Create Sales Guides to Help Your People Sell
Now that you know who to sell to, and how they make buying decisions, the next step is to equip your team with practical guides that help them lead buyers through the journey.
These guides are not pitch decks or generic scripts. They are real tools your sales team can use to:
- Start better conversations
- Qualify the right opportunities
- Close deals based on real value
- And hand off customers with clear expectations
Align Each Guide to a Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
Your buyers go through four main stages, and your team needs a guide for each one.
Customer’s JourneyAwarenessConsiderationSelectionSuccessGuidesProspecting GuideDiscovery GuideProposal GuideMutual Success Guide
Prospecting Guide
At this stage, the buyer may not even realise they have a problem, or they’re just starting to feel the pain.
The Prospecting Guide should help your team:
- Lead with value, not product
- Engage prospects by calling out the priority problems your solution solves
- Qualify them using the Lead and Sales Qualification Criteria you defined in Step 1
This is where you decide:
👉 Should we go deeper or move on?
Don’t pitch too early. If the lead qualifies, then you move to the Discovery stage.
Discovery Guide
Now the buyer is open to change and considering their options.
The Discovery Guide should help your team:
- Go deeper using your Sales Qualification Framework (e.g. SPICED)
- Uncover the buyer’s current situation, pain, and critical impact
- Understand what success looks like from their perspective
This is your chance to position your solution as the best fit based on what matters most to the buyer, not based on features.
Proposal Guide
At this point, the buyer is trying to decide which solution to pay for.
The Proposal Guide should help your team:
- Propose a solution that’s customised to the buyer’s top-priority pain
- Anchor the proposal in the outcomes discussed during Discovery
- Get alignment on decision criteria, pricing, and mutual commitments
Your proposal should show:
“We understand you. Here’s the exact way we’ll solve your problem.”
Mutual Success Guide
After the deal is closed, you need to deliver the value you promised. The Mutual Success Guide helps your team:
- Hand off the full SPICED context (Situation, Pain, Impact, etc.) to Customer Success
- Align on what success looks like for the customer
- Co-create a Mutual Success Plan for onboarding, retention, and potential expansion
This prevents misalignment, broken expectations, and sets up long-term growth.
When you create these four guides, your sales team will:
- Know what to say and do at each step
- Avoid wasting time on the wrong deals
- Deliver a consistent experience to every buyer