Sales playbooks are the most basic building block for any high-performing sales organization.
That’s the view of Phil Charland. He’s learned the critical role of sales playbooks in more than a decade as a CRO and VP Sales leader at companies including SchoolStatus, Ascend Learning, Renaissance Learning and Edmentum.
Phil gives four reasons shared playbooks are essential to sales success.
1. Playbooks Capture Team Best Practices
Sales playbooks are similar to the game plans used by athletic teams.
Just as a sports team wouldn’t step onto the field without a strategy, sales teams need a playbook to guide their efforts.
Playbooks capture the best practices, activities, and behaviors that have proven effective for acquiring new customers and expanding relationships with existing ones.
Importantly, playbooks are not static. As markets and customer needs change, playbooks are the easiest way to regularly incorporate new insights and strategies across a whole team.
2. Building Consistency Across the Team
A critical benefit of sales playbooks is their ability to create consistency. Playbooks are not scripts, every team member will find their own style and voice in running the plays.
When everyone is following the same structure and guidelines, it becomes easier to drive top performance. Playbooks provide clear expectations and guidelines for each sales role.
Without playbooks, individual salespeople are left to figure things out on their own, leading to inconsistency in execution and performance.
3. Skills Development and Reinforcement
Sales training is the beginning, not the end for sales skills development. Sales teams that build skills continuously through practice, coaching, and refinement see 15% to 20% average improvement with their middle of the pack performers.
Playbooks enable front-line sales to continuous skills development by more easily identifying skill gaps and areas for improvement at both the individual and team levels.
While each salesperson often has unique areas to develop, there are often common skill deficiencies that impact the entire team.
4. Accelerating Ramp Time for New Hires
Playbooks play a pivotal role in reducing ramp time for new hires. As sales organizations scale and bring in new team members, onboarding can be a lengthy process without clear direction.
A structured playbook serves as a roadmap for new hires, outlining exactly what is expected and how to deliver results. This clarity significantly shortens the learning curve, allowing new team members to become productive about 40% faster on average. As a result, the entire team benefits from improved performance and faster integration of new talent.
Sales playbooks are the foundation for success. They drive consistency, promote continuous skills development and speed up onboarding, They are living tools that keep teams competitive.