What is HubSpot playbooks, and what are their methods of use?

Find out what HubSpot playbooks are, how to use them and why they are indispensable guides for your company sales teams.

HubSpot is a CRM responsible for developing omnichannel customer management in your company. HubSpot considers all the business areas that an organization has. This CRM stands out among many others for its high level of automation in the commercial departments. That has divisions in marketing, sales, and customer service.

Within this blog, we will address one of those modules, sales, but beyond that, one of the tools that can provide results and support the commercial and sales departments, the tool is known as HubSpot playbooks.

Each company is in a different growth context, but the truth is that, regardless of the operation of the sales department, the sales force is constantly changing. That is when new account executives or sales reps are on board, and other more experienced members require providing advice or coaching to these people.

HubSpot's playbooks have features that simplify these processes, adapt to the established business rules of the department, and fulfill an essential part of the coaching process. The playbooks can meet from basic information to more complex guides, all depending on the business model that a company uses.

Concerning playbooks, we will focus on the following aspects: 

• What are HubSpot Playbooks, and in which licenses are they available?
• What are the essential tools and information that must be in playbooks?
• What are their methods of use in HubSpot?

What are HubSpot Playbooks, and what licenses are available?

HubSpot's playbooks or sales guides are a powerful tool that compiles all the needed templates, documents, tactics, and sales strategies that will support sales teams.

Within HubSpot, playbooks can be used and accessed from any of the records within the CRM. Playbooks are available in the Sales and Service Hub Enterprise license.

If you are interested in learning how to standardize your sales team's approach with HubSpot, I recommend the following HubSpot Academy course:

HubSpot Academy Course: Standardizing Your Approach With Playbooks

Different guidelines can be generated depending on the type of customer, whether it is B2B or B2C, the industry of the respective buyer persona, regardless of the methodologies that the sales teams of your company use, the truth is that no methodology is customized for the sales processes, and buyer personas of your business. This process leads us to consider the following aspects:

• Adapt the multiple sales methodologies you use and unify them in a way that fits your company's business model and your teams.
• The most crucial aspect of HubSpot's playbooks is to implement methodologies that teach every sales representative, the business processes of your company.
• Good documentation is crucial to teach sales reps the methodologies that fit the company's business processes. The consideration of this element is why it is necessary to create guides or playbooks of business processes, sales tactics, elementary knowledge that contemplate the different scenarios the sales force will face when approaching customers and prospects.
• The objective of a playbook is simple it is to design guides that show sales reps or executives the best ways to implement the business process of their company, focusing on each stage of negotiation and the inbound stages of awareness, discovery, and decision of the Buyer Persona.

What are the essential tools and information that must be in playbooks?

In the guides and especially in any of the tactics playbooks and documents of your company sales processes, follow these information steps: 

1. What the salesperson, executive, or sales representative needs to know and understand: What does the salesperson need to know, what product or services are selling to the customer, what sales methodology is in the company, what are the buyer personas of the company, what is the sales methodology used in the company, what are the buyer personas of the company, what is the sales methodology used in the company, and what is the sales methodology used in the company.
2. What the salesperson, executive, or sales representative needs to do: Which strategic phrases and tactics do they use to generate engagement with the customer. Before, during, and after each sales conversation or negotiation?
3. What the salesperson, executive, or sales representative needs to communicate: What is the main message or arguments the salespeople should onboard with the customer, what are the series of questions they should have to ask the customer, what are the questions the customers have, what are the clues they should identify in the conversations?
4. What the salesperson, executive, or sales rep needs to show or present: Not just the sales pitch, but also use compelling visual content that can build the excitement of the prospect qualified to buy.

What are your methods of use in HubSpot?

Playbooks are within the sales module when your sales team has qualified a lead to create a business to indicate and track the revenue opportunity within the negotiation stages of the sales pipeline.

By associating the business with contacts and companies in your HubSpot account, you can view the context of all relevant records in one place.

To use playbooks, you need to consider the following steps:

• Define the Playbook Objective.
• Choose which of the four playbook models HubSpot offers fits your objective.
• If you have not created or designed a sales playbook before, I recommend the following step-by-step guide from HubSpot that details the setup process: 

>> Step-by-Step Guide: Configuring Playbooks in HubSpot <<

1. Prospecting or discovery call playbooks:
   This works as a customized guide to defining the steps before the call. How to define agenda understand the company's priorities, business model, and decision-makers (buyer personas for your business). Define commercial processes, technologies, negotiation times, budgets, and key contacts for those qualified prospects.
   
   
     
   
   
2. Playbooks for use in presentations with prospects:
   There are times when your sales reps are in the proposal presentation negotiation stages, this type of guide would be helpful. You can help your salespeople in the negotiation call through visual elements, which are the key details or clues to pay attention to during those sessions with prospects.
3. Playbooks to define what are the most assets pieces of your company against competitors:
   This type of playbook strategy helps to what are the star products or services of your company, what are their strengths, and weaknesses, how they compare with the competition; this to generate a winning strategy in the process of approaching qualified prospects.

If you are interested in learning more about how to define business process guidelines and improve the sales management of your sales departments, schedule a meeting with one of our consultants.