How giving away a book can boost your SaaS business

Recently we were evaluating a demand-gen firm for a client. They came in polished - playbooks, frameworks, toolkits, all beautifully packaged. Everything looked like an exact science. Halfway through the conversation, I got curious. So I said, “Why don’t you send us a proposal too? We’ve been looking for someone to help with demand gen for our own firm.” We’re a six-month-old consulting business - core team three people, selling something completely different from our client, who’s a decade-old product company with three established markets. The proposal arrived two days later. Almost identical. Same slides. Same strategy and approach. It looked like they had just replaced the company name and logo. Maybe they were holding back the real juice. Or maybe there was nothing more. Either way, it left me wondering - how much standardization is too much? Templates are powerful. They make teams faster. They create predictability. They help scale. But past a point, they stop multiplying returns and start diluting the purpose. If every proposal looks the same, every discovery call sounds the same, and every “motion” runs the same, you’re not running a system anymore. It’s just something on autopilot. You’re producing more outputs, but not necessarily better outcomes. And unless your conversion rate is rising proportionately to all this new efficiency, something’s broken. Just simply the law of diminishing returns. Every efficiency tweak gives you smaller and smaller yield - until all you’re left with is something that looks streamlined, feels productive, and changes nothing. Standardization is essential. It’s what keeps operations sane. But the real craft in sales - and in consulting - is knowing where to stop. Where repeatability ends, and relevance begins. Where efficiency should give way to empathy and context. Because after a point, templating isn’t leverage. It’s just laziness pretending to be process.

How do you avoid costly mistakes when entering a new market? At Enpersona we brake down the pragmatic playbook for scaling tech across the Americas. It boils down to three core pillars: strategic market entry, true value localization, and repeatable sales. #ScaleUp #GTM #Enpersona360 #helpingcompanies

Scaling sales requires structure. Standardized reporting, playbooks, and incentive alignment are the levers that transform a team from reactive to proactive. Ops is the silent driver of revenue.

One-size-fits-all playbooks are the quickest way to lose your clients. Let me explain why! Once, I positioned a standard customer success playbook for a government client. It had worked brilliantly with startups. So, I was confident! The first QBR bombed. Hard. The playbook assumed rapid iteration cycles. Government works on multiple levels of approvals! It emphasized self-service resources. My contact needed approval from three departments to access our training portal. Every "best practice" clashed with their reality. Public sector organizations require customized strategies that respect compliance frameworks, budget cycles, and approval hierarchies. Research shows that tailored approaches significantly outperform generic programs in regulated environments. I learned something crucial that day: alignment beats structure every time. A playbook only works after you earn trust and understand how decisions get made in that environment. What changed my approach was asking about their fiscal year, approval process, and key decision-makers instead of showing up with pre-built cadences. I built the playbook with them, not for them. Templates have value as starting points. But if you're treating every customer the same way, you're treating none of them well. Context determines success more than methodology ever will. P.S. Do templates have a place in customer success, or is everything context? I'm genuinely curious where others land on this.

What strategies can authors employ to expedite book sales? Many authors face a delayed payment cycle, often waiting 60 to 90 days to receive earnings from their book sales. This extended period can impact cash flow and reinvestment opportunities. Consider automating book sales processes to enhance sales velocity without escalating personal effort. Explore methods to set sales on autopilot, allowing for a more efficient and rapid revenue cycle. What innovative approaches have proven successful in accelerating book sales? #booksales #automation #publishing #authors #selfpublishing

Service becomes a growth engine when value is visible. 3 moves to unlock revenue (without heavy sales pressure): 📦 Monetize outcomes: preventive + predictive bundles tied to uptime/SLAs 📘 Productize expertise: assessments, playbooks, remote diagnostics as line items 🔄 Renewal science: health scores + success plans that trigger timely expansions When customers see impact, they buy more—and stay longer.

Yesterday, I connected with a colleague about building a customer success engine for their SaaS business. We covered structure, team sizing, and making sure every rep has their next move just a click away. But here’s what I forgot to mention... and it’s too important to leave out. Playbooks. If you want your team to deliver consistent, high-impact service, they need to know what to say and how to say it. Persona-based scripts and scenario-driven playbooks aren’t just helpful, they’re essential. They turn good intentions into great experiences. If you’re building a success engine, don’t skip the fuel.

A strong Revenue Operations system brings order to chaos. It builds clarity where there’s confusion and consistency where there’s guesswork. Instead of teams working off different playbooks, RevOps ensures everyone operates with the same data, processes, and priorities. That structure creates scalability—turning what used to be luck-driven success into a repeatable, measurable system for growth.

There’s No “One Right Way” to Do Business Anymore Remember when business felt like it came with a rulebook? There was a right way and a wrong way to do things—a formula you could follow to get results. Those days are gone. Today, the world moves too fast for playbooks. Innovation happens in real time. What works this month might be outdated by next. Markets shift, customer needs change overnight, and technology keeps rewriting the rules. If you’re still holding on to “the way it’s always been done,” you’re already behind. The truth is, there’s no single right way anymore. There’s just the way that works right now. That means: Move fast. Build, test, and adjust as you go. Stay flexible. Be ready to pivot when the situation changes. Question everything. Some of the best ideas come from breaking the old rules. Being bold in business isn’t about chaos—it’s about being adaptable. It’s about creating teams that can shift gears, leaders who can make quick calls, and systems that can evolve. There’s no perfect path. There’s only progress. And if it works—it works. Let’s build what’s next, together.

Scaling a sales team isn’t just about hiring more people - it’s about training them fast. That’s where #HubSpot Playbooks come in. Think of them as interactive sales scripts right inside your CRM - guiding reps, standardizing processes, and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. In my latest video, I walk you through: 1) How Playbooks work 2) How to create your first one 3) A real-life demo of a Discovery Call Playbook in action Whether you’re building a team of 3 or scaling to 30+, Playbooks give you a repeatable, scalable approach. 📺 Watch the full breakdown here → https://bit.ly/47pQfDd #HubSpot #SalesEnablement #RevOps #SalesTraining #Playbooks #ElefanteRevOps