Playbook

A playbook is the written way your team sells. It describes each deal stage and what the seller does there. It lists the questions to ask and what must be true to move on. It also holds answers to common objections, message templates and the rules on discounts.

It lives in one shared document that sellers actually open, linked from the CRM. It is not a training manual read once and forgotten. Sellers use it before a call, when a deal gets stuck, and when they are not sure what is allowed. If nobody has opened it for a month, it is not doing its job.

For example, the Proposal page holds the exit rule and three questions to ask before pricing. It also answers "Can you do it cheaper?"

The playbook turns the habits of your best seller into something the whole team can repeat. New sellers learn from it during onboarding. Experienced sellers use it to check that they still sell the same way as everyone else. The head of sales uses it to coach against one shared standard, not personal taste.

Build it around the deal stages. For each stage, write the exit rule, the qualification questions, and links to the scripts that fit. A script covers one conversation. The playbook is the map of all of them, in the order the customer meets them.

The head of sales updates the playbook from real evidence: call reviews, lost reasons and the win-loss review. When the team agrees a change in the weekly meeting, it goes into the playbook that same week. Otherwise the document and the real practice drift apart.

• Writing it once and filing it. A playbook nobody updates becomes wrong within months. Give it one owner, the head of sales, and show the date of the last change on the first page.
• Copying someone else's playbook. Their customers, prices and objections are not yours. Start from your own won deals and the questions that worked in them.
• Making it too long to use. Sellers will not search a long document during a call. Keep each stage to one page and move the detail into linked scripts.
• Rules without reasons. A rule with no reason gets bent the first time it is inconvenient. Add one sentence on why each rule exists.

By Friday, the head of sales writes one page for the stage where most deals stall. Include the exit rule, the questions to ask and the two most common objections with answers. Share it with the team and ask each seller for one correction by the next weekly meeting.

CRM rules the team follows and a forecast review you can run every week.