Top-Level Overview of My Sales Plan
Welcome to The Sales House! Thanks for requesting a top-level overview of my sales plan format. I’ve successfully used it for 40+ years and never came across anything as effective.
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To recap, briefly:
Every seller needs to write a sales plan. Inside. Outside. SDR. AE. Everyone.
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The Big 3 mistakes I see in sales plans are:
1. Too ambitious: Everyone wants to conquer the world.
2. Not detailed enough: Everyone wants to conquer the world without thinking through how they’re going to do it.)
3. Outcome is too dependent on things outside the seller’s control: Everyone wants to conquer the world by assuming that their enemies will self-destruct leaving a clear path to victory.
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Two key planning thoughts to keep in mind.
A) You will establish goals for the entire sales year.
B) You will create detailed sales action plans for only one quarter at a time.
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Why only 90 days?
It’s unrealistic to create sales plans, with detailed action items, for any longer than 90 days at a time.
The reason is that once you start implementing your plan life happens.
Some things will happen faster than you planned. Some will happen slower. Or not at all.That’s why you need to step back and do a review, and a reset or refresh, on your detailed sales action plans every 90 days.
In this plan there are just four steps you have to complete.It’s pretty simple. However, it’s not necessarily easy. It takes effort to think through and create a set of Objectives, Strategies and Action Items that will effectively help you achieve your goals.
Here we go!
Step 1: Establish your two major goals for the year.
- You only get two.
- What are the two most important things you can accomplish this year for you personally?
- Goal ideas: Closing a particular major account. Increasing your win rate. Reducing the length of your sales cycle
Advanced Tip: Don’t make either of the two goals “hitting quota.” Quota is someone else’s goal for you.
Step 2: Create your sales action plan for the first 90 days of your sales year (Q1)
- Establish an objective (that’s typically a milestone for achieving one of your major goals.)
- Write your strategy for achieving that objective.
- List (at least) 3 specific sales actions you will take in Q1 to achieve that objective.
- Establish due dates for completion of each of the action items.
- Repeat for additional objectives.
Advanced Tip: Limit yourself to three objectives per quarter. It’s important to not overcommit yourself.
Step 3: What are the critical dependencies in your plan?
Your plan cannot be based on assumptions that certain events will happen that are beyond your control.
For example, if hitting your Q1 goal is based on selling and delivering a new product that your development team has scheduled to be released in Jan, then that is a critical dependency. What would happen to your plan if the release were delayed until April?
Step 4: What are the major risk factors?
There are macro events that occur in the world at large that could have an impact on your ability to sell to certain customers. Or all customers. It’s important to highlight these to ensure that the success of your plan is not too exposed to risk.
For example,you sell product into the China market. A protracted trade dispute with the US could impact your ability to close orders in the Q1 & Q2. That’s a risk factor.
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Every 90 days you will measure your progress and factor that into the sales action plan you create for the subsequent quarter.
Remember, as simple as this format is, it requires an investment of your time to carefully think through in detail what you really need to do to achieve your goals.
The payoff is more predictability in hitting your goals because you have prepared for what you need to do to get there.
