When going about sales, planning is essential—if you fail to plan, you effectively plan to fail! This is the warning that Benjamin Franklin has given us, and now, we must take it to heart.
Businesses are popping up quickly and disappearing even faster. With the ever-changing landscape of technology, a simple mistake can spell the end of a company. As such, planning is essential, and today, it has been more critical than ever before.
In this article, we're going to focus on planning specifically for your sales, helping you achieve your goals and grow your organization:
With so many daily tasks to be done, you can easily find yourself overwhelmed with the things, and you find that you end up with little to no time to plan for sales. Unfortunately, not all of these daily tasks bring significant results to the table, which may be something you do not realize.
As such, take the time to sit back and look at activities that do make a difference. For instance, if your team needs to renew some contracts, dedicate the time to do so. If you find a need in building business-to-customer relationships, then focus on that.
In other words, by allocating time in the schedule for activities that matter, you can bring in the results you want. In this case, it would be a significant boost to your sales.
It may sound like creativity and planning do not go well together, but it does. If you are trying to improve your sales results, planning to fit in some time to try out new strategies and approaches is a must. Sure, some will fail, but not all of your methods will. Even if you do fail, you gain invaluable insights on what did not work. This way, you can avoid repeating the same mistake in the future.
For the strategies that did work, you can build on them, test their results, and see whether they've boosted your sales. If they do, then go ahead and pair them with your regular activities! If not, phase them out or tweak them.
Planning isn't all about setting big goals for your upcoming sales efforts. It is also all about knowing how to hit these numbers in the first place. To do this, you will need to acquire the right set of skills. For example, if you find your team not doing well in looking for new prospects, training them with the right prospecting skills can help with the issue.
Put simply, giving your team the right skills to achieve significant sales goals will be the only way for you to succeed. Without the skills, it is much like driving a car to a particular destination without accelerating.
By planning your sales even before you begin, you set yourself up for success! That being said, do follow the tips we've shared above when planning your sales efforts.
Things like acquiring new skills or planning the schedule will go a long way in helping you maximize your time and efforts on the suitable activities that make a difference. This will reduce time and money spent on things that do not matter and dedicate more resources to activities that will help your company grow.
Mitch Cammidge offers business coaching services in Edmonton to help businesses run and perform better. If you are looking for business coaching programs to improve your sales and more, reach out to us today!