Rocket Fuel - What is a Sales Plan?
I'm going to continue on from my sales tip of last week, when we were looking at growing revenue and I spoke about looking back before you go forward. I promised you I'd talk a little about sales planning, so here it is!
I'm going to continue on from my sales tip of last week, when we were looking at growing revenue and I spoke about looking back before you go forward.
I promised you I'd talk a little about sales planning, so here it is!
What is a sales plan?
A sales plan is a visual representation of your goals and what you want to achieve for your business going forward. It's something that you could write down in a spreadsheet to keep things simple, or there are lots of planning tools or online software that you can use.
I prefer to use a spreadsheet - I like to keep it really simple!
So, what we do when we create a sales plan is we break it down month by month so we have a whole year to view. Then we build in the revenue that we want to achieve.
Because I have lots of fractions to my business (sales training, consultancy, the Sales Club) I look at what I would like to earn from each of those, and I look at all the activities I know that work for my business to generate that revenue, and I plan that into my months.
For example, if I wanted to promote my Generating Sales via LinkedIn workshop, I know the activities that I can do to fill this workshop, and I'll plan those activities in to make sure that happens: I promote it on social media, I attend networking meetings, and all those good things.
The thing that I really like about a sales plan is it gives you that helicopter view and control of your business.
We're coming up to the start of a new financial year, so it's a really good time to sit and think about what you want to achieve this year, get your goals in place, and really start using your historical data (as I mentioned in last week's sales tip) to help plan your business forward.
I hope that helps!
If you'd like a basic sales template to work from, I have something that I will happily send to you. Just email julie@thesalesace.co.uk, and I'll send it over to you!
See you all next week!
