When it comes to building a sales playbook, 3D printing company Formlabs doesn’t play by the rules.
“The ‘playbook’ is more of a guide that gives structure to our sales process,” Head of Dental Sales Phil Carlino said.
For some companies, a sales playbook is the backbone for onboarding new employees, articulating sales strategy and adhering to brand messaging. For others, it’s a distracting project that’s prone to becoming outdated, or worse, unused.
Instead of an actual document, Carlino said Formlabs’ playbook is a living, breathing practice. Through interactive group learning, skills development and coaching from senior-level management, sales reps at all stages in their careers improve at their jobs, he said.
However, all training doesn’t need to come from management. Carlino asks team members to take ownership of topics they specialize in and teach them to the group.
“The best ideas come from the ground up, and we want to share those ideas,” Carlino said.
How do you format and deliver your sales playbook to the team?
We use a tool called TalentLMS for all new hire onboarding. This tool helps us get our new sales reps up to speed on the products we sell, the competitors we sell against, and the buyer persona within each individual vertical.
Within our sales team, there is a lot of group and interactive learning. The “playbook” is more of a guide that gives structure to our sales process. A lot of training for junior-level reps comes through coaching and development by managers and senior-level individual contributors.
Just last week, my team had a half-day session on customer profiling, building a sales strategy and role-playing. This was a great way to take a step back and look at the big picture, while also helping one another improve fundamental sales skills.
How do you keep your playbook up to date, and when do you know it's time to make an update?
We use TalentLMS for all onboarding across sales, services and for some technical employees as well. Because we sell to such a wide range of customers from several different verticals, some training sessions are led by industry-specific specialists. For continued learning, we use this as a guide to help reps gain competency within different market segments and to better understand the competitive landscape and buyer personas.
I don’t think any Formlabs team has an ongoing formal playbook; as the team evolves, the training evolves. We’re not regimented to follow a playbook since they get outdated quickly and things in our space move so fast. Our team is adaptable to the evolving landscape, and most of our product-specific training and development comes from our product or marketing team.
The best ideas come from the ground up, and we want to share those ideas.”
How do you include your salespeople in the process of developing your playbook?
The team is instrumental in developing and refining the training material. They’re either assigned, or they volunteer to tackle where there is a need. As an example, one topic we developed in our recent training session was how to use the CRM system better to automate outreach. It was developed by a sales rep and put into the playbook. All training doesn’t need to come from management. The best ideas come from the ground up, and we want to share those ideas.
