The Future of Sales Playbooks

This article originally appeared in Top Sales Magazine (link below).

Sales playbooks have come a long way since their early manifestations as a collection of generic product-focused sales scripts, documents and presentations, pre-canned objection handling tactics and linear step-by-step instructions for moving a deal forwards that implied that there was always one best way of managing the key elements of a sales cycle.

With the rise of “solution selling”, these playbooks - particularly in complex B2B sales environments - evolved into consultative selling frameworks, with a greater emphasis on equipping and enabling salespeople to more effectively manage the relationship with their key stakeholders - but much of the content, although more nuanced and situational, was still somewhat generic.

The AI-driven Playbook Revolution

The digitisation of playbooks and their integration into CRM and other sales enablement platforms and their associated data sources has allowed them to become far more dynamic, more situational, more customised, more adaptable and easier to use than ever before. But digitisation is just the start of the next wave: We are in the early stages of an AI-driven playbook revolution.

Dynamic Personalisation

AI’s ability to adapt, tailor and optimise sales guidance in real-time will have a transformative effect on B2B sales effectiveness. Instead of generalised strategies, content and tactics, AI will usher in an age of dynamic personalisation.

The guidance given to salespeople can now be tailored to individual industries, prospect organisations, stakeholders, deal stages and specific interactions in real time. It can analyse industry trends, customer behaviour, and previously successful tactics to generate timely recommendations that are specific to the particular current prospect or opportunity.

Predictive Analytics

AI’s ability to identify patterns of success and failure drives an environment of continuous learning. It can identify which tactics are working, which deals are likely to close, and which ones are at risk, allowing sales teams to proactively adjust their forecasts and deal strategies.

But - of course - the impact will depend on each salesperson’s willingness and ability to act upon the recommendations, or to challenge them if they feel that there is something missing. AI will make the best salespeople (who tend to be always learning anyway) even more effective.

Skills Development

There is tremendous scope for AI to underpin an environment of continuous learning and development by offering proactive guidance and real-time feedback on each salesperson’s communications. AI-driven conversational analysis is already going well beyond simple call transcription to assess both prospect sentiment and the quality of the salesperson’s implementation of their sales organisation’s chosen sales methodologies.

AI-powered coaching platforms are already allowing salespeople to practice upcoming sales calls based on an analysis of the information about the opportunity, the prospect organisation, the market environment and the social interactions of individual stakeholders. Generic role-plays are being overtaken by situationally-specific practice.

Hyper-targeted Messaging and Content

This dramatically deeper understanding of each prospect’s situation enables salespeople to be guided towards the most appropriate content and messaging for each specific stakeholder in each specific opportunity at each specific stage in the evolution of the opportunity.

It can help to recommend what topics, information and mode of delivery is most likely to resonate with each stakeholder based on an analysis of their likely perspective and situation. But it only will augment, rather than replace, each salesperson’s conversational skills and judgement. Once again, AI will make the best salespeople even more effective.

AI is Not a Miracle Cure

I have become convinced of the power of AI to improve sales effectiveness, and hugely impressed with how quickly both vendors and the more advanced sales organisation have moved the state of the art forwards. But I am also convinced that it is not a miracle cure.

Whilst AI will completely replace a growing number of simple transactional sales roles, I have seen nothing to suggest that it will replace the role of intelligent salespeople in complex sales environment any time soon. But it will make intelligent, receptive, salespeople even more effective.

It is also my belief that the declining number of old-school salespeople who are unwilling to embrace these new approaches will struggle. They will increasingly be out-sold by their more open-minded colleagues and competitors. If they choose not to adapt, their decline will be inevitable.

The Future is Here Already

The capabilities I have described are not science fiction. Most of them are here today, being driven by innovative vendors and embraced by forward thinking sales organisations.

To take just one of a growing number of examples, a sales organisation with which I’m familiar is already seeing significant benefits from implementing Zime’s AI-powered just-in-time sales playbook platform. Their salespeople’s conversations are not merely being recorded and analysed but guided - based on a combination of specific customer insights, their outcome-centric sales methodology, and the best practices of their top sales performers.

Salespeople receive pre-call recommendations based on the prospective customer’s status and situation, in-call guidance and a post-call analysis that includes recommended next steps. Leaderboards show how effectively each salesperson is following the recommendations, and what impact they are having on sales outcomes.

Unsurprisingly, salespeople that embrace the guidance are able to advance their opportunities three times more often than their less engaged colleagues. Equally unsurprisingly, salespeople are highly motivated to adopt the best practices of their top-performing peers.

It’s no surprise that win rates are improving and sales cycles are shortening - or that they see the  potential for so much more to come.

Here's the link to subscribe to the always-excellent Top Sales Magazine.