Have you heard of the six P’s?
Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance? As you know this is true, here is a step-by-step process for preparing yourself before and after your in call selling process.
In step one you will take a macro view of your territory and organisation yourself for maximum efficiency.
In step two you will prepare yourself for the actual sales call for maximum effectiveness.
Finally in step three you will review you call against your objectives, to help prepare for your next call.

STEP ONE – Territory organisation and planning

You could perform your territory organisation and planning at the Sales Strategy stage , as this could highlight particular geographical areas that you could target. Otherwise, during your Prospecting phase , you could divide your time and resources according to your planned territory.

Territory

Most professional sales people will have a geographical territory to work on. This could be anything ranging from Continents down to Streets, depending on the nature of your business.
For the purposes of this illustration we will assume your territory is region within a nation, for instance a common one in the UK would be the Northwest of England, including North Wales.

Sub-territories

The first step would be to divide your territory into four equal sub-territories, based on the market size of the prospective customers in that sub-territory. If at this stage you don’t know what the potential business in your territory is, just divide it based on the size of the population numbers or conurbation sizes. Label these territories A-D.

Next, if you can get hold of a physical map, wall chart or atlas of this area, mark on the territories and the location of known customers or prospects.
There are several ways to do the next stage, where you allocate a day in the week to each territory. I will highlight the simplest here. I will show you other methods on later blog posts.
This method is a great way if it doesn’t matter that you only hit one sub-territory on a particular day of the week. In this way A is Monday, B is Tuesday and so on. Friday is free for Admin, Office Work or whatever.

Which customers & prospects to visit?

In the next stage, you use a four week journey planner like the one below, to start to allocate your current customers.
Your criteria for allocating customers and prospects to particular days are as follows:

How often to visit them? Do you need or wish to visit this customer quarterly, monthly or sooner? You can use the ABC or Pareto methods to prioritise how often to visit. The ABC method is where you separate your customers into three groups depending on their monetary value to you.

Let’s say your biggest customer is worth £100,000 to you in sales per year. You could give customers of £50K plus status A. Customers of £10-£50K would be B and those less than £10K would be C. in this case you can then choose to visit your A’s monthly, B’s quarterly and C’s just receive a phone call.
The Pareto method or 80:20 method is based on the theory that 80% of your business comes from just 20% of your customers. You would then choose to maximise your time with these customers.

Your task, when you are filling in your journey planner, should be to maximise customer-facing time and minimise travel. Your objective when you are prospecting, is then to start to fill in the gaps in your planner with prospect calls

STEP TWO – Pre Contact Objectives & Planning

Pre contact objectives and planning is deciding what you aim to do and how you aim to do it. In a way this you can link it to your macro level Sales Strategy.
As you can see below, you want to have a What and a How, to be focussed and competent.

Contact Objectives

When should we set objectives? We can set objectives at different times:
Post customer contact ie. Directly after a visit.
The day before the contact.
There are benefits to both of these. After every customer visit, it is fresh in mind. However conditions or opportunities may have changed since the last visit and so the day before could be beneficial. Another option could be to set the objective directly after a visit and then review it the day before the call.

Test criteria for objectives.

Clearly define your objectives, so there is no ambiguity. Set the objectives against a recognised standard that is clear for both you and the company.
Next, your objectives should be measurable. This means it should be clear when it is achieved. They should also be performance driven.
It is great to have stretch goals and objectives, but they should be achievable and realistic on the one hand but motivating on the other. Stretching objectives test attitude and can foster personal growth. They also generate business growth.

Check list

I’m a big fan of creating checklists as they support self-discipline. Consider the following checklist for your in-contact sales call objectives:

Review the account plan. Where is this customer against its sales target?
Review last contact
Note your objective
Prepare yourself for the Analysis & Investigation step of your in contact activity
What information do you need and what do you want to know?
Plan your questions. Write them out beforehand.
What will be the key point of your Proposal?
What objections do you anticipate?
How you can Close?

STEP THREE – Post Contact Review

In practising a skill to mastery, continuous improvement is what you are after. This is where small incremental improvements are compounded over time. A useful tool you can use to help you in this is the Personal Improvement Grid. After every performance you can review your results and ask yourself the 4 questions, which are designed to root out any areas for improvement or where you can improve further.
This is a great tool to use after every sales call. It is simple and should n’t take too long, but it is very powerful if done habitually. If you answer these questions honestly for yourself and then put into action your findings, you will grow and improve immeasurably.

What did I do well – and why?

What went wrong – and why?
Then what could I do differently – and how?

What could I do that is new – and when?

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Set your objectives and targets to first develop your sales strategy. First start with your business objectives and break these down to individual sales targets. If you are a solo entrepreneur, setting your sales objectives is straight forward, as these are a function of your company objectives. If you have a sales team, you would have to break down these company objectives even further. For example, the Sales Manager would have her sales objectives, The sales teams would then have their individual objectives. Objectives of course don’t need to be financial. They could be to do with policies, such as answer customer queries within a certain time.

Forecasting

In larger businesses, there may be top-down and bottom-up forecasting. For instance, the sales force will forecast future sales, based on their knowledge of the market. Higher management would then reconcile this against the forecasts. There is usually an end of year tug of war until they agree a forecast for the following year.

Personal Targets

Once your have done the forecast, you can then set personal targets for the sales team individuals or yourself if you are a solo entrepreneur. These targets could be stretch targets, with compensation and commissions based on achievement. Targets could be end of year sales, monthly sales. Here is an example of a clear personal objective:

To achieve an overall Net Sales target of £726,464, which is to include New Business growth of £20,000 (i.e. accounts or new product sales into existing customers) by the end of Q4. This to be monitored quarterly against figures published in the Monthly Report. A gap action plan should be produced if sales fall >5% below plan. Another example of an objective is Administration: Ensure all Territory and Customer Admin (e.g. Visit Reports, Special Pricing Forms, Price Increases, Expenses, Mileage, Stock Requisition and Monthly Reports) is completed On Target In Full (OTIF) to standards set by Regional Sales Manager and communicated to all relevant internal and external contacts on-going.

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Sales Strategy

A strategy is used to achieve an objective. Before you dive headlong into the selling process, you need to have a strategy. A Sales Strategy could be part of an overall business plan. This is where you can translate your yearly goals into projects, campaigns and even daily habits. Why should you have a sales strategy plan? Although you can be successful in sales without a strategy or business plan, it is easier to succeed when you have one.

Reasons to develop a sales strategy?

Why Bother Having a Sales Strategy? Well here are some valid reasons to spend some time on a sales strategy. Even if you are an individual salesperson, your strategy will help you become successful.

Plan of Action

The first reason is so you can develop a plan of action. A plan of action will give you a road map, from where you are now, to where you want to be. This is not the same as your goals or objectives, which we will talk about later. Your goals and objectives should be fixed, whereas your plan of action should be fluid. Just like a SatNav system, your destination is fixed, but your route may change depending on the traffic etc. In just the same way, your business goals will be fixed and yet your plan of action may change. It is still import to have your plan though.

Meet Objectives.

As I said before it is important to have business objectives and a sales strategy is a way you can meet those objectives.

Provides Motivation

A sales strategy provides motivation. Its Friday afternoon 4pm and you feel that you have worked hard this week. The little tempting voices ask you “why not slope off early and enjoy the weekend?” But what about the weekly outbound sales call target? You are still ten phone calls short. If you don’t hit these, you will be behind on your monthly target. Do this a few months running and that’s a recipe for disaster. So, your weekly target, which is part of your overall sales strategy, motivates you to make those calls. It makes you do the key things you need to do but don’t feel like doing.

Who needs to create a sales strategy plan?

Sales Manager

It may be the Sales Manager of the Small to Medium Enterprise, who may or may not have a small team of Sales Representatives reporting into them. A unifying sales strategy will help the team to focus. It can create some healthy competition.

Entrepreneur

The Entrepreneur, Sole Trader or Small Business Owner should also develop a sales strategy. As part of the overall Business Plan, a sales strategy is a key feature of the business plan. It will help when forecasting sales and therefore the key financials of the business. This could be critical if applying for finance.

Individual Salesperson

If you are an individual Salesperson,as I said before, get your own strategy. Treat your job as your own Business.

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