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The Sales Team Starter Kit

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The Sales Team Starter Kit

Our guide to building success-driven docs that scale with your team.
Coda
Last updated: 12/10/2020
Looking for a better way to discover and prioritize leads? This Starter Kit showcases free, time-saving templates focused on helping you make the sale. And each template is customizable, so you can build tools to manage time, organize meeting notes, and build a comprehensive CRM—in a way that works best for you.
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Copy this Starter Kit
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Learn more about Coda
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From door-to-door to SPIN to customer-forward strategies, sales teams and their strategies have evolved in-step with products and consumers. And that mastery of adaptation has more recently focused itself on the rise of automation tools—optimizing the processes that support contracts, NDAs, one-pagers, white papers, PDFs, emails, calendars, and everything else needed to meet the needs of their clients.
But a tech stack can easily turn into a slippery slope of tool sprawl that hinders the effectiveness of an entire team.
Suddenly your team spends more time chasing down segmented and outdated data than developing meaningful relationships with customers. Your comprehensive knowledge base becomes dense with outbound links to other tools and difficult for onboarding team members to use. Individual moments of success and failure with customers are tucked away from the rest of the team in a dozen different note apps—potentially resulting in the dreaded double outreach.
On average,
sales teams use at least six tools
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. Your team is busy enough without having to dig through each tool for data, records, and best practices. We understand that any time away from customers is a potential loss, so we created this Starter Kit to surface time-saving doc patterns that help you close the deal.

Introduce your calendar to your to-do list.

Time is money—and sales teams are understandably meticulous about both. Because the two are so closely linked, time and task management need to communicate reliability and trustworthiness to clients.
So how do you establish a system of professionalism while giving your team enough autonomy to track time in a way that meets their needs? Leverage the tools they can’t imagine working without—Google Calendar, Gmail, and Slack.

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To-do with Calendar
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Your team members probably knows their calendar like the backs of their hands—so meet them there. Use your calendar events for the next seven days to dictate and prioritize your upcoming tasks. Type /todo with calendar to add this template to your doc and sync your calendar.

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To-do with Gmail
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Some of us are more focused on inbox-zero enlightenment. Let your inbox and your to-do list make nice by connecting your Gmail to a basic task list. Try out this template below and add it to your doc with /todo with Gmail.
Create a task and then link an email or two. 👇
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Add task
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Done
Priority
Task
Related emails
1
Schedule kickoff meeting with Block, Inc Product team.
Checking in...
Intro email
Coffee next week?
2
Write client proposal for the next meeting with Navigator.
Meeting notes for 8/27/2019
A human reaching out from Navigator
No results from filter
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Schedule reminder
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Even with well-organized to-do lists, tasks and events slip through the cracks. Create a culture of accountability by scheduling Slack message reminders. And while you’re at it, you can automate reminders—just in case you forget to push the send message button. Send a gentle nudge with /schedule reminder.

Organize share-worthy meeting notes.

From pitches to kickoffs to check-ins to stand-ups, a significant amount of your team’s time is reserved for meetings—each with its own set of goals and stakeholders. Designing an intentional process with both in mind provides independence while also ensuring that each client gets the attention they need.

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Pre-meeting prep
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Leads expect that you’ll do your share of the homework. And you’ll want to bring that preparation with you to the meeting. Connect your calendar with /pre-meeting prep to prioritize your research time and keep your notes for the week in one place.
Add a few notes of your own. 👇
Event
Notes
Start
End
Priority
1
Meeting with TJ
This is just a follow-up from our last meeting. No action items!
12/10/2020, 8:00 AM
12/10/2020, 9:00 AM
2
Team dinner
Where are we having this again?
12/10/2020, 2:00 PM
12/10/2020, 3:00 PM
3
Mary's birthday!
Don’t forget to pick up the cake!
12/11/2020, 12:00 AM
12/11/2020, 12:00 AM
4
Coffee with Lola
Review Lola’s resume to see if she would be a good fit for the team.
Talk to Eva for a reference.
12/14/2020, 7:00 AM
12/14/2020, 8:00 AM
5
Weekly Kick Off
​
12/14/2020, 10:00 AM
12/14/2020, 11:00 AM
6
Strategy session
Complete comparative analysis.
Bring social media copy examples.
Make sure all internal stakeholders are invited.
12/15/2020, 8:00 AM
12/15/2020, 9:00 AM
No results from filter
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Simple meeting notes
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If things go as planned, you’ll have countless meetings with the same customer—
18 on average
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. Duplicate this meeting notes template for each meeting to keep everything in a single place, with a consistent structure. Add the template to your doc with /simple meeting notes and then start crossing off those action items. If you need something a bit more comprehensive, try this
meeting tracker
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.

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Voting table
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During the meeting, you’ll want a way to run a
meeting poll
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—to thoughtfully solicit opinions on the meeting’s focus. In other words, the customer should drive the agenda. Use this /voting table to crowdsource questions before and during the meeting, and then vote on what topics are most important to help organize the discussion.
Contribute an idea and cast a vote. 👇
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Add topic
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Done
Idea
Author
Vote
Upvotes
Upvoters
1
How can we implement Coda in Q3?
Adam Davis
👍
1
1
Erin Dame
2
Is it possible to save 2 hours a week on our meetings?
Lola Tseudonym
👍
1
1
Erin Dame
3
What is the process for launching a customer feedback tracker?
Buck Dubois
👍
0
0
​
4
Will there be any scale issues?
Felix Marlin
👍
0
0
​
There are no rows in this table
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You could also try engaging your team with this
live polling app
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.

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Email a page
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Another meeting done—great! Keep everyone in the loop while reminding stakeholders of action items by emailing notes after the meeting. Add your contact list and meeting notes to this /email meeting notes template; the rest is as simple and satisfying as
clicking a button
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.

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Customer success plan
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Once your client becomes a customer, you’ll want to keep proposed milestones in one place where everyone can comment and collaborate. This template provides a snapshot of those milestones and their progress, while also establishing a baseline for Quarterly Business Reviews. Show your clients that their money is well spent by adding /customer success plan to your doc.
Add a milestone, change owners, and have a bit of fun with the sliders. 👇
Objective
Milestones
Quarter
Owner(s)
% Complete
Outcomes
Implement Coda in Q3
Schedule company-wide Coda training.
Q2
Alan Chowansky
000
100
Training is scheduled for 9/25. Will be recorded for those unable to attend.
Configure SSO.
Q4
Alan Chowansky
000
20
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Save 2hr/week internal meetings
Analyze current meeting structure to see where time is spent.
Q1
Polly Rose
Joel Davis
000
55
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Build internal meeting template to address pain points uncovered in analysis.
Q2
Polly Rose
000
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Launch customer feedback tracker
Work with Coda team to create working v1 of tracker.
Q3
Polly Rose
000
0
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Create co-marketing plan for promotion of the tracker.
Q4
James Booth
Joel Davis
000
50
​
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To roll in the money, you need more than a rolodex.

To
quote former Hubspot CRO Mark Roberge
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, “Sales is first and foremost about creating customer value. Revenue and profits are an outcome of customer value creation.” And opportunities to establish value in a product can pop-up anyway. Like in a form to request a demo. Or when your aunt’s neighbor calls to ask how your product can help her one-woman pretzel business.
You’ll need to be prepared to capture a person’s information, along with any notes about your chat, at a moment’s notice.

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Contact list
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Don’t be afraid to keep it simple. Sometimes all you need is a table with a name, phone number, and email address like the one you can add with /contact list. And if you need a bit more, you’re welcome to adapt the table with additional columns or displays, or upgrade to the CRM template.

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CRM
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Like the task tracking and the meeting note documentation, it’s often helpful to record as much information about a potential customer as possible. When you need more detail than a simple contact lists, use the CRM template to capture contact information, any interactions you have with those contacts, and general notes that you might have about the account. Streamline your client info with /CRM.
Create a new contact. 👇
Search
Blocks, Inc.
Chris Andrews, Moira Boise
Code Company
Lucy Xander
Company Name
Blocks, Inc.
Logo
Physical Address
321 Building St
Status
Active
General notes
First requested a demo through the website.
Downloaded the e-book.
Initial meeting - 12/1/2018 - See meeting notes for full details
Follow-up meeting booked for 1/16/2019
Contacts
1
2
Name
Title
Email
Chris Andrews
CMO
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chris@blocks.io
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Moira Boise
Product Marketer
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mora@blocks.io
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There are no rows in this table
Activity
1
Subject
Date
Note
Follow-up
1/16/2019
Make sure to mention their recent product launch.
There are no rows in this table
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Sales teams are busy enough keeping up with forever changing customers, products, and markets. And their adaptability warrants a tool that can keep up—or better yet, bring everyone into a shared space to accomplish collective goals.
If you need help building docs or have tips for making beautiful docs, please share on
https://community.coda.io/
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.

💡 Have a drag-and-drop template idea? Email
help@coda.io
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to let us know!

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