Notes for owners · Sales management
What should an SME sales playbook include?
A sales playbook is the written answer to every question a new joiner asks in their first month, twelve to twenty pages, not a binder nobody opens.
The GullySales team · Updated 15 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
On this page
A sales playbook is the written answer to every question a new salesperson asks in their first month. Who we sell to. What we sell, what it costs and why. What a good enquiry looks like, and what to say on the first call. What to send afterwards, how to handle the six objections you will hear, and what has to be recorded. Twelve to twenty pages, written from how your best salesperson actually works rather than from a template. Its real test is whether a joiner in week three can use it without asking anybody.
Why most SMEs do not have one, and what it costs them
Because the knowledge works well enough while the founder is in every deal. Then the business hires its third salesperson, the founder stops attending every meeting, and three different versions of the pitch go out to the market. Prices vary. Promises vary. The reason customers buy is explained differently every time.
The cost shows up in three places. A new hire takes six months to become productive instead of two. A resignation takes the knowledge with it. And nobody can tell whether a poor performer has the wrong approach or the wrong territory, because there is no agreed approach to compare them with.
What goes in it, section by section
| Section | What it contains | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Who we sell to | Two or three buyer descriptions with industry, size, city and the role that decides | 2 pages |
| What we sell and why buyers choose us | The offer, the one reason to pick you, the proof behind it | 2 pages |
| Price and what moves it | Rate structure, discount authority, what is negotiable and what is not | 1 page |
| What a good enquiry looks like | The qualification questions and the rule for what is not worth pursuing | 1 page |
| The sales process | Stages defined by what the buyer has done, with the next step for each | 2 pages |
| The first call | The opening, the five questions, how to end with an agreed next step | 2 pages |
| Follow-up | The cadence, the channels, what each contact carries | 1 page |
| Objections | The six you hear, the acknowledgement and the question for each | 2 pages |
| Proof and collateral | Which case study answers which objection, where the files live | 1 page |
| What must be recorded | The compulsory CRM fields and when they are filled | 1 page |
| Who to ask | Who handles technical questions, pricing approvals, credit decisions | 1 page |
Eleven sections, sixteen pages. Anything else you want to add belongs in an appendix.
The sections that do the most work
Qualification. The most valuable page in the book, because it tells a salesperson what to walk away from. Write the rule as a question with a threshold: minimum order size, geography you serve, and whether you will quote against a specified competitor product. Also state whether you take work without an advance. A team with no disqualification rule spends its month on enquiries the owner would have refused.
The five questions for the first call. Not a script. Five questions that establish what the buyer is trying to do, their timeline, who decides, what they are comparing you with, and what would stop this happening. Everything else in the call flows from those answers.
Objections with the proof attached. For each of the six objections, name the case study, specification sheet or reference that answers it. The gap between a playbook and a useful playbook is usually this single column.
Price drivers. Salespeople discount because they cannot explain the price. A page that lists what makes the number higher or lower, with one worked example, removes most of the discounting.
A Bommasandra machine tools dealer, and the week the playbook paid for itself
For example, imagine a dealer in Bommasandra, Bengaluru selling CNC machine tools and tooling to small and medium job shops. The details and figures below are illustrative. Three salespeople, a long cycle, and enquiries from IndiaMART, exhibitions and referrals.
The owner had been in every significant deal for eleven years. When the owner stopped travelling, conversion fell. Listening to calls showed why: each salesperson opened by describing the machine's specifications, because that was what the brochure led with. The owner had always opened by asking what component the customer was making, what cycle time they needed, and what they were currently outsourcing. That question changed the whole conversation.
The playbook captured that in one page. Five questions before any specification is discussed. It also settled the discount authority, which had been costing margin. It named which of two case studies to send to a job shop, and which to send to a tier-two automotive supplier.
For example, on around forty quotations a quarter at an average of ₹18 lakh, recovering even two points of margin that had been given away informally is a substantial number. Those figures are illustrative. What was not illustrative was that the new joiner in month two started asking the component question, and started winning.
How to get it written in three weeks
Week one: record two hours of interviews. Your best salesperson on how they run a first call and what they hear as objections. Your owner on who the ideal customer is and why customers choose you. Pull the last twenty won and lost deals and read the reasons.
Week two: write it. One person, one document, plain language, in the team's own vocabulary rather than in consulting language.
Week three: test it on the newest person in the business. Give them the document and a set of live enquiries. Every question they still have to ask out loud is a gap, and you fix those before circulating it.
Then use it in the weekly meeting. A playbook that is not referred to in the Monday review is a document; one that is, becomes how the team works.
What to do next
Start with the qualification page, because it is the shortest and the most immediately useful. Write down what makes an enquiry worth pursuing and what makes it worth declining, and get the owner to agree it in writing. That page alone changes how a small sales team spends its week. In our first conversation we look at the handover from marketing to sales and at how enquiries are qualified and followed up, which is the raw material the playbook is built from.
