Rules of playbook

A sales ‘playbook’ sets the rules for sales execs. Sales teams need flexibility to negotiate deals, but the playbook avoids wild departures and offers guidance to achieve the best results. The playbook might be recorded in a document or company policy, but some rules often exist as unwritten understandings passed down from sales managers. 

It’s difficult to capture all the parameters and dynamics of deals in a playbook. Playbooks deal with pricing and discounting, but they might also deal with product configuration (making sure an order includes all the necessary line items, and nothing incompatible), compliance (export restrictions, localisation requirements, data protection wording), and legal requirements (using the correct contract documents). The parameters might change, and specific deals might justify out-of-policy decisions. Sales execs are not known for their willingness to wade through long policy documents. Many subscribe to “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

It’s possible to implement many playbook rules using process and document automation. Rather than relying on policy documents, build a solution that adheres to the playbook by default.

Set rules for your playbook

Within a contract template (or a template for a quote or sales order), ask questions about the sale and use the answers to drive the inclusion of pre-approved text, relevant clauses, schedules and other attachments. Ask about the parameters of the deal, and let templates set limits on discounts and prices, lead times and product options.

Outside the templates, use workflow rules to specify approval paths. Rather than sending a lengthy sales document to an approver, give approvers access to the automation tool. The approver can see what’s ‘standard’ and focus instead on the deal-specific parameters. As a document travels through an approvals process, each recipient can see the history of the deal. Don’t wait for signature to check sales documents. By that time, the customer has already seen the sales documents and expectations have been set. Use automation early in the sales cycle to trap errors before they are seen by customers.

As rules evolve, an automated solution will always apply the current rules rather than relying on sales teams to monitor rule changes.

Benefits

New joiners to the sales team will be productive more quickly if automated tools guide them though mandated steps.

If you ever had a sales person leave the organisation and go to a competitor, you will be worried about creating documents with pricing and commercially sensitive information that can too easily end up in competitors’ hands. If sensitive information is built into the configuration of an automated tool, it’s much harder for someone to steal a copy. Supposing that the tool is a web-based application, leavers cannot take a copy with them when they leave.

Using automated solutions to create sales deals. You can mine the data to see trends and create reports. You can track the progress of deals from inception to signature.

Good sales tools help sales teams and reduce time spent on tedious tasks. Legito can do all those tasks.

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