What is a sales playbook?

A sales playbook is a written, internal guide that outlines how sales teams should handle specific selling scenarios.

It documents best practices, strategies, messages, and processes so sales execution becomes consistent, repeatable, and scalable across an organisation.

Unlike marketing collateral, sales playbooks are for internal use only. They exist to help reps know:

• What to do
• When to do it
• How to do it
• And why it works

In short, a sales playbook turns individual selling knowledge into organisational muscle memory.

Why do sales teams need playbooks?

Top sales performance does not happen by chance.

That is true for individual reps, teams, and entire organisations. The challenge is that sales success depends heavily on human interactions, soft skills, and judgement. You cannot mechanise people or automate conversations in the same way you would a factory process.

What you can do is create a strategic framework that gives reps proven plays for common situations.

Sales playbooks solve three core problems:

• Inconsistent execution across reps
• Knowledge trapped in top performers
• Long onboarding and ramp times

According to Harvard Business Review, sales playbooks are a unifying trait across high performing B2B organisations because they move selling from ad hoc and opaque to data driven and repeatable.

What value does a sales playbook deliver?

A sales playbook democratises knowledge.

Instead of relying on individual intuition or luck, teams can capture what works, document it, and scale it across the organisation.

Playbooks allow teams to:

• Replicate top performer behaviour
• Standardise messaging and approach
• Reduce onboarding time
• Improve consistency without micromanagement
• Optimise sales processes continuously

According to Aberdeen Group, best in class companies are three times more likely to use sales playbooks. These teams also see 15% more reps hitting quota compared to teams without them.

Winning deals stops being a fluke and becomes a system.

Different types of sales playbooks

A standard sales playbook outlines basic company information, and how to deal with sales prospects. It’s a general guidebook on how the organisation does sales and conducts itself toward customers.

But these can get super specific to focus on a certain sales goal, situation, or activity. Here are eight playbook versions you might want to try.

Referrals

A sales referral playbook outlines how to ask contacts for further introductions. Referrals are integral in the SaaS selling game but there isn’t a universally ideal method for generating them.

Different sales teams prefer asking for referrals at different pipeline stages. The method and approach for doing so varies.

This playbook nails down and systemises your method for referral generation. It also breaks down the social skills and tactics necessary for successfully connecting, keeping the door open, and leveraging the opportunity.

Multi-threading

B2B or SaaS selling generally involves winning over multiple stakeholders. Developing relationships with these people along the way ups the chances of closing the deal and speeds things up.

A multi-threading sales playbook lays out the game plan for managing this delicate process. It can include:

• multi-threading sales sequences
• scripts for conversing with management
• ways to approach management
• email templates for moving things along

Competition

Every playbook has to include competitive strategies and be developed around your winning edge. What are the differentiators to play up or strengths to lean into?

Add in the strategies and methodologies that will give you the edge.

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Conversational

Deals are ultimately closed through a series of conversations. One playbook option is to roadmap the conversations that demonstrate value, build relationships, and move the deal along.

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Messaging

Messaging can be included as part of a general sales playbook or you can get super granular with a standalone sales messaging playbook.

This differs from a brand book, style guide, or content guidelines. It’s more actionable and should include specific messages to be deployed throughout a sales sequence.

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Onboarding

What’s your average onboarding time for new reps? Industry statistics put the average new rep onboarding time at anywhere from three to nine months. That’s a long time, especially when considering that the average rep spends around 1.4 years at a company.

Speed this up by developing and continually optimising an onboarding playbook.

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Objection handling

Objections are inevitable and the best way to handle them is often counter-intuitive. That’s why every sales professional prepares ahead of time with a set of objection handling techniques, responses, and protocols at hand.

SaaS selling teams should be armed with an objection-handling playbook that keeps everyone on the same page.

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Team coaching

Playbooks aren’t only for how to interact with leads and targets. A playbook can include ways to coach, guide, and move the sales team along.

Creating a team coaching playbook will standardise the way sales teams are managed, making success less related to any one manager’s personal coaching genius.

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Sales playbook software

Ready to digitise your sales playbooks for team-wide use? There are several options now, thanks to the normalisation of remote work. Here are two of our favourites.

Dooly is a sales enablement platform for B2B selling revenue teams. Sales playbook software is in its core line-up, along with centralised pipeline management, sales call templates, and a clever note taking feature that synchronises with Salesforce.

Spekit is a digital adoption and sales enablement platform. It facilitates training and empowering remote-working sales teams through a comprehensive product suite that includes digital sales playbooks.

Gartner estimates that by 2025, 75% of B2B organisations will be using AI-enhanced sales playbook software. Either one of these options will give you a nice head start on the competition.

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Free sales playbook templates and resources!

Not ready to commit to sales playbook software? That’s fine. There are plenty of free resources available. Here’s a mini roundup.

Pipedrive’s Sales Playbook Creation Guide If anyone knows what it takes to get a deal closed, it’s the team behind Pipedrive. They tapped into their sales process expertise and drew up a detailed post on how to create the ultimate sales playbook.

SaaStr’s Insider Discussion on Sales Playbooks Listen in on a chat between the founder of SaaStr, Jason Lemkin, and Brendon Cassidy, the Co-CEO of CoSell and former sales leader at LinkedIn, Talkdesk, and Adobe Sign/EchoSign. They cover sales strategies to include.

HubSpot’s Sales Playbook Template Is there a sales or marketing template that HubSpot doesn’t have? We haven’t come across one yet. This templated sales playbook framework is perfect for teams that need help getting their goals and strategy down into one plan.

Vouris is a sales consultancy firm that builds high-performance B2B selling teams. They’ve provided a sales playbook template via an open-access Google Doc. Check out their full guide to writing one here.

Gong – a revenue-driving sales intelligence platform – has an assortment of templates for your playbook template.

Vengreso has examples of structured sales messaging you can include in a playbook. 

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Examples of sales playbooks

It’s always helpful to know what something looks like. Here are some standout playbook examples, from leading VC firms and SaaS companies.

Balderton Capital has a great sales SaaS playbook drawn up for its founders.

Boast – an R&D tax credit platform – has another sales playbook specifically for SaaS selling. It’s chockful of revenue-related metrics, milestones, tools, and guidelines.

Zendesk provides a general sales playbook template, along with a message-focused one.

Gong has 5 sales playbook examples ready and waiting for you. Templates include sales referral, coaching, multi-threading, competitive, and objection handling playbooks.

Revenue.io has another 5 narrowed-down sales playbooks ideal for SaaS selling activities. You can find playbooks for multichannel sequences, conversational roadmaps, onboarding, sales coaching, and a challenge email template they’ve used to close millions in deal revenue.

Sales used to be about individual rockstars who found a way to deliver outstanding results. That’s no more. Organisations can’t depend on one person’s sales performance or wait for a rep to luck their way into closed deals.

That’s why sales playbooks are for everyone. You can curate a selection of effective, reliable, or top-performing sales plays and get them down into one document available for everyone in the sales team.

These playbooks are as versatile and diverse as the organisations that create them. There are plenty of tools around now making the creation process dynamic, collaborative, and efficient. Have fun creating.

FAQs

What is the purpose of a sales playbook?

To provide reps with clear, actionable guidance for common sales scenarios so performance becomes consistent and repeatable.

Are sales playbooks only for large teams?

No. Small teams often benefit most because playbooks prevent knowledge loss and speed up onboarding.

How often should sales playbooks be updated?

Continuously. The best teams treat playbooks as living documents informed by data and real deal outcomes.

Do sales playbooks replace training?

No. They complement training by reinforcing learning in real selling situations.