintenance,
add-on deals, large company pursuits, small company pursuits,
complex solution sales, simple product sales, can each be
accommodated within a well designed playbook using a
common language for the team, but intelligently presenting
the right steps, and just the right steps, for each
transaction type.
In short, the sales processes within playbooks should support
the type of sales process you are executing. This ensures you
have the right activities and outcomes for the appropriate
buying process.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
19
Salespeople are expending the right level of effort,
commensurate with the return from the sales and the
complexity of the situation. You have the right stage
durations for accurate forecasts and can manage performance
based on the types of deals your teams are working.
All of this combined means that the salesperson is getting
optimum benefit from the time they spend in the sales
process.
Your sales playbook should have the requisite intelligence to
support that automatically and serve up the right playbook at
the right time.
DID YOU KNOW?
Only 33% of sellers
made quota in their
last reporting period.
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20
SIX
Process Benchmarks and Insight
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
21
PROCESS
BENCHMARKS
AND INSIGHT
ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE BUILT IN A
CAPABILITY THAT GUIDES YOU TO PROGRESS
Benchmarking delivers many advantages for companies
looking to improve the performance of their sales
organization. Your playbook must capture those benefits,
learn from them, and uncover insights that help you to drive
your sales velocity. When deploying a playbook, ensure that
you have built in a capability that guides you to progress
through these stages of evolution for your sales team.
Record a current-state assessment that goes beyond the
typical lagging indicators of win-rate, quota achievement,
deal size, or market penetration. You should be looking for
measures of early qualification, the velocity through each
stage of the sales cycle, and indicators of where deals are
most commonly getting stalled or lost.
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22
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS THE THIRD MAJOR
ADVANTAGE YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR
Having achieved a comprehensive assessment of the current–
state, a company can then develop a foundation for sales
productivity improvements that are truly transformative. You
know where you are starting from, and you see what you
have to change. Now you can easily identify and prioritize
opportunities for improvement.
Continuous improvement is the third major advantage you
should be looking for as you use your playbook as the source
of benchmarking for your team. The more sales cycles you
go through, the smarter your playbook gets. Don’t rely on
playbooks that don’t support you in gaining this insight.
A common understanding of the sales engine is one of the
most impactful benefits of the benchmarking process.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
23
EVERYONE INVOLVED GAINS A SHARED
UNDERSTANDING OF THE CURRENT STATE
Everyone involved gains a shared understanding of the
current state; and a vision of the journey upon which
the enterprise must embark, and that increases overall
productivity.
When a sales playbook incorporates a benchmarking process
that can dig into an informed knowledge source, and apply
that knowledge in the context of the company’s current state,
true value transfers to the organization and quantifiable value
emerges.
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24
SEVEN
Team Visibility for the Sales Manager
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
25
TEAM VISIBILITY
FOR THE SALES
MANAGER
EVERY SALES MANAGER
NEEDS READILY AVAILABLE VISIBILITY
Being a front-line sales manager is one of the hardest jobs
in sales. It is also the critical link in sales. Unless the sales
manager has all the tools he or she needs to easily manage
the business, the whole performance of the sales organization
suffers.
In a recent survey, sales managers report that ‘Sales Process
Not Being Followed’ is their number one frustration.
Every sales manager needs visibility into the sales process
activities of their team and both the absolute and relative
behavior and performance of each salesperson on the team.
If the sales organization is adopting a sales playbook to
increase sales velocity, then it must provide an easy-to-use
tool to enable the sales manager to monitor the team’s
application of the plays, and the consequent impact on
revenue performance.
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26
LEVERAGE YOUR PLAYBOOK
The playbook must provide the sales manager with a view
across her entire team’s work. What are the critical deals
being worked on by the team? Where is each deal? Where
should we be focused? These are all answers that should be
informed by a sales manager’s view of the operation of her
team’s sales playbook.
It is also critically important that the sales playbook system
that you deploy is quick and easy to use. Sales managers are
really very busy. You need to provide them with the ‘Easy
Button’.
Sales playbooks are often designed just with the salesperson
in mind. Remember that the sales manager is the critical link.
If you can leverage your playbook initiative to increase her
visibility into the sales team, you will strengthen that link and
improve your return.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
27
CRM
EIGHT
Integrates with your CRM System
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28
INTEGRATES
WITH YOUR
CRM
CRM SYSTEM
YOUR PLAYBOOK SHOULD BE WHERE YOUR
OPPORTUNITY DATA IS HELD
This one should be a ‘no-brainer’. Let’s say you use Salesforce
as your CRM. If that is the case, you are already asking
your sales team to enter their opportunity information into
Salesforce. If that is where your opportunity information is
held, then that is where your playbook
should be.
It must integrate tightly with your CRM system so when a
salesperson works with an opportunity, the playbook will
always be present. That way the playbook (if it is smart
enough) can react to the attributes of the opportunity, like the
size of the deal, or the products included in the opportunity
record to present the right playbook for that opportunity.
But not all integrations are created equal. If you are on
Salesforce, then the playbook will benefit immensely if it’s
‘native’ on the Salesforce Platform.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
29
Unlike other solutions that are linked to Salesforce, or just
lightly integrated, this means that your data resides in the
Salesforce Cloud, with the same security as Salesforce, the
same performance as Salesforce, and all of the data captured
within the playbook is inherently accessible to Salesforce
reports, dashboards, and other applications.
When your playbook is native, you do not have to worry about
the security of a third party cloud, the data transfer issues
that occur with non-native solutions, or the reliability of a third
party hosting infrastructure.
Complete integration with your CRM delivers the optimum
experience for the salesperson, and provides sales managers
with greater flexibility on how they view the data in the
context of the rest of the business.
It is important.
DID YOU KNOW?
When sales methodology
and playbooks are
integrated with CRM,
salespeople have higher
quota achievement.
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30
NINE
Informs Sales Forecast Visibility
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
31
INFORMS SALES
FORECAST
VISIBILITY
THERE CAN BE A VERY
STRONG CASUAL CONNECTION
Salespeople spend about 2.5 hours each week on sales
forecasting, and for most companies, the accuracy of sales
forecasts leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, based on recent
research, companies that do not define and effectively
execute a sales process have inaccurate sales forecasts 71%
of the time! When success or failure is usually measured in
margins far less than 25%, these forecasts are truly worthless.
The good news though is that there can be a very strong
causal connection between sales process and forecast
accuracy. In that same research study, it emerged that
companies that did define and execute their sales process well
reduced the level of inaccuracy to 33%.
That is a 200% increase in sales forecast accuracy.
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32
DOES THE SALES PLAYBOOK
INCORPORATE INTELLIGENCE?
To maximize the impact of your sales playbook on the
accuracy of your sales forecast, there are two things to
consider.
Does the sales playbook incorporate intelligence that
objectively monitors the close date of the sale? If you have
built in the sales best practices, and your sales playbook
can learn about the rhythm of your business, then it should
be smart enough to help predict the close date of the
opportunity, and identify for the salesperson the difference
between their opinion of when the deal will close, and a
projected close date based on past behavior of winning sales
cycles.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
33
DOES THE SALES PLAYBOOK
PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO VULNERABILITIES?
Does the sales playbook provide the sales manager with
insight into deal vulnerabilities and risks in the forecast? It
should be able to answer these very important questions:
What’s in the forecast? Are any of the salespeople counting
on unusually large deals to make the quarter? Are all deals
being worked? What’s closed? What’s projected? Which deals
are moving quickly, and where are the opportunities that are
stalled?
Your sales playbook should help you to give those 2.5 hours
back to the salesperson, improve the accuracy of the forecast
for each opportunity, and provide the sales manager with
insight into the factors that will help them understand what
they need to do to make or exceed the quota for the team.
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34
TEN
Motivational and Visual
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
35
MOTIVATIONAL
AND VISUAL
SALESPEOPLE ARE AS MOTIVATED BY FEEDBACK
AND PROGRESS AS THEY ARE BY WINNING DEALS
There are only two reasons why an individual does not
complete a task. Either they do not have the skills, knowledge
or competence to complete it, or they are not motivated
enough to do it. Think about that – these are the only two
reasons. Your sales playbook should improve competence
and increase motivation.
The competence piece is easily understood. To achieve
competence you need to have the core knowledge, the skills
to execute on the knowledge, and a clearly defined path to
success. If you have followed the best practices set out above,
you can build this piece into your playbook.
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36
COMPENSATION IS NOT THE
PRIMARY MOTIVATOR
Motivation is a little more challenging. A study on “What
Motivates Salespeople” shows that, perhaps surprisingly for
some, compensation is not the primary motivator. ‘Making
Progress or Winning’ is ranked by salespeople as the main
reason they get up in the morning. In fact, we can break down
the motivational conundrum into three pieces: Incentive,
Indicators of Progress, and Direction.
To entice adoption of the sales playbook (rather than force
compliance) your sales playbook needs to provide true value
for the salesperson – resolve that reward/effort equation, so
that the salesperson gets more back from the playbook than
they put into it. It must be highly visual, and provide obvious
cues to the next step, recognition of progress, and include
elements of gamification to encourage participation.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
37
THEY CAN’T WIN A DEAL EVERYDAY,
BUT THEY CAN MAKE PROGRESS
Salespeople are as motivated by feedback and progress as
they are by winning deals – possibly because they probably
can’t win a deal everyday, but they can make progress.
Playbooks should empower the salesperson not only through
knowledge and intelligence, but also through live metrics
which provide real progress indicators in response to a
salesperson’s activities and their performance in relation to
their peers. Then you will deliver both competence and
motivation – and your results will skyrocket.
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38
ELEVEN
Social and Collaborative
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
39
SOCIAL AND
COLLABORATIVE
LEADING SALES PLAYBOOKS HELP BY LETTING
EVERYONE ‘FOLLOW’ THE PLAYS
As B2B companies rely more heavily on social collaboration
tools, some of the biggest winners are going to be
salespeople. They know that the Social Universe is a great
place to listen and learn. When you follow your customers on
Twitter, read their blogs, or study their LinkedIn profiles, you
can quickly get a sense of who they are.
The winning salespeople are using online social platforms
to increase productivity by understanding and influencing
customer relationships, creating new channels for research,
and increasing responsiveness to customers.
Salespeople who are the leaders in their organization
are using social tools such as Chatter in Salesforce to
improve collaboration in their own sales teams. Leading
sales playbooks help by letting everyone ‘follow’ the plays,
contribute to the conversation, and collaborate on the deal.
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40
THE B2B WORLD IS CONSTANTLY BECOMING
MORE SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE
They promote an environment where salespeople can lead
their own community of contributors to their deal in an open
and collaborative way.
The B2B world is constantly becoming more social and
collaborative and you should ensure that your sales playbook
accommodates this advancement.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
41
TWELVE
Mobile and Cloud
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42
MOBILE
AND CLOUD
THE ADVANCEMENTS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
As twin engines of growth, the inexorable rise of mobile
device ownership and the advancement of cloud computing
are the most significant changes in the business landscape
that any of us has witnessed in our lifetimes.
The facts are pretty amazing. The mobile industry has scaled
dramatically over the last decade. At the end of 2013, there
were 3.4 billion unique subscribers in the world. Mobile is
not an option anymore. Sales people live on their phones.
Sales calls typically happen ‘on the road’ and the phone is the
device that we all choose to use.
The smartphone has become an extension of the sales
person’s armory. It is usually the first thing they check when
the plane lands. It is the last thing they check before they
walk into a meeting and the first thing they check when they
walk out.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
43
TIME IS PRECIOUS
If the sales playbook you implement is not mobile, then it will
not be available to the salesperson for a large portion of their
working week.
Time is precious, and the salesperson’s time is incredibly
precious, both to them and to the sales organization looking
to maximize the performance of their key quota-bearers.
Since so much of a salesperson’s time is spent moving
between A and B and back again, they should be equipped
with the capability to connect to their sales playbook at any
time, wherever they are.
Apps on your mobile device are at the end of the spokes
attached to the hub in the cloud. The total size of the Cloud
Computing Industry in 2014 is estimated to be $150 Billion
as compared to $46 Billion in 2008 and the overall Cloud
Computing growth rate is 5 times more than the IT growth
rate globally. This shift is empowering for salespeople on the
road. For business strategists, marketers, sellers and buyers
alike, mobile and cloud are becoming the twin axes around
which business revolves – and your sales playbook needs
to benefit from the tremendous advantages they can bring.
When your sales playbook is hosted in the cloud your team
can collaborate more easily and integrate more seamlessly
with other cloud based applications.
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44
MOBILE AND CLOUD ARE BECOMING THE TWIN AXES
In our business we use salesforce.com as our CRM, Concur
to manage travel expenses and Box for enterprise document
storage, all in the cloud on our phones, like ourselves at The
TAS Group, each of these companies (Salesforce, Box and
Concur) uses Dealmaker to enhance sales effectiveness, in the
cloud and on their phones. It just seems to be the smartest
thing to do.
DID YOU KNOW?
Survey of American Adults:
90% have a cell phone
58% have a smartphone
32% own an e-reader
42% own a tablet computer
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
45
DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK
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46
Now that you understand the 12 elements of a great sales
playbook, it’s time to put them into action. We recommend
using Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook, a software app that
delivers your sales playbook to each member of your sales
team, right within Salesforce CRM. The following pages
highlight some of the benefits of Dealmaker Smart
Sales Playbook.
To watch a video of Dealmaker in action, go to
www.thetasgroup.com.
Increase sales velocity for your team by applying repeatable
winning sales playbooks based on intelligent industry
templates and smart sales tools. Increase visibility into team
performance and manage sales forecast and pipeline risk.
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
DEALMAKER Smart Sales Playbook adds intelligence to each sale
47
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Aligns your selling activities to your buyer’s buying activities
48
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
Increases visibility into the entire team’s deals for more accurate forecasts
49
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With quick and easy drill-down in the deals for each team member
50
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook
51
ABOUT THE TAS GROUP
We provide smart sales transformation in the cloud and your
mobile device. Our customers are progressive sales
organizations that maximize revenue in key accounts,
increase win rate and uncover sales vulnerabilities. Our
methodology and sales insight apps are smart, context aware,
and knowledge based, making it easy for sellers, their
managers and sales executives to accelerate revenue growth
- predictably.
The Dealmaker Smart Sales Transformation application is
built on the Salesforce1 Platform for extending the Salesforce
Sales Cloud. Customers include: Akamai Technologies, BMC,
BT, HP, Virgin Media Business, Salesforce and more.
For more information,
visit www.thetasgroup.com
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of Amazon #1 Bestseller Account Planning in
Salesforce, Donal Daly is CEO
and Founder of (his fifth
global business enterprise)
The TAS Group, the global
leader in Smart Sales
Transformation.
Combining his expertise in enterprise software applications,
artificial intelligence, and sales methodology, he continues to
revolutionize the sales effectiveness industry. Feel free to
download The TAS Group's latest publication, Battling the
57%: Deconstructing the Buyer Seller Dance.
Follow Donal’s Blog at www.dealmaker365.com
Send your comments and feedback to:
[email protected]
12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook