Planning for Sales Success: A Framework for Developing a Sales Plan: Strategy and Tactics

Success in sales requires a solid knowledge of the markets you sell to, a good understanding of how your products or services contribute to the success of your customers, your ability to express the value of what you sell to your customers (product knowledge /service) and of course good sales skills: the ability to listen, understand the needs of potential customers, build trust and present solutions.

A skill that is often overlooked in sales literature and training is the ability to think strategically so that you can develop a sales strategy along with identifying the corresponding tactics to implement the strategy; In other words, a practical plan to achieve your sales goals over a defined period of time. weather.

Let’s take a look at the fundamentals needed to create and implement a strong sales strategy and action plan. Let’s start by defining “strategy.” A strategy defines how you will gain a competitive advantage in the markets to which you sell. A well thought out strategy stems from a thorough understanding of the needs and trends in the markets you sell to, and how your competitors are responding to those markets. Your strategy might address competitive advantage based on your knowledge of unmet needs in the marketplace, new products you have developed, a cost advantage your company has gained through lower-cost manufacturing, geographic proximity to your major markets or a host of other capabilities. The competitive advantage can also lie with the people in your organization: superior customer service, better technical support after the sale, or a sales force with deep industry and product knowledge.

Often your competitive advantage consists of an integration of several of the above capabilities. Once you’ve done your due diligence to verify where your business advantages lie, you can start building your sales strategy. In addition to the organizational advantages listed above, your sales strategy should incorporate competitive advantages on a personal level, for example, long-standing customer relationships, experience in a specific sales territory, or well-honed sales skills. A good sales strategy should always incorporate organizational advantages and personal advantages.

Once you’ve grasped all of these competitive advantages, start thinking about how they relate to your day-to-day sales activities and how they can be woven into individual sales calls. This will help you integrate these advantages into your daily selling activities. The next step is to put these thoughts into a paragraph or two that are meant to answer the question: why should a prospect buy from me instead of a competitor? The answer to this question becomes the basis of your sales strategy.

Once you’ve answered that question, the next step is to review your sales goals for a defined period of time: the next quarter, six months, or annually. Make sure your sales targets are clear and defined in numerical form, such as annual sales revenue, average gross margin in percentage, number of new accounts opened, etc. Now let’s link these numerical sales targets to our strategy through the competitive advantage statement we develop. Looking at that competitive advantage statement, how can it contribute to our numerical goals? If you’ve done your homework and identified all of its advantages, some ideas should come to mind. At this point, we want to link those thoughts to a series of tactics that are actionable – this will be our implementation plan. The implementation plan must be feasible, that means that we have identified a series of clear steps that will advance our sales strategy and that those steps or actions are under your control, which means that you can initiate those actions unilaterally and are not dependent on another to institute them. the actions.

An example of a tactic or action might be trying to get an appointment with the vice president of manufacturing at a key potential company whose manufacturing plants align well with its product distribution network, as reflected in its competitive advantage schema.

The actions you identify are also assigned to a timeline so you can chart progress in achieving those steps over weeks or months and correlate the achievement to your quantified sales targets over a corresponding time period (quarter, half, or year). complete).

The best way to achieve identification of action steps is to think about individual potential customers, those companies that are key customers or potential customers. Review the current status of each target or key customer or prospect in light of their competitive advantages and the sales strategy you previously developed. Action items should be customized for each target prospect, as not all of your competitive advantages will appeal to every prospect, and not all prospects and customers will have identical needs. Once you have your action items, set realistic deadlines for completing them. You want to be realistic in your estimate of the time required, but also be aggressive in striving for the accomplishment.

A useful tool for planning your sales activities, monitoring progress, and measuring achievement is the Work Plan, which I define as a structured “to-do” list produced on a weekly basis. The work plan is a simple list of action items per account or prospect that you have estimated can be accomplished within the next week. The purpose is to give you a visible summary of the priorities you want to address and hopefully achieve during the week. It provides some structure to help you manage your selling time, and sets some tough goals for the week. Don’t worry if you have identified too many or too few actions to address. With time and experience, you’ll get better at developing a reasonable estimate. Often the best plans are interrupted by the unexpected problems that everyone encounters. The goal here is to create that priority “to do” list that will help us stay on track as the week goes by.

Finally, remember that we live in a dynamic business environment: assumptions can be proven wrong, industries can seem to change virtually overnight, and the best information becomes outdated over time. So review your overall strategy, action plans, and implementation successes or failures at least once a month, and be prepared to make any necessary adjustments.