Developing Company's Prospect to Order process guidelines in the form of Sales Playbook - Aki Nurminen
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Aki Nurminen Developing Company’s Prospect to Order process guidelines in the form of Sales Playbook Metropolia University of Applied Sciences Master of Engineering Industrial Management Master’s Thesis February 6th 2023
Abstract
Author: Aki Nurminen
Title: Developing Company’s Prospect to Order process
guidelines in the form of Sales Playbook
Number of Pages: 51 pages + 1 appendices
Date: 31 January 2023
Degree: Master of Engineering
Degree Programme: Industrial Management
Professional Major: Commercial Excellence
Supervisors: Dr. Thomas Rohweder, Principal Lecturer
M.A. Sonja Holappa, Senior Lecturer
The study focuses on developing Prospect to Order process guidelines in the form of
Sales Playbook. The case company is an oil and renewable fuel refiner who sells its
product globally and it has complex end-to-end delivery processes, which are
developing rapidly. The study focuses on gathering all relevant guidelines,
instructions, and good practices from Prospect to Order process and formatting those
for salespeople. The idea of Sales Playbook is to provide a tool for sales personnel
which gathers the scattered information into one place, enables salespeople to do
better deals and avoid pitfalls. Sales, as a function, is important for all companies and
by providing tools and right circumstances for successful sales, it benefits the whole
company.
Keywords: Sales Playbook, Commercial Excellence, Prospect to order, instruction,
guidelines
Contents
List of Abbreviations
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Business context of the Case Company 1
1.2 Business challenge, objective, and outcome 2
1.3 Outline of the thesis report on hand 4
2 Project plan 5
2.1 Research approach 5
2.2 Research design 6
2.3 Data Collection 8
3 Analysis of case Company’s current Prospect to Order Process instruction 9
3.1 Defining the content of Sales Playbook 9
3.2 Reviewing of current Prospect to Order process and its instructions 10
3.3 Improving currently existing material for Sales Playbook 11
3.4 Identifying gaps and creating new material for Sales Playbook 12
3.5 Validating suitable material for Sales Playbook 12
3.6 Summary of findings 13
4 Ideas on Improving Prospect to Order Process Instructions in relevant
literature 18
4.1 Best practices from Commercial Excellence concept to Sales Playbook
18
4.2 Ideas for the form of form of Sales Playbook 23
4.3 Best practices for review and update Sales Playbook 26
4.4 Summary of Final Sales Playbook content and form 28
5 Developing case company’s Prospect to Order process guidelines 30
5.1 Overview of this data stage 30
5.2 Improving Prospect to Order process instruction in a form of Sales
Playbook 30
5.3 Improving the Sales Playbook format 32
5.4 Improving the review and updating practices for Sales Playbook 33
5.5 Summary of final Sales Playbook content and form 38
6 Feedback on proposed Sales Playbook content 41
6.1 Overview of this data stage 41
6.2 Feedback received and correction proposals to initial Sales Playbook
41
6.3 Summary of final proposal 42
7 Discussion & Conclusion 44
7.1 Executive summary 44
7.2 Practical next step recommendations 45
7.3 Self-evaluation of thesis project creditability 47
7.4 Closing Words 49
References 50
Appendices
Appendix 1: Key element during the content validation phase
List of Abbreviations
RA Renewable Aviation business unit
RRT Renewable Road Transportation business unit
RPC Renewable Polymers and Chemicals business unit
RP Renewable Platform
OP Oil Products
P2O Prospect to order -process
B2B Business to business
KAM Key Account Management
Core group Includes Head of Commercial Excellence, Head of Key Account
Management & Prospect to Order Process owner
L1 Level 1 -process
L2 Level 2 -process
L3 Level 3 -process
CRM Customer relationship management
1 1 Introduction Based on an article made by Rodriguez, Svensson and Mehl (2020), sales directors in the complex b2b market are looking for solutions to maximize revenue and increase the effectiveness of the sales force. Companies are spending a lot of money to technology, intended to gain systematic operations, but still b2b sales remains opaque and ad hoc (Cleghorn 2021). Having a sales process is extremely important for b2b sales organisations and without it company’s sales activities has no straight road to success and sales activities will be disorganized (Altschuler 2016). Well defined sales process and comprehensive instructions helps the company and its personnel to repeat best practices repeatedly. Sales process and clearly defined responsibilities helps new sales members to join and adopt the practices more efficiently. Companies are able to build coherent business culture by having well defined procedures and practices in place (Karppinen 2022). 1.1 Business context of the Case Company The case company is an oil and renewable fuel refiner who sells its product globally. At the time of writing the company has renewable product refining activities in three different continents, which makes it world’s leading producer of renewable aviation fuel, renewable diesel and renewable feedstock solutions for various polymers and chemicals. Refineries in Finland, the Netherlands and Singapore are 100% owned by the company, besides the company has also a joint venture for refinery activities in the United States which will start producing renewable products. 2021 company had 15,1 billion revenue and the comparable operating profit was 1,3 billion. In 2021 the case company employed 4900 employees globally and the headquarter is located in Espoo, Finland.
2 The case company has divided its operations into 5 different business units which are Renewable Aviation (RA), Renewable Polymers and Chemicals (RPC), Renewable Road Transportation (RRT), Renewable Platform (RP) and Oil Products (OP). The Case company has been selected among the 100 most sustainable companies in the world. 1.2 Business challenge, objective, and outcome Company’s business environment is becoming more and more complex due to regulatory aspects like trade sanctions, GDPR, market regulations and competition law. The case company uses a growing number of operational models to do term sales, spot sales, running channel partner network and purchase feedstock to supply its refineries. End-to-end supply chains are complex and require precise knowledge of local regulation and law. The case company has five different business units where operates more than 10 sales and supply teams globally. According to ICIS article “Commercial Excellence to customer growth” by John Baker, 52% of Chemical Companies which respondents to the survey are focusing on to improve sales efficiency. 46% of respondents will improve customer interactions. Companies are focusing to grow their sales and be more effective in the sales phase. To achieve that, companies need better tools and efficient processes (Baker, J. 2017). The case company has complex end-to-end supply chains and in a growing market segment it must ensure that it receives enough feedstock which can be refined to renewable products. As competition intensifies it’s crucial to serve customers even better and ensure that all good practices are widely used throughout the whole organisation. By improving current Prospect to Order process instructions, the study aims to gather all scattered information into one place, harmonize instructions, have the good practices and non-do things listed based on experience, help new sales members to adapt company procedures
3 more quickly and win more deals in the future. Harmonizing the guidance of sales, the company focuses to do sales in a more harmonized way – the better way. Competition in open markets is intensifying increasingly, and it's dangerous for a company that is accustomed to a dominant market position and lacks the ability to monitor competitors. If the company does not train its salespeople and the salespeople do not manage their sales process, the price is the only trading competitive advantage for the company. Focusing on price competition instead of customer service, may lead customers to choose the cheapest option of the market. Price competition decreases the company’s margins and thereby reduces profits. If sales representatives fail to provide superior customer service compared to competitors, customers may opt for more cost-effective alternatives in the market. The salesperson’s successful way of acting and progressing in the sales process significantly influences the customer’s final choice. Customers are no longer loyal to their suppliers, and they are scanning the market all the time and may change the suppliers easily. Customer service and the right way performed sales process by sales, should be the cornerstones for every company (Rubanovitsch 2005). Companies should equip sales staff with the proper knowledge and training to develop the skills necessary for managing customer experience. Company’s management should ensure that salespeople have the sufficient competence to navigate through the sales process (Rubanovitsch 2005). The Objective for the study is to develop the case company’s Prospect to order process guidelines in the form of Sales Playbook. Outcome is Sales Playbook which contains all above-mentioned things to guide sales to do better deals and serve the customer better. The Sales Playbook will be more like a tool for sales personnel rather than an instruction package. Key elements for Sales Playbook are easy to use and navigate, good searching availabilities, usability with computer, mobile phone, or pad and simple to keep updated. Best practices are searched and further utilized during the study.
4 This study does not include implementation of the Sales Playbook. It is limited to collect, create, and modify content, create the final form of Sales Playbook, and give proposals for reviewing and updating the content. At the end of the study also future development ideas are shared to further improve the Sales Playbook. 1.3 Outline of the thesis report on hand The thesis focuses on gathering all relevant guidelines and instructions from the Prospect to Order process in the form of Sales Playbook. The final form for the Sales Playbook is selected based on research and review and update practices introduced. The thesis will not focus on implementing the new Sales Playbook in the organisation and user training are also out of the scope. The thesis is divided into 7 sections. It begins with the introduction to business context, business problem, objective, and outcome. Section 2 describes the research approach, design, and data collection plan. In section 3 the content of Sales Playbook is defined. Workshops were organised to gather relevant material, to be modified and created new material in cooperation with the content area specialists. After the material was collected it was validated together with the thesis steering group, which contains the Head of Key Account Management, Head of Commercial Excellence, and Prospect to Order process owner. Section 4 describes the best practices from literature, it covers how the Sales Playbook content should be created, what kind of material there should be, how to review and update the content, what kind of platform is best to be chosen for the Sales Playbook. Section 5 describes improving the Prospect to Order process instruction in the form of Sales Playbook in chosen conceptual framework. Section 6 describes the organisation feedback of the Sales Playbook and how the given feedback is utilized to improve the Sales Playbook. The final section 7 summarizes the thesis and gives recommendations for further development.
5 2 Project plan The business context, challenge, objective, and outcome were introduced in the previous section. This section describes the selected research approach and design and finally data collection and analysis methods. 2.1 Research approach According to Saunders, all business and management research projects can be set on the line which other end is basic research and other is applied research based on their purpose and context. Research, which addresses the practical issue or opportunity that can be used to develop and create solutions for a business problem, is applied research. Basic research concerns to understand theoretically business process and their outcomes. Basic research aims to have results in universal scale related to processes and to have findings which creates value to society in general (Saunders 2019). Research methods can be separate to quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative research is made without numerical data, instead it focuses on words and sentences. Qualitative research is used to gain deeper understanding of phenomena when there is not much existing data or information available on the research object. Quantitative methods instead require models or theories which are understood beforehand. Quantitative methods use statistical methods to find out the answers (Kananen 2013). Design research combines research and development, and it generates practical and functional solutions to enhance operations. Design research can use qualitative and quantitative methods (Kananen 2013). The chosen research approach for this study is design research because the research addresses a practical business problem, and the study focuses on developing a solution to it. Qualitative method was selected because the study is aiming to improve specific business problems.
6 2.2 Research design This study includes four stages which are conducted from business challenges and required data collections, actions, and analysis to achieve the objective and to produce the outcome. Figure 1 shows the whole research design of this study. Figure 1 Research design in this study The First stage was to define the content of new Prospect to Order process instructions. The activities began with the meeting with level 1 Prospect to order process owner and core group. Table of content for Sales Playbook was created based on level 2 and level 3 sub-processes and all sub-process owners were then invited to a kick-off meeting. Case company’s current Prospect to Order process and its sub-process instructions were reviewed and strengths and weaknesses of them were discovered. Strengths were utilized and weaknesses improved furthermore to achieve the harmonized level of quality. Outcome from the data gathering and current state analysing was a defined content to be used in a new sales guidance document, list of suitable instructions, list of improvement
7 needed instructions and stakeholders’ expectations about the final outcome of the study. After defining the content and hearing stakeholders’ expectations it was time to seconds stage which was literature review. In this stage the relevant academic literature was searched and found the best practices from commercial excellence keeping in mind the stakeholders’ expectations. Relevant findings were conducted to a conceptual framework of this study. Relevant literatures were searched from the following areas: how to create Sales Playbook, what kind of content should be in it and what are the best ways to review and keep it updated. These were the main development points for this study. Third stage of this study was to build a proposal based on stage one and two outcomes. Content was improved and harmonized in co-operation with sub process owners. Improvements were made based on best practices found from literature research. After the instructions were developed based on best practices, the content was validated with level 1 process owner. Research for best format was made and best format was selected for the Sales Playbook. Proposals on how to maintain the playbook were conducted and update cycles were established. Sales Playbook update cycle is faster than normal process instruction and it’s crucial to keep it updated. For that reason, it was chosen to develop two update streams for the Sales Playbook, for ad-hoc update needs, where the Sales Playbook user could make update requests straight from the playbook. The second stream was a content review process for the whole content. Final stage of this study was to validate the Sales Playbook and collect feedback from relevant stakeholders and from salespeople who are the main user group. Initial version of the playbook was shared with the stakeholders and feedback was collected to further improve the Sales Playbook. After stakeholders’ and management feedback were received, small enhancements were made to meet the expectations. Backlog list was also published to better follow the changes in the future. Some items were already listed to be developed in the near future.
8 2.3 Data Collection Data were collected from different sources for this study. As seen in Table 1, the Data 1 gathers first relevant process instructions and other written material from the Company’s management system. Existing written material were reviewed, already good instructions were listed, and gaps were identified for future editing. Secondly, interviews were arranged with Prospect to Order process owner, Head of Commercial Excellence and Head of Key Account Management to create frame for the work and set targets for this improvement project. Table 1 Data plan for the study Data 2 was drawn from interviews and workshops where initial content was co- created with each content area specialists and validated with Prospect to order process owner, Head of Commercial Excellence and Head of Key Account Management. The first draft of the Sales Playbook was created with consideration for stakeholders' expectations from Data 1 outcome. Proposals for reviewing and updating the content in the Sales Playbook were created. Data 3 Included suggestion for the Sales Playbook. This data phase included interviews with P2O process owner, Head of Commercial Excellence and Head of Key Account Management. Survey was sent to collect feedback from the stakeholders, content area specialists and salespeople. Finally, a summary of corrected suggestions was created.
9 3 Analysis of case Company’s current Prospect to Order Process instruction The main stages of this study and the data collection plan for gathering information was described in the previous section. In this section the content of Sales Playbook is identified, current instructions are reviewed, gaps identified, and suitable material selected. The identified gaps in the Sales Playbook content are filled by modifying existing material and creating new material. Summary of findings is presented at the end of this section. 3.1 Defining the content of Sales Playbook In this section the data collection was started by interviewing the Prospect to Order process owner, Head of Commercial Excellence and Head of Key Account Management. From now on the previously mentioned group of people is called the “core group”, which was also a steering group for this study. Core group steered the study in the right direction during the work. The scope of this development work was agreed to cover the current Prospect to Order process and its sub-processes in L2 and L3 phases. The existing process instructions were explored from the company’s management system and other company’s electric locations. In the book” Valitse myynnin kasvu” written by Karppinen, J, Sorri, T & Paussu, A. it is stated that Sales Playbook might be a huge totality to be covered and it is better to start building it by defining the table of contents first. Together with the core group, level 1 and level 2 processes were identified, and process owners and content area specialists listed. Totally four of level 1 processes and 11 of level 2 processes were identified. In the very beginning it was clear that the amount of instruction was high and there will be a lot of material. The case company has named process owners for level 1 and level 2 processes, but not for more specific steps under the Prospect to Order process. These more specific steps were also identified, and specialists named for each specific step.
10 A kick-off meeting with all content specialists and key stakeholders was held to secure their commitment to the development project after the steps and table of contents were identified. Totally 39 sub areas were identified under level 2 processes and each area has its own content area specialist. Content area specialists are in a key position in creating new content and guidelines but also modifying the existing material which then would be suitable to use in the Sales Playbook. 3.2 Reviewing of current Prospect to Order process and its instructions After the commitment from the key stakeholders were received, current instruction reviews started with the content area specialists. Workshops were organised to first check the current material and finally decide if it would be ready for data validation phase or should it be modified first. Sales Playbook is a tool for salespeople, so the perspective of instructions should take that into consideration. Figure 2 Material review, creation process and validation process As seen in the figure 2, once the table of contents were defined there were two streams to validate the text for each content section. There were totally 39
11 different areas to be covered. First stream was for content areas where there weren’t any instructions available. There were 12 areas with no suitable material to be used. The first stream focuses on these and aimed to create a new instruction material for these areas. Workshops were arranged with content area specialists and once the material was created it was presented to Core Group and it was decided whether it is suitable or needed more enhancement. If more changes to content needed to be done, then a new workshop with a content area specialist was arranged. At this stage, the necessary changes were made and then a final validation was still needed to ensure the correctness of the content. The Second stream was focusing on areas where the material already existed. Process started with a review session with a content area specialist. Material was checked whether it was suitable for use in the Sales Playbook or if it needed modifications. 10 areas were passed through the validation straight away and 17 areas needed modifications and workshops to be organised. The areas that passed validation the first time were aimed to sales personnel like credit limits, payment terms and trade sanctions. Those that needed more guidance for sales, were things which are not in core of sales personnel job description, like logistics, system integrations and chemical compliance. 3.3 Improving currently existing material for Sales Playbook Number of areas, which needed more modifications to be validated and accepted for the Sales Playbook material, were identified to be 17. The improvement process started from the review section where the current content was reviewed and compared to validations elements which are shown in appendix 1. Gaps between the existing material and validations elements were identified together with core group and content area specialist. After gap analysis the workshop was arranged to improve the instruction based on gaps and always keeping in mind the user perspective, instructions and guidelines are for sales personnel. The workshops were arranged with content area specialists and workshops focused on to fill in the previously mentioned gaps. Typically, the areas which
12 needed improvement were missing the sales perspective or then guidance about what are the good practices and what salesperson should avoid. An attempt was also made to identify silent information, which could be, for example, in someone's head or on a local drive or in email. Key elements for this improvement section were also presented in appendix 1. After all relevant information was added, each section moved on to the content validation part. Content validation was arranged to be a separate session. 3.4 Identifying gaps and creating new material for Sales Playbook Areas with no existing material or guidance for sales force, were identified to be 12 pieces. Some of the areas were totally new process steps which were not implemented yet in the organisation and some of them were just not written down. By identifying these unwritten parts and by documenting them, operations get more harmonized, standardized and it helps organisation see the way work is really done. Harmonized and well-structured documents help readers to understand and learn more easily (Oakland, J, 2014). The Workshops with content area specialists were organised to address the identified gaps in the literature review sections. Some of the content areas needed several workshops to get all the relevant data collected. In some operations, the case company has different work procedures in different business units. Relevant persons were then contacted, and data gathered. Different ways of working in different business units were clearly highlighted to prevent misunderstandings. Key structure elements for each section are presented in appendix 1. 3.5 Validating suitable material for Sales Playbook Material validations were made for all accepted material by the process owner who also owns the Sales Playbook. Process owner responsibility towards the Sales Playbook is data validation which consists of up-to-date data, accepting
13 new content, modified old content and removing expired content. As important as to have updated data in the Sales Playbook, it’s also not to have the old, expired data. Key elements for the material validation were that the content is made for sales personnel and the content and guidance should be relevant to help sales force to do better deals. One important part of the validation process was to ensure that the material is coherent, meaning that the language and wording is homogenous. Appendix 1 shows the framework for each workshop when new material was prepared. In each area it was important to define sales personnel roles and responsibilities to make sure everyone understands their role in the process. Key stakeholders were identified to determine who should be involved and notified, and in terms of process flow, where inputs originate and where outputs are directed. The sales personnel tasks outline all necessary actions to secure successful deals, while utilizing best practices and a non-do list to prevent potential issues in the process. Hard requirements from the management system were linked into the Sales Playbook to avoid double updating. Each subject matter expert was listed with direct contact information for easy access. 3.6 Summary of findings Totally four of level 1 processes and 11 of level 2 processes were identified under Prospect to Order process. 39 sub-areas were identified under level 2 processes to be covered in the Sales Playbook. All the 39 areas went through the review, creation and validation process described in figure 2. 12 areas were identified with no suitable material existing, 17 areas had existing material, but they needed further development and 10 areas were passed through the validations at the first time.
14
Summary of findings
Content ready Content need modification Content need to be created
Figure 3 Summary of findings
Totally 12 areas were found without existing material to be used in the Sales
Playbook. This means that current instructions were not created, topics were
covered in internal mandatory training, or instructions were not up to date. The
Forecast & Plan process was under development during this study and process
instructional materials were created for this development work. The majority of
new instructional materials were needed for the Preparing deal section, which
was also the largest in terms of content area topics. Totally 5 content areas were
without existing material. One area under communicating deal and two areas
under deal execution required new instructions to be created. Figure 4
summarizes the findings.15
Content area had no existing material available by
processes
Forecasting & Planning Preparing deal Negotiating deal
Communicating deal Deal execution
Figure 4 No existing material available, distribution by processes
17 areas had instruction material, but they needed more modification to be used
in the Sales Playbook. Material development was mostly to focus on things which
are important to sales, what were their responsibilities and what are the good
practices. The Preparing deal section had 10 content areas which needed
modification. As mentioned before, this was the largest section in the Sales
Playbook. Five areas which needed modification were under the negotiating deal
process and two under communicating deal -process. Figure 5 summarizes the
findings.16
Content area instructions needed modification by
processes
Forecasting & Planning Preparing deal Negotiating deal
Communicating deal Deal execution
Figure 5 Content areas which needed modification by processes
10 areas passed the validation at the first place. Preparing deal process had four
areas, negotiating deal process three areas and Communicating deal process
three areas as well. To summarize these passed areas the following diagram was
created, see figure 6.
Content areas which passed the validation without
any improvement needs
Forecasting & Planning Preparing deal Negotiating deal
Communicating deal Deal execution
Figure 6 Areas which passed the validation at the first time by processes
Workshops were arranged with content area specialists for those areas where
existing material needed modifications and those where the material did not exist.17 After material modifications and creation workshops, all areas passed the validation. The made analysis for the Prospect to Order instruction shows data about which steps already had instructions for salespeople and which had not. Preparing deal -process step had most of the areas which needed modification as well the areas which had not ready instruction at all.
18
4 Ideas on Improving Prospect to Order Process Instructions
in relevant literature
In the previous section the current instructions and guidelines were identified, and
the gaps were analysed. Section 4 gathers the relevant existing knowledge found
from reviewed literature. These best practices were then utilized to build a
conceptual framework for this study which is described at the end of this section.
This section focuses on commercial excellence in regard to the Sales Playbook.
It covers key findings on the best form of Sales Playbook and best practices for
maintaining it. These findings are used to develop the conceptual framework of
the study and the final section summarizes the key takeaways from each topic.
4.1 Best practices from Commercial Excellence concept to Sales
Playbook
Sales Playbook is one of the most common tools used in sales organisations to
improve sales efficiency. It compiles the sales organisation's purpose and
operating methods in an easily digestible form. Well prepared Sales Playbook
works as an orientation material for new sales members and speeds up them to
do productive work for the company and help the company to improve solid work
culture (Karppinen, J. 2022). Companies are usually acquiring different amounts
of information technology tools over time which then gathers information inside
them. When using multiple platforms and data storage places, companies are
exposing themselves to duplicate content challenges, which means the same
data needs to be updated in several locations. Companies should have a well
prepared administration structure for IT-tools or then use data collection sites to
keep it simple for the user (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
McKinsley & Company describes in their article that customers are nowadays
more demanding and they want to have more customer centric interaction with
counterparty. Sales organisations need to focus on customer centric abroad and
ensuring best practices and share these practices to wider in organisation.19 Successful sales organisation can repeat these best practices repeatedly. Selling methods evolve over time and so do best practices. Organisations must continuously learn and adapt to these changing practices. They must document and update the methods and best practices as changes occur. According to McKinsley & Company research, traditional face to face selling is moving towards online and hybrid sales. These new trends and skills need to be trained to be successful in the market (McKinsley 2022). To get most of the benefits out of the Sales Playbook, it should be built based on the company’s sales process and it should be clearly defined. Playbook guides salespeople through different process steps to be more successful in each step. Playbook should not give strict rules, but rather steer in the right direction. Karppinen lists things that a good Sales Playbook should include in his book “Valitse myynnin kasvu”. Those are: - What does your company do? - Why does it exist? - Who does it serve? - What are its values and goals? - How does the company operate? - How does the company achieve its goals? - How are key processes are handled? Shivakumar lists the common challenges with content in general and what is suitable to take into consideration when creating content from the content management point of view. - Duplicate content - Content silos - Inconsistent and non-uniform content - Complex and inefficient content update and creation process - Less effective content leading to decreased usability rate - Content discovery challenges - Challenges with content collaboration - Absence of content
20
Alana Ballon has described individual steps to create Sales Playbook from the
scrats in Saleshacker.com site:
1. Determine roles. The needed roles for creating a Sales Playbook are
subject matter experts, project manager, content reviewer and approver,
and content architect who led the discovery of what is needed by other
group members, gathers content from subject matter experts and edit the
content into final format.
2. Prioritize content creation by figuring out the most needed content. The
content architect should have discussion with sales managers about the
key challenges sales is facing. Also looking at the sales process with a
critical eye and determining what guidance needs to have in each step to
be able to continue successful. Investigate also why deals are being lost
or going cold.
3. Start creating content. Check what guidance already exists. Sometimes
the needed information lies in the person’s email boxes or personal drives.
Try to collect the most important things that allow sales to be successful.
Gather insight from previous deals on the past, wins and losses.
4. Content should be structured among the sales process. Tactical content
is preferred to be used so that sales could discover more critical
information during the sales process.
5. Content review. Once the material is ready sales leadership should
validate and sign-off on what is created. It is recommended that the Head
of sales review and validate the whole content before it is published.
Marketing department can also be utilized to review processes. Content
can still be change if something insight is brought up.21
6. Implement the Sales Playbook to the sales organisation. Make sure that
the Sales Playbook is used.
7. Insert the playbook where the sales representatives are. Most typical place
is the company’s own customer relationship management system. Most
used CRM System in globally is Salesforce-tool, which allows to insert
company internal instructions inside the application.
8. Measure results, gather feedback and revise the Sales Playbook. Get
statistics about which part of the Sales Playbook is used more often than
the others, get feedback about the content, which things are working, and
which are not.
The best sales playbooks are continually evolving as the market environment
changes and new products are launched (SalesHacker.com 2023).
To avoid content silos, Shivakumar recommends creating the content together
with the stakeholders and encourage to increase collaboration internally when
updating the Sales Playbook content. By creating and finalizing the content
across the content creators, companies can ensure the uniform and coherent
user experience. Content structure and style might vary by author, which might
negatively affect to user experience (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
Complex content review and update procedures might require multi-level
approvals and that effects on publishing timelines. A well-designed workflow for
review, creation and approval phases are key things to optimize the timeline in
workflows (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
Large sizes of complex text without any visualization, structure, labels, or tags
might lead to decrease the usability of the content. This also makes it hard for
users to find the right things from the platform. Content may be also hidden
behind multiple layers, which causes problems for finding the right content.
Structure should not be multilayer. Relevant content needs to be available, but22
also, it’s important to identify missing content. Companies need to build practices
to identify missing content. To make sure that content is relevant, governance
methods need to be used to validate the content. This part can be included as
part of the publishing process. (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
There are various things to be considered when creating the content to be used
in a company. To understand the content needs it’s important to know who the
end-users for the content are and what kind of business nature is. Statistics from
site visits, most popular parts of the content and formats helps to further develop
the whole content package. Some platforms have built-in dashboards where
statistics can be seen. Feedback collection is one part to continuously improve
content. Feedback can be collected by surveys or interviews. Clearly identifying
content responsibilities helps to update the areas which need enhancement
based on statistics and feedback. These are critical touch points to better
understand what matters to the content end-user. (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
To be able to give content in the right wording and format, content creators need
to know business related requirements. Shivakumar’s list of these requirements
is:
- Researching: The primary intent is to provide the information complete and
accurate and draw the users attention to most critical phases
- Decision: User might explore to find correct data point for making business
decisions. The relevant ways of working must be presented clearly
- Action: The information in this stage should be optimized so that user can
complete the actions in the right way and quickly
The old saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words” is true based on The
Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Visualization helps people to
understand more complex things and it’s suitable to use different kinds of media
types in a modern learning environment.
Jamie Cleghorn, Jordan Lee, Eliza Kennedy, and Randy Huey add also in their
article “The Sales Playbook of Successful B2B Teams” that Sales Playbook is a23 living document and plays which are working needs to be added and plays which are not working needs to be removed from Playbook. They highlight that to be successful in business, the right procedures need to be updated and changes need to be made if the business changes. Karppinen highlights that it’s important to include not just a customer acquisition, but also how a company is managing already existing customers and how those are led to grow. Companies should focus also to grow and take care of current customers; those could have a big potential in the future (Karppinen 2022). When companies are choosing to digitalize their processes and instructions, it provides opportunities to enhance the given information and it can be further personalized based on the user group. Enhancing the information could also mean that just relevant information is shown in each context. Providing digital tools enables better collaboration between parties to better share the information and knowledge inside the company (Shivakumar 2017). 4.2 Ideas for the form of form of Sales Playbook Internal requirements from the core team were that the Sales Playbook should be more like a tool, rather than a document package. Users should be able to Navigate among the process to different sections and information should be easily accessible. Side notes the case company uses Google tools instead of Microsoft Office products. Jason Jordan and Robert Kelly present in their article “Companies with a formal sales process generate more revenue” that clearly defined sales processes are key for success. This means that all key steps and milestones are defined with the language that every sales representative could understand. As important as a company has a formal sales process, is that it is written down and salespeople are following it. Pipeline management has also been raised up as a key activity which sales need to follow (Jordan 2015).
24 Mr. Jouni Karppinen describes in his book, that the Sales Playbook should be documented in a simple way, so it is also easy to update when needed. Ideally the form would be one where can be saved print screens, videos, and sales performance indicators. He also mentioned that many companies use classic PowerPoint. The content of the playbook should be structured into logically progressing sections. Karppinen also highlights that navigation between different sections should be smooth and table of content informative (Karppinen 2022). When companies are entering into new markets or business is in a changing environment, business rules and complexity of the processes tend to increase. Digital platforms and technologies give a huge potential to improve user experiences and help people to apply the rules and suitable methods. Digital platforms give an opportunity to use interfaces between different digital tools. Digital tools also enable the collaboration, so more than one person can edit the document at the same time (Shivakumar 2017). Most modern digital platforms are having a good search-centered experience for the user. Search-centered experiences are built based on site search options, search portals, faceted search, synonym support, semantic search and like functions. Connections between different digital platforms can be added and extend the search to other sources as well (Shivakumar 2017). When deciding on the final format for the Sales Playbook, several options were considered based on online research. WordPress is the most popular platform for websites globally. According to their website, 42% of the web is built on WordPress. WordPress gives the opportunity to use ready-made themes and layouts, or the possibility to create a site from scratch. WordPress also advertised effortless page updating and editing possibilities and it supports embedded videos and pictures (WordPress.com, 2023). WordPress is mainly used for creating blogs and websites. The user interface is intuitive, and that feature helps administrators to quickly build
25 websites. The user interface consists of administration panels, dashboards, and features to add images and manage posts (Shivakumar 2017). Google Slide is an online presentation application that makes it possible to create and format presentations. Google slide can be used from any device, including mobile phones, laptops, and pads. Pictures, videos, and graphs are easily added. It is comparable to Microsoft PowerPoint. Collaboration between different users is easy, multiple users can work on the same presentation at the same time and keep track of changes. Google slides has a built-in image editor to crop, adjust, and add effects to images and the creator has an option to add animations and transitions to slides to make presentations more engaging. With Google Slides users have integration with other Google Workspace apps, such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Sites (Support.Google.com 2023). Google Sites allows to create internal websites, which are easy to create with drag and drop methods. Google Sites websites are responsive, which means that end users could use tablets and smartphones and the view is always optimized. Google Sites is created for Google Drive, and it can make use of local drive data. Updating and publishing content is easy. Embedding feature gives an opportunity to embed other Google services such as Google Maps, Google Forms, and Google Calendar. Google Sites also provide pre-designed templates for various types of websites, including portfolios, team sites, and project sites. Collaboration has been made easy, multiple users can work on the same site at the same time and keep track of changes. Google Sites gives an option to set up different levels of access and edit permissions for different users (Support.Google.com, 2023). Using multimedia such as pictures, words, videos, and voice sources, enables us to take full advantage of human capacity for processing information. This is an important thing to consider when creating modern guidelines (Mayer 2005).
26
4.3 Best practices for review and update Sales Playbook
Main functionalities for document management are content creation, review, edit,
content versioning, publishing, and archive. Content workflows consist of these
series of above-mentioned steps. Basic document lifecycle includes document
creation, reviewing, approving, and finally archiving the document, see figure 7.
(Shivakumar 2017).
Content
Reviewing Approving Publishing Archiving
creation
Figure 7 Document lifecycle (Shivakumar, S. 2017).
Authored content is reviewed and approved by relevant business stakeholder(s).
Based on review comments, content is updated to meet the current ways of
working. Review step can be done in several steps by using different roles of the
organisation to double check the crosslinking between different functions.
Content is published once the organisation is sure that the content, form, and
other aspects are checked, and the content meets the current ways of working.
Usually the published document is shown to all basic users, but the draft version
is only visible for a limited user group. Every time the content is published, a new
version occurs in the system. Content versioning is also an important role, and
normally all content management systems have such a feature (Shivakumar
2017).27 Sales Playbook is a living document, which must be updated alongside the processes. Good Playbook supports and helps organisations to grow, and a growing organisation is constantly evolving, Playbook must evolve together with organisation. However, content of the playbook should include topics and things which are not needing constant updating. Topics and things which update cycle is tight, should be only linked into the Playbook (Karppinen 2022). Collectively updating the Sales Playbook commits personnel to common operating models and company’s culture. Involving many people to update processes helps implementation of the sales process in the organisation. (Karppinen 2022). Once the document is created, it’s important to keep it up to date. Documentation review is a process where normally the document is checked one or multiple stages of review and reviewers. Outcome of the review process is that it improves the accuracy and quality of the document (Document360.com, 2023). Digital platforms enable good content management practices. Content management practices usually include authoring, reviewing, and publishing workflows, content security, content versioning, content backup and archival. Regular on-going content maintenance makes sure that content is up to date. Content can be tested, audited, or reviewed in a certain time cycle. Continuous monitoring also includes feedback receiving processes from end-users and business stakeholders. Web statistics are used to understand the usage and effectiveness of the content, and this helps also to develop further the content. (Shivakumar, S. 2017). Documentation updates are typically made by ad-hoc changes when someone identifies a mistake or change has been made to the current procedures. Update needs could be also identified during the review process (Wiggins, B. 2012).
28 4.4 Summary of Final Sales Playbook content and form When a company seeks efficiency in their sales organisation, Sales Playbook is a common tool which is used among different industries. Sales Playbook gathers all relevant information into one place, which helps salespeople to do better work and it helps to on-board new sales personnels. Best way to utilize the Sales Playbook is when it is built to follow the sales process. Sales Playbook is a living document which needs to be updated regularly to meet the used best practices. Sales Playbook will be a more powerful tool for sales, if it is simple to use, it’s built based on multimedia content and finding information is easy. Possible forms were listed, and the most common form would be to use PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation applications. More user-friendly options are to build own site, for example using WordPress or Google Sites. All these forms support multimedia content, but Google Slides and WordPress supports also view optimization to other devices like mobile phones and pads. Keeping Sales Playbook up to date is one key point once the first version of it is published. No one would use it if the content were not accurate. Many of the hard requirements or company’s instructions should be linked into the playbook to avoid a double review and editing. Collectively reviewing the document commits personnel to follow common sales procedures and helps implement it to the organisation. Case company’s review cycle is max 3 years once the document is published for the first time. However, considering the nature of the document, the review cycle is presumably shorter and even ad-hoc reviewing and updating is possible to do. Based on best practices found on literature, the conceptual framework has been created. Its emphasis the importance of content, user-friendly interface which allows content the be found and content accuracy, review, and update procedures. Conceptual framework presented in figure 8.
29
• Review & Update practices
(Document360.com 2023)
Accurate • Easy to give feedback
(Shivakumar 2017)
• Easy navigation (Karppinen 2022)
• Content easy to find (Shivakumar
User friendly 2017)
• Content created for salespersons
(Shivakumar 2017)
Content of the Sales • Include relevant info to be successful
in sales (Karppinen 2022)
Playbook • Introduction material (Karppinen
2022)
• Walks the process (Karppinen 2022)
Figure 8 Conceptual framework of this study
Conceptual framework was built based on three factors. Content is at the heart
of this study; it needs to be made just for salespeople and content and Sales
Playbook should follow the sales process (Karppinen 2022). The second layer in
the conceptual framework model in figure 5. is user friendly. Navigation inside the
Sales Playbook should be seamless (Karppinen 2022), and content should be
found easily (Shivakumar 2017). User friendly part is related to the selected form
of Sales Playbook which gives this functionality. The top layer of the conceptual
framework is accurate. The Sales Playbook must be updated as it guides sales
representatives in their daily sales activities. (Document260.com 2023). Review
and update practices need to be determined, and ad-hoc changes must be able
to be done (Shivakumar 2017).
Next section describes how best practices are applied in the conceptual
framework and how the form, content and update practices are developed.30
5 Developing case company’s Prospect to Order process
guidelines
In the previous section the literature research was made to collect the relevant
and best existing knowledge. The conceptual framework was created based on
best practices. The conceptual framework in figure 8 gives the boundaries for this
study. This section utilizes best practices from literature to develop current
Prospect to Order process instruction in the form of Sales Playbook.
5.1 Overview of this data stage
This section follows the conceptual framework which was presented in figure 8.
The purpose of this section is to further develop the current Prospect to Order
instruction and guidelines to meet the best practices from literature. The form for
the playbook is selected based on best practice from literature, but also case
company’s limits and goals are evaluated as part of the outcome.
Sales Playbook needs to be up to date and accurate to help organisation to be
efficient. Review and updating practices will be proposed also in this section.
5.2 Improving Prospect to Order process instruction in a form of Sales
Playbook
In section 3 the initial instructions were identified, collected, and then validated
as a suitable material to be used. Section 4 described the best practices from the
literature and based on those practices, instructions are further developed in this
section.
According to Karppinen, it is efficient to construct the Sales Playbook based on
the Sales Process (Karppinen 2022). Section 3 focused earlier on collecting the
material only from the level 3 processes, and the collection did not focus so much
on the pig picture – P2O -process itself. New sales process picture was created
to have logical structure for the Sales Playbook. The process picture shows L231 process steps: Forecast & Planning, Preparing deal, Negotiating deal, communicating deal and deal execution in figure 9. Karppinen also highlighted in his book “Valitse myynnin kasvu” that it’s important to include not just a new customer acquisition, but also managing and growing the current customer base. Therefore, managing customer -process was also added in the picture, but decided to leave that otherwise out of this study’s scope at this point. Content for managing customer -process will be added later. Figure 9 also points out previous L1 process - Market to Prospect and the following process steps Supply to pay and Order to cash. Figure 9 Case company's Sales process Once the P2O process picture was designed, it was logical to use that as a structure for the Sales Playbook. L2 process: Forecast & Plan, Preparing deal, Negotiating deal, Communicating deal and Deal execution steps were separated and Sales Playbook content were then structured. Section 3 also included the instruction validation part, which used appendix 1 information to ensure that important steps were considered. Karppinen has also listed topics that a good Sales Playbook should include. Those topics were listed in section 4.1 Best practices from Commercial Excellence to Sales Playbook.
32 Based on the list, a few items were suggested to be listed to the development backlog. Listed items were: - What does your company do? - Why does it exist? - Who does it serve? - How does the company operate? In the literary review section, it was mentioned that visualization helps people to better understand the complex things. After the material collection phase was done, the total amount of text was 53 pages in Google doc which was a working version for the Sales Playbook. Based on the fact above, it was decided to visualize the content more. Videos and images were incorporated to enliven the content and steps were taken to identify content that could be visualized. Totally 17 new pictures and 2 videos were added to the initial content. 5.3 Improving the Sales Playbook format Content was ready and gathered into Google doc file, but it was obvious that the final format should be something else. Most typical format for the playbook based on literature, was Microsoft PowerPoint application. Due to a decision by the case company, the use of Microsoft products was prohibited, and Google tools were used instead. First option was to use the Google Slides application. There were many positive features like, easy to use and update, available, no need to use consultancy services. Google Slides also has features, but it was not chosen due to a lack of user-friendly navigation and how the content is structured. WordPress is in common use all over the world and enables a unique user experience. Modification possibilities are wide, but competence to modify content
33 and pages should be bought as a service. Sales Playbook content must be up to date and update cycle might be short. WordPress was put aside because of a lack of competence in the organisation and that’s why it is hard to update the content. Selected form for the Sales Playbook were Google Sites which have many good features. Key advantages of using Google Sites include ease of use, no need for external services to maintain updates, the ability to create a well-structured site with easy navigation, and an in-site search tool to help users find what they need. 5.4 Improving the review and updating practices for Sales Playbook The Sales Playbook must be accurate and up to date to bring benefits to the company, so it was important to establish proper procedures to ensure regular updates. Case company’s document approval workflow described in figure 10. According to the case company’s document management instruction, expiration time for documents is max 3 years and after that the document needs to be reviewed. Shorter review cycle can be also selected if the nature of the document requires it. Document workflow begins with a draft section, where the document content is created. In this section the first version of the document is prepared. Second phase is the review section. The document is reviewed from multiple perspectives. Firstly, the accuracy of the content is checked, and all metadata is inspected. By having multiple reviewers, the company ensures that all aspects are cross-checked and that the content corresponds to actions. All critical requirements will be checked by cross functional dimension inside the organisation. Once the content, metadata and all other relevant information have been inspected, the document can be forwarded into approval workflow. The document approver needs to be higher in hierarchy level than the document owner. Approvers inspect and finally approve the content of the document. Once approval has been made, the document is published as an official document.
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