Free Sales Playbook Template
Updated October 2026 · By Gene Altman, founder of DPO100
Ten sections, fill-in prompts under each, and a worked example so you can see what "done" looks like. Built for a solo seller or a small team, not a 40-person sales org.
No email required. Codes, logins, nothing. The template is below the fold in full if you'd rather read it first.
[Company] Sales Playbook
Owner: [name] · Last revised: [date] · Review cadence: quarterly
1. Company and product overview
- What we sell, in one sentence
- What it replaces or what the buyer does today without it
- What it costs and how it's priced
2. Ideal customer profile and buyer personas
- Who buys (company type, size, situation)
- Who makes the decision, who influences it, who can block it
- For each person: what they care about, what they're afraid of, what they've been burned by before
3. Sales process stages
- Stage name
- What has to be true to move on (exit criteria)
- The one question or move that gets you there
01 · What's in it
What's in the template
A sales playbook organizes the sales process: what to say, when to say it, how to handle objections, and how to move a prospect to the next step. (Full guide: what is a sales playbook.) This template has the ten sections a complete one needs:
- Company and product overview
- Ideal customer profile and buyer personas
- Sales process stages, with exit criteria
- Messaging and value propositions
- Talk tracks
- Objection handling
- Competitive positioning
- Metrics
- Tools and systems
- Onboarding and practice
Small teams can skip 9 and 10. Nobody should skip 6.
02 · The template
The template
[Company] Sales Playbook
Owner: [name] · Last revised: [date] · Review cadence: quarterly
011. Company and product overview
What it's for: the shortest possible answer to "what do you sell and why does it exist." Nobody reads a long version before a call.
Fill in:
- What we sell, in one sentence
- What it replaces or what the buyer does today without it
- What it costs and how it's priced
- The one reason it exists, in the buyer's words
Filled-in example
"We do same-week home inspections with a report agents can forward to clients without editing. Agents currently wait five to ten days and rewrite the findings themselves. $450 flat. It exists because a slow inspection kills a deal in a hot market."
022. Ideal customer profile and buyer personas
What it's for: knowing who buys, who decides, who signs, and who can quietly stop it.
Fill in:
- Who buys (company type, size, situation)
- Who makes the decision, who influences it, who can block it
- For each person: what they care about, what they're afraid of, what they've been burned by before
- Who is not a fit, and the one question that reveals it
Filled-in example
"Buyer: residential agents closing 15+ deals a year. Decider: the agent. Blocker: the brokerage's preferred-vendor list. Afraid of: an inspection that scares the buyer off. Burned by: an inspector who found 'everything' and sank a sale. Not a fit: agents under five deals a year, revealed by asking how many closings they had last quarter."
033. Sales process stages
What it's for: the steps from first contact to close, with what has to be true before you move to the next one.
Fill in, for each of the seven stages:
- Stage name
- What has to be true to move on (exit criteria)
- The one question or move that gets you there
Stages: 1 Open · 2 Make them feel understood · 3 Surface what it's costing them · 4 Picture the after · 5 Proof · 6 The offer · 7 The next step
Filled-in example
(stage 3): "Exit criteria: the agent has named a deal that fell through or stalled because of an inspection, in their words. The move: 'Walk me through the last deal where the inspection slowed things down.'"
044. Messaging and value propositions
What it's for: the three to five things you say about the product, in order, tied to problems the buyer named, not features.
Fill in:
- Value statement 1, and the buyer problem it answers
- Value statement 2, and the problem
- Value statement 3, and the problem
- The one-line version you'd say if you only had one sentence
Filled-in example
"Same-week scheduling → the deal doesn't sit. Report written for the client → the agent doesn't rewrite it at 10pm. Findings framed as fixable → the buyer doesn't panic. One line: 'Inspections that keep your deal moving instead of stalling it.'"
055. Talk tracks
What it's for: the actual words for the moments that repeat, written as something a person says out loud, with a note on delivery.
Fill in, each with a delivery note:
- The opener
- The first discovery question
- The price question, answered
- The recap before the ask
- The ask
Filled-in example
(opener, inbound): "'Thanks for reaching out. Before I send pricing, what happened on the last inspection that made you look for someone new?' Delivery: unhurried, then wait."
066. Objection handling
What it's for: the eight to ten objections you hear every week, each with a response, a forward question, and the second response if they push again.
Fill in, for each objection:
- The objection in the buyer's words
- Your response (one or two sentences)
- The forward question
- If they push again
Filled-in example
"'I already have an inspector.' Response: 'Good. Keep them if they're fast and the reports are clean.' Forward question: 'How long did your last one take from booking to report?' If they push: 'Then this is only worth a conversation if that number is costing you deals. Is it?'"
077. Competitive positioning
What it's for: how you answer "why you" without trashing anyone.
Fill in:
- Who else the buyer looks at
- What each does well (say it plainly)
- The one thing you do that they don't, in a sentence
- The question that turns the comparison back to the buyer's need
Filled-in example
"They look at the big franchise inspectors and the cheapest guy on Google. The franchise is reliable and slow; the cheap guy is fast and sloppy. We're fast with a report the client can read. The question: 'When you compare, is it on price, or on which one keeps your deal on schedule?'"
088. Metrics
What it's for: the four or five numbers that tell you whether the playbook is working.
Fill in:
- Reply rate to first contact
- Discovery-to-proposal rate
- Close rate
- Average deal size
- Days from first contact to close
- Where these numbers live and who checks them weekly
Filled-in example
"Tracked in a shared sheet, reviewed Friday afternoons. Current close rate 22%, target 30% by Q1."
099. Tools and systems
What it's for: where notes go, how follow-ups get scheduled, what gets logged. Only as much as you'll maintain.
Fill in:
- Where conversation notes are kept
- How follow-ups are scheduled and by whom
- What gets logged after every call (three fields max)
- What gets sent after every call
Filled-in example
"Notes in the CRM, same day. Follow-ups scheduled before the call ends. Logged: buyer's exact words for their problem, next step, date. Sent: a three-line recap email within the hour."
1010. Onboarding and practice
What it's for: how a new seller learns the playbook, and how the playbook itself gets better.
Fill in:
- Week 1, 2, 3, 4 focus for a new seller
- Who reviews their first ten calls
- The loss review: after every lost deal, which step failed and what the buyer said right before it
- How often each section gets revised
Filled-in example
"Week 1: sections 1 to 4, shadow three calls. Week 2: run discovery with review. Week 3: full calls, recorded. Week 4: own a pipeline. Loss review in the shared sheet; objections section rewritten quarterly."
Your Conversation Compass
Your Sales Scenario
Start Here: Win Your Next 3 Conversations
How You Need to See This
What You'll Hear from Them
Do This Today
DPO100 Conversation Compass - Page 1 of 30+
Built Just For You
Your next sale is in here.
You'll know exactly how to handle every stage of the conversation, from the first hello to the close. Including the tough parts, like objections and the moments that usually stop the sale cold.
All of it built around what you sell and the way you naturally talk. So you never sound like everyone else.
Go ahead, flip through
Rather have it written for you?
Take the quiz03 · How to fill it in
How to fill it in
Done well, this takes 20 to 40 hours over two to six weeks. The order matters.
Start with how you sell. Before any section, know your natural style. A seller who leads with trust runs discovery differently than one who leads with confidence. Take the 60-second Sales Edge quiz so section 5 gets written for the person who'll use it.
Write section 2 before section 4. You can't write value statements until you know what the buyer is afraid of. Spend the longest on personas.
Write section 6 from real calls, not memory. Keep a note on your phone for one week. Every objection you hear goes in. Those are the eight to write for.
Write talk tracks as speech. Read each one out loud. If you wouldn't say it to a person, rewrite it.
Fill the example field in every section with your own. The home inspection example is there to show the level of detail. Replace it.
Run it for thirty days, then revise. After every lost deal, write which step failed and what the buyer said right before it. The step that shows up three times is the one to rewrite.
04 · Example
A filled-in example
The template is the skeleton. To see a complete one, built for one seller and one situation, see a real Conversation Compass example or four examples across different industries and selling styles.
05 · Limits
What a template can't do
A template tells you what sections to write. It can't tell you what to say when a specific buyer pushes back on a specific thing, because it doesn't know your buyer, your product, or how you sell. That's the part that takes the 20 to 40 hours.
If you'd rather have that part written for you, DPO100 builds a Conversation Compass from a 60-second quiz and four questions about what you sell: the same ten areas, filled in for your product, your buyer, and your situation, in a few minutes. It's $47, one time.
06 · Comparison
Template vs generated
| Feature | Template | Conversation Compass |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $47 |
| Time to usable | 20 to 40 hours over 2 to 6 weeks | A few minutes after a 60-second quiz |
| Personalization | You write everything | Built around your selling style, buyer, product, situation |
| Talk tracks | You write them | Written for your situation, with delivery notes |
| Objection handling | You list and answer them | Your buyer's objections, word-for-word responses |
| Updates | Manual rewrite | Build another for a new situation anytime |
Both work. Use the template if you have the time and want every word to be yours. Use the generator if you need something usable this week.
07 · FAQ
FAQ
Yes. Copy it to Google Docs, download the Word or PDF version, or read it on this page. No email, no signup.
Google Docs (make a copy), Word (.docx), and PDF. The content is identical in all three and matches what's on this page.
Ten: company and product overview, buyer personas, sales stages with exit criteria, messaging, talk tracks, objection handling, competitive positioning, metrics, tools, and onboarding. Small teams can skip the last two.
Plan on 20 to 40 hours over two to six weeks if you do it properly. Personas, talk tracks, and objections take the longest and matter the most.
Both. It's written for a solo seller or a team under ten. Larger teams should add a section per product line and a per-role version of section 5.
A completed template is a custom playbook; you wrote it. The difference is time. A half-finished template is worse than none because it sits in a folder.
A template is headings and prompts; you write the content. A generator produces the content from your inputs. DPO100's generator builds a Conversation Compass from a quiz and four questions.
Yes, that's the point. The prompts are industry-neutral and the example is one industry. Replace the example in every section with yours.
Template if you have the hours and want full control. Compass if you want it done this week, built around how you sell. Both paths work; they trade time for money in opposite directions.
See a real Conversation Compass example. The structure matches the template; the content is written for one seller.
Skip the Blank Template. Start With It Filled In.
Use the template above to build your own over the next month. Or take the Sales Edge quiz and have DPO100 build your Conversation Compass in minutes.
$47. One time. No subscription. 30-day guarantee.