Critical Skills For Sales Leaders - Sales Performance Planning to Increase Revenue

How do you get your sales team to generate the greatest amount of revenue, consistently, year after year? Most sales managers think the answer lies in being aggressive, doing more sales activity, proactive business development, keeping the pipeline full and increasing the abilities of your salespeople so that they are more effective on the ground.

What about the value of better planning? World-class sales organisations establish aggressive sales objectives to achieve the best possible results. To accomplish these aggressive targets, they develop clear and effective sales strategy and Performance Plans. The Sales Performance Plan guides the sales leader's Sales Performance Coaching efforts, providing both them and the salesperson with a clear track to follow.

An effective Sales-Performance Plan can work to reduce your sales revenue peaks and valleys.

Generally the Sales-Performance Plan is an offshoot of the marketing plan, which is a critical component of the overall company business plan. Simply stated, the marketing plan defines your target market and outlines specific strategies which will attract, promote and sell your product or service. The Sales-Performance Plan details the essential steps that are required in order to retain the existing customer base, along with the specifics of how to reach potential customers and convert them from prospects into paying customers.

These plans should include execution details. Specifically featuring: who is doing what, by when, how and with what resources. The plan may also include details on how to deal with roadblocks and other obstacles. An effective Sales Performance Plan anticipates and create contingency plans against competitive threats, delays, etc

Leading sales managers have a healthy obsession with planning to ensure they reach their targets and better planning is the key to producing consistent and predictable sales numbers. An effective Sales-Performance Plan is made up of a variety of issues depending on your own individual sales environment.

Elements of a Sales-Performance Plan

A well constructed Sales-Performance Plan will not deliver sales results on its own. As with any plan, it must be actioned in order to produce a result. However, a well developed Sales-Performance Plan will direct every sales activity, greatly increasing the likelihood of the salesperson achieving their sales goals. The Sales-Performance Plan details the key objectives and the actions required to achieve the salesperson's goals.

• More effective Sales-Performance Plans will create, build and nurture a healthy sales pipeline.

• A well thought out and well-managed Sales-Performance Plan ensures your salespeople meet revenue goals and attain their sales quotas.

• A good Sales-Performance Plan will also include development and up-skilling objectives that you and your individual salespeople have determined to be lacking in order for them to achieve their sales goals.

The Sales-Performance Plan contains a brief description of the actions required in order to achieve the goals. The Sales-Performance Plan must briefly specify the following:

• Who: Who are the individuals responsible for achieving what needs to be done?
• What: What is required to be done to achieve the goal?
• When: By when must the required actions be done?
• Tactics: What tactics will be required to achieve the goal?
• Resources: What resources will be required to achieve the goal?
• Measures: How will success be measured, by whom and when?

None of your salespeople should ever begin their year, month or sales week without a clearly specified sales plan. The plan must lay out and detail their key objectives and action plans to achieve their desired results. Once the plan is submitted and agreed upon, it needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.

Target elements to plan for may include:

• Increase $ volume

• Increase the % in sales volume year over year

• Increase sales of specific products/services

• Increase average deal size

• Decrease average length of sale

• Increase $ volume by customer

• Opening new accounts targets

• Margin

• Ratio improvement

• Key account increases in existing product purchases

• Key account new product purchases

• Customer retention goals

• New product objectives

The Sales-Performance Plan needs to be split up into 4 X 90 DAY ACTION PLANS with set dates and strategies for their execution. The plan must be simply broken down and laid out for easy reference and follow up by you as the sales leader. Territory Sales-Performance Plans may also include some of the above measures as well as other goals for growing the territory.

Territory Sales-Performance Plans Territory Planning (a mix of customers or key accounts and prospects in a specified geographic location) is the process a sales team uses to analyze and plan around key accounts and opportunities within their assigned sales territory. For a Territory plan to effectively drive revenue, it must include both strategy and tactics and detailed actions for delivery of each objective.

A typical Territory Plan may include:

• Analysis and objective setting around the company's products and services, market segments, competition, trends, and profiles of key accounts.

• Specific key objectives

• Opportunity/threat analysis

• Account identification and estimates of account potential

• Account situational analysis and account strategy

• Detail on territory/account tactics - What to sell, for what price and by when?

• Key account increases in existing product purchases

• Key account new product purchases

• Customer retention goals

• Channel development

• Deeper key account penetration

• Re-establishing abandoned customers

Developing, reviewing and regularly updating your Sales Plan is critical to consistent sales success.