Sales Planning

Sales Planning Is The Key To Profitable Sales Growth

Sales plans flow from the important and fundamental process of strategic planning. Unfortunately, the targets that management sets often fail to evolve into sales plans that individual salespersons can use effectively for their own sales planning.

Countless salespeople begin their selling year without a firm sales plan or "selling blueprint" of their own. With hazy goals and fuzzy planning, their success is often illusive. When Commonwealth's Sales Planning For Profits™ process becomes a normal part of your sales planning culture, management can eliminate this problem. See Alan McAnally's article, "Sales Plans For The Individual Salesperson" published in Sales and Marketing Excellence.

Sales Planning For Profits™ - What Is It ?

Every salesperson needs a well-defined plan to maximize his or her success during the year. Sales Planning For Profits™ formalizes the key elements of a professional, individualized business plan, and provides both the process and the guidelines to implement it in your company. The format, customized to your own sales and business environment, allows each salesperson to begin every new sales year with a proven roadmap for success.

If you would like to see the content outline of a sample individual business plan, click on the following link: Sales Planning For Profits™

What Does Commonwealth Do?

We work with sales management and examine how you presently accomplish sales planning. Taking into account the factors that make your business and sales situation unique, we develop an individual business plan format for your company to use. Normally comprised of two parts, Sales Planning For ProfitsTM calls upon each salesperson to (1) review the current sales year and (2) plan, target, prioritize and strategize for the upcoming year. As a beginning, examining the present year can be extremely valuable; it forces a candid assessment of issues, opportunities and competitive factors that can impact on future sales success.

In the second part, primary emphasis is placed on customer or client targeting and the priority that these business opportunities should receive. Following this is a detailed plan of the strategy and tactics the individual salesperson intends to use to attain his or her goals. These activities are specific and relevant, and are at the heart of the Sales Planning For ProfitsTM program.

Implementing Sales Planning For Profits™

Once management has approved and agreed upon the plan's content, process steps and time frame for implementation, Commonwealth develops a detailed set of instructions for completing the plan. These instructions are normally given to the individual salesperson three to four months prior to the beginning of the new selling year. Following this, we prepare a customized template which yields a standardized format for your business planning. This template ensures uniformity of content throughout your sales group and it also minimizes salesperson's administrative work in preparing a professional document. We work with you and your salespeople throughout the process and stay involved until they successfully complete the plan.

Here Is How You Benefit From Sales Planning

There are a host of benefits for both your company and the individual salesperson when you incorporate a Sales Planning For Profits™ planning process. It would:

• Ensure that your corporate goals and objectives are aligned with those of the sales organization.
• Define prospect versus client/customer responsibilities.
• Provide standard methodology, procedure, instructions and formats for planning use prior to the beginning of each sales year.
• Foster sales teamwork throughout your company.
• Prioritize and focus your entire sales effort.
• Strengthen the qualification criteria for new business opportunities.
• Ensure greater salesperson accountability and initiative.
• Serve as a blueprint for sales efforts during the selling year.