A Business Playbook Can Help You Scale Your Business Faster and Smarter. Here’s ...

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Growing up, my father owned businesses in the automotive industry. From the sidelines, I saw how building, sustaining, and growing a company in a highly competitive industry is often very challenging. But, it can also be highly rewarding for those who persevere, sacrifice, and execute a solid strategy.

Some say that many successful entrepreneurs are very lucky. Yet, as film production pioneer Samuel Goldwyn famously said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

A business playbook is a great way to help transform a business concept into reality and communicate a company's vision to potential investors, partners, employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Business Playbook?
• Benefits of Business Playbooks
• How to Create a Business Playbook
• My Business Playbook Template

A business playbook is less formal than a business plan, which describes a startup company's goals, market opportunities, risks and projections for the purpose of securing financing and complying with regulatory requirements.

These are valuable tools for entrepreneurs looking to:

• Clarify their goals
• Identify their target market
• Define their value proposition and unique selling proposition (USPs)Plan their operations, marketing, and finances

A business playbook can help an entrepreneur to effectively communicate their vision and mission to potential partners, investors, customers, and employees.

When crafted effectively, this document can motivate them to join their venture. It is a great way for entrepreneurs to:

• Avoid common pitfalls by pivoting and changing course.
• Recover from challenging times and circumstances.
• Take advantage of proven strategies.
• Optimize their performance.
• Achieve their company goals to launch their venture or reinvigorate their strategy when scaling up.

Ideally, the playbook should include company profile information (for established businesses, even early on) as well as information about how the company was formed. It should also describe the company's leadership team and structure, its employees, business policies, goals, and operating processes. I'll go into the parts of a business playbook in my template later on, but first let's talk more about benefits.

Benefits of Business Playbooks

I followed in my father's footsteps as an entrepreneur (on a much smaller scale) when I became a freelance writer. I was inspired to pivot my career to writing for and about innovative businesses when I volunteered as a communications lead for Startup Canada several years ago.

During this experience, I learned about planning, building, and running a successful business from mentors like Victoria Lennox, a globally recognized entrepreneurship advocate and catalyst. Lennox is the founder, former CEO, and president of Startup Canada and the co-founder of Startup Nations in the United States. She is now consulting with growing businesses as the CEO of Lennox Innovations. Here's what she has to say about business playbooks.

"In my experience, business playbooks have been invaluable," said Lennox. "They provide entrepreneurs with a structured guide to navigate the complexities of starting and growing a business. They help ensure that nothing is missed, which is crucial because, as entrepreneurs, we often find ourselves doing things for the first time."

During the time I made a career shift from sales to marketing, I had an eye-opening experience attending a bootcamp workshop on business plans and business playbooks.

Donna Douglas (a former magazine publisher and journalist turned business coach) compared writing a business plan to preparing to pilot an airplane to a far-off destination.

Douglas explained, "You can't simply jump into the cockpit, fumble to start the engine, and pull back on the control stick and expect a safe, successful journey. You need proper training, navigation instructions, and to check that the plane is fueled, mechanically sound, and ready to make a safe journey to the correct destination."

I can't think of a better metaphor for both the importance of - and the reasons for - having a solid business playbook.

Kinds of Business Playbooks

There are many kinds of business playbooks, and each sets standards for what business stakeholders should expect to do to meet the company's goals, mission, and values. Each playbook is targeted at (or useful for) a different audience persona and delivers unique benefits.

Company Playbooks

A company-wide playbook is a general overview of the company, its leadership team, and its vision, mission, and values. It's typically aimed at employees, partners, and customers during onboarding to bring everyone up to speed on standard operating procedures and help everyone know what to expect during day-to-day interactions.

Sales Playbooks

These documents share a company's selling methodology relative to the USP of their products and services. They are often written by a company's sales enablement team or sales managers based on successful sales pursuits.

I will never forget a sales kickoff event when I worked for Open Text. They introduced their sales playbook to our global sales team in a fun and interactive way. We went through a series of role plays, including competitive positioning, overcoming objectives, presenting solutions, and closing deals. The event also established a policy where if a customer conversation wasn't documented in the CRM, it didn't happen.

Marketing Playbooks

These resources are sometimes created in the form of a wiki or collaborative document with links to resources like competitive battlecards, customer presentations, and procedures on the kinds of marketing assets that are best suited to different aspects of the pre-and post-sales funnel.

I worked with a fleet telematics company that had an excellent marketing playbook that made it easier to find resources, understand processes for content review, and to find subject matter experts for input on different topics.

Operations Playbooks

An operations playbook is a document that describes how a business delivers its service procedures. It describes the roles of employees and the leadership team relative to their operating procedures. This document can be helpful for prospective customers, employees, and investor candidates.

Human Resources Playbooks

These HR documents capture the policies and procedures that an organization follows for the entirety of the employment lifecycle, including:

• Recruiting and onboarding.
• Performance reviews, benefits allocation, salaries, and incentives.
• Policies and reporting processes for diversity, equality, and inclusion.
• Practices for handling policy violations like harassment, conflicts of interest, or unauthorized use of company assets.

HR playbooks often incorporate policies related to industry standards and tend to be more formal for compliance reasons, especially in regulated industries and publicly traded companies.

Channel Playbooks

Companies in industries like technology, electronics, and telecommunications often rely on channel partners for sales, installation, and maintenance of their products. Channel playbooks often state partner rules of customer engagement for direct sales and channel partners. They may also describe partner resale margins, opportunity registration, and channel support service levels.

Customer Service Playbooks

In the digital era, customer retention is crucial, especially for companies operating on recurring revenue models. Customer service playbooks often describe how customer support, success, and training teams will help their customers realize the benefits and return on investment they were promised when they purchased a product, subscribed to managed services, or contracted professional services.

Pro tip: A conversation intelligence tool is also a great resource for customer service teams to aid in coaching reps to ensure they are providing effective guidance to your clients. Learn more about coaching your sales team with conversational intelligence in our free academy course.

In a nutshell, the various kinds of business playbooks above set expectations internally on how a company will deliver on its promises and meet its goals. Not all companies have official mission, vision, and value statements, yet they are valuable "north star" targets for your team to work towards as a common goal.

How to Create a Business Playbook

Now that I've covered the benefits of a strong business playbook and how different kinds of playbooks can help your company and/or team, let's talk about how to create one. There's a basic structure you'll want to follow, but playbooks needn't be written in stone, either.

When I spoke to Lennox about creating a business playbook, she said their "structured approach not only streamlines operations but also makes it easier to pivot and grow during challenging times, ultimately leading to more successful business outcomes."

During my own career shift, I rewrote my playbook with a renewed focus on educating business leaders on the benefits of technology, since writing and educating were my passions and what I wanted my business to focus on.

Here are the five steps I went through to create my business playbook.

1. Define and document your ideal client profile (IDP).

Call it a customer persona, target audience, or IDP. Either way, it's important to find out early who you need to get in front of to sell your products and services. I personally found marketing executives were my target audience. At first I did work pro bono to build a portfolio of work samples, which paid dividends later.

2. Identify your revenue model.

As a freelance writer, I assessed a number of pricing models. Billing by the hour wasn't ideal. The more content I created within my niche, the more my writing and research accelerated. Charging per word isn't always practical either because a lot of research time goes into articles like these. I found a flat fee or retainer pricing model works best for me.

3. Establish SMART goals.

It is critical to set SMART business goals: goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Documenting those goals in your business playbook holds you accountable.

I wanted to land ten regular customers in my first year that I could profitably work for. I landed fewer clients, but most accounts were larger, and their contracts were more valuable than I first planned. (See above: not set in stone. Being agile is crucial.)

4. Build your A-team.

When I first started my business, I partnered with a former sales colleague who was tech-savvy, and we got along great. Unfortunately, he wasn't as enthusiastic about starting a business, and joined an established company.

Your company may require a team of people with varied skills, and hiring skilled professionals who are willing to devote themselves to their careers can be challenging. Ensure everyone you partner with or hire is prepared for the startup experience, and that you have the resources or backing to make it worth their while. Make sure your team can access your playbook to understand their place in your company's present and future plans.

Pro tip: If you are working on taking a business venture from an idea to reality, check out the HubSpot Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs for ways to use tools like business playbooks.

5. Use or build a template.

As Lennox mentioned, creating a business playbook for the first time can be daunting. Hiring a consultant to create one might be too costly for your business, so using a template as a starting point can be a great solution. I'll share one below.

My Business Playbook Template

Although most of this article was written by a human, the business playbook template below was created with the help of generative AI and reviewed for accuracy. It is intended to provide you with structure, inspiration, and best practices for creating your own business playbook. You will recognize many of the elements of this template from earlier in the article.

Introduction

• Explain the purpose and scope of your business playbook.
• Provide an overview of your company's model, vision, mission, and values.
• Highlight the company's main goals, objectives, and key of business leadership and business staff.
• Summarize key and emerging challenges and opportunities in your company's market niche.

Strategy

• Define your company's target market and customer segments.
• Analyze the competitive landscape and identify the unique value proposition.
• Outline the marketing and sales strategy, including the channels, tactics, and performance metrics.
• Describe the product or service offering, including the features, benefits, and differentiation.
• Explain the pricing and revenue model, including the cost structure and profit margin.

Execution

• Identify the key resources and capabilities required to deliver your company's value proposition.
• Specify the roles and responsibilities of the team members and stakeholders.
• Establish the processes and systems for managing the operations and quality.
• Define the milestones and deliverables for each phase of the project or business cycle.
• Set the budget and financial projections, including the assumptions and risks.

Evaluation

• Design the performance measurement and evaluation system, including the key performance indicators and targets.
• Collect and analyze the data and feedback from the customers, market, and internal sources.
• Report the results and outcomes of the project or business cycle, including the achievements, challenges, and learnings.
• Recommend the actions and improvements for the next phase or cycle, based on the evidence and insights.

Conclusion and Next Steps

• Summarize the main points and takeaways from your unique business playbook.
• Reiterate the value proposition and the competitive advantage of your business.
• Emphasize the vision and mission of the business and how it aligns with the customer needs and expectations.
• Thank readers for investing the time in reviewing, and invite them to contact you for further information or collaboration.

How Will Your Business Playbook Shape and Grow Your Company?

As I researched to write this article, it was fun remembering some of the experiences I had in planning my own business. As you can tell from everything I've outlined here, having a strong business playbook plays a huge part in building and scaling your business. It's helped me get mine off the ground and stay on track, and it can do the same for you.

Topics:Sales playbook

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