2024-07-02 | Playbook Strategies | Episode 002

[00:03] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: So as long as LinkedIn makes this awkward, we're going to have awkward starts to the show. Happy Tuesday everybody. Welcome to Let's Build Daily. I'm your host, Chris Carolan. Uh another special guest, starting another great series today. Um, Madeleine Donovan is here to talk about Hubspot Playbooks. Uh, welcome Madeleine. Madeleine Donovan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Chris Carolan: My pleasure. I think uh we agree uh that Playbooks is one of the most, you know, underutilized, um, just super powerful tools that is in the HubSpot, um, tool set right now. Before we, we dive in, uh, want you to share a little bit about, you know, who you are and your journey, um, and maybe why you care, care about Playbooks so much. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, sure. Yeah, so um, I've been in marketing operations for almost a decade now and um, you know, Hubspot's been a really natural part of that. Um, and you know, Hubspot is great because it's it's where all of your data is, you know, marketing, sales, service, your website, everything. Um, and you're always trying to automate processes because you always want to make things more efficient, you want to optimize, you want to solve problems for your team. But you always run into the problem where there are certain processes in your business that are unique to your business and you can't just automate everything. There's always going to be an element of, you know, human touch and personalization that you need. Um, there's always going to be some nuance. Um, and that's where playbooks are really handy. Um, they allow your team to follow a process that you have defined that Hubspot probably can't define for you. Um, but then you can mold, meld that process into HubSpot's data and the way that you really should be setting things up for your business. Yeah, so that's why I love playbooks.

[05:05] **Why People Don't Use Playbooks** Chris Carolan: So why do you think, um, why aren't more people using Playbooks? Do you think? Madeleine Donovan: I don't know that they know they exist, which is a huge issue, but I also think people don't use them the right way, um, at least initially, and so they think it's just like a notepad. And they it's just another way to write a note in the platform, um, when you can just write a note or you can just have, you can just copy and paste an email template and email, email it to your team members, or, you know, maybe if they do know that you can put properties in a playbook, maybe they think, oh, well, I can just update the properties on the contact record. Why would I need the playbook to do that? Um, but it's all of those things, which is what makes it great. Chris Carolan: Right. Yeah, I've also had some some pushback related to like, oh, I don't want my people, you know, too scripted or to sound like robots or uh stuff like that. And this is this is where like that's not the intent. Um, but when it comes to like gathering important information, um, in a standardized way, I mean, playbooks just goes such a long way to kind of conversationalize like the data capture needed because a lot of this data is already being shared in these conversations. Um, and we've been relying on somebody writing down notes or typing in notes somewhere on the record. Um, uh, and then after the call, they're going to, you know, update the CRM. Uh, well, they're not. Or if they do, they're going to miss stuff and um, you know, playbooks goes a long way into just providing some guardrails and some guidance, you know, while you capture that data. It's not a uh the intent is not to say like, okay, you can't ask questions in a different order or like Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: You can still move through the conversation the way you would need to, especially as a as a salesperson. Um, but this is just a a guide to say like, hey, if you want the rest of the system to work for you, the way that you're asking me to make it work for you, you know, this these kinds of things are are important. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, and I think it's important to even if let's say they did record all of their notes perfectly, you can still forget to ask one or two questions. And so you don't have notes on them, but it's not because you didn't write them down, it's you just never asked it during the call. So guardrails as far as what to bring up even in the conversation, I think is a great point too.

[09:22] **Approaching Playbooks** Chris Carolan: So when you first started, um, using Playbooks, like what what's your approach? Like if if a company's using HubSpot, like and they say, okay, like how do they even say, okay, I see the Playbooks thing. Like where where do I start? Madeleine Donovan: Do you want the the answer that typically happens or the way that it should happen? Chris Carolan: Oh, only the typical answers here. Madeleine Donovan: Okay, cool. The way that it typically happens is someone's like, oh my gosh, cool, Playbooks. We really need this for our sales team, um, because there's so much information about the product that we want to be able to give the customer. Or maybe it's like this certain target audience, they have so many little things that we want to remember about them or certain questions that we want to ask them. Maybe they're like healthcare specific questions or I don't know, a certain, you know, product specific disclaimer that they want to make sure to give in a conversation. So then they create a playbook for that. And then they create that they clone it. I can't even remember if you can clone a playbook. I don't know that you can, but they'll essentially clone that, you know, structure, which is no structure. And then, you know, say, hey, it's here whenever you want it, use it whenever you want. Like, hopefully it's helpful. And then either no one uses it, or some people use it, or any any combination of the above. Chris Carolan: Right. And at that point, it is it they are treating it like a script or like a word doc that just gets passed around. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: And there isn't a lot of intention and you can't rely on what it's doing for you at that point. Um, and and it's very easy to waste a lot of time on tools like that in Hubspot. So this is a place where like I think coaching is is huge. Um, in terms of what, what to do and what not to do, you know, with Playbooks. Uh, I think to help guide that, I'm going to share my screen here for our, you know, old old trusty process map. Um, and when you made, so when you made your first playbook and for those that are seeing the screen for the first time, right, we've got we go from, you know, lead generation to sales to service hand off here. Uh, where was your first playbook in the in the process? Madeleine Donovan: Probably marketing to sales hand off. Chris Carolan: Okay. So, so right there, like that's the hand off. If hand offs exist in your organization and they do, uh usually, that is the first place to look, uh in terms of where Playbooks can be, uh can be highly valuable for you. Would you, would you agree with that? Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: So, of course, you need to understand your process and have it documented effectively to understand where those hands offs are, what's needed in order to hand off effectively. Um, so take us through like the kind of questions you're asking, uh either yourself or the team to really start, you know, building out in a in effective playbook. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, and the way you just framed it too, just to pause there. I think a lot of the time the disconnect is that Playbooks are just like an additional tool that's separate from this entire process, which is where, you know, obviously that's why this process isn't getting built out the right way because you're looking at it as separate from all of this. But you're right, you have to understand the process and build the playbook into it and use the tool, use the playbook as a tool to go through this process. That's a huge factor in all of this. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And just to I guess triple click on that now. Uh, the way you described it to begin with, like people like people who are used to paper processes, right? Often look for and misuse tools like this where they're just like, I don't want the structure. Like I know we got to do stuff in HubSpot, but I don't know what properties are called and I'm not comfortable like scrolling around the interface while I'm on the phone. Um, so I just need a place to just write stuff. Um, and we either should like usually start with like a note on the record or something like that, but Playbooks are kind of like supercharged reusable notes. Uh like you can set them up that way, right? And that's the situation you described. And that's where what we try to avoid is you're not investing in HubSpot so that you can recreate your paper process. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Like in a digital format. Madeleine Donovan: That's a yeah, that's a great way to put it. Chris Carolan: But that's often what happens and this is one of the most common ways that happens because then now HubSpot is our digital desk with papers everywhere. And but understand that when you're trying to implement a tool like this, understanding where those papers exist during the current version of the process, that's where all the data is. And the reason this has been effective before HubSpot was in place is because you literally have people with the piece of paper and then they walk over to the other desk or the other office, give the person the piece of paper, sometimes walk them through what's on the paper, why these are highlighted, and what these notes mean, right? And that's where the actual communication happens, right? As we go digital and remote, like we don't have that opportunity. So Playbooks, if you think about it in how it's used during this paper process, giving like setting it up the way that we're going to talk about and we're going to do lots of, you know, uh, versions in this series, like setting up in that way, we, we can recreate the intent of what they're doing in those communication moments, right? Without, you know, highlighters, without scribbles on the page, without, you know, uh, sketches and drawings and all this stuff, like we can bring some of that in. But that's where, um, and I know I'm kind of stealing your, your thunder a little bit there. Madeleine Donovan: No, no. Yeah, no, I love it. Chris Carolan: But it's like that's where understanding the process and sitting down with somebody and say, okay, when, when sales usually when I give this to sales, let's say I was just at a trade show and I've got notes and then I go talk to my sales guy about it, right? I'm giving them this information so that they can take it and provide a lot less friction for the customer, they can know like which products can be. They know, they don't have to re-ask all these questions to the customer or to the buyer. As you discover that and establish that, then you bring it back to, okay, this is what we need to be asking for on the website or in this case in the playbook so that that information already is is both, you know, captured and formatted and organized in a way that it's actually going to be useful, useful for the next person. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. And that that's such a, you know, sticking point between teams a lot of the time too is whenever a hand off, a digital, you know, hand off occurs, it's like, oh, this, you know, this lead isn't a great one is the typical example or we don't have enough, you got us all this information that is like three paragraphs long, but you didn't get me the actual thing that I needed, now I have to call them again or, you know, whatever. Um, this is the way to ensure that you're getting the information that you need before things move forward in the process so that you're not moving backwards. The goal is to never have to move backwards and not have to type out three paragraphs if you just know what one question to ask or two questions or whatever. So, right. Chris Carolan: And like because that three paragraphs might only help you. It probably doesn't even help you that much. Yeah. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: But definitely the next person does not want to read through, you know, the three paragraphs. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: And I think we've seen in cases where if the information, you know, without something like a playbook, like some teams need to know that there's some kind of tools involved and they're not just going to trust all the information from, you know, the marketing team or the sales team. So they're like, okay, that's great. I'm just going to reach out to the customer directly and reconfirm this before I make myself look, you know, some kind of way. So there's just so many nuances, you know, to this. Um, before we leave this spot, I know you've got some stuff built in HubSpot to show. Is there anything else you want to touch on in relationship to like kind of understanding the process or questions you like to ask, um, to get us to the point where, okay, now we even know a a playbook is the right way to to to add to improve this process. Madeleine Donovan: I think so when not to use a playbook is a great um place to go. Um, but I think let's open up Playbooks. Chris Carolan: All right. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: So I'm going to stop and you can share your screen, but is one of the best first questions to ask. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Should you do this at all? Madeleine Donovan: Yep. Madeleine Donovan: So, let's say let's just create let's create a playbook from scratch. Let's create your typical, your typical playbook. Um, I will call it Sales Playbook. And I'm going to write a bunch of notes. I'm going to say, make sure they're bant qualified. Fill out this playbook during every discovery call. Tag a team member when you've completed this playbook. We have one question that Hubspot pre-populated. It's a question that you'd like answered. So we can edit this. Let's say, um what products are they interested in or what what what's their need? Let's just say that. Um, okay. So this is your typical starter playbook. We have some instructions at the top that are horrible, no offense, because you're not even going to, half of these aren't relevant until you open you only see them when you open the playbook. They're instructions about different parts of the process. Um, and make sure they're bant qualified. Okay. Do I not do this playbook then if I already know they're not? What if they I submit the playbook? There's no question about whether they are bant qualified. If I completed the playbook, are they or are they not? Um, where do you want me to say whether they are? You know, all of those sorts of things. The it's vague and it's not binary. So there's no way to know certain things about this process. Anyway, so like let's go to the question. What's their need? Um, here, let's publish this. And I created a dummy contact called named Porsche. I'm going to find hopefully, yeah, I'm going to open this playbook. And I'm going to say, Porsche wants to get a creative puzzle business. So some important background. Porsche wants to get a photo, a custom puzzle printed with a photo of her dog. Okay, cool. I will uh log this. I'll log this playbook. Um, and now I'm done. But it ends there. And no one knows anything. Oh, the instructions told me to tag someone. So I could tag, apparently, I can't right now. We'll tag you, Chris. Porsche would like custom puzzle. Okay. This puzzle, we don't know anything about it. We don't know, we don't know if she's bant qualified. We don't know where she is in the process. Um, based on the playbook in the record right now.

[50:23] **Moving Forward and Learning to Optimize Playbooks** Chris Carolan: Yeah. Right. The person who talked to Porsche and maybe even the webpage that she submitted, uh, her like quote request on might have like 20 different pieces of information between the webpage and the person who talked to her. Like we could be like 40% of the way if we're thinking of data in our process and how we support like even like quoting or what emails we're going to send or what templates we're going to use. All that stuff could be already in HubSpot, um, with tools, with the tools that HubSpot makes available to you and Playbooks is is one of these tools. Madeleine Donovan: Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, no. Um, so I would say this is an example of a playbook that is kind of just replacing the physical piece of paper. Um, it it hasn't advanced any processes in HubSpot, it hasn't automated anything, it hasn't filled out any data. The only way that you're going to find anything that was discussed or logged in the playbook is by coming to the activities tab and finding the logged activity and referring to it. So while it might have been helpful for the team member to fill it out and to have, you know, that, that box that they checked to know that they did what they're supposed to do, it's really not helping you optimize your sales process, short term or long term. So that's one reason I wouldn't create a playbook. Another reason is if you are creating multiples, cloning the playbook, like I mentioned earlier, for like a bunch of different scenarios that aren't different enough. So if you have a bunch of different types of products, um, but all of those products use the same types of properties. Like there's no different data being filled out, then there's no reason to have separate playbooks. Um, Hubspot is really it's conditional logic, synced properties, all of the property updates that have happened in like the past year and a half have like changed the game as far as, you know, data quality and how efficient it is at sorting data. Um, so there's no reason to junk up your platform with copies and copies and copies of playbooks. You really should only need one playbook for a certain type of process and then use properties well to kind of guide you to fill out the data that's needed. Um, yes, and this is again where we get back to like what does the process look like? What is your data structure? What information do you need to know uh to support, you know, the rest of the process. Um, often times like uh, you know, like product specification building spreadsheets, uh or any kind of spreadsheet that's used throughout this whole process is a good place to look for like so even if your team as you talk to them is having trouble answering questions because they're looking at a new interface or it's just it's something they haven't had to think about before, you can often point them to like, well, what where are you putting notes during the process? Um, what is that thing doing for you after you put the notes there? So like if they're using like some kind of pricing calculator spreadsheet or configurator spreadsheets, like if if the customer needs this temperature, then only these things are going to be available. Um, those are the the the kinds of things that we can plan for and then build out, you know, with the conditional logic that that Madeline mentioned and we're never going to get there if you come at it from the angle that she just, you know, created and uh as far as just here's a couple things we'd like you to do in this playbook basically is is what uh she just gave as an example of a bad bad playbook. And this is where like you can get into some trouble like in the quick wins conversation or like the pick, you know, like a super user who's champion and then build everything out with them, right? Because she might have picked a person there that's willing to just fill up that playbook with information and they love just putting all the notes. Um, and it's like, okay, this is going to be great. Now we can just go into log call, we can see everything, we can even, you know, this person agreed to bold and, you know, do these different formatting, so it looks like we can look in this record and everybody's going to understand what's going on. But then when you get to the next salesperson or stakeholder, they're not a note taker, right? So they're going to give you minimal amount of information because there's no structure telling them which information's needed because they're used to just having it in their head. They're not used to having to hand off, right? Or if they do hand off, it's always in a one-to-one conversation, right? So now they're going to use this playbook completely differently. Um, so that's something you kind of need to head off at the pass to really understand, you know, what the playbook is going to do for you and for the team and, you know, why why it's needed or or why it's not needed. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, um I love the I love talking about how to make these processes more efficient and like collect all the data, but also not make your entire sales team mad in the process. It is definitely important to take both into consideration. Um, and again, I think that comes back to knowing what data is the most important. Like asking yourself, is it really fair for me to expect the sales team to fill all of this out? Like is this really needed right now? Should these all be required fields? Um, maybe I pick five required fields and I make it really clear which ones they are. Maybe I put them all at the top and then they can skip to the bottom if they have no more information. But what if they do have more information and they want to provide it? They might also be annoyed that they can't provide it there in the moment without, you know, clicking out of the playbook and going to a note and then adding all the notes. Um, like it's important to do both, I think. So, um, as an example, I'm going to open up a different playbook that I started, um, just to show the difference and how you can optimize playbooks. So, of course, you can include any relevant instructions like Hubspot tells us to. But, um let's just take a second like and highlight, highlight that sentence and hit the AI button. Uh, and let's say expand. Just want to see if it takes into account the questions in the playbook. Uh doesn't look like it does. Um, something we might want to pay attention to down the road is like there's so many places that AI is popping up in HubSpot right now. Like little notes like this or here's what to expect, you know, salesperson. Yes, we trained you like a month ago, but you haven't used this tool at all since then, so we probably need to refresh you every time you open up this playbook, right? Chris Carolan: Yeah. Madeleine Donovan: It I imagine at some point we're going to get to where it can see the questions that are being asked, it can see the playbook on the screen and then you can come back up to the top and say AI, please create like an introduction. Yeah. Yeah. To this playbook. Um doesn't look like we're there yet, but if anybody's seen this in action uh work, this is how it works on the website stuff. Um, uh, be very interested to hear uh of experiences where you've used AI, you know, in relationship to to playbooks. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, that's a great point because that's kind of similar to how it works with workflows right now, I think. Like workflow descriptions or report descriptions. Um, so yeah, I think that would be an obvious next step. Um, okay, I'm going to click this plus button. And here's our options. We could also always insert a video or like a link to what are playbooks? How do I use a playbook as that refresher for, you know, the person who got trained a month ago but might have never used a playbook before. Um, but I'm going to assume this is your average sales team member. They know how to use a playbook, um, and they're ready. So I can insert a question. And I have a few options. But this is what makes or breaks a playbook. So what is my question? I'm going to say, how many puzzles do they want? And save. Cool. I inserted a question into my playbook. But this question sucks because it's just notes and if I logged this playbook, all it's going to do is add a note into your activity portion. It's not, it's not being saved anywhere as data, as a property. Um, so we can't use it in reports. We can't, well, I guess you could use it as maybe activity, but I don't know. Um, you can't use it when you're filtering contacts, you can't, you can't do anything with this. You, you can only view this information from that note that's going to get logged in your activity tab that you don't want your the rest of your team to have to go looking for. So I'm going to edit this question and I'm going to make it into a property. Update a property and I'm going to say, I'm just going to pretend that I have a property set up for this. So let's say number of employees, sure. Or here. How many employees do they have? Okay. Save. That's a little better. But we still have the opportunity for them to mess up and I wouldn't blame them for messing up, but we want to avoid that if at all possible. So instead of allowing them to add a note and type the number in that note instead of filling out the property, I'm going to use this hide notes field and I'm also going to make this required so that in order to fill out this playbook, they have to answer this question and they can't type it in as a note. So now, by default, anytime they fill out this playbook, they will have had to say how many employees this company has. That's like the backbone of any playbook, in my opinion. You can always add more information to, you know, add color, I guess to a record or to a a meeting or a call, but if you're not filling out, if you're not creating values for your properties, this isn't advancing that giant process map that you showed earlier. This isn't getting the next team the information that they need in order for the the hand off to be fair. Um, yeah, that's that's like the most essential step, I think. Chris Carolan: And I think like onboarding like bringing new people into the process, like this kind of stuff cuts that by like 75, 80%. Madeleine Donovan: Yes. Chris Carolan: You know, instead of like the days of ride alongs and like, hey, just shadow me, right? Because in reality they don't shadow anything and they just get thrown into the fire and like, hey, here's your first sales call. Um, things like this goes such a long way because you're connecting this, you can connect this to dropdown fields, to yes no checkboxes. And when you start to require that stuff and also only have certain options available, like to your first questions, like how many puzzles do they want, right? There can be an option that is one, two, or three. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Like, so if they say they want 10, uh, we're in the custom puzzles business. We don't mass manufacture puzzles, so you can't get that many. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Um, and things like that start to go a long way. And again, I think like it's very easy to um you know, get excited about tools like this in Hubspot if if you're an admin, um but think about the way you position it in that all we're doing here is capturing information that is already being uh you know, let's say transacted during the process. So it's not the only extra work it is for anybody is getting used to this new process, right? They're already doing these these sales conversations, they're already sending emails with all these questions in them and the and the person's sending back an email with all the questions in them, right? That's where when you combine this with form fills and automated email sends that might be asking these same questions and this person pulls up the playbook and they can see that this person has already answered this question, now you just skip, right? Or you do a confirmation step, right? It's like, hey, you filled this out, do you still want 10 puzzles, right? Um, that kind of stuff that's where I'd say it's it's okay to ask the question again because then you're highlighting the fact that, hey, we know you already. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Like you've already given us this data. We need to confirm it for XYZ reasons, but it's like we are already paying attention to you. Yeah. And in essence, we have our shit together in order to be able to do that. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. Which is the opposite of asking them twice and making them feel like they filled out a form that was useless. Chris Carolan: Right. Because that's where like and so this this enablement and training piece of this is so important to say that, yes, we can use, we can build all this all this tooling in Hubspot to get all this information, but it's very important that the team understands, you know, the why, what, and how behind it all, um, so that they don't feel like they're having to do extra work for no reason. They know that the data is actually being used to help the hand off, right? And I'll just give like quick example before we before we wrap today. Um, and full disclosure, like worked together with Madeleine on a process that included Playbooks that I didn't know was going to include Playbooks when we first started. And when the initial ask was, hey, we want to do some quoting in HubSpot, right? And that's the perfect in a lot of companies that is a hand off scenario, right? And the team that needs to quote needs a lot of information to do good quotes, to do them quickly, to do them in the way that sales wants them to do them, to do them in a way that a customer can understand what is on the quote without generating the quote and then needing somebody else to just change half of the information on it to make it, you know, understandable. And when you showed me the playbook that you already had, it's like all of a sudden, this process gets way easier because we can capture everything in the playbook that's needed for the quote, right? Um, questions that are already being asked during the sales process because they're needed for the quote. They're needed to talk to the engineering team. And it was just a beautiful thing. We'll we'll share a link. I'll share a link to um you know, the video we we did talking about that where it's just it's so powerful. Um, and this is where once the sales team or whoever you're trying to get to change understands what's happening here, you get to those moments where it's like, oh, well can we do this too? Madeleine Donovan: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Can we do this? Then it's like, now we've we've we've got them, right? And they're bought into Hubspot and it's like, yes, everybody's there's so many smart people involved, like once they understand how all the pieces fit, now we can supercharge the whole process and the team can spend more time focusing on the humans on the other side of the phone or the the screen, right? Um, to to develop more personal experiences and, you know, really take the customer experience to the to the next level and the the level that your leadership wants it to be at, I'll say that. They don't exactly describe it this way or know how to do any of this stuff, but when you can relate it to customer experience and this is why we're doing this stuff, you get buy in, you know, very quickly versus, hey, I want to new we need a playbook because we need this data so that we can attribute, you know, marketing sourced opportunities, right? That's basically the opposite way of everything I just said and the sales guy is not touching the playbook if that's how you present it. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah. No, you're so right. It's it's it can seem like extra work, but it's the opposite of that. It's more it's less work, but more purposeful, more intentional, and it makes hopefully the process better for all teams, all teams involved and their customer. So it's like it's a collaboration superpower. Chris Carolan: Right. And so we're going to be showing, you know, some great examples throughout the series. Um, I'd say like we'll probably open the door as I get used to using Riverside and you can have like call ins and um people come on during the show like if you've got a playbook you're proud of, um, I'm betting we'll get to a place where we can, you know, highlight some of those on the show. Um, but yeah, there's a lot, there's so many use cases, there's a bunch of templates that you can start with. Um, but starting to to bring this into your process uh can and should have so many positive impacts on your team, on your data cleanliness. Uh and if you haven't touched Playbooks yet, you know, I'll I'll urge you to check them out. Uh watch this recording, very quick, you know, how to. Um find the opportunity and let's grow people. Thanks so much for joining me today, Madeleine. Madeleine Donovan: Yeah, thank you. Chris Carolan: Have a great day everybody.