Now halfway through April, a jam-packed month always in my calendar marked by religion, Marathon Monday and the Red Sox...all in that order... I am today reminded not only by my mailing of various checks to the IRS, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and "The Live Free or Die" State of New Hampshire, but also by the loud ticking of my Quota Clock in the most important quarter of any sales year. - Q1 is about my sales plan kickoff, starting new tactics and implementing new tools
- Q2 is about the adjusting and refining of what we learned in Q1 and gearing up.
- Q3 is about implementing those adjustments...even in the heat the summa'
- Q4 is about reaping the benefits of my Q2 replanning and the detailed playbooks
Of critical importance in April is the ability of the sales manager/director/vp/whatever to take a day away with the team to analyze Q1's results, talk through in great detail ongoing tactics, review the draft of a detailed May, June, and July playbook and polish up the use of your value propositions or another critical sales tool in your Sales Toolbox.
Gee, Jack, I can't afford to take a day away with the team!
Ok, then do you have the time to recover if you miss your numbers?
Jack, you don't seem to understand, we're just too busy!
Ok, what about meeting on a Saturday? What about a half day ending with dinner?
Last week, I took just three hours with a small team of a great CEO and the head of sales, both of whom are superb individual salespeople deep into the details of sales, their products and their salespeople. During those three hours, we mapped out a more refined sales process, analyzed the data from their Hubspot CRM, which we had sold them and installed and worked through an improved value proposition focused on their core strength. Friday found me taking the day with the global senior management of a very large company to work through organizational growth and sales structure opportunities. In both of these cases, the key to success was setting aside offsite time to meet, everyone committing to doing the necessary prep work, taking concentrated time to objectively work, debate and argue through various options, and then come to 100% commitments about the forward paths. Once you take prepared time to work through solutions with experienced sales management, it always works!
2023 SALES PLANNING-NONE OF US CAN CONTROL RESULTS!
Whether you're a burgeoning entrepreneur or a seasoned corporate salesperson or manager, you need a sales plan! It's that simple, and a sales plan is not a collection of analytics and financial numbers that end up in spreadsheets. Metrics are critical, of course, but they're just the results.
- None of us as salespeople can control the economy or our competitors!
- None of us as salespeople can control metrics, KPIs or any forecasted result!
- All we can control are our own sales action plans!
CONNECT WITH ME AT ANY TIME FOR SOME QUICK Q&A IDEAS!
Here's something to get you started in our new edition of our Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2023! You can click there for a free copy or, of course, just connect with me at any time, and I'll email you a copy and I'm always available for questions, comments or just catching up. There's never a cost for a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about Sales!
www.derbymanagement.com
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.
