5 Tips for Creating a Winning Sales Playbook

When you look at buyers today, it’s not one size fits all. At John Hancock, we wholesale our life insurance products through insurance agents around the country. The agents (our ‘customers’) sell our products through insurance agencies, broker dealers and intermediaries. They come from different backgrounds and generations and focus on varied markets. 

With only 110 sales team members covering the country, we must meet the varied segments of our customers where they are, delivering a memorable experience so they continue to represent our products and services.

When we began to look critically at our sales enablement process, we first had to understand and evaluate the existing challenges:

·        How to address all those different segments of sellers? 

·        How to create scale for significant growth? 

·        How to double down on the right sales activities in a very competitive market?

Here are my top 5 tips for answering these questions:

#1: Know your audience

We have relationships with agents who have sold our products for decades and are fortunate that they sell our products consistently. We have relationships with agents who sell our products a few times a year. And we want to build new relationships with agents who don’t yet know us. According to LIMRA, 60% of Americans do not own an individual life insurance policy*.  That’s a huge opportunity - to reach those consumers and more motivation to get to know the agents that don’t know our story or what we have to offer.

The conversation and approach “the play” we take with a consistent John Hancock seller is completely different than the play we make with a potential John Hancock seller. The collateral, wording, ask and call to action are all different. The application of a product in the high-end estate planning market is different than in the income replacement protection market; the same product but a completely different approach and conversation. Knowing your audience and individualizing the reach out is critical. 

#2: Automate with personality

We currently sell 17 different products, 3 living benefit riders and a number of services that differentiate us in the life insurance marketplace. Can you imagine carrying that briefcase full of different product nuances and services out in the field?

The key is finding a way to automate as much of the sales process as possible to gain efficiencies by reducing or eliminating some of the manual tasks performed by your sales team.

Organize your content so that it’s automated and fits a specific channel of business or segment of customer but build in the flexibility for your salespeople to customize their intros, closes and calls to action, so their unique style and personality shines through. Our business is a relationship business first and foremost, so it’s critical that we bring that to the forefront when we bring on automation. Make sure your sales people can convey their unique personality. 

#3: Tailor the play

We are in the process of creating individual plays for each product and service and then, as we get better at understanding the 360-degree view of who our customer is —what they’ve sold in the past, what products or services meet their needs —we can tailor the play to that segment of seller.

The system we use to automate our plays is supported with data and insights so it has predictive behaviors —who should we call, when should we call, even which number to call. It notes that the call was made and moves to the next step of the sales cycle based on the result of the call.

When the digital process is backed by data and analytics and then follows a defined playbook cadence, that’s when you start to experience real efficiency and can scale effectiveness and growth.

#4: Set up your sales teams for success

Implementing playbooks in your organization requires transparency about the change management process — answering not only the “how” you are doing things differently but the why, will lead to greater buy-in and adoption.

Collaboration across other departments is also key — involving your product department, marketing, operations. From the top down, everyone must be working in tandem and focus on the same strategy and initiatives, contributing to the playbook content and using a more agile approach where ideas can be continuously tested and adjusted. Having new ideas surface regularly across our organization has been really refreshing.

Then of course, providing the training and technology needed to make it as easy as possible is paramount. Keep your sales team focused on what they do best…selling!

#5: Remember that progress is (and should always be) iterative

Our playbook execution is a work in progress. The plays we create today won’t be the plays we use tomorrow. The sales process itself will keep morphing as technology and consumer preferences keep changing. It’s a continuous loop where you take something out and put something new in.

I encourage others out there who are entering the playbook arena to consider sharing ownership of the play creation, giving people the autonomy and independence to try their hand at something new. Imagine going to work for a big brand —it’s your first real job and six months in they ask you to write a sales play. That can be incredibly exciting and motivating for someone trying to carve out his/her own niche on the team. That’s the kind of energy you want to keep building for sales momentum. 

Change is hard, time consuming and often complicated. But once you start to gain insights and begin to really understand your customer and define the segmentation and content that appeals to them, that’s when the magic starts to happen.

*Source: LIMRA Facts about Life 2019, September 2019

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Insurance products are issued by: John Hancock Life Insurance Company (U.S.A.), Boston, MA 02116 (not licensed in New York) and John Hancock Life Insurance Company of New York, Valhalla, NY 10595.