HARDISON’S TIPS – NOVEMBER 30, 2021 – 2
Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan
What are some possible strategies? You could devise plans to:
- Increase dollars spent in current products or services by current customers via increased volume. Has your customer’s business changed, making it more appropriate for them to purchase more from you?
- Make available (and then sell) new products or services to existing customers. Are your current customers aware of all of your offerings? They already buy from you, so this is often the easiest option.
- Add new customers. It takes more work to acquire new customers, but you are spreading out your risk by relying less on a few large customers.
- Allocate your sales resources more strategically to match your best resources with your best existing or prospective customers. Consider classifying your customers as A, B, or C targets. Naturally, the “A” prospects will be the primary targets. This could be because the sales volume or revenue potential is significant, because the likelihood of making the sale is greater, or both. While you shouldn’t necessarily ignore all “C” prospects, it might be strategic to target them with marketing materials and periodic phone follow-ups versus in-person selling or account management.
None of these ideas is revolutionary, perhaps, but they are strategic and will set the foundation for successful tactical sales planning and deployment.
With realistic, bottom-up annual goals in place and strategies defined to achieve them, now what? How do you put those strategies in motion? One common approach is to divide the sales year into logical chunks – usually months – and set smaller goals and initiatives within each period. From there, you can further break down the period into even shorter-term – such as daily or weekly – objectives. But remember it’s not always as easy as merely dividing the year into 12 equal parts. Some industries and markets have a seasonal nature to them. Others experience surges in sales at the beginning and end of the fiscal year as budgets are either opened up or have dollars remaining to be spent. Whatever the cyclical nature of sales in your industry, factor that in when setting incremental goals.
When your sales plan is taken to the periodic goal and tactical level, you’ll be able to assess where you stand for the year-to-date while you still have time to make adjustments. Of course, this is much easier if you have a CRM in place to give you the analytical insights necessary.
Bottom Line:
Your business must have a sales plan. Period. You can’t hit goals if you don’t have them; you can’t execute phantom strategies; and you can’t very well put tactics in motion if you don’t know which direction to go.