Professional Documents
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(Shared) Sales Playbook
(Shared) Sales Playbook
(Shared) Sales Playbook
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Implement a systemic approach to selling your software and win more deals repeatedly with a Saas sales
playbook.
A framework to create a Saas sales playbook that sales reps will use
If your salespeople are constantly trying different sales methods with customers, they miss out on the
opportunity to become experts at selling your software and close more deals faster. Chances are they might be
confused regarding next steps, presenting the right content at the right time, or wasting time with bad
prospects.
In that case, all you might need is a sales playbook. A sales playbook is a key resource describing
salespeople’s roles and knowledge within your organization. It contains all the information they need to know
to perfect their skills and use the right sales methodology to sell your software.
The objective of a sales playbook is to implement a systemic approach to selling your software and close
more deals faster. When sales processes are clearly defined and documented, your organization can get a
grasp of the most effective methods to sell.
1. Maximize sales efficiency with a sales framework and centralized content to make their job easier.
2. Train new hires with a smoother onboarding and reduces ramp-up time.
3. Ensure consistency across the sales team continuously improve sales practices.
When putting together your sales playbook, always keep in mind your audience and their personal objectives.
Explain the value sales reps will get out of it to keep them engaged and interested. Include other useful
elements such as the feedback and update processes.
Elevator pitch
If people had to remember only one thing about your software or your company, what would it be? Your
elevator pitch should answer this question. It’s a short statement explaining who you are, what you do and why
you are needed.
Everything in your playbook should be built on this concise summary of your software benefits. Remember to
keep it short, straight to the point and exciting.
Tackling customer challenges and goals early on in the playbook will help sales develop empathy towards
customers and prospects. Educate them about the common challenges faced by your typical client so they
develop a mindset that places customer challenges at the heart of their approach.
Answer questions such as: what does success look like for your customers? What metrics are they interested
in?
Software overview
In this section, you want to expose the facts that back up your elevator pitch. The software overview should
provide enough detailed information for sales to position your product accurately to potential users. However,
bear in mind that a sales playbook is not a product manual and should remain a sales guide.
You want this to be specific enough to resonate with the customers but not overwhelmingly technical. Focus
only on the most valuable aspects of your software to find the right balance of information.
You can also include key statistics and figures that support your pitch.
Customer outcomes
This is where your customers’ objectives and software capabilities meet to create value. You want to
demonstrate how customers’ will achieve their personal goals using your solution.
Think about the two kinds of outcomes an organization gets from using your solution. Direct outcomes are the
direct positive effect of your software on daily operations. For example, if you’re editing a payroll software, the
HR department probably saves time creating, reviewing, and sending payslips to employees.
On the other hand, the business outcome for the full organization is cost-saving and better quality assurance
on accounting tasks.
You should be able to respond to every customer challenges and objectives with features of your product.
What are your ideal customer qualification criteria and motivators? What industry and size of company are you
targeting?
The objective is not only to be able to identify a good prospect, but also to spot and take out bad customer
profiles. Sales reps need to be realistic about who the ready buyers are, and fully prepared to qualify out
prospects that don’t match your target.
Buyer profiles
Software end-users and buyers -aka decision-makers- have distinct motivations. They should therefore be
approached in different ways. There is a range of buyer profiles across organizations and departments.
Mapping out buyer profiles just like you would do with customer profiles will help position your product to
decision-makers.
We have covered this topic in-depth in a recent article: Overcome the 3 biggest challenges of selling software.
Handling objections
Customer objections are unavoidable in sales discussions. A prospect raising objections is simply expressing
concerns about whether your software is a good fit for them. Sales reps should always acknowledge
objections and learn how to resolve them effectively. Objections should be seen as a good opportunity to
further qualify the customer and clarify misconceptions about your solution.
In your sales playbook, list common objections that are raised frequently along with the best way to handle
them. You can structure the objections and their answers according to the different stages of your sales
process.
For best strategies to handle objections, look into the BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) or LAER (Listen,
Acknowledge, Explore, Respond) frameworks.
Because every sales organization is different, we would like to propose 3 frameworks to choose from when
structuring your sales playbook.
1. What to know
This section contains information about your organization, product, service, persona, sales process, and
methodologies.
2. What to do
Here, you want to lay out the steps, strategies, and tactics sales reps should take to engage clients before,
during, and after sales conversations.
3. What to say
Outline your core messaging, storyline, questions, and conversation talk tracks.
4. What to show
Centralize all the sales collaterals that sales can share with customers such as videos, whiteboard sessions,
sales decks, demos.
This is a great option to get started with your first sales playbook. However, the limit of this model is the lack of
interconnectivity between the different elements. For that reason, you might want to look into the following
framework.
Most companies have a large amount of content created by the marketing team, but disconnected from the
sales world. This is a good way for these resources to be used in sales conversations.
3. Persona, Pain, Feature, Content
This last framework is probably our favorite since it’s entirely customer-focused. It clearly displays what
content and features to rely on for every customer pain point.
If you’d like to implement this framework, start with your 3 most common buyer profiles.
Source: Hubspot
At Salescode, we are experts in developing and structuring sales strategies that drive results. Contact us if
you’re looking for a partner to help you generate more sales for your software.