Getting Started with Playbooks - Sales Hub ‌📚‌

[kvlschaefer]

Hey Community,

Did you know that sales playbooks can help your company increase revenue and lead conversion rate? A sales playbook is a document used to implement strategies, sales tactics, or best practices throughout the buyer’s journey. 

 

Each member of your sales team has different needs from a new hire to your top-selling rep. Keeping track of their needs can be difficult as your company scales, but it doesn’t have to be that way when you use playbooks! 

When it comes to building a playbook, you’ll want to keep these four processes in mind: Sales Process, Contracting Process, Forecasting Process, and Handoff Process. 

Here are some common uses cases for playbooks to get you started:

• Call Prep: Guide your reps through a call with speaker notes. The speaker notes can be based on the type of meeting or stage of the sales process. The 
• Call Outline: Use bullet points and question-and-answer boxes to guide your reps through conversations and make sure they don’t miss any important points. 
• Competitive Battlecards: Create a playbook for each of your competitors. Use images and texts to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of your product and of your competitors. 
• Onboarding: Help new employees settle into their roles by outlining your sales approaches and tactics in one playbook. Include sales scripts for reps to get prepared to take their first call. 
• Buyer Personas: Work with your marketing team to create a detailed description of your buyer personas so reps can identify a lead while they are on a discovery call. 

Important note, these are examples of sales playbooks. Each team will have its own playbooks depending on its processes and sales code.

Share your playbook use cases below, or new ideas you’re looking to use them for.

Interested in learning more? Check out these resources to continue learning about playbooks: 

• Knowledge Base: How to Use Playbooks in HubSpot
• Learn the strategy to use playbooks effectively with HubSpot Academy Professor, @KyleJepson: Standardizing Your Approach With Playbooks

[AGalvez7]

I'd like to have a checklist (with checkboxes) and/or tasks right in a playbook -- even better if we can run a report to show which boxes were checked, but that may be just wild dreaming. Is this possible already or has anyone found a work around? 

[SMarín]

Hi! I'd love to start working with playbooks and I have already created some of them. However, we don't like that anytime i publish a playbook it is displayed in all objects.

Is there any workaround where i can set where do I want each playbook to be displayed and not Hubspot recommending the one that matches my filters (but showing all of them anyway)?

Thanks!

[danmoyle]

@SMarín I don't know of a way to offer them only in specific Objects, no. You can set some conditions for when to highlight them and in which Objects you're recommending them, but not to be able to exclude them, no. 

[danmoyle]

One other thought @SMarín - you can share your request in the ideas forum here, where product managers monitor comments. 

[kvlschaefer]

Hey, @danmoyle! Thanks for helping out here 😄 

[SParany]

It's not a very robust feature to be honest. 
Can't export can't be used in automation? 

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @SParany,

Thank you for the feedback.

This feature is currently not available at this time, I would encourage you to upvote this related idea and comment why this feature would be useful in the thread. 

Our product team, who monitors the forum regularly, can read your specific use case and understand why this would be a useful functionality or change. 

Best,

Kristen

[vanessahunt]

Can you reference Playbooks in Workflow, please? I'm thinking that based on a certain Playbook being used in a Deal, we can kick off an internal email notification or a Task. 

Or I guess since I've added it as a Note, I may be able to use Note content instead...

[kvlschaefer]

Hey @vanessahunt,

Thanks for reaching out!

That's a great product suggestion and I appreciate you explaining your use case 🙂 

I would recommend upvoting this related idea in the Ideas Forum to show your support for this feature request. 

That's correct about notes 🙂 You could add a note engagement as a condition to a contact-based workflow for example.

I also wanted to refer you to this discussion about workarounds for gathering information from playbooks and ways to trigger workflows with properties. 

I hope this helps!

Best,

Kristen

[vanessahunt]

Thanks so much for the links @kvlschaefer ! 

[KSenette4]

Has anyone ever used playbooks as a call coaching tool? Possibly as an outline for reps to coach one another on calls?

[kvlschaefer]

Hey @KSenette4! That's a great idea! 

I'll tag in some awesome members from the Community to get a conversation going 🙂 

Hi @Mike_Eastwood, @Josh, @CateDuarte, @Bryantworks - Have you used playbooks for coaching reps or new employees? 

Cheers,

Kristen

[rachel79]

Can you advise on the reporting is available when using Playbooks?  I'm looking to track how many calls were logged via a specific playbook with the call type of Deal Revival/Reintroduction to try and capture SDR/BDR effectiveness.  Thanks!

[danmoyle]

Hey there @rachel79. I don't see that granular of reporting available in Custom Reports or Sales Analytics. Reporting in the Playbooks tool is limited to simply "number of views." 

In Custom Reports, when I set up data sources of calls (primary), contacts, sales activities, and sequences, there is a property for "playbook conversion." 

However, it's not showing me specific Playbooks and their steps. 

So at this point, I don't think the exact report you want is possible. But maybe it's something you can answer in another way with custom report builder. 

[danmoyle]

We have a playbook for helping folks across all of our teams tee up a conversation with sales. So if I've been working with an onboarding client and they want to talk to our growth strategist about engaging our RevOps team, our playbook walks me through the conversation to ensure I'm giving the right information, including historical knowledge of the last couple months, to sales. It helps with consistency, collaboration and communication. 

[kvlschaefer]

Thanks for sharing these playbook tips and how they help your team, @danmoyle! 

[kvlschaefer]

Let's get this conversation about playbook use cases started!

Hi @danmoyle, @Jnix284, @johnelmer, @Ben_M, @GeorgeBThomas, @Josh, @HubDoPete - Do you have any sales playbook use cases or a sales playbook idea you would like to share with the Community? 

Thank you!

Best,

Kristen