The Basics of HubSpot Playbooks - Practise & Procedure

HubSpot's Playbooks offer a comprehensive guide to inbound sales success. This series covers everything from building buyer personas to designing the sales process, and streamlining sales and marketing efforts. The Playbooks can be used to standardize sales interactions, ensuring that they are consistent and aligned with the organization's overall sales strategy. 

Sales teams can create templates for different sales situations, including guidelines for messaging, next steps, and tasks to be completed. These templates serve as a starting point when interacting with leads and customers and can be customized as needed. 

HubSpot Playbooks benefit both new and experienced salespeople by providing a clear roadmap for sales interactions and ensuring best practices are followed. They also help sales teams track and analyze their processes, identify areas for improvement, and optimize their approach over time. 

Overall, HubSpot Playbooks are a valuable resource for businesses looking to streamline their sales efforts and optimize their sales process. In this blog post, we'll provide an overview of HubSpot Playbooks and how they can benefit your business.

What is a Sales Playbook?

A sales playbook has existed for some while, even before HubSpot started using them!
A sales playbook is a document that outlines the processes, strategies, and techniques your sales team should use to close deals. It should include everything from how to prospect new leads to how to handle objections during the final stages of the sale.

The point of a sales playbook is to give every member of your team a clear understanding of what it takes to close a deal successfully. By having all of this information in one place, you can make sure everyone on your team is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

When done right, a sales playbook can be an indispensable tool for any sales organisation. It can help you:

• Onboard new reps quickly and effectively
• Improve rep performance
• Increase win rates
• Reduce wasted time and effort
• Boost morale
  

Introduction to HubSpot Playbooks

HubSpot Playbooks Tool is designed to help you close more deals faster. A HubSpot Playbook is a set of instructions that helps you automate and optimise your sales and marketing processes. It's essentially a "playbook" for your business, outlining the steps you need to take in order to achieve success. Plus, they're easy to customise and share with your team.

HubSpot Playbooks can be customised to fit the specific needs of each sales team and can be used in conjunction with other sales and marketing tools within the HubSpot CRM to provide a comprehensive approach to inbound sales success.

Why Use HubSpot Playbooks? 

There are several benefits to using HubSpot Playbooks for your sales team:

1. Streamline processes:
   HubSpot Playbooks provide a clear, standardized process for sales interactions, which can help to streamline the sales process and make it more efficient.

2. Ensure consistency:
   HubSpot Playbooks ensure that all sales interactions are consistent, which can improve the overall customer experience and increase the likelihood of making a sale.

3. Improve efficiency:
   By providing a clear roadmap for sales interactions, HubSpot Playbooks can help salespeople to be more efficient and productive.

4. Track and analyse processes:
   HubSpot Playbooks provide a way to track and analyse sales processes, which can help to identify areas for improvement and optimise the sales approach over time.

5. Onboard new salespeople:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be a valuable resource for onboarding new salespeople, as they provide a clear set of guidelines for how to approach sales interactions.

6. Improve Customer Experience:
   Increase your customer engagement by ensuring that every customer interaction is consistent and relevant.
   
   
7. Improve Win Rate:
   Increase your conversion rate by helping you track and manage your leads more effectively. 

Overall, HubSpot Playbooks can help sales teams to be more effective and efficient and can improve the customer experience by ensuring that all sales interactions are consistent and aligned with the overall sales strategy of the organisation.

HubSpot Playbooks - Your Guide to Inbound Sales Success

HubSpot Playbooks can be created around different themes within your company.

1. Buyer Personas: 
   

   This playbook will help you understand what buyer personas are and how to create them. Creating buyer personas is essential to effective inbound sales, as it allows you to tailor your sales pitch and messaging to the specific needs and wants of your target customer. 
   
   

2. Sales Processes: 

   This playbook will teach you how to design a sales process that aligns with your buyer's journey. Having a well-designed sales process is crucial to achieving success with inbound sales. 
   
   

3. Lead Nurturing: 

   Once you have leads coming in, it's important to know how to nurture them so that they're ready to buy when the time comes. This playbook will show you how to develop a lead-nurturing strategy that keeps your leads engaged and interested in what you have to offer. 
   
   

4. Closing Deals: 
   

   Finally, this playbook covers the essential steps for closing deals and ensuring customers are happy with their purchases. From negotiating pricing to handling objections, this playbook has everything you need to close more deals and boost your commission check!
   
   

Preparation to Build a Sales Playbook

If you’re thinking about creating a sales playbook for your team, start by gathering input from everyone on your team and then organising it into sections such as prospecting, qualifying, presenting, and closing. Keep in mind that less is more when it comes to developing each section so that your reps feel empowered to make decisions rather than like they’re following a script.

Prospecting:

Qualifying:

Presenting:

How will you make your pitch?
What resources will you use? 

Closing:

Premade Sales Template Examples

Discovery Call Playbook

Create a script to lead successful and insightful conversations with a prospect or customer.

Qualification playbook

Build a playbook to qualify prospects based on budget, authority, needs and timeline (BANT)

Support playbook

Keep your team up-to-date on the latest product changes and features. Build out a playbook with text, images, videos and links to the product documentation.

How to Setup HubSpot Playbooks 

1) Go to Sales → Playbooks in your HubSpot account.
First login to your HubSpot account and navigate to the "Sales" menu tool.

2) Click Create Playbook.
Then, click on the "Playbooks" tab and select the playbook you want to use. Once you've selected a playbook, you'll be able to customise it to fit your specific needs.
To create a new playbook, simply click on the "Create Playbook" button and follow the instructions. To edit an existing playbook, simply click on the "Edit" button next to the playbook's name. 

3) Select from scratch or from a template, then click Next..

4) Enter a name and description for your playbook, then click Create Playbook.
HubSpot Playbooks are designed to be easy to use and customise. Eliminate the guessing game for new hires by providing them with a training playbook. Include everything they need to know, from company culture to product information.

For a concise process for creating a playbook, follow these steps:

1. Login to your HubSpot account and navigate to the Sales Hub.
2. Click on the "Playbooks" tab in the left sidebar.
3. Click on the "Create Playbook" button to create a new playbook template.
4. Give your playbook a name and a description, and choose a category for it.
5. Define the steps and tasks that should be included in the playbook. You can add tasks, set deadlines, and assign them to specific team members.
6. Add any relevant documents or resources that salespeople should use when following the playbook.
7. Save your playbook and publish it so that it can be accessed by your sales team.
8. To use the playbook, salespeople can select it from the list of available playbooks and customise it as needed for their specific sales situation.

Now that you know the basics of HubSpot Playbooks, it's time to start using them in your sales process!

Create a playbook

Transform your team's success by providing them with sales content as and when they need it. Create a tailored playbook filled with helpful materials like text, links, videos, pictures, or embed codes.

Add interactive questions

The questions in your playbook are essential for gathering customer information and saving it directly into your CRM system.

Start using playbooks

Now, you can find and open your playbooks while viewing a contact, company, deal or ticket record. Plus, if you take notes in the playbook, it will save as an engagement automatically in the timeline of that specific entry. 

Discovery Playbook

Use this playbook as a set of guidelines for your first call with a prospect. The goal of this call is to use questions in order to reveal the relation between the prospect's needs, challenges and goals and your product or service. By doing so, you can ascertain whether there is indeed a fit between what they need and what you're offering.

Before the call, you should:

• Research your prospective customer business
• Create a meeting agenda and send it to your prospect
• Set a time and date that works for both of you

Below are some key questions to ask during your discovery call.

Qualification Playbook

Use the BANT sales qualification framework to find out:

• Budget: Can the prospect afford to buy?
• Authority: Make sure your contact has the proper authority to approve a purchase before moving ahead.
• Need: Does the prospect have a business pain you can solve?
• Timeline: When is the prospect planning to buy?

Using Content with Playbooks

Set your team up for success with sales content when and where they need it. Build a custom playbook by adding content including text, links, images or embed codes.

Add interactive questions

Use questions in your playbook to gather and organise information from prospects. When you enter an answer it will be saved directly in your CRM.

Types of Questions to Include in a Playbook

These playbooks can include a variety of types of questions that can help salespeople to better understand the needs and interests of their leads and customers. Some examples of types of questions that might be included in a playbook include:

1. Qualification questions:
   These are questions that are used to determine whether a lead is a good fit for your product or service. Examples might include questions about the lead's budget, timeline, and decision-making process.

2. Pain point questions:
   These are questions that help salespeople to understand the specific challenges and problems that a lead is facing, and how your product or service can help to solve them.

3. Value proposition questions:
   These are questions that help salespeople to understand the specific benefits and value that a lead is looking for in a product or service, and how your offering compares to competitors.

4. Objection handling questions:
   These are questions that are designed to address common objections or concerns that a lead might have about your product or service.

By including these types of questions in a playbook, sales teams can better understand the needs and interests of their leads and tailor their sales approach accordingly.

Select the type of engagement that will be saved to the record when this Playbook is run.

Answer Types

Open Text: Take Notes in a text field

List of answer options

Create a list of answer check options and select one or multiple

Update Property

With this function, you can rest easy knowing that your contact company, deal or ticket records will always be up-to-date.

Set when to recommend

By creating a recommendation rule, you can ensure that the right playbook is provided at the right time. When a CRM record matches the rule, this playbook will be given priority and displayed at the top of the list.

How to Start Using Playbooks 

Search for and access your playbooks right from the contact, company, deal or ticket record. When you take notes in the playbook, it will save as an engagement in the record's timeline. For a step-by-step list to start using HubSpot Playbooks, follow these steps:

• Login to your HubSpot account and navigate to the Sales Hub.
• Click on the "Playbooks" tab in the left sidebar.
• Review the available playbooks and select one that aligns with your sales process and goals.
• Customise the playbook as needed to fit the specific needs of your sales team and the leads and customers you are interacting with.
• Assign tasks and deadlines to specific team members as needed.
• Start using the playbook to guide your sales interactions with leads and customers.
• Track and analyse the results of your sales efforts to identify areas for improvement and optimise your approach over time.

By following these steps, you can start using HubSpot Playbooks to streamline your sales process, ensure consistency in your interactions with leads and customers, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales efforts.

Saving the Results of a Playbook

HubSpot Playbooks allow sales teams to create and manage repeatable sales processes, or "playbooks," for interacting with leads and customers. These playbooks can include a variety of tasks and actions that salespeople can complete as part of the sales process.

If you want to save the results of a playbook as a structured data type rather than a free text value, you can use a "Radio Button," "Dropdown," or "Checkbox" property type. These property types allow you to define a set of pre-defined options that salespeople can select from when updating the property value.

To save the results of a playbook into a property, you can use the "Update a property" action within the playbook. This action allows you to select a property on a contact or company record and update its value based on the results of the playbook.

For example, if you want to save the result of a qualification call as a structured data type, you could create a "Dropdown" property called "Qualification Status" and include options like "Qualified," "Not Qualified," and "Undetermined."

To save the results of a playbook using a structured data type, you can use the "Update a property" action within the playbook and select the appropriate option from the dropdown list.

By using structured data types, you can ensure that the results of your playbooks are consistent and accurate, and you can use this data to track and analyse the performance of your sales team over time. 

By using the "Update a property" action within a playbook, you can track and analyse the results of your sales efforts and use this data to optimise your approach and improve overall sales performance.

Reporting on HubSpot Playbooks

HubSpot Playbooks provide a number of reporting options that allow sales teams to track and analyse the performance of their sales processes. Here are a few examples of the types of reports that are available:

1. Playbook performance report:
   This report shows how well salespeople are following the playbook and the results they are achieving. It includes metrics like task completion rate, deal velocity, and win rate.

2. Playbook adoption report:
   This report shows which playbooks are being used most frequently and by which team members. It can help sales teams to identify which playbooks are most effective and where there might be opportunities for improvement.

3. Playbook task report:
   This report shows the status of tasks within a playbook, including which tasks have been completed, which are in progress, and which are overdue.

4. Playbook timeline report:
   This report provides a visual timeline of the steps in a playbook, including the duration of each step and the number of HubSpot deals that are in each step.

By using these reports, sales teams can track and analyse the performance of their playbooks and identify areas for improvement. This can help to optimise the sales process and drive better results.

Final Points on Playbooks

Here are a few additional points to consider when using HubSpot Playbooks:

1. Collaboration:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be edited and updated by multiple team members, which can make it easier to collaborate and ensure that all team members have access to the most up-to-date version of the playbook.

2. Customisation:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be customised to fit the specific needs of each sales team, allowing salespeople to tailor the playbook to their specific sales situation.

3. Integration with other tools:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be integrated with other sales and marketing tools within the HubSpot CRM, such as email templates, sequences, and deals, to provide a more comprehensive approach to inbound sales success.

4. Performance tracking:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be used to track the performance of salespeople and identify areas for improvement. By analysing how well salespeople are following the playbook and the results they are achieving, sales teams can optimise their approach and improve overall sales performance.

5. Best practices:
   HubSpot Playbooks can be a great way to share best practices and standardize the sales process across the organisation. By creating playbooks that outline the most effective sales approaches, sales teams can ensure that all sales interactions are aligned with the overall sales strategy of the organisation.

Conclusion: 

In this blog post, we discussed the basics of HubSpot Playbooks and how they can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of sales teams. HubSpot Playbooks is a tool within the HubSpot CRM that allows sales teams to create and manage repeatable sales processes, or "playbooks," for interacting with leads and customers.

By providing a clear roadmap for sales interactions, including guidelines for messaging, next steps, and tasks to be completed, HubSpot Playbooks can help sales teams to streamline their processes, ensure consistency in their interactions with leads and customers, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales efforts.
They can also be a valuable resource for tracking and analysing sales processes, identifying areas for improvement, and optimising the sales approach over time. Overall, HubSpot Playbooks can be a valuable resource for sales teams looking to improve their inbound sales efforts and drive better results.

HubSpot Playbooks are an essential tool for streamlining your sales and marketing efforts. If you're not already using them, we highly recommend that you get started today! Whether you're new to inbound sales or looking to take your game to the next level, the HubSpot Playbooks series is a great resource for achieving success. So what are you waiting for? Start reading today and learn how to close more deals and increase your commission check!

If you want to learn more about HubSpot Marketing, check out our HubSpot Sales Hub Guide