Playbook is a term used in sports (mainly football) to indicate all the possible plays / strategies to be studied at the start of season by the players to make their game most effective (ref: Dictionary). In a business, the term has been adopted to help the team devise & execute a sales strategy with which it’ll reach its customers and generate revenue.

In my sales career spanning over 15 years, I have lived through crafting as well as executing different playbooks. I’ve come to appreciate the effectiveness in having one such playbook and refining it over time. With the right playbook a startup, and for that matter any organization, avoids the pit-falls of selling – targeting the wrong customers, positioning the incorrect offering, hiring the wrong people, having an ineffective sales process or worse having no process, and many more.

Equipped with a sales playbook, startups can scale from 0 to 1 in a much shorter amount of time, with confidence and at a much lower risk. A sales playbook leads to a much faster path to revenue – something that can make or break a startup. The earlier the revenue is had, the faster it can be re-invested and reduces the burn. More importantly, with an effective sales playbook, you get early feedback from early adopters that goes a long way in developing your product roadmap.

Going from Zero to One is so critical for a startup. This gap was covered extensively in one of the most popular books – Crossing the Chasm – by Geoffrey Moore. The 0 to 1 Playbook is the practical execution layer of Crossing the Chasm – it helps startups build a repeatable sales engine that works beyond early traction. Each module (or chapter) within the playbook maps to each of the chasm concept and provides one piece of the puzzle in helping cross the chasm.

For me creation of the Zero to One playbook is going to be an ongoing endeavor – learn while helping out the startups craft & execute their playbooks.