Creating Sales

Guides That
Really Help
Sales Force

A White Paper
Creating Sales Guides That Really Help Sales Force
Introduction

Your sales guide must equip your sales force with the ammunition they need to sell
the company’s products and solutions to the prospective customers and clients. It is
the ‘how-to’ guide that should help them swim through numerous obstacles they
might encounter during the sales process. This white paper explains the pitfalls you
should avoid while designing sales guides and outlines some of the best practices that
should be employed in creating effective sales guides.

What Makes an Effective Sales Guide?

A sales guide isn’t just a bunch of pages providing few facts and figures. It is the
culmination of an enterprise-wide sales management mechanism. Your sales guide
reflects the sales processes being followed by the organization. A good sales guide
should be able to motivate your sales force to sell. By guiding them to position and
promote your offerings to the potential customers and by providing the necessary
reference material, a sales guide makes sales people feel in control of the sales
process.

An ideal sales guide should pay adequate attention to the following five components –

Motivate and
energize the sales
Clearly explain
force by
what you sell, to
equipping them
whom you sell,
with the
and how you sell
necessary tools to
seal deals

Should provide
Educate the sales
accurate
force about the
information about
marketing goals
products being
and objectves of
sold and their
the organization
competition

Should align the

sales force with
the core sales
processes of the
company

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 What to Sell, Whom to Sell and How to Sell

A sales guide should clearly explain the purpose of the sales processes being used and
the objectives it seeks to achieve. It should contain all the relevant sales information
such as the size of the potential deals, the competition your sales force is facing, the
product details, the customer or client profile, etc.

What to Sell

Your sales force ought to have a clear understanding of what it is selling. The sales
guide should give them answers to the questions they are likely to face while selling.
It should cover all the details such as product features, product benefits, sales volume,
costs, wholesale and retail prices, discounts, offers, product specifications, and return
policies, etc, in detail.

Whom to Sell

The sales guide should guide the sales representatives in identifying and managing
sales opportunities. The guide should be their handy reference in recognizing potential
customers, qualifying the prospects and working on actionable leads. The sales guide
should have detailed information about the nature of the market, market opportunities,
customer demographics (with details such as age, gender, income levels, etc.),
existing and potential clients, customer behavioral patterns specific to the industry in
which the company operates in, customer expectations, customer segmentation
details, and market potential.

How to Sell

The sales manual should detail the processes and procedures employed by the
organization. The standardized sales mechanism followed by the sales and marketing
departments should be clearly explained in the book. It should also include tactics and
strategies employed by the organization in identifying prospects, increasing
conversion rates, scripts used to counter customer resistance, and cold calling scripts,
etc.

Align Your Sales Guide to the Core Sales Processes

High performance sales organizations employ standardized sales processes and

mechanism throughout the sales cycle. They constantly fine-tune their processes and
invest heavily in training the sales force achieve excellence in using those
standardized processes.

Your sales guide should be aligned with the core sales processes being used across the
organization. The guide is a one-stop reference your sales rep can refer to know what
process to follow and which strategy to employ. It should contain a step-by-step
explanation of what the offering is, how the product or service works, the value

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 proposition being presented to the customer, the
elevator pitch, sales scripts, and the way a willing Four Steps to Create
customer needs to be employed. an Effective Sales
If the organization has cross-functional teams that Guide
serve customers, then each department needs to have Involve Your Sales
a clear idea of whom to contact within the People. Take their ideas
organization so that the customer’s needs are taken and suggestions in
care of in a proper way. devising a sales guide.
Make as many revisions
The Elements of an Effective Sales Guide as possible so that it
addresses the real world
Contact Information. Tell the sales rep where they challenges being faced
can know additional information about the product by your sales force.
or whatever that’s been mentioned in the guide.
Include e-mail IDs and phone numbers of all the Be realistic in presenting
people he or she is likely to contact during the information about your
course of a sales cycle. products and competitive
advantage. Avoid a rosy
Selling Strategies. Provide brief information about picture and provide
the market demographics, sales cycle, customer honest info about the
profile and other references. competition. It helps the
Product or Service Details. Briefly outline the sales people position
products and services, their benefits, highlights and your product against the
USP, and FAQs likely to be posed by customers. competitor’s
weaknesses.
Competition. Outline competition and compare key
product features which are perceived as important by Be concise and to the
the customers. List the product differentiators and point. Sales people need
USP the sales rep should focus on. Outline the to cope with too much
company’s core sales processes to counter the information. So respect
competition’s strengths and promote your product their time. Use charts,
line. tables and figures to
condense information.
Sales Presentation. Provide the standard elevator Make it easy for them to
pitch the sales rep should use to pursue a sales know where to look for
opportunity. Ideally there should be two versions – to find what they need.
one short and the other long.
Avoid fluff and generic
Outline sales scripts to be used to increase the marketing messages.
chances for success. Clearly define the firm’s
USP, product benefits
Outline potential objections that may be raised by and product positioning
customers and provide responses to those objections.
against the competition.

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 Pricing. Provide all pricing, ordering, and product configuration information.

Sales Literature. Provide associated collateral such as brochures, price sheets, data
sheets and brochures.

Other Reference Material. Provide a list of sources of further information about the
product or service line. The list can include both online and offline data.

Glossary and Index. If the guide is more than 40 pages, then provide glossary and
index. This makes them easy to find the information they need.

Depending on what you are selling, your sales guide may also contain other details
such as key partners, support staff details, more exhaustive notes on product
positioning and product specifications, and solution delivery mechanisms.

Summary

An effective sales guide is the result of many careful revisions. Make sure that your
sales people aren’t left with too little information or too much technical stuff to bother
reading. Hiring professional writers, instead of marketing staff, to work on sales
guides helps to avoid biases.

An effective sales guide should present technical information in an easy-to-understand

simple prose with due consideration to the intricacies of the sales as they happen in
the real world. Involving sales people in drafting sales guides is highly recommended.

Your sales guides should present the market information, product details, the
competition it faces and sales strategies the sales rep should employ to seal the deal.
Instead of treating it as just bunch of papers to carry around, use it to educate the sales
force about the marketing goals and objectives of the organization. When designed
properly, a sales guide can be of immense help to sales people. It makes their job
simpler and your bottom line fatter.