I was recently features on mark Carter’s Idea Climbing Podcast, where we spent 25 minutes talking sales and marketing playbooks.
So many companies don’t have a sales plan or a strategy to accelerate business growth. Unsurprisingly, lagging performance from a business is usually related to the fact that they don’t have a plan.
The sales playbook is a companion to the sales plan.
While the sales plan is all about the numbers, the sales playbook is an actionable tool that contains all of the best practices that a company is already doing, or best practices that their successful competitors are doing that they want to emulate within their own company.
Only about 40% of companies – probably less – have a sales playbook.
Why? Because they don’t know how to get started creating one and they don’t make the time to learn.
What Goes into a Sales Playbook?
The first element that needs to be in your sales playbook is the Business Model Canvas. In short, it’s one page that outlines everything about the business that you need to know.
Another important element is an analysis of your competitors. What are they doing? What do their processes look like?
Then you need to have a follow up process that helps you gain new clients and grow your business.
Once you have your sales playbook outlined, you can combine it with your marketing campaigns to create a sales and marketing playbook.
In this episode, we also discuss:
What a defined sales process is and how to create yours.
The similarities and differences between your sales and marketing efforts.
The importance of an assessment of your sales and marketing efforts at least once a year.
How to perform your own sales and marketing assessment.