Never prepared a trading plan? As the title of the article says, the steps are simple but that does not mean that the exercise is not demanding, especially if you are in your first sales plan or structured business planning. Luckily, you will find plenty of examples on the web to get you started.
The importance of each stage of the trading plan
The purpose of this article is to help you better understand the importance of each step in arriving at your sales plan, which in some way constitutes the realization of your sales vision for the year.
You will present the sales objectives that you have set for your business and describe the means that you intend to take to achieve them. While not perfect, this plan can help you take a more strategic overall approach to grow your business revenue.
For a business you have to build lean management system to control overall process, the sales plan can and should be kept simple and concise. It can be a few pages in Word, or even a simple spreadsheet, as long as the information and indicators are clear. I encourage you to use a collaboration tool that will make execution so much more efficient and understandable.
The important thing is to structure your sales and marketing efforts so that everyone on your team is moving in the same direction.
Here are four simple, yet challenging steps to create an effective business plan for your business:
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Define business goals
Start by identifying the goals you want to achieve. These can be targets for revenue growth, profitability, market development, and even strategic customers. Do you desire to introduce a new service or product? Improve your customer retention rate? Increase the closing rate of your proposals.
Feel free to write everything down. At this stage, do not limit yourself. When you’ve figured it out, discuss your goals with your team members and ask them to comment and elaborate on their thoughts. The main principle is that the whole team must adhere to the objectives since ultimately, the achievement or name of the latter will depend on adhesion.
Your team’s participation in the preparation of the plan will make employees feel involved and listened to, and this means greater capacity and motivation to implement the sales plan.
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Clarify your goals
When you have set your strategic objectives for the year, you should be able to specify the details, mergers and acquisitions consulting is required. If you’re targeting a new market – Ontario, for example – clearly indicate which regions you want to focus on. Now is the time to make sure your goals are realistic and, above all, measurable. Test your scenarios. Is there a demand for your product or service in this market? Who are the main competitors? Here again, you have another opportunity to involve your team by asking them to help find the information you need for the continuity of your plan.
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Assign resources
What do you think is feasible given your means? Is your structure solid? Do you think you need to recruit? What obstacles might arise? Is the realization of the plan the sole responsibility of sales and marketing or do you have to be able to rely on other departments, M&A advisor, external resources, and strategic partners? What is the level of investment to achieve each of your targets? Take the opportunity to take stock of your tools and systems. Are they up to date? Can your CRM system and processes support the business? What marketing resources do you have to support your sales team, support, and consultants?
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Define your key performance indicators
To know the level of success of your plan, you must measure your results using key performance indicators and where possible, gather the data in a dashboard with a specific view for the different stakeholders.
You’ll probably want to track revenue by rep and by region, or the number of proposals submitted vs. proposals accepted. For more efficiency and so that you can support your team, you will need to have a sales process with specific steps, from qualification to closing the sale.
Nobody wants complicated things. If you’re on your first sales plan, make a short list of goals and choose no more than three to five metrics and track them consistently, keeping in mind that week makes a month, month makes the quarter, and quarter makes the year. View your plan over 90-day phases rather than 12 months.
Communication is key. Hold periodic meetings with your team to update you on what is going well and any challenges. Be sure to foster and provoke open but relaxed discussions to make sure you get the facts straight and figure out where to invest time. Keep in mind that no matter how perfect your plan is, without good communication and collaboration, even the best plans fail.
Why You Need a Plan of Action
Businesses occasionally don’t take enough time to create an action plan before launching a project, which typically results in failure. If you haven’t heard, Benjamin Franklin allegedly famously said, “Failing to plan is preparing to fail.”
Your action plan will help you prioritize your tasks based on effort and impact because you are outlining all the steps you need to do.
You may prepare for upcoming challenges and stay on track by planning. Additionally, you can increase productivity and maintain concentration with a solid action plan.
Following are some advantages of an action plan you should be aware of:
- It provides you with a definite path. You will know exactly what to accomplish because an action plan outlines all of the steps that must be taken and the due dates for each one.
- Your motivation and commitment to the project will increase if your goals are documented and laid out in detail.
- You can monitor your advancement toward your objective with an action plan.
Manage the business action plan to stay in control
Often, planning is added to all our daily activities which are often related to operations. To maintain control of your plan, spread the planning process over a period you can manage and focus on one part of the plan at a time. The main thing is to see the progress. Keep your team in the action by providing leadership coaching and avoid crippling lame analyses.
Remember, your plan will never be perfect or static. Your business requires transformation every day to grow, and so does your sales plan. Trust yourself and ask for outside help to support you in this process. You will learn at an accelerated pace and after a month or two of implementation, you will want to add things and have the ability to make changes along the way.
