Activity Based Planning

Guest post by: Nikki Owen
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Transcendental Powers - By Nikki Owen

One of the characteristics that makes a sales person successful is careful use of their selling time. Time is something that doesn’t stop, yet how it’s used, effects performance that can leverage the impact of sales activities. To influence sales results you need to work on your sales activities. For example, all the sales activities you have undertaken in the past have produced your current results. The sales activities you do today will create your future results. Therefore, there is always a time delay between activities and results. Focusing on activities in a well-planned way naturally increases results. The Sales Platform concept is a sophisticated process for analysing, planning, directing, and monitoring the activities of sales people.

The Sales Platform features three main elements:

1. Buying Platform – This comprises of existing customers who are purchasing from you on a one-off basis or a regular basis. This segment of the platform requires two strategic sales approaches:
• Sales actions that reduce the risk of losing customers (a proportion of customers are lost over time due to a variety of reasons)
• Sales actions that can generate incremental business from existing customers (it’s easier to get new business from existing customers compared to prospects)
2. The Working Platform – This comprises of prospects who have been visited yet aren’t currently buying. This segment of the platform is extremely time intensive yet is a crucial part of the development of an ideal customer base. The sales approach in this segment is to accelerate prospects through the pipeline until they become a customer.

3. The Market Platform – This comprises of leads that have not yet been qualified as prospects that have the potential to become customers. This segment of the platform is the vital preparation phase to replace lost customers and grow existing business in the longer term. The sales approach in this segment is to select the right type of opportunities that have the potential to become prospects. Banks of qualified prospects can be built up if appropriate – ready for a concerted attack on a targeted part of the market place.

In an ideal situation and based on the market conditions there should be a good balance between all three platforms. Excess Buying Platform activity will constrain the growth of the business into those areas that are identified as the opportunities of the future. It is also a symptom that the organisation has got itself into a rut or a ‘comfort zone’, that the communication of policy is poor, that management is not controlling the work, or that people lack the confidence to tackle new areas (or a combination of all of them). Too much emphasis on the Market and Working Platforms is inefficient and will increase the cost of sales unnecessarily. Without a strong base of long-term customers, this will dramatically reduce the potential for growth, and could well lower the reputation of the organisation.

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Transcendental Powers - By Nikki Owen

About the Author: Nikki Owen

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Nikki Owen has dedicated the last 16 years to the development of sales professionals and sales leaders for many large international organizations. She has coached and mentored over 6,000 sales people and their leaders. In 2004 Nikki conducted the largest sales research projects ever undertaken, involving 2663 organizations to identify the 5 biggest barriers to sales success. This extensive report has been referred to in global publications as the ultimate solution to creating high-performing sales teams. Nikki is the creator of The Sales Activator® an award winning sales toolkit. As a certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP, Nikki is an expert with applying seeming complex techniques within a corporate sales infrastructure. Nikki lectures on sales leadership using her own case studies from her client portfolio including Shell, Barclays Bank and Zurich Life. In 2007 she became an accredited firewalking instructor with the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education and studies Quantum Physics. Nikki is the author of 'A Second Chance to Live' that was first published in 1991 by Transworld and was translated and sold in 16 different countries. She has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows and is finalising her next book titled – An Audience with Charisma based on her cutting-edge seminars that she hosts at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London.
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