Chapter 4 -- Blueprint Creation --- From Sales Playbooks: The Builder's Toolkit
Goal: Reduce the time and amount of rework required to develop the playbook by building a blueprint.
How It’s Used: The playbook development team will use this element to outline the blueprint of the playbook.
Difficulty: Easy
People + Resources Required:
????Playbook Development Team
The playbook blueprint is an outline that includes all the elements that will likely be needed in a playbook.
It’s important to create a blueprint in order to:
We’re often asked which element should be finished first and which can wait. The answer in almost every case is to put something good in each element and then iterate and expand on each one over time, with more effort placed on the elements that will have a more significant impact on the business.
Yes, we know that “do everything first” is usually not the right move in the professional world, but the goal is for the sales team to engage around a single source of truth. If salespeople still need to go other places to get information that will eventually be put in the playbook, the playbook will just add to information overload and clutter.
An example of a high-level blueprint that covers the elements that are discussed in this book is presented in figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1: The sales playbook blueprint
Step One: Assign Responsibility
One person should own the overall playbook project, and he or she should be in a position to hold other playbook development team members accountable to their commitments, regardless of formal reporting structure.
Each element of the playbook should be assigned to a specific person.
During the playbook development phase, it’s important to track next steps and next step dates for each commitment. If people aren’t meeting their commitments, the playbook owner must have the power to hold that person accountable.
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To stay on track and avoid the playbook development team should meet periodically (ideally weekly) to track status and maintain momentum.
Step Two: Development Strategy
As we mentioned above, it’s important to put something in each element of the playbook from the start. Worst case, spend fifteen minutes in the elements you have identified as lower priority, and plant seeds for additional information to be populated later. Interview notes are a great way to seed the playbook.?
Pro Tip: Plan Your MVP
Software companies often begin their journeys by building a minimum viable product (MVP), getting it into the hands of users, receiving feedback, and iterating. Once a small group of users has validated the product, they continue to build out additional features and functionality. This way, they don’t overbuild in the wrong direction. You’ll do the same.
In The Lean Startup, author Eric Ries states (with regard to product development), “As you consider building your own minimum viable product, let this simple rule suffice: remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to the learning you seek.”
To make this concept applicable to the playbook developer, we mandate the following:
As you consider building your own minimum viable playbook, let this simple rule suffice: remove any element, content, or process that does not contribute directly to repeated sales team engagement, activity, and revenue impact.
Take Action
????Create your playbook blueprint as you work through the rest of this book.
????Assign responsibility for the overall playbook, as well as each element.
????Define what is required as an MVP to launch the playbook.
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