We’ve already covered steps 1 and 2:
Defining PQAs/PQLs and taking action on them are two different beasts.
Having a score or a definition is wonderful and all — but it doesn't mean a lot unless you make different moves based on what you know.
Once you know what you’re looking for, it’s time to create a workflow to act on these opportunities. These moves are what we typically call “playbooks” — specific motions, triggered by data, that support the strategic goal.
Playbooks surface leads for your reps to action (or for automated sequences).
<aside> 🔎 Digging deeper: What is a PLS playbook?
A playbook, in the context of PLS, is a prescriptive workflow that defines a specific goal for a cohort of customers and defines a set of plays your team should run to get closer to that goal. PLS playbooks establish the stages of the sales process and provide context for messaging and outreach, based on the specific reasons leads are being surfaced.
Free-to-paid conversion example If your goal is to optimize self-serve revenue, you might want to run a free-to-paid conversion playbook. But, you don’t want to devote salespeople’s time to close deals that were going to convert on their own. Instead, you can create a playbook for users who fit your ideal customer profile, but aren’t showing signs of activation within the first 7 days on your product.
In this case, a sales follow-up could help users who might be stuck, or can benefit from a more hands-on approach, to reach product milestones that increase their likelihood of conversion. Whenever a PQL is surfaced in the free-to-paid conversion playbook, your team will have a repeatable sales methodology they can apply and insights into customer pain points your product can solve.
Why isn’t lead scoring enough? By operationalizing PLS with playbooks, sales leaders can get as prescriptive as they need, inserting automations, email templates, and even objection-handling scripts that resonate with that segment. What’s more, you can get in-depth metrics by analyzing playbook performance to discover areas of opportunity in the selling process, uncover value propositions that resonate with different segments, optimize your pricing structure, and provide targeted experiences at scale.
Learn more about Product-Led Sales Playbooks.
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Start with your goal and a few hypotheses of the signals that make up the ideal PQA/PQL for your playbook. Map out your playbook experiments like this:
