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Rather than either starting from scratch to prepare your quarterly business review, or starting with an out of date plan from last quarter, using your current plan saves time.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.

The Ultimate Predictor of Sales Success

In the movie, “Money Ball,” a young Yale graduate who has never played or managed baseball, comes up with a better measure to predict a team’s success. Rather than the traditional measures of batting average, home runs, hits, etc., he said the objective is to get on base more often. If you get on base more often, you will produce more runs and more runs will produce more wins. So, they managed to “on base percentage” and took the Oakland A’s to the American League playoffs spending much less money than other teams. Two years later, the Red Sox used this approach and won the World Series.

The “Advance” is the analogous measure in sales. An Advance occurs when a potential buyer commits to do something specific in a specific time frame that moves the sale forward. If you earn more Advances and progress through the sales process more readily, you will win more sales. So, the Advance is the key leading indicator of sales success.

It is important to create a clear picture of the stages in the sales process and the key milestones within each stage. Management’s role is to use this to help the sales team navigate from one stage to the next; achieving more Advances more efficiently.

To track progress, you can create reports that show:

• Account, opportunity
• Stage in the sales process
• Most recent Advance
• Length of time in current stage
• Revenue produced
• Revenue potential

By measuring how your team manages the process and where they get stock, you can glean powerful insights. For example:

• Prospects to target and which to avoid
• Products that your team is having trouble selling
• “Stall points” in the sales process
• Who gets stuck more often and why

With this understanding in place, you can identify what solutions are needed, such as: adopting clear target prospect criteria (i.e. by product line), improving territory and strategic account management/ planning, leveraging best practices, providing coaching, training and/or selling tools.

Take these 5 steps:

1. Identify the stages and milestones in your sales process.
2. Train your team on how to most efficiently and effectively progress from step to step.
3. Measure Advances achieved.
4. Identify the top issues constraining progress through the sales process.
5. Provide solutions (see the paragraph directly above).

Use this clear measure of progress (the Advance) to drive sales success!

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 the results from new software tools that you are expecting!

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:

1. Analyze your business/ territory/strategic account
2. Understand what drives customers to buy
3. Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
4. Determine your objectives
5. Develop strategies to accomplish your goals
6. Engage the resources you need
7. 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.

How to Write a Strategic Account Plan

How can you write a Plan to Penetrate and Grow a Strategic Account?

In order to gain the insights you need to create a winning plan, you must ask the right questions. Use this checklist as a guide. Use your plan in your strategic account reviews and to manage your account team.

1. Analyze your Target Account’s Business

Start with what is going on in your account’s business.

• What are the key trends in their industry?
• Who are their top prospects and customers?
• What are the top issues facing their customers?
• What are the critical trends in the geography?
• What is reflected in their financial reports and news about them?

2. Understand what is Driving the Account

You must understand their objectives and challenges.

• What are their strategic initiatives?
• What are the characteristics of their high-payoff customers/prospects?
• Are there verticals that they are winning in more than others? Why?
• What “pain” or business issues do they solve?
• What is their competitive position?
• What is their purchase history and decision-making process?

3. Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

Conduct a SWOT analysis that examines how you can help this account.

• What Strengths can they benefit from? For example, a unique business model or capabilities.
• Which Weaknesses do you need to respond to? This includes the strengths of competitive and alternative solutions.
• Which Opportunities in the marketplace will you take advantage of… and help them take advantage of? How do you uniquely meet their compelling needs?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against? Consider competitive moves, changes in technology, industry and regulatory standards.

4. Determine your Selling Approach

Consolidate the above insights the critical strategies and actions necessary to succeed.

• How do you help them accomplish their strategic objectives?
• What is your unique selling (value) proposition?
• Based on your SWOT, what are the critical few strategies to win in the account?
• What type of opportunities will you concentrate on?
• How can you leverage your differentiators? (Sales approach can be a differentiator.)
• What is your strategy to leverage current successes?

5. Engage the Resources you Need

Enroll the people and gather the knowledge you need.

• Which internal resources have the skills/connections you need?
• Who inside the account can help you win?
• Are there external resources that can support you (partners, people “in the know”)?
• What additional product/industry information do you need? What sources can provide it?
• How could you improve your selling and account management skills?

6. Create and Work your Plan

Use your plan as a guide to proactively produce your intended results.

• What are the high-leverage actions?
• Which resources are needed for each task?
• What are the due dates and key milestones?
• Do you take action and update the plan on a regular basis?
• Are you engaging your management, internal and partner resources?

If you don’t plan your work, you can’t work your plan. Winging it is the best way to lose a big opportunity you could have won!

Good luck and Good Selling!

How to Write a Sales Territory Plan

As published in Selling Power Blog, August 18, 2011

What are the critical steps in writing a successful Sales Territory Plan?

You may be wondering, “Where do I start?” The key is asking the right questions to harness the insights you need to create a winning plan. Use this checklist as a guide.

1. Analyze your Territory/Business

Start with what is going on in your territory/vertical market.

• What are the key trends in your geography/ market?
• Who are your top prospects and customers?
• What are customers buying?
• Based on your conversion rates, how much business do you need in your funnel?
• What is the gap between what you need in your funnel and what you have now?

2. Understand what Drives Customers to Buy

You must understand why they are buying or not buying your products.

• What are the characteristics of your high-payoff customers/prospects?
• Are there verticals that you are winning in more than others? Why?
• What “pain” or business issues do you solve?
• What compelling events drive the purchase?
• Are there specific products/services that you are selling more than others? Why?
• Why do they not buy your products/services?

3. Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

Conduct a SWOT analysis that examines:

• What Strengths will you build upon? For example, a unique business model or capabilities.
• Which Weaknesses do you need to respond to? This includes the strengths of competitive and alternative solutions.
• Which Opportunities in your marketplace will you take advantage of? How do you uniquely meet your buyers’ compelling needs?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against? Consider competitive moves, changes in technology, industry and regulatory standards.
• What is your unique selling (value) proposition?

4. Determine your Objectives

Consolidate the above trends into a few powerful objectives. Write specific, measurable goals (i.e. ‘I will add 5 new accounts in this vertical market’).

• Which vertical markets or geographies will you focus on?
• Based on the characteristics of your high-payoff customers/prospects, which accounts/opportunities will you concentrate on?
• What products/services/capabilities do you need to highlight in your plan?
• At your average selling price, how many opportunities do you need to add to your funnel?

5. Develop Strategies to Accomplish your Goals

Generate the top strategies to succeed.

• How will you further penetrate current accounts?
• What is your strategy to leverage current successes?
• What will you do to generate new leads?
• How will you improve your conversion rates?
• Where do you need to improve your selling process?

6. Engage the Resources you Need

Enroll the people and gather the knowledge you need.

• Which internal resources have the skills/connections you need?
• Who inside the account can help you win?
• Are there external resources that can support you (partners, people “in the know”)?
• What additional product/industry information do you need? What sources can provide it?
• How could you improve your selling and territory/account management skills?

7. Create and Work your Plan

Use your plan as a guide to proactively produce your intended results.

• What are the high-leverage actions?
• Which resources are needed for each task?
• What are the due dates and key milestones?
• Do you take action and fine-tune the plan on a regular basis?
• Are you engaging your management, internal and partner teams?

“It’s not the will to win that matters…everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”

-          Paul “Bear” Bryant

Creating and implementing a well thought-out plan greatly improves your probability of success!

Five Reasons you Need a Plan… to Win

Here are the top 5 reasons you need a good territory/strategic account plan. Without it, you will:
1. Miss important opportunities
2. Lose sales you could have won
3. Take longer to win business opportunities
4. Unnecessarily lower your selling price and reduce your profit margins
5. Waste time and resources

Good planning enables you to optimize 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.

Success Story: Account Management
I managed a $20M opportunity for HP, selling to another Fortune 100 company. The sale took 18 months and involved a wide range of internal resources and customer representatives. My detailed strategic account plan enabled me to:
1. Identify our competitive advantages.
2. Articulate our value proposition and clearly describe how it met their needs.
3. Make sure our sales, division people, and executive sponsor were on the same page.
4. Manage meetings between a wide range of people from the customer’s and our organization.
5. Respond effectively to competitive threats.
6. Keep the sale on track.

I could never have managed the effort, kept everyone engaged and won the business without a clear plan that I updated on a regular basis. The bottom line is that you need a good plan backed with persistent effort to win a complex, competitive business opportunity.

Self-Assessment

• Consider companies you regard as successful, well-managed, high-performing organizations. Can you imagine how they would have performed without a solid business plan?
• Reflect on times when you did not have a plan and/or did not work your plan. What did you miss? What were the consequences?
• Are you a skilled planner? If not, how could you improve your planning abilities?
• Think of the best planner you know. Ask them how they do territory and account planning.

As the famous football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant, said “It’s not the will to win that matters…everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”

To learn more about territory and account planning software applications that work within Salesforce.com, visit www.territoryplan.com or see us on the Salesforce.com AppExchange at http://bit.ly/hPTdDT and http://bit.ly/eCZcFR.

Good Luck and Good Selling!

Guerilla Sales: 3 Key Account Research Steps Your Competitor Is Not Doing

So, your hard work in prospecting has paid off and you’ve landed an appointment with a big, publicly traded company.

To prepare, you’ve scanned through the latest press releases and the annual report, but you want to go one level deeper to make sure you stand well ahead any competitors.

Your extra effort will be well worth it. If you close this account, it could mean becoming the next sales superstar at your company!

That’s why we wrote this article. By following these three non-conventional steps, you’re going to show your prospect that you’ve done your homework and you merit their business.

Step 1: Study the Latest Investor Presentations

Public companies are required to present to shareholders and analysts at least every quarter. Many do it more than once a quarter.

These presentations are usually available to the general public for free. To access them, simply go to the company’s website and click on the Investors tab (or equivalent). Presentations to investors can be found on the “Presentations” tab (or similar).

Read one or two of their latest presentations (usually in PDF format). While these presentations highlight financial information, they will also be great resources for information on strategies and goals.

See an example of McKesson Corporation’s recent investor presentation by clicking here (PDF document).

Step 2: Read the Company’s Latest Earnings Call Transcript

Second, read the company’s latest one (or two) earnings call transcripts. These written transcripts can be a BIG eye-opener.

That’s because during the call, CEO’s typically share their latest strategies as well as their biggest challenges and pains. This information can be like digging up gold for a savvy salesperson, so make sure you do this step. It can pay off in a huge way.

Earnings call transcripts can be found for free at Seeking Alpha. Simply type the company name in the search box on the top right. As an example, here is the last earnings call transcript for McKesson’s Q4 2011 Results.

Step 3: Read The wikinvest Profile

Lastly, you can read the company profile on wikivest. This is a gem of a website that provides you with a good snapshot of a company’s basic information, strategies and challenges – for free! Simply type the company name in the search box on the upper left.

As an example, take a look at the wikinvest profile for McKesson Corp.

Conclusion:

These steps may take a little bit more work on your part, but it can pay off exponentially. Think about it: just one intelligent question on your part can make the difference between getting blown off and taking the opportunity to the next level.

The extra digging will also put you head and shoulders above any competitor going after the same deal (who did zero or minimal research).

Thanks for reading and we wish you happy hunting!

This was written by Silvia Quintanilla; this month’s guest author.

About Silvia Quintanilla

Silvia Quintanilla is President and Chief Sales Detective of Industry Gems, a custom sales intelligence company dedicated to helping salespeople win large deals with Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies. Learn more about us at www.industrygems.com.

If you sell solutions to the Fortune 1000, Silvia invites you to sign up for our Sales Gems Triggered Events newsletter at www.industrygems.com (subscription box on top left hand corner). In each report, we highlight the best “door opening” news that can help you get your foot in the door at a big account.

Copyright © 2011, Silvia Quintanilla & Industry Gems
Please include this copyright notice when reprinting this article. Please link back to this site when reprinting or quoting.