A Sales Playbook Built From the Ground Up

A strong sales team needs more than good instincts. It needs a shared foundation including a common language, a clear process, and a standard for what great looks like. For Hess Equipment Solutions, a regional food equipment provider with nearly 80 years in the industry, that foundation did not yet exist in one place.

Client

Hess Equipment Solutions is a regional food equipment provider specializing in premier commercial kitchen equipment, service, supplies, and post-sale support. They serve customers across restaurants, grocery, convenience stores, healthcare, and education throughout their territory.

Objective

Develop a comprehensive, brand-aligned sales playbook to serve as the single source of truth for the Hess sales team. From onboarding new hires to giving experienced reps a refreshed framework, this playbook equips the team to sell, follow up, and build lasting customer relationships.

The Challenge

Hess had an existing sales playbook, but it was not working for the team. It was heavy on policy and process, light on culture and voice, and disconnected from the brand positioning the company had worked hard to establish. Scattered across more than 15 separate documents, scripts, templates, and reference materials, there was no single place for the sales team to go.

At the same time, Hess was growing. A new sales hire was coming on board, a refreshed brand identity had been established around a five-star experience framework, and leadership was ready to raise the standard for how the team showed up in the market. The playbook needed to reflect all of it.

Strategy

L&L Collective began with a thorough discovery process, conducting a two-day in-person strategy roadmap session with Hess leadership, a one-on-one interview with the company's most experienced sales rep, and a full audit of all existing sales materials.

From there, we identified three core priorities:

1. Dual-purpose design: The playbook needed to serve two audiences simultaneously: new hires who needed a front-to-back onboarding guide, and experienced reps who needed a reference and a reset.
2. Equal parts mindset and process: We implemented a 50/50 balance between mindset and process, intentionally weaving the Hess five-star brand framework throughout every stage of the playbook. This allowed culture and accountability to feel inseparable rather than like two different documents stapled together.
3. Tone and voice that resonate: Every section was written to feel direct, warm, and practical, the kind of guidance a rep actually wants to read rather than a corporate policy manual they file away and forget. This ensured the voice sounded like Hess leadership talking directly to the team.

The Deliverable

What started as 15+ scattered documents became one cohesive, 35-page Hess sales playbook, delivered as both a branded print-ready PDF and an interactive Flipsnack guide with clickable navigation to every section and appendix.

The playbook was not just written well, it was designed to match. L&L's design team produced a visually striking, professionally branded document that balances bold visual identity with clear, functional layout. Every page was crafted to be as easy to navigate as it is to read, with intentional typography, consistent structure, and design choices that reflect the same attention to detail that defines how L&L approaches every deliverable.

The playbook includes:

• An introduction written in the voice of Hess leadership
• 13 sections covering sales philosophy, territory strategy, prospecting, qualifying, site visits, solution selling, dealer relationships, follow-up, closing, post-sale partnership, and CRM accountability
• A closing note that brings the document full circle to the company's core brand statement
• 6 appendices including cold call and email scripts, a site visit questionnaire, a post-meeting follow-up drip sequence, the five-star sales checklist, dealer introduction email templates, and a handwritten thank-you note guide

Result

The Hess sales playbook was delivered on time and immediately put into active use. The company's newest sales hire began onboarding with the document from day one.

The client's response upon delivery said it all: "Oh my goodness, this is wonderful."

Hess received:

• A single, authoritative sales resource that replaced more than 15 disconnected documents
• A document that serves both new hire onboarding and experienced rep development
• A sales framework anchored to the Hess five-star brand positioning throughout
• Ready-to-use appendices covering every stage of the sales process
• An interactive Flipsnack guide that allows the team to navigate directly to any section or appendix with one click

Why It Worked

The success of this project came from treating the playbook as a brand document first and a process document second. Instead of simply reorganizing what already existed, L&L Collective started from a deep understanding of Hess's culture, their best salespeople, and the standard they were trying to hold themselves to.

The result was a document the Hess sales team actually wants to read, built on:

• Immersive discovery that informed every creative and strategic decision
• A writing process anchored in the Hess voice, not a generic sales framework dropped into their brand
• Equal investment in design and content, because a playbook no one wants to open is a playbook no one uses
• A collaborative, section-by-section review process that kept every page grounded in the client's voice
• A delivery format designed for how salespeople actually work, accessible and easy to reference in the field