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How to create a winning sales plan

Guest post by: Steven Harper

Article Overview: Selling is hard enough without putting the extra pressure on yourself by "winging it". By creating a sales stratgey and action plan, you can immediately see where your precious time should be spent, and what critical and IMPORTANT (not urgent) activities should be taking place. This is probably one of the most overlooked skill sets with anyone selling today!

How to create a winning sales plan

The problem with sales is…

“Across industries, the selling context has changed. Buyers are behaving differently, and the work required of the sales organization is becoming more difficult.”

- Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie, Harvard Business Review


I am pretty sure that you didn’t need a quote from the Harvard Business Review to tell you that selling has become more work. Our prospects have become much savvier and have a great deal more information about us and our products or services than ever before. In fact, most prospects are well down the road of buying before we ever enter the picture.

The Big Picture

Start with a basic territory assessment. Evaluating your business and numbers is a good starting place. Take the time to step away from the business and look at the basics. Use a spreadsheet to track things and capture data.

First, start with your quota or sales goals, the average deal size, and the repeat business if any that you expect this year. Then calculate how many average deals you will need this year to make the sales number. This sounds so simple and obvious that you may actually chuckle. However, I challenge you to ask 10 sales people or entrepreneurs what their average deal size is and how many net new deals that they will need to attain their goal and only 3 will have an answer.

Next, create a stretch goal for yourself. Maybe you set it for 120%? Maybe 110%? The idea is that you can create a plan to get you to any number that you want. Is 300% possible? I don’t know, but as has been said, “If you can dream it and believe it, you can achieve it”.

Before you can start looking at the new business that you need, it is best to take a look at the business that you already have. For this reason, you need to start by entering the companies that you have already done business with in the last year. The current customers you enter should be the highest grossing in revenue dollars (or profit, or volume, or bookings, however you track sales).

Next think about what they bought, and enter that. Finally, enter their revenue from last year. You can enter as many as you like, but realistically you should be looking at your top 5 -10. The idea is that you most likely have more products and / or services that they can buy from you.

Next, think about the top prospects that you have in your current customer base. Maybe you have a small division of a very large company. They don’t show up as a top customer since their revenue isn’t that high, but the possibility is there for them to be huge. This is what you are looking at. Where is the greatest growth possibility in your current customer base? Enter the company, their industry, and then the growth possibility that you see. Is it additional products or services, or is it another division?

Lastly, assign a revenue target to these customers. If this is not revenue that you received last year, then this will be considered new in this plan. Many people find that a significant portion of their sales goal can be found in the existing base, simply by expanding what they already do.

Now, you want to look at the issues that are facing your customers and their industry. This is critical in today’s market! For example, if you sell to the construction or mortgage industry there are currently a number of factors that are drastically changing these industries. What do you see impacting your customers? This is both a threat and an opportunity to your ability to sell to these companies. If their industry is booming, they may have plenty of money to purchase what you sell. However, there may very well be new competitors that see this opportunity and enter the market. If you are selling to a booming industry, you may have trouble convincing them that they need your product or service since many “Pains” are covered by good earnings. Just be aware that whatever is happing in your customer’s industry WILL impact your sales tactics and strategy.

Where have you had the most success? In what industry or vertical has your product or service been most successful? What about in your given geography? Why is this? The answer to the “Why” question is very important as you move forward in attacking the market. If you have solved problems for others in a specific way, then odds are that you can solve the same problem for others that have that issue. At a minimum, you have a story to tell as you prospect within your targets.

Get Tactical

At every organization, there are people who fill different buying roles. This may be one person, or multiple people. The roles that they fill typically are: User Buyer, Technical Buyer, Economic Buyer, and Decision Maker. In most cases there will be at least 2 people making the buying decision. In any case, in this section you need to determine how each of the people in the account views you and your company. You also need to rate the relationship, with 5 being excellent and -5 being terrible. In most cases you will have some real advocates in the account and one or two detractors.

Build an Action Plan to DO something

Now, build a plan based on the information you have entered. What do you need to do and by when? What step in the process are you at, and what priority is this action? Be specific and add a time frame.

This step is possibly the most important one in the process. Based on all of the thinking and information you have entered, you now need to create a 90-day plan of action. Here you need to enter all of the actions and activities that will make you successful at making the sales and quota numbers that were entered at the very beginning.

The most efficient way to create this plan is by company. That is, enter all of the activities that you believe you should do with the soonest activity first starting with each company. Then follow with each additional company. You will need to enter a due date and priority.

Pull it all together

Based on what you have entered and the actions you have created, talk about your plan. How will you reach your goals both corporate and personal? What will get in the way? Who will help? Be specific.



This process should be revisited every 90 days to update the plan. New accounts become existing business. Lost accounts have to be accounted for so that you have a good idea of the number of deals that you are targeting. The target list has to be updated for those that fall off. This is the key. Redo your plan every 90 days and look at it twice a week to stay on track. Think, analyze, plan, act! If you do this consistently, you should make the sales goals that you have set.
Good selling!

Steve

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