Developing Company’s Prospect to Order process guidelines in the form of Sales Playbook

Abstract

Tässä työssä kehitettiin kohdeyrityksen myynnin olemassa olevaa ohjeistusta ja luotiin uutta ohjeistus. Lopputuloksena syntyi myynnin pelikirja, joka pitää sisällään yrityksen myyjälle olennaiset asiat, jotta hän pystyy suoriutumaan myyntiprosessista parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla. Myynnin pelikirjassa on valmiita tapoja tehdä asioita, mutta myös asioita joita myyjän tulisi välttää.

Työ aloitettiin keräämällä ja analysoimalla jo olemassa olevat ohjeet myyntiprosessista. Nykytila-analyysin jälkeen tunnistetut puutteet korjattiin. Myynnin pelikirjalle valittiin sopiva alusta, joka täyttäisi kohdeyrityksen vaatimukset, sekä olisi parhaiden tunnetuiden käytänteiden mukainen. Myynnin pelikirjalle luotiin myös prosessi, jolla varmistetaan sisällön paikkansa pitävyys ja, että pelikirja on aina ajan tasalla.

This thesis was done for the company who is doing business in the oil and renewable fuel industry. Company’s own refineries are located in Finland, Singapore and the Netherlands. The case company operates in a changing environment where regulations and complex business models are complicating everyday business. End-to-end supply chains are often long and for the successful business it is important that the company executes the sales process well. The objective for this thesis was to develop case company’s Prospect to Order process instructions in the form of Sales Playbook. The outcome of this thesis is the Sales Playbook which gathers all good practices and non-do things into one place to harmonise the sales process and to help salespeople to do better deals.

The study was conducted by first collecting the existing material from the Prospect to Order process and running the current state analysis for the instructions. Idea with the analysis was to determine the gaps, where the company has not any specific instructions for the salespeople. The Prospect to Order process included five level 2 processes and 39 specific content areas. Current state analysis showed that 17 areas got instructions, but they needed modifications to be used in the Sales Playbook. 12 content areas did not have any existing instructions in place and those needed workshops to be organised in order to create content. 10 content areas were having the instructions ready to be used in the Sales Playbook.

In the literature review phase, relevant best practices were adopted to further develop the Sales Playbook. Content of the Sales Playbook was further developed, the final form was selected and document review and update practices were improved. Content updates were made with each content area specialist to ensure that content is made for the sales. Workshops were organised, where together with content area specialists, instructions were modified and new instructions created. After the modifications were made, the content was validated together with Prospect to Process owner. Based on the literature phase, Google Sites was selected as a platform for the Sales Playbook. Google Sites has features like ability to include videos and pictures, and also content could be structured among the sales process. Google Site also has its own search engine which helps users to search the content that they are looking for. Review and update practices were also an important part of the study, because the Sales Playbook is a living document and the content needs to be accurate all the time. It was decided to divide the review process into four different sections, because the Sales Playbook is quite a large entity and the review process would be a huge accomplishment to be done at once. Ad-hoc update needs were taken care of by adding a feedback button, where users can report update needs for the owner of the Sales Playbook. Backlog list was established to keep track of suggested improvement ideas and change logs to see all changes which have been made.

After creating the Sales Playbook, the feedback survey was sent to closest stakeholders and Sales Playbook users. Feedback was positive and overall satisfaction was at a good level. It was clearly seen that there was a need for such a document which helps salespeople work. Complexity increases and, in the future, it might be more important to serve customers better. The Sales Playbook is also good material for the introduction process when a new sales member is joining the sales team. Company’s common ways of working, culture and purpose is presented in an understandable way.

Future improvement ideas for the Sales Playbook were also introduced. One example of improvement ideas was to integrate the Sales Playbook into the company's CRM system. Salespeople have a straight link from CRM to company’s guidelines and best practices. The study was a quite long project and needed many stakeholders to be involved, but the final outcome was worth the effort.