Feature Flash: Linkando Playbooks

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Overview of all previous Feature Flash contributions

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• B2B sales 2025: five predictions for the coming year

  As always, the internet is full of predictions at the end of the year. We have read through the reports and summarized the most important trends in B2B sales for you. With concrete examples.

• Contact forms are so 1990: How to increase your inbound conversion rates with webplays

  You are missing out on enormous inbound potential with contact forms and chatbots. Webplays are better! They are much more than just a contact form; they set a systematic and structured sales process in motion that leads to significantly higher conversion rates.

• 46% shorter sales cycle: How to boost your sales with partner-sourced leads
  Partner-sourced leads close contracts 46 percent faster! You've probably heard the saying, "Referrals are the best form of marketing." It's even better if your partners not only recommend, but also sell. You can make this possible with digital guides. 

• Using SalesTech correctly: Why digital guides improve your sales results
  Which sales tools really deliver ROI? Sales managers need to be able to answer this question. The main problem: salespeople don't use many tools in the first place. Gartner calls this "tech fatigue". In the Linkando NewsFlash, we show you how to make it easier for your employees to use sales tech tools with digital guides. 

• Playbooks for public offices and authorities: How digital guides relieve citizens and employees
  We are all familiar with the bureaucracy at public offices and authorities: Lots of paper, handwritten signatures, notarized copies - everything takes a long time and requires countless documents. There is a better way! Digital guidelines guide employees and citizens through bureaucratic processes. This shortens processing times, minimizes errors and relieves the burden on office staff. 

• Kickstart 2025: How your sales department can sell more next year
  As the year draws to a close, you're probably thinking about how you can sell more in 2025. The management consultancy Gartner has published the report "Accelerate Sales in 2025" and identified the three biggest challenges in sales.

• Self-service online: How customers can find their own way with digital guides
  With digital guides, customers can find their own way around online, for example in online stores, online banking or on insurance portals. The guide collects information and leads customers step-by-step to their goal. If they get stuck, all the information is passed on to an employee who then picks up the thread. This reduces the workload on employees and improves the customer experience.

• SalesTech or BuyerTech? Both!
  You're probably familiar with the term "SalesTech"; recently you've been hearing the term "BuyerTech" more and more often. What is the difference and when are which tools used?

• Salespeople spend 70 percent of their working day not selling!
  Sales employees do not spend 70 percent of their day on sales activities - according to the latest "State of Sales" report from Salesforce. And in the last two years, sales productivity has not increased despite the introduction of numerous sales tools. The problem is that digitalization does not necessarily increase productivity.

• Digital guides instead of chatbots: the evolution of B2B communication
  The internet has revolutionized B2B communication: From telephone, post and branches to online forms and chatbots. The next evolutionary step is digital guides, a symbiosis of man and machine. Find out how they work and what the differences and advantages are compared to chatbots in the new NewsFlash. 

• Will digital tools and AI replace people in sales?
  Human interaction matters! In the digital age, people are not becoming less important - on the contrary, they are becoming even more important. While machines are taking over more and more routine tasks, people can focus on their core emotional skills. You can find out exactly what this looks like in day-to-day sales in our new NewsFlash.

• Are salespeople egotistical? How to prevent knowledge hoarding in sales.
  How well does your sales team communicate? Probably less well than you think. Every year, Fortune 500 companies lose a total of 31.5 billion US dollars because colleagues don't share their knowledge with each other. This phenomenon is known as "knowledge hoarding". In the new NewsFlash, you can find out how you can prevent knowledge hoarding by using digital playbooks.

• Why does cross-selling fail - and how can it be done better?
  Companies with a successful cross-selling and upselling strategy increase their profits by an average of 20%. However, 37% of all salespeople do not achieve any cross-selling turnover at all. Why is that? Many companies make a fundamental mistake when it comes to cross-selling: they treat the customer as they did with the first deal and use the same tactics. This is a completely new sales cycle. You can find out how to do it better in the Linkando NewsFlash.

• Sales rep onboarding: Faster, more efficient and cheaper with digital playbooks
  Sales rep onboarding takes far too long. On average, it takes 3 months for new sales reps to interact with buyers, 9 months for them to perform competently, 15 months to become top performers - if at all. In times of skills shortages, no company can afford such long onboarding times. The good news is that with the right system, it can be done much faster.

• Post-merger CRM integration with digital playbooks
  When two companies merge, which CRM will be used afterwards? What sounds like a trivial question at first glance is a decisive success factor in post-merger integration. Because if there is no central CRM, both companies cannot pull together. Digital playbooks - directly integrated into the CRMs of both companies - create the ideal transitional solution and facilitate integration. 

• Shorten the B2B sales cycle with Linkando Playbooks
  Is your sales cycle too long? If you sell a B2B product, the answer is most likely "Yes!" The main problem in B2B sales is the lack of understanding on the seller side for the buyer side. Sellers can't change the processes on the buyer side, but they can change their own sales processes. To shorten sales cycles, sales leaders need to create a better understanding of the buyer side.

• Why is digital transformation so difficult?
  More and more buyers want to buy digitally, but sellers are finding it difficult to switch to digital sales. Digital tools are both the solution and the problem. In order to successfully master the digital transformation in B2B sales, companies must first and foremost adapt their structures and processes to the challenges of modern sales. 

• EU AI Act
  Watch out sales leaders: Yes, the EU AI Act affects you too! Do you remember the introduction of the GDPR? A lot has changed since then, from marketing to sales to customer service. This could be the case again with the AI Act. It came into force on August 01, 2024.

• From win rates to best practices
  Success in sales can be replicated! The task of sales leaders is to "decode" the recipes for success of their champions and transfer them to the entire team. But how do you do that? That's what our new NewsFlash is all about. 

• SmartWe Integration
  Do you use the SmartWe CRM? Then you can integrate Linkando Playbooks directly into your CRM. It's really easy to do in the Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser. No need for expensive and complex integrations!

• Feedback forms
  How can you identify potential for improvement in the sales process? Ask your sellers! Because they are close to the customer and know what works and what doesn't. With Linkando's feedback forms, you can involve your sellers in the change management process and implement their feedback directly in your sales playbooks. 

• Zoom integration
  Sales meetings are increasingly taking place virtually and Zoom is now one of the most popular video call providers worldwide. That's why you can use your playbooks and action cards directly in your Zoom calls.

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration
  With the Sales Navigator, LinkedIn offers a comprehensive social selling tool with which you can map the entire sales cycle on the LinkedIn platform, from prospecting to deal closing and upselling. 

• meetergo integration
  meetergo is a GDPR-compliant tool for online appointment booking that automatically classifies incoming requests and forwards them to the right contact person.
  

• Linkando Playbooks for Hubspot CRM
  

  Hubspot provides you with Hubspot-internal playbooks with which you can standardize simple interactions with forms. However, since Hubspot is a pure CRM and not a specialized playbook solution, the Hubspot playbooks differ significantly from Linkando playbooks in terms of their scope and features. 

• Action Card Composer
  You can think of the Composer as a kind of construction kit that you can use to build your Action Cards.
  
  
• Action Cards
  While playbooks map an entire process from start to finish, action cards enable small-scale instructions within this process.
  
  
• Linkando sidebar
  The lightning-fast and simple integration means you are ready to go straight away. This saves costs and time and you have a quick return on investment. The uncomplicated integration also reduces your economic risk.
  
  
• Meeting Templates
  Preparation is crucial for the success of every sales meeting! To send your sellers into their meetings perfectly prepared, you can create as many meeting templates as you like in your Linkando Playbooks.

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