Equipping Your Team with Revenue Growth Plays: What Actually Works in Today’s B2B Market
Today’s market is demanding. The sales landscape has shifted dramatically since the pandemic. As a result, many companies are facing slowing growth and declining margins. Sales and marketing leaders are under pressure to deliver results. Meanwhile, their reps are asking one question: what should we be doing differently?
The solution usually comes down to three key areas. To improve results, companies need targeted sales plays. Teams also need the right training and support systems to run them confidently. Finally, companies need a coaching system that helps those sales plays stick.
1. Develop Targeted Sales Plays
The generic approach no longer works. Consequently, high-performing B2B teams are moving away from one-size-fits-all selling motions and building a clear set of sales plays designed for specific situations.
Different situations require different sales plays. For example, you need a play for targeting a specific industry vertical, a play for displacing a competitor, and a play for expanding or renewing existing accounts. Every scenario demands its own messaging, execution style, and supporting tools.
Focus on selling value not speed. Under pressure, sales reps feel the need to rush to the demo or the proposal. However, that instinct works against them. Each sales play should outline the steps, activities, and tools that help reps build a compelling case for change.
Specifically, sales teams need more time upfront to understand the buying process. But deals do not close without a clear link between the problems you solve and the measurable value your solution provides. Slow down on the front end. As a result, teams can speed up at the close.
What every sales play must include:
- Ideal customer profile and trigger events
- Industry trends and insights to lead with
- Discovery questions that surface the buyer’s real priorities
- Value proposition tied to business outcomes not product features
- Competitive traps and objection responses
- A defined next step that advances the buying decision
For a deeper look at what goes into each play, see our Sales Playbook resources. Once the sales plays are clearly defined, the next step is making sure teams can execute them effectively.
2. Equip and Train Your Team to Run the Plays
In today’s selling environment, credibility and confidence are critical. In addition, both come from preparation and ongoing development rather than product knowledge alone.
Use a video-enabled enablement platform. There are many strong enablement tools available today. However, the most effective ones do one thing others do not: they show reps what good looks like in action. SalesOptyx, Kodiak’s sales enablement platform, is built specifically to deploy sales plays with video, coaching guides, and interactive tools that reps can access at the point of need not just during a training event.
Your enablement platform should include:
- Videos of top performers running the play in real scenarios
- Trends and pressures that drive the need for change in your buyers’ world
- Key themes and value propositions for each sales conversation
- Competitive positioning and traps to set
- Objection handling frameworks tied to the specific play
Incorporate micro-learning. In addition to full playbook access, offer bite-sized learning modules that let reps absorb and apply one concept at a time. As a result, short, focused practice often beats long workshops when it comes to retention.
For more on how to build this infrastructure, read our guide on Sales Enablement strategy. Even the strongest sales play will fail without ongoing reinforcement and coaching
3. Coach Your Team and Remove Friction
Here is where most sales transformation efforts break down. The plays are built. The training is delivered. But without consistent coaching, the new behavior evaporates within 90 days.
Provide focused coaching guides. Sales managers need more than inspection and accountability although both matter. Their role, more importantly, is to help reps think clearly about what is working, what is not, and what needs to change. That requires a structured coaching conversation tied directly to the play the rep is running.
Kodiak’s Sales Leadership Playbooks give managers the coaching guides, cadence, and frameworks to make this happen consistently. Every manager meeting has a purpose. In addition, 1:1 sessions follow a clear structure. Coaching conversations also stay tied to a specific sales play.
Remove friction from the process. Additionally, sales reps will resist any tool or training program they see as administrative overhead. Therefore, the sales play and the enablement platform must feel like they exist to help the rep win, not to help management report on activity.
When reps see the play working in real deals, adoption follows naturally. That is why the sequence matters: build the play around the buyer’s journey, not the manager’s dashboard.
For additional perspective on building a sales coaching culture that sticks, see our post on building a Sales Leadership System.
What Separates Teams That Win
By combining targeted sales plays, a strong enablement platform, and a consistent coaching cadence, companies can navigate today’s complex B2B landscape with far greater confidence. Furthermore, these three elements work together, each one amplifying the impact of the others.
A sales play gives coaching direction. Coaching drives adoption. Meanwhile, the enablement platform ensures both stay active long after launch
Kodiak Group has driven over $10 billion in incremental revenue across 300-plus enterprise engagements by building exactly this system. To learn more about our video-based playbook platform, visit SalesOptyx.
Ready to see how these ideas apply to your team? Schedule time with our Managing Partner to talk through where your biggest opportunity is.
