Annual sales plans – those things that managers ask of salespeople just after Thanksgiving and to be completed by Dec. 20. Salespeople know the drill: Most start to work on it the afternoon of Dec. 19. It is likely the same one that your manager reviews with you once and never looks at again.
It doesn’t have to be that way; in fact, building an annual sales plan the proper way is a cornerstone to sales excellence. Here are seven best practices to building an effective and useful annual sales plan:
1. Do not use Excel. The most common sales plan I see is laid out on an Excel spreadsheet. With the salesperson’s annual quota listed at the top, there are several cells beneath that illustrate the various activity steps that lead to the sales quota achievement. For example, a $2 million quota may yield subsequent goals of $6 million of quotes, 120 demos, and 25 new accounts.
This isn’t a plan – it is simply math that answers “what” – whereas an annual sales plan should answer “how.” Use Word or PowerPoint (or relevant applications) to build your annual sales plan.
2. Break out annual goals into quarters. For each annual goal, back into quarterly goals and make sure they are logically determined. Unless there is some crazy course of events, I cannot imagine that any of your achievements will be distributed equally across each quarter. Think about the seasonality and activity for each time of year. Consider your vacations and your customers timelines. This exercise will enable you to examine your progress every quarter and make the appropriate adjustments.
3. Forecast the amount you will sell to top-tier clients. Using historic data, budget meetings and your gut feel, forecast the amount of business that you will receive from your top-tier customers. Once you complete this exercise, you will have a great sense of comfort knowing that a large chunk of your quota will be generated by these clients. It is now up to you to find the rest.
4. Identify the whales you want to catch. Every salesperson has a few huge accounts that they dream about winning. Unfortunately, they are so large that most people never take the first step. Add a section to your annual sales plan that summarizes the top 1-3 whales that you want to land. Do not get into too much detail on your account plans, but create a list of tasks that you will accomplish throughout the year in penetrating these huge accounts.
5. Build a plan for the top of the funnel. Most sales plans talk about goals at the bottom of the sales funnel and ignore the hard work that is required to fill the top of the funnel. Create a strategy for finding, approaching, and meeting with prospective new accounts. This plan should consist of outbound touches (calls, emails, personal visits), networking and social media work.
6. Create a professional development initiative. Is there a professional skill that you have always wanted to develop? Maybe you want to improve your public speaking, or you would like to understand more about credentials, or you need to become better at prospecting. Whatever the skill is, use your plan to finally take a step forward and develop it.
7. Establish your ideal week. Following a routine is the most effective way to realize a long-term strategy. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to follow a routine when you are constantly being dragged in multiple directions. To counter this problem, design an ideal week into your calendar. What does your perfect week look like? Document it and do your best to follow it. For the record, you will never be able to follow it; however, designing and documenting your ideal week will help you stay focused and get the important things done each week – not just the urgent things.
Chris Peterson is the founder and president of Vector Firm (www.vectorfirm.com), a sales consulting and training company built specifically for the security industry. To request more info about the company, visit www.securityinfowatch.com/12361573.
