If your struggling to hit this years sales targets Sales Planning will help as this is the missing link between Sales Goals and Sales Goal Attainment.

1. www.iainswanstononline.com
boost sales, boost your bank balance
Sales Planning for Growth
January 22, 2014 by Iain Swanston – www.iainswanstononline.com
If you are reading this post and have not yet read Sales Goals then you might
find it makes sense to read this first. In Sales Goals we talked about the process
of setting our Sales Goals and now we are going to talk about Sales Planning,
which is about planning for success, rather than just waiting or hoping we will
hit our sales targets. But first, congratulations for taking time out and
completing your Sales Goals, which is one of the main differences between
amateurs and professional sales people.
Sales Planning
There are two mistakes many sales people make after setting Sales Goals:
1)
They expect to achieve a certain % increase in sales by doing the same things they did last
year. Well logic, experience and evidence will tell you that if you do the same things as you did last year,
you will hit last year’s Sales Targets, not this year’s. You need to change, you need to do different things
to get different results.
2)
They set new Sales Goals and then fail to make a Sales Plan. Setting Sales Goals without a Sales
Plan is like choosing to Vacation in the Virgin Islands and then not working out when to go, or how to get
there.
If you want to be successful you must first do Goal Setting, then do some simple Sales Planning which is
the road map to take you to your goals and then work on Goal Attainment.
Sales Planning is a schedule of Sales Activities laid out in a methodical process that we create to achieve
our Sales Goals. For the purposes of this Sales Plan we will set our new Sales Goal as 20% increase in
revenue for the year. There will be many circumstances when 20% is not a high enough target and just as
many reasons that 20% is too ambitious, but we will use 20% here as an example. We will also assume no
change in margins. First break the big 20% annual goal down into a 20% per month goal. Simply check
the equivalent month in the previous calendar year and add 20% to get your monthly Sales Goal. Now to
achieve your Sales Goal you need to do at least one if not all of the following:
a)
Open up new accounts to the value of a 20% increase every month
b)
Increase the transaction size of your products or services 20% to your existing accounts
c)
Increase the frequency of your transactions 20%
d)
Raise your prices (reduce/eliminate your discounting) to the value of 20%
Once you have chosen which one or combination of the above four options, you need to decide what sales
activity you need to do to execute your strategy. Sales is driven by activity, and if you need a 20% uplift
in sales you need to alter your sales & marketing activity accordingly. For example:

2. www.iainswanstononline.com
boost sales, boost your bank balance
a)
Open up new accounts to the value of a 20% increase every month – this could mean 20% more
meetings for the Field Sales Team.
b)
Increase the transaction size of your products or services 20% to your existing accounts – this could
mean up selling and cross selling 20% of the time.
c)
Increase the frequency of your transactions 20% – this could mean 20% more telephone calls from
Inside Sales Reps.
e)
Raise your prices to the value of 20% – this could mean reducing or eliminating discounts to the
value of 20% your sales people may be giving.
Sales Planning and Sales Strategy are even more important given that most sales people I know do not
have 20% of extra time. It may well be possible for some companies to find one single enterprise
customer that will equate to a 20% increase on their own. Typically if you have never sold to a customer
that large before, you will have to do something very different to sell to them now. Your Sales Planning
must include the amount of activities that sales need to complete, in order to meet the sales goals. This
could be 20% more sales meetings, telephone calls, networking events, exhibitions, lead generation broken
down into a weekly and monthly plan.
Don’t forget to Follow Us on Twitter, Google + or Linkedin.
Copyright © 2014 · www.IainSwanstonOnline.com