A crucial component to the success of any business is the ability to expand its customer base to ensure its share of the marketplace is maintained. Your business can achieve this success through the formation and successful implementation of a well-developed sales planning document. The sales plan will provide a 12-month road map that lays out sales goals such as how a salesperson plans to generate leads, contact customers, follow up with those customers, and produce sales.
Instructions
1. Research and generate historical data to have a foundation to base your future expectations. Ensure data are collected throughout the year. It will be difficult to develop realistic goals for the future without having a set of data to analyze.
2. Formulate and put in place a set of realistic goals. One of the big mistakes business owners make is setting unrealistic growth rates. Determine if the market share is available to support the type of growth that you would like to see. If you find it is difficult to set realistic goals for growth, perhaps this is an important indicator that it is time to diversify your product or service offerings.
3. Tie each goal to a clear benchmark. By linking a goal to a definite point in time, the salesperson will have a metrics by which she can judge her progress on any given day. This prevents the sales professional from needing to wait until the end of the sales planning period to ascertain progress or lack thereof. Ensure these metrics take into account seasonal activity so as to provide a valid and credible benchmark.
4. Develop a segment of the plan for each sales position in your business. Each segment of your targeted sales demographic could be different based on factors such as regional variations or available market share. It is important for your sales planning document to reflect these changing realities and for strategies to be based upon the feasibility of achieving goals in each demographic. The implementation of this policy will also help address concerns of inequity-of-expectation among your sales staff.
Tags: realistic goals, sales planning, market share, planning document, sales planning document, your sales