When I first heard of the term “Sales Playbooks” my first reaction was great, another sports analogy for selling that will be incessantly repeated on sales forecast calls across America.  I guess in my experiences selling I had heard too many quotes from Vince Lombardi such as “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” Thanks for the motivation, but how does that help me close a large opportunity with a Medical Device company facing compliance challenges?  Or analogies that I needed to perform more like Tom Brady and “quarterback the deal”.  As you’ll see throughout this blog I like analogies, but only when they actually help me better understand a situation.  Sales Playbooks aren’t just another motivational quote or sports analogy.  When successful they can definitely impact revenue, however when implemented poorly they are just another costly tool from corporate that sellers don’t adopt.
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Whether it’s the newest technological item presented in dozens of fashion colors, the infinite number of fonts and letter effects in word processing/printing, or the seemingly endless options that most major  manufacturers (and aftermarket companies) offer to ‘make something theirs feel more like yours’, it’s fairly common knowledge that the discerning customer now almost expects to have certain things available for customizing with any product or service.  In fact, some companies now make their livelihood exclusively dealing with the custom options and add-ons for existing products!
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When I sat down to write this piece I thought about doing something along the lines of why B2B organizations should be embracing social media. This is something I believe strongly in as the social media guy here at SAVO. However this topic has been touched on quite a bit lately, and there are great blogs out there already like Mashable that can give some good insights on this topic. (Also, if you haven’t yet seen it yet take a look at this recent YouTube video from Socialnomics and the data behind the explosion in social media, it is worth a look.) However, after some thought I decided it might be more valuable to give a little insight in to why we are doing it at SAVO.
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I threw out the entire marketing collateral closet.  I recycled it all.  Do you know what?  No one complained.
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