The end of a year and the start of another often leads a business or sales leader to update their sales strategy plan. It could be based on your financial year end or the calendar year end. I have been through the sales strategy plan in many different positions and companies ranging from being a sales rep at a fortune 500 company to being the co-founder of my own company. Here are some of my tips on a what makes a successful sales strategy plan.
Goals
Setting sales goals for the year is important. I suggest both high level and supporting goals. This would mean things like revenue, but also other goals like booked meetings or demos.
Involve the team
Your business will need to set goals and plan from the top down, but also include the team and go bottom up. What are their ideas? What are opportunities in the funnel and how do those match with the top down revenue goals?
Review wins
Using your CRM look back at your wins for the year. Examine the tactics, sources of the leads, ideal customer profiles, buyer personas, and other factors that may be important to you. How do they match up from the year before? What learnings can be brought forward?
Confirm ideal customer profiles and buyer personas
When looking back, understand what were the best targets. How did they help you get to your target prospects? There could be things changing in an industry: new competitors, or even new features/benefits of your solution that could change this. Pay extra close attention to your inbound leads. These companies found you and thought you could help them. What were your learnings to help you find new targets, or do you need a change in focus?
Reset your tactics
In sales and marketing, things change on a regular basis. There could be new tools or even tactics that are more successful. As a growing company, you are gated by two things, time and money. There is a finite amount of both so find the tactics that lead to the best return on investment. Remember if you are adding a new tactic or more time/money on an existing tactic, you may need to reduce efforts on some tactics or even stop previous ones.
Work on the team
The start of the year is a great time to put some extra focus on personal development for team members. Maybe there are things that need to be worked on to get team members better at their existing job or their next job at your organization. Even if you are a small organization with not of a lot of budget, there are lots of great cost effective ways to promote development including online courses (with some that are even free), a webinar, role playing, or even reading an old fashioned book. You may also need to add or reduce roles and even types of jobs to match your business needs.
Time for yourself
As the sales or business leader, the sales strategy plan can apply to you on a personal level. Do you need to change your focus? Can someone help you with a bigger or a new role? Don’t forget about your personal development. How can you work on new opportunities to learn and get better as a sales leader? There are also opportunities to get some outside help with coaching or getting a mentor. One thing that I have found helpful is being involved with Peer-2-Peer groups.
If you are interested in talking about how VA Partners can help with your own sales strategy plan, contact me.
