Creating Sales Playbooks for the Real World
There is definitely a lot of complexity to this issue of aligning your sales channels with your growth initiatives. The 4 core areas that must be connected are strategy, messaging, process, and leadership. We find that when organizations take a step back and say “How do I make this growth initiative practical?”, they can accelerate the implementation of their best ideas.
When we say practical, we mean playbooks. Or sales guides. Or whatever terminology fits your organization.
Take the strategy and clarify “where to go” through a playbook that clarifies accounts and opportunities to prioritize.
Take the process and build a playbook focused on “what to do,” a playbook that maps out the extended sales team’s roles and responsibilities, critical planning tools, and specific best practices.
Build a playbook for sales managers on how they will coach to your strategy, coach to your messaging, and coach to your processes.
As you build playbooks focused on your strategy, messaging, processes, and coaching disciplines, make it clear and simple. Take what could be very complex and boil it down to its essence for your sales channels. When organizations get it right and they build effective playbooks, they follow through with training on how to apply playbooks in the real world. Then, the leadership team proactively reinforces those playbooks and the associated content, practices, and tools. As a result, they get there faster.
