On the one hand, the access to insights, knowledge and even detailed process is extraordinarily valuable...but it’s also exceptionally dangerous. The reason is that the majority of organizations sharing valuable information have this in common:
Now, neither of these things are bad, but they should put up a caution light to marketers, sales reps and executives committed to improvement and growth (personal and business). A quick review of my just my Twitter stream right now highlights the conflicting approaches being advocated. Here’s some of what I’m seeing:
I could go on, but the point here is that none of this data is wrong. It’s just not right either. This is why having a playbook is crucial for any growing business. Without a clearly laid out playbook, every member of your team will apply “best practices” that may not actually be best for you and may conflict with other actions people are taking. Playbooks align everybody behind the same mission, philosophy and approach.
Unfortunately creating an effective playbook is not as simple or as easy as getting a copy of someone else’s playbook and making it yours (I’ve tried that approach and can tell you unequivocally it doesn’t work). You playbook is, well, yours. It’s unique to your business, situation, culture and market dynamics.
The first step in creating a powerful playbook is defining the game you’re playing. To do that, you need to understand and determine three foundational elements of “your game:”
In the 13 years I’ve been actively blogging, my favorite blog post is still one I wrote a few months in. What Bach, Beethoven, Bruce Springsteen & Eminem Can Teach You About Growth highlighted how many things we think of as complex are actually quite simple. These four musicians used 12 inputs (there are only 12 notes in music) to create a broad array of genius compositions.
I think of this everytime I think about business. We all have a tendency to think of our businesses as unique, when the reality is they are not. There’s a very finite number of business types of businesses (with an infinite number of variations). When determining your game, figure out which archetype best fits your business. To do that, figure out where you are on these criteria:
The strategies, tactics and demand generation & sales plays that will work for you and your business.
If you’ve read The Innovator’s Dilemma/Solution then you know the importance of identifying your business lifecycle (if you haven’t read one of them, order now!). While there are a number of business lifecycle models you can use, here’s a simple one if you don’t already have one selected:
As the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. When designing your sales model here are the key elements you’ll want to focus on:
When you’ve clearly defined the three areas outlined in this post, you’ll know what game you’re playing. With that clarity, putting together an effective playbook to enhance performance becomes much easier, and determining which best practices are best for you becomes a simple task as well.
By the way, if you’d like to learn more about how these three areas contribute to developing a powerful marketing, sales and/or demand generation playbook, as well as the other components of an effective playbook, I encourage you to watch this webinar (it’s either about to happen or it’s been recorded, depending upon when you read this post). I’ll be sharing the details and the process about creating playbooks to be your foundation for growth.