Strategic sales planning
Sales planning involves properly setting your goals, objectives, plans, strategies and actions that will fulfil your organisation's purpose.
It is a written document of what you are going to do, and in what time scale.
All great salespeople have solid written plans. Some are brief that covers two to three pages. Others are far more in depth. I have worked with some salespeople whose plans that extends 20+ plages.
As a minimum, your written plan should cover the following:
What they are going to do
How they are going to do it
When they are going to do it
Who do they need help from to do it
How often are they going to do it
And in what quantity
Sales plans are easy to write. I will go through the process below. Your focus should not be on ACTIVITY goals but rather on your objectives which ultimately lead to reaching your goals. In other words, do not focus on simply doing the dials.
When you type up a document or put pen to paper, it cements the reality of being able to achieve your goals and builds a systemic pathway for their accomplishment.
So let's go through the sales plan and how to construct it:
Pre-call Actions
Following from above, before you pick up the phone you need to establish the following if you want to have any degree of success in telesales.
These steps make you combat-ready and will save you an inordinate amount of time when you finally hit the phones.
1. Your knowledge – what do you, and what don't you know about your industry, your company, your products and your competitors. How do you plan to fill any gaps?
2. Have you completed a the prerequisite FAB and SWOT analysis? What is it about your company and your products that give you the edge in a competitive situation and how are you going to explot that?
3. How you are going to get testimonials and who you are going to get them from. Whose help will you need?
4. Create a specific Preferred Prospect Profile list using these steps.
5. Create your Curiosity Statements to be used in any situation, including short statements for lead generation campaigns.
6. Create various Decision Maker Curiosity Statements.
7. Write down the minimum amount of research (internet and other) that you are going to do on each of your prospects before you approach them.
8. Based on your FAB and SWOT analysis note which minimum Fact Finding questions you are going to be asking in preparation for your KDM calls.
9. Based on the answers to your minimum Fact Finding questions what are your qualification criteria? At what point do you say 'yes this prospect is worth pursuing' or' no this prospect isn't worth pursuing'? It is critical that you have go/no go qualification criteria so that you don't waste time in sales cycles that come to nothing.
10. Create some prospecting scripts for KDM and research calls.
11. Create sample Agendas to send through to your prospects.
These are the basics you need to have in place before considering your numbers. With these steps as well as your activity goals for dials you will ensure you destroy your sales targets.
Numbers
Good businesses and telesales agents understand the importance of numbers. So what do you need to know?
Firstly, in order to test and improve on our calls, we need to split our tracking and conversions between ou inbound campaigns and our cold calls. Both should have different metrics and objectives associated with them.
Two kinds of numbers
The numbers you need to know for each are either simple numbers (such as an Average Order Value of $1200) or ratios (such as 80% conversion from Decision Maker call to appointment).
1. On average, how many calls is it taking to get the minimum Fact Find information that you require? Are you managing to speak to the right people to get the background information you require? This number will tell you. If you are getting most of the information in one call, that's great. If it is taking a lot of calls before you have enough information to call the KDM, you mayneed to look at who you are speaking to and what you are asking.
2. From those calls, as an average, what percentage of the prospects do you qualify in/out before you move on to the next stage? Remember that some of the companies that you call at the FF stage will give you information that leads you to believe that it is not worth pursuing a sales cycle at that moment in time. If you are not qualifying any prospects out after Fact Finding it could indicate that you are too reluctant to 'let it go' and you may end up spending time selling to prospects that don't give a good return on your investment of time. This will reduce your sales closing ratio. So check what percentage of prospects you say 'no go' to at this early fact finding stage.
3. Now we look at the the percentage of calls where you get through to the decision maker. Don't count the calls when you call and the response is simply that decision maker is not in the office or in a meeting. The key number you are lookig for here is what percentage of the time you are successfully getting past the gatekeeper to the decision maker. It is an often neglected measure in the sales profession, but a critical one. Getting past gatekeepers is a skill and therefore warrants measurement.
4. During the Decision Maker call what percentage of your prospects were qualified in and out? Good agents don't waste selling time chasing everything that moves. They are ruthlessly efficient and will always qualify out some of their prospects. More often than not it happens at the FF stage, but also occasionally on the KDM call.
It is important to keep a note of how many prospects, on average, you are qualifying out. If the answer is close to 0 the chances are that you are getting too enthused about having the KDM on the phone and going for the appointment every time.
5. What percentage of KDM calls that you qualify IN do you successfully convince to go to the next stage of the sales cycle (appointment)? This is a key ratio and will give ou the best indication of how effective your calls are.
Appointment Metrics
There are some numbers that you need to analyse at the appointment to sale closure stage. Here are the numbers you need to be aware of and measure.
6. How many appointments, on average, do you conduct per prospect? This will tell you if you are meeting the right people in the decision making process at the START of the sales cycle. If it takes a long time to get to the KDM, you may need to look at who you are initiating the sales cycle with and start taking a more bold approach at the beginning. Are you aiming high enough up the chain of command?
8. What percentage of prospects do you get to written proposal stage? If you are suggesting that you write a proposal to every prospect you have an appointment with you are still not being ruthless enough or finding out enough about the prospect's business to be sure your proposal will be successful. Only make proposals to prospects that are qualified and likely to buy from you.
9. What is your proposal to sale ratio?
Here are two reasons for why your close to app. ratio is low:
a) Because you are so keen to hit your activity or appointment target that you don't do enough qualifying out of your prospects, leading to meetings and proposals that are with prospects who are less likely to buy. This happens a lot when you set valueless targets such as '60 dials per day.'
b) Because you are generating a lot of INTEREST from your prospects but not getting them to the stage in the 'buying mind-set' where they WANT or NEED your products ENOUGH.
10. What is your average order value size? This is commonly known as the average order value or AOV. This is a major sales success indicator and tells you a lot about the type of prospects you built in your PPP list. If your PPP list has too many small companies in it, your AOV may be low. It can also tell you about how well you are penetrating your accounts. Do you have all the prospect's sites involved in the sales cycle? If your company sells multiple products are you cross selling and making the most of every sales opportunity? If so, our AOV will be high compared to your other agents.
11. What is the average length of a sales ccle? If you want to take complete control over your sales performance you need to avoid peaks and troughs. It goes without saying that some sales will happen quickly and some will take a particularly long time but you will still end up with most sales taking an 'average' period of time.
Depending on what you sell and what industry you are in the average sales cycle length could be hours (for telesales) to months (for Key account salespeople.) When you know what your average sales cycle length is you can start to forecast what type of business you are going close in the days, weeks and months ahead. It also gives you a good idea of how many prospects you will need to keep in your pipeline to consistently hit your sales performance goals.
12. At what point during your week/ month/year do you usually hit your target? Some companies have quarterly targets or annual targets, others have monthly targets, and some have weekly targets. At what point during your target period do you generally hit target? Is it right towards the end of the target period? If you have a monthly target do you generally hit your target in the last week of the month? One of the sales performance goals of top salespeople is that they always aim to hit targets with lots of time to spare in the month.
You only have to get a slight improvement in one of the above numbers or ratios to have a significant upturn in sales results. Knowing how much time you spend on each activity is also critical. If you can optimize the time you have in your day and ensure the majority of it is spent on the right types of activity you will have a much more control of your sales revenue.
Objectives
Once you have completed your actions list you have enough data to generate some numbers on your spread sheet you can then sit down and look at how to improve your performance.
A performance objective briefly describes what it is you want to achieve in the month, quarter or year ahead. It could be a number such as '150% of target for the quarter' or '200% of target for the year' or 'to consistently hit target every month by the third week'. It may be to sell a broader mix of products, or to earn a certain level of commission. Performance objectives are whatever you want them to be.
Once you have your performance objectives then you need to find out what you need to do to achieve them.
Then calculate the numbers and ratios that you would need to hit in order to achieve your performance objectives. Specifically you need to look at your average order value which will tell you how many sales you need to make in total from both your leads and your cold calls. Then look at your average sales cycle. Is it a week, is it a month or longer?
This will give you an idea of how long it is going to take you to get to your performance objective. Then look at some of the ratios that you think you could improve? You might not be happy with the number of prospects that you qualify out. If you are not qualifying any prospects out the chances are you are chasing everything. What about the proposal to sale ratio? How many proposals or quotes are you making to get one sale? Are you comfortable with it?
Is there a marked difference in any of the ratios between the cold called appointments and the Lead generated appointments? Do you need to increase the number of prospects you are marketing to so you get more leads? Do you need to focus more heavily on one lead generation technique and drop another?
The bottom line is that you need to know your numbers and you need to know your ratios. You couldn't drive a car successfully if you didn't have gauges telling you what speed you are going at or how much petrol you have left in the tank. The same goes for sales. The numbers and ratios are your gauges on your sales journey. The whole sales plan is your SAT NAV system to make sure you get to your destination in the quickest possible time.
So your performance objectives, the actions you need to take to achieve them and by when (date) become the core of the sales plan.
All that matters is that you have:
Performance Objectives
Actions to achieve the objectives
Timescales to achieve each action
A spread sheet of Numbers and ratios that are continually measured so that you know how well you are doing and which parts of the plan need to change
So, now you can start to write your sales plan in reverse
Do it in this order:
1. Write down your performance Objectives
2. For each objective decide which of your actions lists helps you achieve it.
Below each performance objective detail each action by saying:
What you are going to do
How you are going to do it
When you are going to do it by
3. Then measure each aspect of the sales cycle and see how do compared to your written performance objectives.
4. Update the Sales Plan regularly and note which of your numbers are improving, and which you still need to improve. Also note any new actions you need to take, and indeed change your performance objectives if you need to.
That's it.
This should take you at least half a day to get your day fully set up. But if you don't measure you can't improve on your results.
Put this into place, take action and then make sure to reward yourself.
It is a written document of what you are going to do, and in what time scale.
All great salespeople have solid written plans. Some are brief that covers two to three pages. Others are far more in depth. I have worked with some salespeople whose plans that extends 20+ plages.
As a minimum, your written plan should cover the following:
What they are going to do
How they are going to do it
When they are going to do it
Who do they need help from to do it
How often are they going to do it
And in what quantity
Sales plans are easy to write. I will go through the process below. Your focus should not be on ACTIVITY goals but rather on your objectives which ultimately lead to reaching your goals. In other words, do not focus on simply doing the dials.
When you type up a document or put pen to paper, it cements the reality of being able to achieve your goals and builds a systemic pathway for their accomplishment.
So let's go through the sales plan and how to construct it:
Pre-call Actions
Following from above, before you pick up the phone you need to establish the following if you want to have any degree of success in telesales.
These steps make you combat-ready and will save you an inordinate amount of time when you finally hit the phones.
1. Your knowledge – what do you, and what don't you know about your industry, your company, your products and your competitors. How do you plan to fill any gaps?
2. Have you completed a the prerequisite FAB and SWOT analysis? What is it about your company and your products that give you the edge in a competitive situation and how are you going to explot that?
3. How you are going to get testimonials and who you are going to get them from. Whose help will you need?
4. Create a specific Preferred Prospect Profile list using these steps.
5. Create your Curiosity Statements to be used in any situation, including short statements for lead generation campaigns.
6. Create various Decision Maker Curiosity Statements.
7. Write down the minimum amount of research (internet and other) that you are going to do on each of your prospects before you approach them.
8. Based on your FAB and SWOT analysis note which minimum Fact Finding questions you are going to be asking in preparation for your KDM calls.
9. Based on the answers to your minimum Fact Finding questions what are your qualification criteria? At what point do you say 'yes this prospect is worth pursuing' or' no this prospect isn't worth pursuing'? It is critical that you have go/no go qualification criteria so that you don't waste time in sales cycles that come to nothing.
10. Create some prospecting scripts for KDM and research calls.
11. Create sample Agendas to send through to your prospects.
These are the basics you need to have in place before considering your numbers. With these steps as well as your activity goals for dials you will ensure you destroy your sales targets.
Numbers
Good businesses and telesales agents understand the importance of numbers. So what do you need to know?
Firstly, in order to test and improve on our calls, we need to split our tracking and conversions between ou inbound campaigns and our cold calls. Both should have different metrics and objectives associated with them.
Two kinds of numbers
The numbers you need to know for each are either simple numbers (such as an Average Order Value of $1200) or ratios (such as 80% conversion from Decision Maker call to appointment).
1. On average, how many calls is it taking to get the minimum Fact Find information that you require? Are you managing to speak to the right people to get the background information you require? This number will tell you. If you are getting most of the information in one call, that's great. If it is taking a lot of calls before you have enough information to call the KDM, you mayneed to look at who you are speaking to and what you are asking.
2. From those calls, as an average, what percentage of the prospects do you qualify in/out before you move on to the next stage? Remember that some of the companies that you call at the FF stage will give you information that leads you to believe that it is not worth pursuing a sales cycle at that moment in time. If you are not qualifying any prospects out after Fact Finding it could indicate that you are too reluctant to 'let it go' and you may end up spending time selling to prospects that don't give a good return on your investment of time. This will reduce your sales closing ratio. So check what percentage of prospects you say 'no go' to at this early fact finding stage.
3. Now we look at the the percentage of calls where you get through to the decision maker. Don't count the calls when you call and the response is simply that decision maker is not in the office or in a meeting. The key number you are lookig for here is what percentage of the time you are successfully getting past the gatekeeper to the decision maker. It is an often neglected measure in the sales profession, but a critical one. Getting past gatekeepers is a skill and therefore warrants measurement.
4. During the Decision Maker call what percentage of your prospects were qualified in and out? Good agents don't waste selling time chasing everything that moves. They are ruthlessly efficient and will always qualify out some of their prospects. More often than not it happens at the FF stage, but also occasionally on the KDM call.
It is important to keep a note of how many prospects, on average, you are qualifying out. If the answer is close to 0 the chances are that you are getting too enthused about having the KDM on the phone and going for the appointment every time.
5. What percentage of KDM calls that you qualify IN do you successfully convince to go to the next stage of the sales cycle (appointment)? This is a key ratio and will give ou the best indication of how effective your calls are.
Appointment Metrics
There are some numbers that you need to analyse at the appointment to sale closure stage. Here are the numbers you need to be aware of and measure.
6. How many appointments, on average, do you conduct per prospect? This will tell you if you are meeting the right people in the decision making process at the START of the sales cycle. If it takes a long time to get to the KDM, you may need to look at who you are initiating the sales cycle with and start taking a more bold approach at the beginning. Are you aiming high enough up the chain of command?
8. What percentage of prospects do you get to written proposal stage? If you are suggesting that you write a proposal to every prospect you have an appointment with you are still not being ruthless enough or finding out enough about the prospect's business to be sure your proposal will be successful. Only make proposals to prospects that are qualified and likely to buy from you.
9. What is your proposal to sale ratio?
Here are two reasons for why your close to app. ratio is low:
a) Because you are so keen to hit your activity or appointment target that you don't do enough qualifying out of your prospects, leading to meetings and proposals that are with prospects who are less likely to buy. This happens a lot when you set valueless targets such as '60 dials per day.'
b) Because you are generating a lot of INTEREST from your prospects but not getting them to the stage in the 'buying mind-set' where they WANT or NEED your products ENOUGH.
10. What is your average order value size? This is commonly known as the average order value or AOV. This is a major sales success indicator and tells you a lot about the type of prospects you built in your PPP list. If your PPP list has too many small companies in it, your AOV may be low. It can also tell you about how well you are penetrating your accounts. Do you have all the prospect's sites involved in the sales cycle? If your company sells multiple products are you cross selling and making the most of every sales opportunity? If so, our AOV will be high compared to your other agents.
11. What is the average length of a sales ccle? If you want to take complete control over your sales performance you need to avoid peaks and troughs. It goes without saying that some sales will happen quickly and some will take a particularly long time but you will still end up with most sales taking an 'average' period of time.
Depending on what you sell and what industry you are in the average sales cycle length could be hours (for telesales) to months (for Key account salespeople.) When you know what your average sales cycle length is you can start to forecast what type of business you are going close in the days, weeks and months ahead. It also gives you a good idea of how many prospects you will need to keep in your pipeline to consistently hit your sales performance goals.
12. At what point during your week/ month/year do you usually hit your target? Some companies have quarterly targets or annual targets, others have monthly targets, and some have weekly targets. At what point during your target period do you generally hit target? Is it right towards the end of the target period? If you have a monthly target do you generally hit your target in the last week of the month? One of the sales performance goals of top salespeople is that they always aim to hit targets with lots of time to spare in the month.
You only have to get a slight improvement in one of the above numbers or ratios to have a significant upturn in sales results. Knowing how much time you spend on each activity is also critical. If you can optimize the time you have in your day and ensure the majority of it is spent on the right types of activity you will have a much more control of your sales revenue.
Objectives
Once you have completed your actions list you have enough data to generate some numbers on your spread sheet you can then sit down and look at how to improve your performance.
A performance objective briefly describes what it is you want to achieve in the month, quarter or year ahead. It could be a number such as '150% of target for the quarter' or '200% of target for the year' or 'to consistently hit target every month by the third week'. It may be to sell a broader mix of products, or to earn a certain level of commission. Performance objectives are whatever you want them to be.
Once you have your performance objectives then you need to find out what you need to do to achieve them.
Then calculate the numbers and ratios that you would need to hit in order to achieve your performance objectives. Specifically you need to look at your average order value which will tell you how many sales you need to make in total from both your leads and your cold calls. Then look at your average sales cycle. Is it a week, is it a month or longer?
This will give you an idea of how long it is going to take you to get to your performance objective. Then look at some of the ratios that you think you could improve? You might not be happy with the number of prospects that you qualify out. If you are not qualifying any prospects out the chances are you are chasing everything. What about the proposal to sale ratio? How many proposals or quotes are you making to get one sale? Are you comfortable with it?
Is there a marked difference in any of the ratios between the cold called appointments and the Lead generated appointments? Do you need to increase the number of prospects you are marketing to so you get more leads? Do you need to focus more heavily on one lead generation technique and drop another?
The bottom line is that you need to know your numbers and you need to know your ratios. You couldn't drive a car successfully if you didn't have gauges telling you what speed you are going at or how much petrol you have left in the tank. The same goes for sales. The numbers and ratios are your gauges on your sales journey. The whole sales plan is your SAT NAV system to make sure you get to your destination in the quickest possible time.
So your performance objectives, the actions you need to take to achieve them and by when (date) become the core of the sales plan.
All that matters is that you have:
Performance Objectives
Actions to achieve the objectives
Timescales to achieve each action
A spread sheet of Numbers and ratios that are continually measured so that you know how well you are doing and which parts of the plan need to change
So, now you can start to write your sales plan in reverse
Do it in this order:
1. Write down your performance Objectives
2. For each objective decide which of your actions lists helps you achieve it.
Below each performance objective detail each action by saying:
What you are going to do
How you are going to do it
When you are going to do it by
3. Then measure each aspect of the sales cycle and see how do compared to your written performance objectives.
4. Update the Sales Plan regularly and note which of your numbers are improving, and which you still need to improve. Also note any new actions you need to take, and indeed change your performance objectives if you need to.
That's it.
This should take you at least half a day to get your day fully set up. But if you don't measure you can't improve on your results.
Put this into place, take action and then make sure to reward yourself.
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mactadvi -
Thanks - 1 reply
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NHasan -
Thanks
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