Sales Planning Part 4 of 4 the part program Presented by Joe Ellers www.joeellers.com

Review Strategic Foundations: What do you want? Your sales: By customer By product/service By salesperson

Did they find enough to meet the overall goals? Raise Prices (5) Existing products or services New products or services Existing customers 1 2 New customers 3 4

Sales Planning Matrix Existing product New product Other Customer 1 Prospect 2 Customer 3

How did they do? Right number of accounts? Right priority? Right mix in existing and new? Enough potential? Effort goals? Enough potential for focus products?

Could you define the strategy for each box? D(efend) I(ntroduce) G(row) F(ind out) F(orget about) Are you clear on the required activities? Are they?

Using the sales plan (throughout the year) Pre-Call Planning Opportunity Management Problem Identification Training Forecasting

Pre-call Planning Does the call plan match the sales plan? Are they making the right calls? Enough of the right calls? Working on the right things?

Opportunity Management To grow sales, you need sequential activities designed to move from a “Maybe” to a “Yes.” Are these activities occurring in the right accounts with the right opportunities? Are you getting the results you want?

Problem Identification You need to be able to see if the right things are happening early… Lack of effort and lack of a quality effort will be immediately obvious…

Training You have to learn how to read the plan in two ways: Columns (Product/service) Rows (Customers and customer types) Are there any areas of common problems?

Forecasting Develop success ratios Apply them to… Potential Customers Products/services

A final word about reporting… It sure would be nice if your information systems captured the data in the format presented for quick reviews… Routinely (Informally) Monthly/Quarterly (Formally) Use it in conjunction with other sales management tools