Playbooks

Playbooks in Membrain give you even more power to control and dynamically change your sales processes based on conditions you specify, which are relevant to your business. 

For example, say your sales rep discovers your main competitor is also targeting a potential client. With Playbooks configured, you can guide your sales rep through an alternative set of steps in the sales process, ensuring each opportunity is managed with relevance and precision.

Or you come up against an objection in an opportunity that changes its direction and potentially its outcome. Playbooks make it easy for you to deal with this by automatically changing the steps in the process, to guide you through a different route and ensure you're ahead of the game. 

Create a Playbook

For this example, we can create a simple Playbook and then add some complexity to it for the second part of this article.

First, decide which step you want to make into a Playbook, and map out what additional steps you want to take, based on what information is captured in that step.

For example, let's say you are a software company and you want to record what other systems your client is considering.  You already record if the competition is your main competitor "Competitor A" or not so aggressive "Competitor B". But you want your sales reps to send a Comparison Document if the competitor chosen is "Competitor A" 

Part I - Simple Playbook (step by step guide)

Administrators create playbooks from the process editor.

1. Go to System Setup - Process
2. Click on the Process you wish to create the playbook in.
3. First, let's presume that you already have a step in the process that allows you to select from a multi-select list and identify who your competitors are.
4. To build the playbook based on what competitor is selected, we will create a new step that will only appear when certain competitors are selected. Click the button at the bottom of the stage where you want to add the step and create the playbook.
5. Call the new step "Send comparison document". The step is saved to the process.
   You now have 2 steps, the first one to identify the competition, and the second one that we will configure to appear only if a certain competitor is chosen.
   
6. Click back into the step to change the settings to make it a playbook, and click on Add Details/Tools on the right-hand side.
   
7. Click Playbook Condition.
   This is where you chose what must happen in order for this step to dynamically appear in the process.
   
8. Select if you want the new step to Show or Hide by default, based on a certain scenario.  This is helpful if you want the step to be visible by default and only hidden in some scenarios, making playbooks easy to manage.
   
9. Click +Add Condition to start building your scenario for showing or hiding your playbook. For this example, we will choose the Competitors field.
   
10. From the list of Competitors, we've selected "Competitor A", "Competitor B" and "Competitor C". This is now the base of the setting that makes the next step appear when the salesperson selects any of these three competitors during the sales project.
    
11. There are some additional options that allow you to get more specific about when you want the next step to appear. Use the dropdown options to the left in the specific Playbook Condition selection to change the conditions of what and how many of the options need to be selected for the Playbook to apply.
    
12. Click OK to confirm your choice, and Save the step. You will now see that your step Comparison Document is greyed out in the process, showing you that it is a Playbook step. 
    Hovering will also show you the settings of the step.
     
13. Click Publish Process and your simple Playbook is ready!

Part II - Additional Conditions

If you want to get more specific about the scenarios where you want steps to be shown or hidden, you can add additional conditions to your playbook. The possibilities are endless in terms of what conditions you want to apply, based on any of the data you record in your process. 

Example 1 - Playbook in a Sales Process

In the example below, the step is hidden unless

• Competition is set to "Competitor A"
  AND
• Lead time is set to "1 month"
  OR
• The value of the Sales Project is equal to or more than 10,000 USD.
  

Example 2 - Playbook in an Account Growth Process

In Account Growth, you can use Playbooks based on the Growth Grid quadrants your Accounts are positioned in. For example, the most valuable Accounts in your process might need to have more steps to complete in order to be successful in Account management. In that case, you can have Playbook steps that appear only if an Account is positioned in the Top Right quadrant (high Value and high Untapped Potential). Learn more about the Growth Grid in this Help Center article Setting up the Growth Grid

In the example below, the step is hidden unless

• Account is in the Top Right Quadrant of the Growth Grid
  

Example 3 - Playbook Based on Number of Stakeholders

Another helpful feature is the ability to base playbooks on the number of Stakeholders in a project. Say you have a Sales Project above a certain size you might want to have more Stakeholders involved with that potential customer. You can then create Playbook rules based on the value of the deal and have it trigger when you move past a specific point or you have filled in a specific option in your sales process IF you have not identified enough Stakeholders.

• Deal is above 10.000 USD
  AND
• Customer is committed to the investment
  AND
• Number of Stakeholders is less then 5

If these criteria are met then the step will be visible urging you to identify additional Stakeholders. If more then 4 Stakeholders have already been identified the step become visible but is already completed.

Example 4 - Playbook Based on Number of Activities

In some cases Playbooks based on the number of activities that have been completed within a Sales Project or Account Growth Project. In the example below, you want to have a step appear to remind your sales person to do a proactive reach out to the client if you had less then 5 activities by a specific point in the process.

• Number of Activities is less then 5
  AND
• Step Completed: Investment Attitude

If these conditions are met this will prompt an additional step to appear to remind the Owner of the project to do a proactive reach out.

Playbooks Preview

To help you see and keep track of all of your Playbooks in a process, we've created the Playbooks Preview.

1. From the process editor, click on the "Playbook Conditions" button from the top toolbar, to see how your Playbooks will play out.
2. Select options available for each Playbook you have created and see how things would dynamically change, while in the live process.
   

Note: While in the Process editor, you can quickly see which steps are playbook steps as they are greyed out.