Modern companies are now starting to fine-tune their sales
processes by developing a “sales playbook.” Within Chapter 15 of David Meerman
Scott's book, Real-Time Marketing & PR, he elaborates what sales playbooks
are and what it allows companies to now be able to do. Sales playbooks are a
sales representative’s best friend. It guides the sales representative from the
initial contact of the sale to the last steps of closing the sale. Granted no
sale is ever the same, the playbook allow the sales force to share a common
goal of "closing more business by optimizing for real-time marketing and
sales agility."
I do believe sale playbooks are useful,
that is to an extent. I believe the larger the company and the more infrastructures
it has the better the playbooks will work. Scott mentions how IBM Software uses
sale playbooks, but does not touch on small-localized businesses almost at all.
Now I cannot speak for him nor argue against something that he has yet to say,
so I will just offer my thoughts on the continued topic of using these sales
playbooks in a small company. I work as a sales representative for a small organization
and I can first hand say the playbooks would cause more trouble than benefits.
The process of a sale is generally the same regardless of the organizations
size, but sometimes a company’s strong suit is being free-versed rather than
bound to predetermined responses.
By no means would I argue that playbooks are completely a bad thing, because it is not at all. The use of the
books does provide structure and repeatability to the sales process if used in
the right way. Scott defines and explains the real-time sales playbooks well,
but I do not believe the playbooks would work as efficiently or effectively for
smaller organizations.
Until Next Time,
Matt
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