The Missing Link Between Sales Playbooks and Performance

Welcome to the Sales Readiness Podcast brought to you by SBI. Each episode features an unfiltered conversation between our host, SBI's Managing Director, Ray Makala, and an industry expert about strategies, skills, and solutions that drive sales performance to the next level. These conversations are packed with expert advice, real-world examples, and practical tips to help sales enablement leaders to close deals, lead teams, and outperform the competition. In this episode, Ray Mackla is joined by Charlie Dorier, Director of Training at SBI, to unpack the disconnect between building sales playbooks and actually using them to drive performance.

Together, they explore why so many playbooks fall flat after launch, what it takes to embed them into the seller's daily workflow, and how AI is reshaping what modern playbook enablement looks like. All right, welcome to the Sales Readiness Podcast. I'm Ray Mackla, Managing Director of the Talent and Training Business here at SBI. and really pleased to be joined by my colleague, Charlie Dorier, to talk a little bit about playbooks and playbook enablement and specifically some interesting findings, some research that we have, and some takeaways that we're hoping to share with you today.

But maybe just to get started, Charlie, do you want to say a little bit about your background and your role at SBI? Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Ray. So I lead the team here at SBI that partners with clients around activating a lot of the work that we do in terms of the frameworks we build for clients, playbooks included.

So eager to talk about that. But we do a lot here at SBI focused on training and enabling first line teams. I lead that team and that's quite most of my background in similar roles, go-to-market consulting and sales training and enablement. Yeah, and I think actually it's been a great partnership and the idea that SBI, I think we're uniquely positioned to not only do the go-to-market consulting, advisory and strategy work, but to pull that through to enablement.

And as Charlie, you and I are spending a lot of our time on, you know, the training and putting it into practice and really making sure that we're pulling that through. So excited to jump more into that. You know, one of the things that prompted this conversation was some research we did with the Revenue Enablement Society around manager enablement and kind of what's working, what organizations are doing differently. The topic for a separate podcast.

But one of the takeaways was kind of an interesting finding that showed us that we asked about the performance of teams across the board. And then we also asked about how they were using playbooks and some of the tools that were put in place. One of the interesting findings was that there wasn't a direct correlation between having a manager playbook in place and getting better performance. And not necessarily that it's a bad thing, but I think I always like the research when it causes us to step back and go, huh, what's going on there?

And so in this case, you know, I think there's a lot that may be going on, but can you talk a little bit about, you know, what might be happening there and why might we not be seeing the uplift from a playbook that we might've, you know, expected or hoped for when we put it into place? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think we'll get into what best practice looks like in terms of playbooks. What I would suspect is that many companies, and we certainly see this across our clients, is that we're underestimating the level of enablement required to make a playbook effective.

So we see clients that do an amazing job organizing, building content, but then that enablement piece is a miss and it ends up sort of just creating more noise for a role that's already underwater. I mean, if you think about it, the first line sales managers are are some of the busiest folks on earth in terms of onboarding new hires, hiring new team members, coaching, pipeline management, forecast management, the list goes on. And so, you know, whatever we inject into that ecosystem has to help streamline and help organize things.

Because I think the irony about that research is that this is actually an extremely helpful tool to organize and save time for managers. So I'd imagine what you're seeing in some of that research is just those companies that are not really enabling around the content that they've developed. I think that's spot on. And I think, you know, potentially it gives a false sense of security that, hey, we've spent a lot of time codifying this, right?

We got it down on paper. We have the 100-page playbook. And all the answers are in there. But maybe we don't index enough on how are they using it in their flow of work?

Is it accessible? Do they really understand it? And over time, are they putting it into their ongoing management processes? And I think that's often what we see where it may be missing, which we'll, as you said, lean into a little bit further.

You know, can you share an example of, you know, maybe where a playbook was implemented, but it didn't deliver the performance gains they were looking for? You know, what went wrong? What was going on there? Yeah, I think there's probably a few different failure points that I would point to.

And certainly when you have multiple of these, and you're trying to roll out a new playbook, it's going to be kind of dead on arrival. First of all, you know, led by the wrong teams or not sponsored or really truly endorsed by sales leadership. So that's a critical failure point. Another is just filtering content.

As we've talked about, there's so much that might be included in a playbook. There's a tendency to include everything under the sun and it ends up reading like, you know, an owner's manual for a new car. Hard to find what you're looking for and just creates more confusion. But again, to the conversation we just had, I think the biggest failure point is that you do invest the right resources in design and sort of curating content And then you don really set your managers up for success in terms of how it embedded into their workflow how you enabling them around the content So you have this sort of treasure trove of stuff that's really well organized, but managers don't know what to do with it.

Yeah. And I think your point about the sponsorship and, you know, the leadership, they may feel like, well, yeah, we, we spent a bunch of time on this, We did that and checked it off, but it needs to be part of that ongoing journey. And I don't think it's enablement's fault either, right? I mean, I think often enablement knows how this should be done, but doesn't have access to the resources or the timeline or, frankly, the bandwidth of the managers to really implement it effectively.

And then leadership coming in over the top to support it on an ongoing basis. I mean, I can share. I have my SBI playbook, you know, at the ready. And part of that is because I think we've done a really good job, you know, embedding it in the culture where we talk about it on our pipeline reviews, on our sales calls, you know, kind of expected to be able to go to that play or understand that stage in the process.

I don't think that's always done. And in fact, sometimes the leaders don't even know, you know, what's in there. Let me just touch on one other point. I think your metaphor about the car owner's manual is a good one, because I will say in my new car, with voice activation, and a better digital interface, I can just ask it a question if I need to know how to do a setting or how to fix something.

That is such a great enabler. And I think we're, you know, we'll get into that talking a little bit about AI and digital tools. But, you know, I think that's a great way to bring it to life. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the direction we're heading, right?

Both at SBI and with our clients, is how do we make it easier to access, easier to navigate, easier to find the right answers on demand? Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit more about, you know, enabling it. What do you think organizations should do to kind of rethink the role of the playbook?

You know, maybe we're asking too much of it or not thinking of it the right way. But, you know, it's not just a document receptacle, but it's part of a broader system and process. How should we be thinking about that? Yeah, I would say there are a certain number of things that are just table stakes to get this right.

As I talked about before, the right sponsor or champion, this needs to be an initiative that's led by sales leadership and facilitated by sales enablement. enablement. And I think that is critical. The content that we build in, it needs to be informed and championed by influential leaders inside the sales organization, as opposed to created in a vacuum, which I think sometimes we see that as well.

At a minimum, we've got to bring those leaders on board. But ideally, they're actually the ones that are helping to shape that content. But and when we think about the content, it needs to be bite size. You know, less is more.

I think simple really sort of wins the day on that front. It is meant to be a tool to clarify expectations and organize the ecosystem for sales managers. So the content needs to be streamlined. And then the hard part, which again, not to sort of double down on this, but there needs to be a strategy to actually embed it in the workflow, make it easy to search and find key pieces of information.

The aspiration here should be that managers live in this tool and they use it daily. And I think AI presents a huge opportunity here, which we're starting to really dig into with many of our clients in terms of how we deliver playbooks. Yeah, absolutely. And even just digital access, I think one of the challenges is a great playbook.

It's rolled out at SKO or a leadership summit, and then it's immediately out of date. and we know that our businesses are changing rapidly and we have new plays and we have new personas and new product offerings, the idea that we can make it accessible digitally where then that is the single source of truth and we can update it in real time, I think that needs to be built into any playbook activation. Yeah, agreed. And I think the more we can make the playbook a a push versus a pull from managers where there are automated triggers in the right systems and the right tools to activate the playbook content in a way that managers aren't, you know, constantly seeking out answers.

They're having some of those answers and insights pushed to them. Yep. Yep. Well, you touched on earlier about, you know, the role of executive leadership, and certainly we need them to kind of sponsor and fund this, but, you know, how do you ensure you have that alignment and really get it embedded in the culture and make it part of a kind of ongoing, evolving part of the sales process.

I mean, what can you do to really get that executive sponsorship? Yeah, I mean, I think first is building the business case to really engage senior leadership and get buy-in. If you start with what we know for sure is that managers are overwhelmed by what's on their plate. And coaching is typically one of the first things to go.

Any tool that can help free up time and build consistency around the organization is going to be embraced by leadership. Focus on KPIs, whether it's reduced ramp time for new managers or forecast accuracy or just overall team level attainment and productivity. There's plenty of research out there that documents the the value that playbooks can bring. And then just as important as, as building that business case is, is the long-term version for how, or excuse me, long-term vision for how the tool will be deployed.

And again, that's where we, we go back to some of the AI solutions that are out there ongoing updates and making sure that this is not just a, a once and done launch where we're sending people hard copies of, of a ton of different content. So having a long vision for how you going to update it and really embed it into workflow is critical Yeah And I think having those executive conversations is so critical to say no this is what we looking to accomplish And this is why, and to your point, we know the correlation between coaching and sales performance.

Our recent research also enlightened that those organizations that invest in training their managers and enabling them outperform others, so building the business case around that. But here's what it takes to do that, you know, effectively. Let's talk more about that. I mean, what role does ongoing training and coaching play in, you know, taking that static playbook and making it a living document and making it something that's actually getting utilized?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's safe to assume that, you know, the playbook is going to change nearly every year. Right. So the best organizations have really built this assumption into that longer term vision that I mentioned before. You know, we need to have regular listening tours with sales managers to make improvements, to sort of reflect the changes that are ongoing from one year to the next.

And the training that sits around the playbook and the enablement needs to be updated on a regular basis. I think once an organization is really committed to playbooks as the tool to help simplify the complexity that exists inside of the manager's world, then you have to commit to that ongoing update. So whether it's, you know, leadership, top-down leadership coaching and inspection for utilization of some of the key concepts or it's bottoms up training and enablement to support managers, we've got to kind of keep a steady pressure on the accelerator or else it just it all sort of falls away.

Yeah, I think keeping that top of mind, as you said, and an ongoing part of an ongoing process. You know, one of the challenges we hear is that the managers are overloaded. You know, as you said, they're one of the busiest roles in any organization. We ask a lot of them.

And in fact, I think when we do our time studies, it often shows they're spending a lot of time that doesn't look like they're focused on coaching and enabling their teams or, you know, helping directly with clients. interactions. They're doing administrative work. They're doing reporting.

They're attending meetings. We're asking them to do a bunch of other things across the organization. So they're overloaded. I mean, what can organizations do to maybe reduce that burden?

And we know that if we're asking them to do more coaching and playbook enablement, they may need to take something off their plate. But how do we help them balance that and maybe create a stop doing list or prioritize their actions? Yeah, I mean, I think first and foremost is let's define the role of the sales manager. And when I say define, let's get very specific.

Establish a standard operating cadence or rhythm around sales management. Study time spend. If you haven't done that already, often we will work with clients to understand where those big time sinks are today. study the best managers.

Let's look at replicating the rhythm of your very best managers. And then be ruthless about eliminating the low value stuff that's on their plate. So the ad hoc kind of redundant reporting that you mentioned, too many meetings, we really have to be ruthless about taking some of that stuff out. And then going back to the embedding this tool, Like this should be a destination or it should be embedded in the tools where managers are already operating.

And I think that's what ultimately will help create a productivity lift through the playbook as opposed to, you know, just another thing that's out there for managers to go and find. Yeah. And I know when we do, you know, sales manager, sales coaching training, it's the number one challenge they say is, well, I'd like to coach. I just don't have enough time.

And we often ask the question, what else are you doing? What could be more important? But it's a longer term gain, right? It's like, we need to focus on that today, but it's not urgent, but it will pay dividends.

And I think the playbook is another example of that. If we really embed it into the process, if we get people using it, it's going to pay huge dividends, but it's not going to be today or this week. Are there other things we can do to embed those principles into the daily workflow, both for the sales manager and for the sellers? Yeah, I mean, I think we've got to meet them where they work.

And the notion, and maybe this is just inherent in the name of the tool, the playbook, and legacy hard copy books that we distribute for people to study. that doesn't work anymore. And I think we know that. But this it needs to be either a destination where they can live, or it needs to be tied into all the places where they live today.

So meeting them where they work and, you know, do it in a way that is going to, you know, take away or create more simplicity in terms of the things that they're doing. So if they're, shifting gears from pipeline and forecast management to coaching to deal support, that all of the right information and content lives inside the systems where your managers are operating. We don't necessarily need a singular playbook that has everything in one place. We need all of that great content and intelligence spread around to the places where managers actually live and work today.

Yeah. And I think that's a great call out. We need to get it out of the playbook and into an operational way that they can use it. Not that it's not great to have it all in one place, but then, yeah, how do we make it really practical?

And I think that's where- Yeah. I mean, I think hard copy is great to build some buzz at the time of launch at an SKO or, you know, good airplane reading. But in terms of like Monday through Friday we got to make sure that all of the great content that lives inside that playbook is in the right places Yeah When I think that ties directly into kind of another area I wanted to explore was just how we think about digital tools, enablement, and specifically AI these days. Can you talk a little bit about that in terms of leveraging some of those tools to enable the playbook adoption?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, as you know, we're really starting to dig into this with our clients. And I think it's still somewhat early days, but we know the capability is there in terms of AI helping us to turn the playbook, turn the old-fashioned hard copy owner's manual version of the playbook into a dynamic tool that managers can access on a regular basis. So whether it's AI driven coaching prompts that are built into the CRM, which again, that's not the playbook, but we're pulling from the playbook to nudge managers towards the right next step or next best action as they're coaching their teams.

You can do query based formats where, to your point about the newer car, you can actually ask, where do I find the latest coaching plan or coaching review process? And, you know, conversational intelligence, I think, is it presents another massive opportunity where, you know, you can detect whether or not a seller or a manager, for that matter, is actually following concepts that are into the playbook. You can build the triggers from sort of playbook triggers into forecasting and pipeline reviews so that managers are sort of nudged in the right direction based on what we've learned.

there's so much intelligence and so much institutional knowledge that goes into a playbook. I think that, you know, the crux of it is just getting that in the right places where managers can access it, you know, in the moment, sort of on demand. Absolutely. Yeah.

And it's an area that I think is worth, you know, leaning into further, you know, going forward, or if you're a client thinking about that is how do we make it not only available, but even with, you know, like a chat GPT or co-pilot, if, if we have that available, now we can use that. It's a mindset change to say, oh, I can ask this prompt to say, I'm struggling with this particular, um, skill for this AE, or I just observed this sales call. Can you help me prepare for this conversation?

And, you know, even that kind of a dialogue, just like a seller might do, I'm stuck, you know, this is happening where I got this objection, what can I do? But for the manager, I think it becomes really valuable as a coach, right? To have that safe place to ask those questions, to prep and say, you know, can you help me create an outline? Or can you help me prepare this email?

Because it then knows the contents of the playbook that you can leverage, right? Absolutely. Imagine a coaching session where managers are fed in advance of that conversation, specific KPIs and metrics and conversational intelligence feedback and, you know, all of the data that will help to inform the conversation that they need to have with their team member. And it's fed up to them on a silver platter.

That's where managers will start saving time. And then, you know, I think that that just compounds upon itself because they will go back to that more and more often based on the value they see out of that as opposed to sort of scrambling across multiple systems and tools. So, no, a ton of potential, I think, in terms of AI and what it can bring to sort of modernize the legacy sales playbook concept. Yeah, I think that's going to be really exciting to be a part of over the next few years.

You know, it's going to evolve in real time as the tools and platforms become more accessible. Um, you know, I guess just in terms of wrapping this up, are there a couple of key thoughts or themes that you would want to, you know, leave our listeners with today regarding playbooks? We covered a lot of ground, uh, and, and certainly worthy of further discussions, but, uh, yeah, what are a couple of takeaways you would leave, uh, leave us with today? Yeah, I mean, I go back to sponsorship.

None of this matters if you don't have the right folks on board in terms of senior leadership. And, you know, the reality, even if we are able to, you know, leverage AI and build the right content and, you know, extract the right insight from different parts of the organization to serve up to managers in that playbook, it requires, you know, a significant investment. in enablement and training. And so the minute we're finished compiling all those insights, let's not forget that handing it over to someone is not going to do the job.

We've got to meet with them on a regular basis. The standard approach that we take to activate a sales playbook is typically anywhere from six to 10 weeks, repeated sessions with managers and with sellers, giving people a chance to practice. So you got to spend the time up front to make sure that the content is right and you don't have too much content. But then once all of that great work is done, let's make sure that there's a real true plan for enablement and activation.

Well, I think that's a great place to leave it for today. I think that is the success factors and we've seen it when it works right. And I think people may have observed that. It's like, oh, now people get it.

And they're actually are marching in the same direction. And that provides a huge uplift for the organization. So really appreciate your time today. Great discussion.

I look forward to continuing the conversation. But thanks for joining the day, Charlie. You've been listening to SBI Sales Readiness Podcast with Managing Director Ray McAuliffe hosting. Visit sbigrowth.

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