How to Create and Use Playbooks in HubSpot

In sports, a playbook contains a team’s winning strategy, outlining what the offense and defense will do to win the game.

Don’t worry; you aren’t back in high school gym class. Playbooks in business are the processes and strategies your team members uses to do their job effectively.

What Are HubSpot Playbooks? 

In HubSpot, the Playbooks tool helps guide your sales and service teams through your outlined sales process to gather information more effectively. Sales or service Playbooks contain questions, instructions, checklists, best practices, rebuttals, and team strategies for effectively executing sales meetings, customer onboarding, and more. It’s an invaluable tool so your team follows through on your process, and a great help when training new sales reps.

Some ideas for Playbooks include:

• Discovery calls
• Renewal conversations
• Customer onboarding
• Regular check-ins

In this blog, we’ll take you step-by-step to show you how to create and use a Playbook in HubSpot.

Note: You’ll need an assigned Sales or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise seat to create, edit, and delete Playbooks, and depending on your subscription level, some features may be limited. Users who don’t have a paid seat can still view and use Playbooks once they are published.

How to Create and Use Playbooks in HubSpot

First, let’s go over how to create a Playbook in HubSpot.

1. Navigate to Sales and choose Playbooks from the drop-down menu

2. Click the orange “Create Playbook” button in the upper right corner
3. Select “Create a Playbook from scratch” or choose from the template library.

For the purposes of this how-to, we’ll show you how to create a Playbook from scratch.

4. Add the title of the Playbook
5. Click the orange “Create playbook” button again

6. You can now use the editor to create your Playbook.

The toolbar helps you customize your Playbook with headings, formatting, bullet points, and more. You can also add images and videos if you’re creating a Playbook that could benefit from visuals.

The feature you’ll likely use the most is the Question and Answer field. Click on the question mark icon in the toolbar to add these to your Playbook.

When creating your Question and Answer fields, there are three types of answer types you can choose:

• Open Text: Enter answers in an open text field
• List of Answer Options: Create a set of answer options the user can select. Available to Sales or Service Hub Enterprise users only.
• Update a Property: Use properties that will automatically update when a Playbook is saved. Available to Sales or Service Hub Enterprise users only.

You can also make any question required in order for your sales team to record the Playbook.

7. After you create your Playbook, click the Settings tab.
8. Choose how the Playbook will be logged. This can be a Call, Meeting, Email, or Note.
9. You can also choose the default call type, such as a Discovery/Connect Call, Demo, or Presentation.

10. Set up recommendation settings.

When you set up filters to create custom recommendations, the right Playbook will display at the right time on the contact, company, deal, or ticket record. You can use a wide variety of available filters, including contact properties.

11. Click the orange Publish button. You’ve successfully created your Playbook!

Now, let’s go through an example of how to use a Playbook in HubSpot.

1. In your account, find the contact, company, deal, or ticket record you want to use the Playbook with.

For this example, we’ll use a Contact record.

2. Since this contact matches our recommendation settings, it is showing the Discovery Call Playbook as a recommendation.

If, for some reason, you don’t want to use the recommended Playbook, you can click on “View all playbooks.”

3. When you click on the Playbook, a popup window will appear.

You can adjust the size or move it to your other monitor to make sure it’s in view when talking with a prospect or client.

4. As you are on your call, you can go through the prompts or questions and record what the contact says.
5. Once you are done with your call, you can select an outcome and call type at the bottom dropdown menus.
6. You also have the option to create a follow-up task.
7. Finally, the last step is to click the Log button.

Once you’re done recording a call, you can review the Playbook under that specific engagement type—Call, Meeting, Email, or Note.

HubSpot Playbooks might seem complicated, but once you’ve created them, they are an invaluable tool for scoring the metaphorical touchdown with a prospect or client.

Not sure where to start? We can help. Contact Hivehouse Digital to learn how we can help streamline your sales and service processes with Playbooks.