The Ultimate SaaS Sales Playbook (with Free Template)

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What is a SaaS playbook?

A SaaS playbook includes everything a sales rep needs to be successful. This will include sales process, outbound sales campaigns, sales tools and templates, content, media, training and coaching. Playbooks are an essential tool for every SaaS company as studies show Reps who use playbooks sell more.

What is a SaaS Sales Model?

A SaaS sales model is a company’s business model that largely depends on a subscription model to sell its products. SaaS companies are those whose primary revenue is derived from the monthly fees of customers who subscribe to their software-based products and services.

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Please note: This SaaS Sales Playbook template is created in Microsoft Word for easy editing. Should you require a Digital Playbook please check out our Sales Playbook built in Microsoft OneNote.

1. B2B SaaS Sales Playbook

The Ultimate B2B SaaS Sales Playbook is a free template that you can use for your own SaaS business. Sales is never an easy topic to tackle, but it is one of the most important parts of any successful company.

The video will walk you through every step of the process of building your own playbook and how to customise it to your unique circumstances.

Whether you’re looking for tips on how to sell more software or launch a new product line, there are lots of ways in which this template can help you out!

The playbook has over 55 pages packed with templates and tools that you can use in your business immediately.

Need more help? Check out our consulting services or email us via the contact us page.

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SaaS Playbook

2. What is included in a SaaS Sales Playbook

It’s important to recognise that different teams have different needs. For example, sales development reps require a very different skill set in order to be successful than Saas account executives do. As you would expect the roles and skills for a SaaS business can vary differently from a traditional business model.

Our SaaS playbook template incudes 12 key areas of focus on:

Your Company – details on your history and the products and services that you sell.

Colleagues – who are your working with in the inside sales team, who are the key contacts in other departments you need to know?

Domain Knowledge – what are the key statistics and trends in your industry and what do you need to know to become a subject matter expert?

Sales Tools – what tools do the sales team use and what are the login and training details for them? For example CRM, Outbound email, Call recording etc.

Your Clients – details on buyer personas, ideal client profiles and perfect prospect profiles.

Sales Process – what is the buyers journey, the qualification process for prospects, how we identify, track and deals through the sales process.

Sales Plays – how do we engage prospects and when do what are the discovery questions and sales scrips, demo and presentations that we need to know?

Competition – who are our competitors, how do we differentiate ourselves and how do we beat them?

Content – what sales and marketing collateral is available and how and when should this be used.

KPI’s – what does success look like as an effective sales rep and how will you measure the effectiveness of the sales reps?

Learning – what training and coaching do you need to improve your inside sales teams?

Admin – this section includes any HR policies, Social media guidelines, compensation structure, holiday & sickness, and company benefits.

Within each of these areas we have included all the templates and tools that we use in both our own business and that of our clients.

This SaaS Sales Playbook will:

– Empower you with a step by step process for how to build and implement the right Saas sales strategy.

– Provide an overview of all the key functions within your business that are involved in Saas sales so you can make sure there is alignment across your team.

3. Sales Playbook Benefits

Your playbook includes all the details for salespeople on how your organisation will go to market. This covers everything from customer personas, to how to hire and onboard new reps, to KPI’s and learning and development plans. It’s one reference point for everything sales.

Use this code to develop KPI’s, materials, calling scripts and content thus becoming a long term asset of the enterprise. It can also be used in your own organisations KPIs and call scripts to build your own sales playbook.

It provides an instant information base for everything related to sales and a step-by-step guide to the way your organisation goes to Market.

Statistics show that salespeople using a sales playbook are 11% more likely to attain target than those without a playbook. Other benefits of a saas sales playbook are it allows you to:

– Actively manage sales activities and processes

– Standardize messaging across reps to ensure a consistent customer experience

– Capture insights on which selling techniques are most effective for your company’s products

A SaaS Sales Playbook is essential for every SaaS company because it keeps each team member accountable. It also provides guidance when needed without constantly having to refer to line managers.

4. Outbound Sales Playbook

Outbound sales play an important role in the success of your company. Your playbook should detail the exact sales process the sales team need to follow on how to build and run an outbound sales campaign including:

– Examples of your SaaS outbound email scripts complete with their conversion stats.

– How to differentiate your SaaS products and services to stand out from the crowd and avoid competing on price.

SaaS outbound sales best practices.

– How to use your tracking systems and tools for SaaS sales.

– How to use the sales templates, guides and checklists

– How to use social media as part of your outbound campaign

– How to implement an ABM (account based marketing) campaign

– The optimal sales cadence and touch points for each campaign

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Sales Pipeline Strategies

5. What is a SaaS Sales Strategy?

In terms of your SaaS strategy, this is primarily influenced by who your target audience is and how they buy. If you are targeting large enterprise organisations , you will have a very different sales process compared to companies with smaller budgets.

There’s never a perfect time to re-evaluate your sales strategy, however, the reality is that if you have missed your sales targets for more than three consecutive months, it’s highly unlikely that you will hit next months target.

Whilst our playbook is not a sales strategy in itself, it will help you implement your strategy and walk you through what you need to know about SaaS sales, by providing a template for creating your own playbook. 

As a minimum your strategy should include:

  1. Who you are targeting. You should have a detailed overview of your ideal client profile.
  2. Why should they buy from you. What are the pain points that your solution solves. These help you create great discovery questions for your sales team
  3. How you will target them. This is usually the most difficult part of sales and you should have at least three different and proven ways of reaching
  4. What product or service you will provide

However, in order to create your perfect SaaS Sales Playbook, it’s important that you start by answering the following questions:

What does success look like? and what is my end goal? Who are my target customers and how do they buy our type of services?

saas sales playbook.pdf

6. SaaS Sales Models

SaaS Sales models have become one of the best ways to build a new businesses, because they allow companies to scale quickly with minimal material and production costs. In essence, they are building one product and selling it multiple times.

Unlike for example, a manufacturing company that has to buy materials and manufacture individual products for each customer. Some of the biggest businesses in the world are now SaaS companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, Square, Shopify and Zoom.

The SaaS model also makes purchasing easier as the costs are attributed as Opex and not Capex. This way rather than paying for individual or custom software the client is buying into a platform that has shared build and development costs keeping the monthly fees much lower.

Opex has been on the rise in recent years; forecasts show $30 billion of SaaS spend globally by 2020  and SaaS revenue is growing faster than all other software segments.

A SaaS company’s main focus is recurring revenue, which can make it easier to predict cashflows. However, this model does not suit everyone; research shows that 42% of SaaS companies fail because they are offering products their target customers don’t need.

SaaS companies also need to be able to scale their teams as they grow, and this is not always easy. Many companies end up paying a premium to hire developers and senior sales and marketing leaders due to the shortage of skills and experience in these roles.

7. Sales Playbook Download

You can download your FREE copy of the Ultimate SaaS Sales Playbook by completing the form on the left.

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The Best Sales Playbook in the World

Once you’ve registered you’ll be redirected to a page that contains the download link.

Please note: The Sales Playbook is built in Microsoft Word for easy editing