sales playbook

also referred to as: sales playbooks

16 statements across 14 episodes · 2 bullish · 5 bearish · 14 people on the record · first statement Jun 22, 2022 by Zhenya Loginov · across every show →

Everything said about sales playbook, oldest first

Jun 22, 2022 negative
Insight
Founders should not write their startup's first sales playbook alone
“No, the founder shouldn't and it's better that, that they're not. So of course the founder is the most, most often the first seller and most often you know, and they need to link the sales playbook to the vision of the product and the company they want to buil…”
Zhenya Loginov Jun 22, 2022 ▶ 11:04 Mire CRO Zhenya Loginov: Hiring Tips for Sales; Why Dropbox Lost Enterprise | 20VC #900 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 22, 2022
Insight
A comprehensive sales playbook spans customer, team, and market levels
“I feel like I think about sales playbook on three different levels. The customer level, team level, and market level. So customer level for me is all about the problem and the solution. So the question is like, what problem are you solving? Who are you solving…”
Zhenya Loginov Jun 22, 2022 ▶ 9:10 Mire CRO Zhenya Loginov: Hiring Tips for Sales; Why Dropbox Lost Enterprise | 20VC #900 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 14, 2022
Insight
Founders should generate sales playbook inputs, not write the playbooks themselves
“That's not their job, I believe, to create the sales playbook, but it is their job to generate the inputs That go into that playbook.”
Eleanor Dorfman Sep 14, 2022 ▶ 7:13 Eleanor Dorfman: How We Scaled Retool to $50M ARR; Red Flags for Sales Hires | 20VC #925 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 19, 2022 neutral
Insight
Schwartz: Fixed sales playbooks are too prescriptive for early startups
“I think that the word playbook is like a little prescriptive for super early stage startup. I think If what we're thinking about is first couple of hires and what they actually need, their job is to go out into the market and collect information about your add…”
Lauren Schwartz Oct 19, 2022 ▶ 11:12 Fivetran's Lauren Schwartz: Must-Ask Questions to Identify Potential Sales Talent | 20VC #939 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2023
Insight
Jiménez: Sales playbooks should act as guides, not rigid scripts
“A playbook should be a, think of it as a more of a GPS. So it doesn't have to be a script, like each step down to the minute detail. I'll think of it as a guide. So depending on where you are in a sales process where there it's very early and you're doing disc…”
Lori Jiménez Aug 2, 2023 ▶ 8:13 Lori Jiménez: How to Increase Sales; Hiring Tips from Google; Best Way to Grow Sales Teams | E1043 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2023
Insight
Jiménez: Founders, not the head of sales, must build initial sales playbooks
“I think the founders are the right folks to create it for a few reasons.”
Lori Jiménez Aug 2, 2023 ▶ 9:25 Lori Jiménez: How to Increase Sales; Hiring Tips from Google; Best Way to Grow Sales Teams | E1043 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 4, 2023 negative
Insight
Rosenberg: Custom 20% of a Sales Playbook Determines Success
“There's 80% of commonality. It's that 20% that actually is the difference between winning and losing, and that 20% of the playbook that you really have to build only once you get there, and you understand the business deeply, and you understand the process, th…”
Matt Rosenberg Oct 4, 2023 ▶ 8:02 Matt Rosenberg: Why You Should Not Hire Sales Leaders From Big Companies | E1068 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 14, 2024 neutral
Insight
Gonto: Organize sales playbooks by use case, not industry vertical
“I don't think about industries because sometimes three industries have the same use case. So that's why I think grouping them by use case makes more sense than just grouping them by a specific industry.”
Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto) Feb 14, 2024 ▶ 39:46 Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto): The Biggest Mistakes Startups Make When Scaling into Enterprises | E1115 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2024
Insight
Brendon Cassidy: Sales playbooks must target personal buyer motivations over corporate needs
“Sales playbooks need to be very, very rooted in what is the customer thinking? Not what is the customer thinking on behalf of a company, but what are they thinking? What is their personal what is their personal opportunity and fear and upside? And I've always …”
Brendon Cassidy Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 9:40 Brendon Cassidy: Why You Should Never Hire Someone You Do Not Know in Your First Five Hires | E1124 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 10, 2024
Insight
Larry Shurtz: Effective sales playbooks start with outcomes and work backward
“I always start playbooks with like outcome, outcome first and work backwards, right? Because I think you can get play super playbook happy. Super playbook heavy. Everybody's got a playbook. Playbooks end up conflicting with each other.”
Larry Shurtz May 10, 2024 ▶ 9:24 Larry Shurtz: How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Vertical Teams | E1151 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 7, 2024 positive
Insight
Founders must be primary sellers and storytellers early on
“In my mind, a founder should always be the main seller. Definitely the main storyteller, right? And that's how you create the content that you need to build your sales playbook is what is the vision? Like, what are we solving here and what are we building and …”
Ashley Kelly Jun 7, 2024 ▶ 14:51 Ashley Kelly: The Playbook to Start and Scale Your SDR Team | E1162 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2024 negative
Insight
Fiechtner: New CROs fail by copy-pasting playbooks instead of adapting
“I think too often they come in with design playbooks or this worked at this company and blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to copy and paste it here instead of coming in with design principles about these are the things that I know and the frameworks that I can a…”
Ben Fiechtner Aug 2, 2024 ▶ 54:08 Ben Fiechtner: 12-Week Step-by-Step Framework to Crush Every Sales Quarter | E1185 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 23, 2024 negative
Insight
AJ Tennant: Sales playbooks overcomplicate sales, which is fundamentally simple execution
“My view is that playbooks are really, it's like a fancy word for what is your strategy? What is your outbound messaging? Like, what is your plan? Like a play, so I guess, you know, it can be semantics a little bit, but what I view is sales is very simple. You …”
AJ Tennant Oct 23, 2024 ▶ 5:09 AJ Tennant: How to Build a Sales Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | E2118 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2025 negative
Insight
Teixeira: Sales playbooks are useless without proper skills development
“Like without the right skills development, your playbook isn't worth shit.”
Julian Teixeira Mar 7, 2025 ▶ 0:08 Julian Teixeira, CRO @ 1Password: How to Hire and Train Your First Sales Hires · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 12, 2025
Insight
Bendov: Average founders should personally handle early sales and playbook creation
“I think a mediocre founder can do probably the best job early on because you understand the picture, you have the passion, you understand, you know, you're, you still don't have a playbook, so if you're an average, like, communication skills founder, do it you…”
Amit Bendov Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 13:46 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
Nov 28, 2025 positive
Insight
McMahon: Sales playbooks remain essential in the era of AI
“It should. It should still hold true, no different than, like, I think about a sports team. Sports team has a playbook, and the players have to know the playbook, so they have to have the knowledge, and then they have to have the skill set to execute the play,…”
John McMahon Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 5:20 20Sales: John McMahon on How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Sales Reps | How Sales Changes in a World of AI | Sales Lessons from Snowflake and MongoDB | How to Create and Drive a Sales Process with Urgency
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