Planning For Sales Success

There many roads to sales success, but the surest way to prepare yourself for success rest on these tenants.

1.) Organization- knowing where client information is, client history and having sales tools readily available.

2.) Planning, Projecting, Forecasting- The bottom line on how successful you become is based on reaching and achieving sales goals and objectives. You must become adept at projecting and forecasting sales budgets. You must anticipate sales performance and set sales goals for yourself, months in advance. You set your own sales goal and set it much higher than management. For instance you should set your sales goals one year in advance on a monthly basis. You must determine management’s goal setting style and emulate that style in arriving at your monthly and yearly goals. Does management typically set your sales goal 10% over the prior year? Then you set your sales goal at 40% over the previous year. You set a much higher standard for yourself and you aggressively work toward achieving that goal.

When management finally sets your goals, you have already made their goal, because you have an entire year of pre-set goals. If you have done a good job organizing, planning and projecting, you have all the tools in place to reach your goals. Once you know what your goals are; you have a clear objective as to how you need to perform and what you need to do to get there.

The next step is developing an action plan or game plan. This is a crucial step toward reaching your defined sales goal. You must determine the following;

Who are your pre-sold accounts?

What accounts have promised to buy from you in the future?

Identify opportunites  from new customers and inactive customers

Indentify revenue from the previous year

Know your account base- Are they purchasing products from your competitors? How do you capture that revenue?

This  is the foundation of your sales strategy. Once you know what pre-existing sales are in place and how much revenue is involved, you are well on your way to reaching your goal. Typically, pre-sold accounts, including current and seasonal accounts, can represent anywhere between 0 to 90% of your sales. Your objective here is to grow the number of pre- sold accounts and raise the sold percentage. You do this by establishing yearly budgets for your accounts, anticipate trends and opportunities.

Your action plan should be to set up appointments with new accounts, inactive accounts, and accounts you plan to convert from other media  and put together proposals to help you get there. You always keep an eye out for opportunities maybe it is a follow-up call that you will need to make in two months. Keep score by adding revenue for that month in anticipation of the sale.

3.)Engage the customer- You must be engaging toward the customer. The customer must feel comfortable with you.  They do have to have a healthy appreciation for your product and your service, which it is up to you to convey. Above all they must trust you. There are a number of ways to do this. YOU MUST BECOME A NECESSITY TO THE ACCOUNT; BECAUSE YOU DELIVER RESULTS. IN ORDER TO DELIVER RESULTS YOU MUST DEMONSTRATE THAT YOU KNOW YOUR PRODUCT or SERVICE.

4.) Time is money and people do not have a lot of time. You must learn to quickly assess what the customer perceives as a need and suggest the product or service that will help the customer achieve that need. If you have done a good job conveying the value of your product, the customer will buy from you every time.  This perception is fostered and created entirely by you, so you must be persuasive and you must close, close, close throughout the sales process.

5.) Always leave a reason to follow-up with the customer. This creates an open opportunity for a return call.  The customer has already approved that you can follow-up with them and this gives you an opportunity to win the the contact as a customer.