4 Ways to Get the Most from Your Sales Plan
The best salespeople I know have a sales plan, check it regularly and update it often. In our dynamic world, this has become imperative- to respond to the changes in our industries, territories, accounts and competition.
1. Check/Update It Often
Have it with you or have it easily accessible (i.e. via mobile access). Keep it up-to-date so that it reflects the changes in your selling environment. Reviewing the plan helps you see what you are missing; key players, articulating important aspects of your offering, responding to important opportunities and threats.
2. Have It in Your Sales Force Automation System
This enables you to easily refer to, review and update the plan. It also makes it visible to other members of the team so they can help you achieve your objectives.
3. Review It with Management
Getting management input helps you catch something you missed and keeps the plan fresh. Further, this enables you to get management support to get access to the resources needed as identified in your plan.
4. Use It in Your Quarterly Business Review
Rather than either starting from scratch to prepare your quarterly business review, or starting with an out of date plan from last quarter, using your current plan saves time. Many of our clients present their quarterly business reviews out of our territory and account planning apps, saving additional time.
7 Steps to Ensure Software Adoption (A Software Adoption Manifesto)
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy a new tool and not have to do anything else to have your team use it and produce dramatic improvement in performance? Unfortunately, members of the team are already busy and having them do anything different takes effort on their part and yours. Resistance within the organization- especially the user base- and poor management of the process are the two biggest reasons software implementations fail to produce their intended results.
However, the effort is well worth it as it can dramatically:
- Increase sales
- Improve predictability / forecast accuracy
- Enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness
- Drive team effectiveness
The following process helps people rapidly embrace the adoption of new tools and methods. Missing any of these steps slows progress and increases time and cost. Though this process largely sequential, some steps can occur in parallel.
1. CREATE URGENCY
- Identify user needs and how you help them do their job faster, easier , better
- Understand competing pressures area
Obstacles:
- Dismissing the approach because, “we tried it before and it didn’t work”
- Organizational arrogance
- Complacency due to lack of visible crisis, low performance standards and insufficient feedback perpetuates clinging to the status quo
- Thinking steps in this process can be skipped
- Not clarifying how the tool solves the problem and improves results
2. GATHER SPONSORSHIP
- Put together a leadership team with enough power to lead the change process
- Ensure the sponsorship group works together toward a common objective
Obstacles:
- Underestimating the challenges in engaging adoption and the importance of a strong, guiding coalition
- Trust issues among members of the sponsorship team
- Not addressing conflicting metrics, goals and agendas
- Cultural issues, including arrogance and the “not invented here” syndrome
3. DEVELOP A VISION AND STRATEGY
- Create a vision to guide the effort
- Develop strategies for achieving the vision
- Optional: establish a pilot group for testing and fine-tuning the approach
- Establish clear metrics and how / when they will be measured
Obstacles:
- Underestimating the importance of having and selling a clear vision and reason for the change… and the role it plays in helping to direct, align and inspire action
- Failing to emphasize the value of individual and team learning for on-going success
- Cultural issues, i.e. taking short cuts or insufficient focus on any one initiative
4. COMMUNICATE THE OBJECTIVE
- Communicate the intended outcome and why you are excited about it
- Use every vehicle possible to constantly communicate
- Make sure sponsors and managers model the expected behavior
Obstacles:
- Not clarifying what each person needs to do, the support they will get and how performance will be measured
- Thinking you have communicated enough
- The sponsorship / management teams don’t examine their actions / “walk-the talk”
- Leadership loses enthusiasm for this project and moves on to the next new idea
5. ENSURE ACTION
- Have people use the new tools
- Remove obstacles that undermine adoption
- Encourage and reward risk-taking and nontraditional approaches
- Provide needed support and promote learning
- Monitor progress and act quickly to improve adoption
Obstacles:
- Allowing barriers and breakdowns to block use of new methods and tools
- Failure to examine existing systems and create new ones that support the vision and eliminate those that don’t
- Insufficient leadership engagement to generate broad based action
- Resistance to change and fear of undesirable consequences
6. PUBLICIZE SHORT-TERM WINS
- Measure performance and identify “wins”
- Engage management to enable success of the new approach
- Visibly recognize and reward people who achieved wins and made them possible
Obstacles:
- Failing to focus on short-term wins
- Lack of celebration, acknowledgement and rewards for those who achieve the wins
- Without feedback, the team assumes no progress has been made
7. BROADEN ADOPTION AND CHANGE
- Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
- Use increased credibility to change systems and procedures that don’t support the change
- Reinvigorate the process with new initiatives and change agents
- Hire, promote, and develop people / leaders who can implement the needed changes
Obstacles:
- Declaring victory too soon
- Not leveraging the progress already made to broaden adoption
- Failing to connect specific new behaviors and attitudes with improved performance
- Lacking the necessary leadership and management capabilities
You need this kind of process to ensure you get your intended results from new software tools!
This was informed by John Kotter’s Leading Change.
Seven Must-Dos; Planning for 2012
In order to get the most out of your territory and strategic accounts, you need to have a good plan that covers the 7 Key Steps:
- Analyze your business/ territory/strategic account
- Understand what drives customers to buy
- Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
- Determine your objectives
- Develop strategies to accomplish your goals
- Engage the resources you need
- Create and work your plan
These articles explain how to do it:
How to Write a Sales Territory Plan
How to Write a Strategic Account Plan
They will enable you to make better use of your time and resources and produce better results, including:
- More Opportunities
- Shorter sales cycles
- Larger deal size
- Higher win rates
Good Selling!
Ron
Five Reasons you Need a New Plan
Here are the top 5 reasons you need a new territory/strategic account plan for the New Year. Without it, you will:
1. Miss important opportunities
2. Lose sales you could have won
3. Take longer to win business opportunities
4. Be forced to sell at a lower selling price and reduced profit margin
5. Waste time and resources
Why create a new plan? Things change! You need to take into account:
• Changes in the economy and regulatory environment
• Changes in your industry/geography/vertical market
• New products/new technology
• How to improve your approach
• Incorporating new skills and tools
Good planning enables you to maximize the results from your territory/strategic account. By adopting and implementing good planning and selling methods, one of my clients:
• Increased Bookings by 43%
• Boosted Margins by 10%
• Improved Market Share by 53%
• Increased Productivity per Salesperson by 50%
• Grew Win/Loss Ratio by 131%
Having a plan enables you to manage a great deal of complexity. This includes understanding the market, focusing on the customer problems you can solve, selecting your best solution, and managing the internal and partner resources necessary to meet your objectives. It enables you to make the best use of your time and resources by connecting strategy to key tasks.
Using the plan, you make sure the tasks get implemented the time frame required to win. Through it, you give appropriate attention to the critical path – the steps that have the most impact on producing the result on time. Without a plan, it is easy to omit a key element and dramatically compromise your results. Further, it enables you to respond effectively to quick changes in your territory and accounts.
The bottom line is that you need a good plan backed with persistent effort to maximize your results in your territory and win competitive business opportunities.
