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December 31, 2014
Have You Double-Checked Next Year’s Sales Plan?
By:
The New Year is upon us. With it comes high hopes and great expectations. As the holiday festivities wind down, take some time to double-check your sales plan. It’s always good practice to ensure you are ready.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln
As you review next year’s sales plan, use SBI’s framework below. (Click here to enlarge.)
The framework will help you identify possible gaps in your plan.
If you haven’t yet, it’s not too late to download SBI’s 2014 Research Report. The report outlines how other sales leaders use the framework to build their sales plan. And sign up for the workshop to stress test your 2015 sales strategy.
Sequence is critical when using the framework to double-check you sales plan. To be effective, your plan must follow a particular order. Building your sales plan out of sequence will produce gaps. Gaps will cause you to miss your number. Start with Segmentation and work your way down and across.
Step 1: Segmentation – Understand your market, your accounts and buyers inside your accounts. This ensures your sales strategy is differentiated from the competition while being aligned with your buyer needs, the corporate strategy and the product strategy.
Step 2: Planning – Leverage the segmentation findings to develop revenue, budget and data plans that once executed will allow your organization to hit your goals.
Step 3: Engagement – Define the processes for how the sales team is going to interact with prospects and customers.
Step 4: Organization – Make sure the organizational structure is set up correctly so the right people are in the right roles to execute the processes.
Step 5: Execution – Begin executing the strategy by focusing on areas like sales enablement, sales adoption, pipeline/forecast management, reporting, etc.
Step 6: Support – Help the sales team be effective in perpetuity by supporting them and making the internal organization easy to do business with.
CALL TO ACTION: Make sure next year is a raving success. Double-check your sales plan. Use SBI’s ‘Make the Number’ framework to look for possible gaps. It’s not too late to make adjustments.
Happy New Year!
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