In today's B2B sales environment, where demand is neutral and even negative, with four out of every five deals getting lost in the process and 17% of sellers delivering 83% of the revenue, the need to improve sales effectiveness has never been more acute. The transition from growth at all costs to profitable growth in the SaaS industry underscores this urgency to do more with less.

Whilst sales playbooks have been used for decades as an integral component of a sales enablement strategy many remain unused and contribute to a poor reputation for this strategic document, This guide outlines a clear, actionable approach that directly impacts sales metrics. By the end, you will understand how to systematically improve your team's performance by crafting a playbook that is integrated seamlessly into sales workflow and is more suited to the increasing complexity of today's B2B buying process.

We go beyond conventional tips — it's a practitioner's blueprint in the modern B2B landscape, providing clarity on what constitutes an effective B2B sales playbook from content and structure to creation, integration, adoption, and measurement and how Generative AI plays a transformative role.

The term sales playbook is used to describe a collection of best practice sales activities. For B2B, it applies to tactics such as how to perform a specific instage sales activity within a channel to broader strategic motions covering all go to market activities across marketing, sales and service.

If you ask 10 different people what a B2B sales playbook is you’ll get 11 answers. There is no standard much like there’s no standard in a sales strategy. But there is best practice structure, content, sales workflow integration and measurement. 

Though definitions vary, the essence of a B2B sales playbook is its role as a strategic tool that translates sales strategy into actionable steps, directly influencing both lead and lag sales indicators.

If we agree the sole purpose is to activate the sales strategy, improving sales effectiveness becomes the goal. Improving sales effectiveness is a function of improving the behaviours and skills which create the sales competencies which then go on to improve sales outcomes.

The playbook doesn’t do this in isolation but it does provide the base asset sellers use and managers coach to that reinforces deal winning attributes to advance deals to close.

From startup to enterprise, the role of a B2B sales playbook evolves. Initially, providing a framework for consolidating and standardising what's working and what should be happening. As the company grows, it becomes crucial for scaling effective practices and ensuring all team members, from new starters to seasoned sellers, execute the competencies that make it more likely to advance a deal.

Stages of Growth and the Role of the Playbook

Early Growth - Initially, the playbook provides a foundational framework based on what has worked and what hasn’t in a sales process, viewed through the buyer's lens. It's about starting to formalise the sales process and method to create consistency and a rapid succession feedback loop.

Scaling Up - As the company expands, the playbook supports the replication of successful deal winning practices across more sellers. Creating repeatability of how sellers are executing provides the platform to scale.

Grown Ups - The playbook ensures consistency and refines sales practices across a broader product suite and into more markets.

Primary reasons to create a B2B sales playbook

1. Achieve Revenue Goals: Defined by each growth stage, ensuring strategic alignment with broader business objectives.

2. Improve Sales KPIs: Win rates, deal velocity, instage conversion rates, sales cycle length and transaction values.

3. Boost Sales Effectiveness and Productivity: Improve the overall efficiency and output of the sales team.

4. Improve Strategic Sales Skills: Focuses on skills such as creating need and urgency, discovery, active listening, directing group meetings, building champions, and achieving consensus.

5. Scale Sales Operations: Creating a platform to replicate deal-winning practices and scale sales operations.

Reactive reasons to create B2B sales playbook

1. Missing Sales Targets: When the numbers are off, indicating a disconnect in sales competencies, lack of alignment to the sales process, sales method and GTM.

2. Levelling Up Sellers: Pareto’s law exists where few sellers are delivering the majority of the number. This requires an approach to level up B&C sellers.

3. Ineffective Playbook or Tech: When existing tools do not yield the desired impact.

4. New Strategies or Markets: Introducing a new GTM, messaging, or sales method, especially when moving from mid-market into enterprise or breaking into new territories.

5. Operational Strain: Reducing the burden on overstretched sales managers.

6. Shift in Selling Focus: Moving from product-centric to value or problem-centric sales approaches.

7. Leadership Changes: A new revenue leader joins and there's either no playbook or the current version is inadequate.

A good playbook is more than a document, it's a dynamic tool that evolves with your business, improving not only sales KPIs but also continuous improvement in sales practices. A good playbook is designed to achieve specific outcomes such as increasing revenue, enhancing sales effectiveness, boosting seller productivity, and reducing the time it takes for new starters to close their first deal. When these targets are met, the playbook proves its value.

The Impact of Sales Playbooks

• Increased Win Rates: Organisations using well-crafted playbooks report a 20% increase in win rates (SiriusDecisions).
• Meeting Sales Quotas: Playbooks are associated with a 73% likelihood of meeting sales quotas, compared to those without (Forrester Research).
• Larger Deal Sizes: With the use of a sales playbook, companies see a 27% increase in average deal size (Bridge Group).
• Adoption Among Top Performers: 67% of top-performing sales organisations employ a sales playbook (CSO Insights).
• Boost in Sales Productivity: Companies have observed a 25% increase in sales productivity with the implementation of a sales playbook (AA-ISP).

Industry Comparisons

• Adoption Rates: 42% of best-in-class companies use sales playbooks versus just 14% of laggard firms. This strategic tool contributes to better quota attainment, higher customer retention, and increased lead conversion rates (Aberdeen Group).
• Defined Sales Processes: Companies with well-defined sales processes—central to effective playbooks—are 33% more likely to be high performers, with over two-thirds winning more than 50% of their sales opportunities (Salesforce via The TAS Group).
• Sales Target Achievement: Salespeople equipped with playbooks are 54% more likely to achieve their sales targets compared to those without (Aberdeen Group).
• Pipeline Contributions: Leading sales operations teams attribute over 60% of their total pipeline in any quarter to actively designed and deployed sales plays (Bain & Company via Harvard Business Review).

If a playbook fails to achieve these outcomes, has low adoption levels, or becomes outdated, it risks becoming ineffectual, sitting unused and gathering dust. Not a good playbook.

Whilst views may differ, these characteristics form a gold standard checklist for sales playbook effectiveness.

1. Strategically Aligned: Supports the broader business goals and aligns with the company's overall sales strategy and market positioning.
2. Outcome-Oriented: Clearly defined to increase revenue, improve sales effectiveness, boost seller productivity, and reduce time to first deal for new starters.
3. Behaviour-Changing: References and supports improved behaviours, skills, and 10 to 15 strategic sales competencies that create successful sales outcomes.
4. Comprehensive yet Concise: Distilled into an easy-to-consume format that avoids overwhelming users with excessive information.
5. Prescriptive not Restrictive: Provides clear guidelines and steps while allowing for adaptability to different sales scenarios and individual seller needs.
6. Next Best Actions: Enables the seller and manager to diagnose deal gaps and next best actions to advance the deal through a deal coaching guides.
7. Integrated: Seamlessly works with existing sales workflows such as CRM systems, digital sales rooms, copilots or other enablement platforms, ensuring it is accessible at the moment of need continually reinforcing deal winning attributes.
8. Adopted: Regularly used by sales teams, indicating its relevance and integration into daily sales activities.
9. Dynamic and Evolving: Updated to align with new sales tactics, go-to-market strategies, changes in the competitive landscape and growth stage.
10. Supportive of Continuous Improvement: Includes mechanisms for regular feedback and updates, ensuring it remains relevant and effective.
11. Data-Driven: With the advancement of revenue operations platforms, call, email and CRM data, using data and to inform best practices becomes possible.
12. Contextually Aware: Soon AI will make it possible to set the next best actions based on sales process, sales method, qualification method and sales interaction data.

Points 11 and 12 have moved us into a new era of B2B sales playbooks, into that of Guided Selling which is more suited to the complexity of today's B2B environment. For clarity “Guided selling is used as a seller-centric solution providing next step suggestions for sellers to take at any given moment.

“Sellers can no longer exclusively rely on intuition-based selling to push a deal over the finish line. Tomorrow’s sellers must learn to use data today to effectively manage their sales cycles as the use of information will become more critical to their success over time.” - Steve Rietberg, senior director analyst in the Gartner Sales practice.

Applying the core principles of what makes a good playbook into a maturity model provides a direction of travel to improve it's effectiveness.

Put simply, who you’re selling to, why and how they buy, what to do at each stage to achieve the exit criteria and decision consensus. This can be communicated as assets to navigate the deal and how to have the conversation throughout the sales process. A focused sales playbook includes clear, actionable steps for each stage of the sales process, integrated directly into sales workflow, ensuring it's not only informative but also immediately applicable.

While there are several models for structuring a playbook, let's discuss the common yet traditional "5 P's" model and why a more integrated approach might be better suited for modern sales environments.

Traditional 5 P's B2B Sales Playbook Model:

The 5 P's model is a well-known framework that includes:

• People: Understanding the expectations, attributes, and standards of excellence of those involved.
• Prospect: Identifying who you are targeting, why they fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), supplemented by buyer matrices, industry deep dives, customer interviews, buyer personas, and case studies.
• Problem: Defining the industry problems and their underlying causes.
• Process: Outlining how specific sales activities should be conducted, including cadences, scripts, one-to-ones, objection handling, and demo and discovery structures.
• Product: Explaining what your product does, how it works, its significance, and evidence of its effectiveness.

Limitations of the 5 P's Model:

While comprehensive, articulating a sales playbook using the 5 P's can lead to content overload. This model treats "Process" as just one component among many, whereas ideally, everything in a sales playbook should be built around and integrated into the sales process. 

This approach can result in a playbook that is too bulky and overwhelming, acting more as a deterrent than an aid.

A More Effective Model:

Transitioning from the traditional 5 P's, a more focused and effective model centres around a sales process playbook. A singular and in depth focus on how to advance deals and have sales conversations inline with the how and why buyers buy, the sales method and process. The approach makes it more accessible, more likely to be adopted to create the required behavioural change and actually have an impact on sales execution and revenue.

This alternative framework includes the following within each sales stage:

• What to Know: Information about the problem space, persona.
• What to Show: Demonstrations or evidence that align with customer needs.
• What to Do: Specific actions to take at each stage.
• What to Say: Key messages and conversation points.
• What to Avoid: Approaches that could derail the sales interaction.
• What to Use: Tools that support the stage.
• Skills: One or two primary skills needed to achieve the exit criteria, supported by targeted training content.

The sales process’ role is to support the buying process so the model should be created with this in mind focusing on practical steps that improves deal advancement and sales conversations in line with how and why buyers buy.

Finally using a set of management guides that strip across the process such as how to prepare for meetings. Examples include:

• Sales Method: Embed the sales method within each stage, offering guidance on execution to achieve the exit criteria. This is the how.
• Sales Qualification Framework: Work this alongside instage exit criteria to identify gaps and set next best actions.
• Manager Support: Equip managers with tools to inspect deals consistently and set next best actions.
• Deal Coaching: Integrate coaching into regular sales operations, using it as a force multiplier to both advance the deal and coach the required skill.

Typically, there are around 30 deal navigation, conversational and coaching guides that if created well form the base of a well constructed, distilled and useful sales playbook that is more likely to lead to performance improvements than other approaches.

Structuring your sales playbook in this way around these focused and actionable elements, you ensure it is a practical tool that supports your team, improves execution making each sales interaction more likely to lead to another.

In crafting an effective sales playbook, it’s crucial to focus on what truly drives sales progress and eliminate any clutter that could distract from the main objectives. Here’s what to leave out and why:

1. Exclude Non-Essential Information:

Company History and Detailed Product Specs: While it might seem essential to include exhaustive details about your company’s history or the intricate specifications of your products, these elements do not directly advance deals. Such information is better suited for HR orientations or detailed technical manuals, not a tool meant to improve sales effectiveness.

2. Avoid Overloading with Documents:

Bulky Presentations and Extensive Documentation: Avoid packing the playbook with extensive PowerPoint decks or hundreds of documents stored in a Content Management System (CMS). These can overwhelm and confuse sellers, who need quick, digestible content to effectively navigate sales conversations and decision-making processes.

3. Streamline for Actionable Use:

Focus on Actionable Content: Concentrate on providing streamlined, actionable content that directly enhances sales execution. This means developing concise materials that sales reps can easily comprehend and utilise during sales activities, ensuring they have the right tools at the right time.

4. Measure and Develop Key Competencies:

Behavioural, Skill, and Competency Metrics: Spend time measuring and developing the behaviours, skills, and competencies that have the most significant impact on sales outcomes. This focus allows for targeted training and upskilling in areas that directly contribute to closing deals and achieving sales targets.

5. Create Effective Enablement Tools:

Buyer-Centric Enablement Collateral: Develop materials that are directly aligned with understanding and meeting buyer needs. This approach ensures that sales reps are equipped with tools that resonate with prospects and facilitate meaningful engagements.

6. Coaching and Reinforcement:

Coaching to the Sales Process Playbook: Regular coaching sessions that reinforce the sales playbook’s principles and strategies are essential. These sessions should not just reiterate the playbook content but also help reps to internalise and apply the strategies in real-world scenarios.

By removing non-essential content and focusing on streamlined, actionable tools and information, the sales playbook becomes a more effective instrument in driving sales and enhancing the performance of your sales team. This targeted approach not only simplifies the sales process but also ensures that every component of the playbook contributes directly to advancing deals and improving sales outcomes.

The job is to codify into the blueprint structure outlined above or something else you have in mind, get it adopted so it achieves the target outcomes you’ve set.

Technically, there is perceived sales best practice, data driven best practices, and A-player best practices that need to be consolidated, translated into a playbook that aligns with where the team is now and their future needs.

Start by defining clear goals and involving a cross-functional team to gather diverse insights. Then, distil these into a structured, actionable playbook that's regularly reviewed and updated based on real-world feedback and sales outcomes.

1. Define the Blueprint and Goals:

Set Clear Goals: Begin by defining clear, measurable objectives that the playbook is designed to achieve. Consider the end-goals like increased win rates, shorter sales cycles, or improved customer engagement.

Cross-Functional Team Involvement: Assemble a diverse team from across your organisation, including sellers, marketing, C-suite, revenue operations, and product teams. This diversity ensures the playbook covers all necessary perspectives and mitigates potential resistance by involving stakeholders early in the process

2. Consolidation and Structure Creation:

Gather and Consolidate Data: Collect all relevant materials that could inform the playbook. This includes both successful and unsuccessful sales call recordings, scripts, email exchanges, and details from your sales process, sales methods, and qualification frameworks.

Develop the Information Architecture: Create the core structure of the playbook. Decide whether this will be presented in slides, document form, within a CMS, LMS, or integrated directly into your CRM.

3. Best Practices and Documentation:

Identify and Isolate Best Practices: Carefully select best practices that are most effective across different sales stages. This should be a mixture of established best practices and innovative practices driven by recent data.

Build Supporting Documentation: For each stage of the sales process, develop supporting documentation that is both instructive and easy to use. Ensure this documentation is comprehensive yet concise, covering all necessary aspects without overwhelming the users.

4. Review and Iteration:

Initial Feedback Integration: Present the draft playbook to an internal group that includes representatives from the teams that will use it. Gather their feedback on its usability, relevance, and comprehensiveness.

Incorporate Feedback: Refine the playbook based on this initial feedback. This might involve adding new sections, removing redundant content, or simplifying complex parts to enhance clarity and usability.

5. Integration and Adoption:

Platform Integration: Decide on the best platform for hosting and presenting the playbook. This could be within a CRM, a digital sales room, a sales copilot, a sales enablement platform, or an LMS. Each platform might offer different benefits, so choose one that best fits how your sales team operates.

Rollout and Training: Launch the playbook to your sales team with comprehensive training sessions that explain how to use it effectively. Emphasise its benefits and how it can simplify their sales process.

6. Ongoing Review and Updates:

Regular Updates: Regularly review and update the playbook based on ongoing sales outcomes and real-world use. This ensures that the playbook remains relevant and continues to provide value as market conditions change and new sales data becomes available.

Continual Feedback Loop: Establish a mechanism for continuous feedback from users, ensuring that the playbook evolves in response to the actual needs and challenges faced by the sales team.

The key to creation is the ability to distil down into bite sized content that’s easy to consume, prescriptive and not restrictive.

By meticulously detailing each step and integrating feedback throughout the process, the playbook not only becomes a vital tool for your sales team but also stays dynamic and aligned with your business and the external environment.

There’s no right answer but if we base the principles of a good playbook on creating behavioural change, aside from the right content and structure, adoption is the critical success factor. Sellers are busy and have too many tasks and platforms in their day to day (Gartner Survey Finds 77% of Sellers Struggle to Complete Their Assigned Tasks Efficiently) so making it easy to find, reference and use is important. To achieve this the playbook must be integrated into sales workflow. 

If we define selling as a series of decisions taken by individuals, it’s in person, digital, 1-2-1 or 1-2-many and asynchronous interactions.

Create the blueprint and then integrate into CRM, digital sales rooms, call intelligence platforms and sales copilots as needed. Your blueprint becomes the master version which reflects changes that are then made to digital versions.

Adopting a B2B sales playbook represents a significant change. Despite 42% of sellers being resistant to change, a staggering 87% are underperforming according to the Ebsta/Pavilion 2024 Sales Benchmarks Report. Notably, with 85% of opportunities not well-qualified, it highlights that many reps, particularly B's and C's, need to improve how they qualify and develop deals. This underscores a critical need for change. While it might seem that adoption should be straightforward if a clear path is laid out, this isn’t always the case.

Individual Motivation and Resistance:

Every seller has unique motivations, yet the common goal remains to meet quotas and earn commissions. Effectively tapping into individual 'What's In It For Me' (WIFM) factors is crucial. However, identifying the right motivators is only part of the challenge; overcoming resistance is another. This might indicate either you have the wrong person the bus or a need for more structured change management, such as innovative programs like Dr. Grant Van Ulbrich "Scared So What" program for sales transformation.

Applying the common strategic sales method that underpins change of prospect and loss aversion theory, maybe gain is not the best motivator for change so it needs to be rooted in current or future pain motivator aka quota attainment now or in the future.

Practical Steps for Behavioural Change:

Irrespective of the psychology of the change, behavioural change and reinforcement of new ways of executing sales is practically outlined by Jerry Phar, a leading sales enablement practitioner. The following pyramid showcases strategies from most to least impactful for enforcing behavioural change: Original post is Here

Ironically, a well-constructed sales playbook becomes the ideal structured data for feeding an LLM. As long as you understand the jobs to be done and are skilled in QA’ing a generative AI application, this becomes the next content distribution channel. It embeds the playbook even deeper into sales workflow and removes the cognitive lift.

We're now seeing playbooks integrated into call intelligence platform like Gong, and meeting assistants like Attention.tech and Salesroom.com. Integrating directly into workflow at the point of need is clearly the right direction. Whilst it's absolutely right to begin to help sellers in this way it's important to consider if the seller is assisted or hindered by real-time meeting nudges and if those nudges are accurate. The devil is in the detail with the critical success factor being the how, aka the sales method. We're still at a stage where MEDDPICC is considered the how vs a deal navigation and qualification model with some vendors using it as the how. This is important detail that can negatively impact the buyer experience and misdirect a mid level seller who know's nothing better than to rely on the machine, to the detriment of productive deal advancement.

Another word of caution is the LLM is only as good as the custom playbook it's using to inform the real-time coaching or making recommendations on the next best actions. Again, in most cases the how is not so easy to get right unless the playbook is sufficiently designed to support this type of output.

Watch this space, we're now beyond moores law so next best actions are likely to get alot better, fast.