How do I write a Sales Plan that Drives Explosive Growth?

As I work with several business owners who want to experience explosive sales growth, ( growth greater than 20% year over year) we first write or update their three-to-five-year strategic plans, and then we develop a sales plan to execute and deliver the growth results they desire in revenue, market share, and profit margins.

I just met with a new client last week who wants to update their strategic plan and wanted to know the steps we use in creating a sales plan. They have several parts of a strategic growth plan. They shared their revenue and profit objectives over the next five years. They shaped the “where” they plan to grow sales and profits but failed to address strategy, the “how.” We agreed to conduct voice of customer research and develop their “how” with current customer insights, transaction data, and trends.

Creating a comprehensive sales plan and strategy is essential for driving explosive growth in market share, revenue, and profits.

Most teams communicate their growth objectives, but many need to write a sales plan and sales plan by salesperson. Several teams deliver goals to their salespeople and ask them to “make it happen.” Some salespeople can do this but most would value a plan that helps guide their behaviors each day.

Here are the top 12 steps to guide you through this process to writing a sales plan that results in explosive growth.

1. Define Clear Objectives and Your Strategy to Grow Revenue and Profits 2. Understand Your Customers and Markets 3. Analyze Current Sales Transaction Data 4. Develop Buyer Personas and Messaging 5. Set SMART Goals 6. Craft a Value Proposition That Resonates with Decision Makers 7. Develop Sales Strategies 8. Create an Action Plan 9. Determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 10. Implement Sales Tools and Technologies to Support Plan 11. Train Your Sales Team 12. Monitor, Evaluate, and Adjust

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each step.

1. Define Clear Objectives and your strategy to grow revenue and profits

We would like to start by outlining your sales goal.

Then we dive deeper into where you expect sales to come from, write that into our sales plan, and plan by each sales territory.

Do you plan to introduce new products? Do you plan to grow through acquisitions? Do you plan to sell current products in new markets? How much of your sales growth will grow organically from current customers? What is your goal for new products and services? What is your sales goal for new customers? What is your sales growth goal from large key accounts?

What are other goals you have?

Are you aiming to increase market share? Do you plan to increase profit margins and how much? If you are acquiring a business, what are your goals for that event and when? Are you changing a channel strategy?

Clear, measurable objectives provide direction and benchmarks for success.

2. Understand Your Customers and Market

Conduct thorough voice of customer and market research. Identify your target audience, their needs, preferences, and pain points. Understand the competitive landscape and pinpoint opportunities for differentiation.

What market, economic, and/or global trends are occurring, and how might your customers feel about them?

How are these trends and often constraints impacting your customers’ bottom line?

We reviewed the insights we gathered from interviewing customers and the prospects we quoted but have yet to win.

We review our strengths, constraints, and weaknesses.

We clearly understand your current state and the current state of your company, markets, and customers.

3. Analyze Current Sales Transaction Data

Review historical sales data to identify trends, strengths, and improvement areas. This analysis helps set realistic targets and understand what has worked or failed in the past.

Many teams build their sales plan from the top, the goal, down. We recommend building your sales plan from the customers up. If we find a gap between what the company needs and the goals we built from the customer up we build plans to close those gaps.

What are your sales by customer descending? What are your growth goals for each? What growth opportunities can we accomplish with the top 20% of customers representing 80% of revenues? What is our close rate on new business? What is our sales cycle today? What is the lifetime value of a customer? Are customers buying one or two products and services or our entire portfolio? What are your sales team’s plans for growing your B and C accounts? What new accounts are in your top 20% of revenue in the last 12 months? What accounts were in your top 20% but are not today, and why? What products deliver the most revenue in the last 12 months? What is our Net Profit by Customer? What products used to be among your top products but are not today, and why? What is our Net Profit by Product?

We have found dollars in your data if you know where to look.

Gathering the above helps identify trends and actionable insights for our sales plan.

Sales plans must be written leveraging actionable insights from the data we have not assumptions or how we have always done things.

4. Develop Buyer Personas and Messaging

Create detailed buyer personas for each segment of your target market. These profiles should include demographic information, buying behavior, challenges, and preferences. This helps in tailoring your sales approach.

We will develop four to five or more decision-maker personas and train your sales team on how to have conversations that lead to revenue with each persona based on what is important to them.

This becomes critical in growing our current accounts as well as winning targeted new customers by territiry.

5. Set SMART Goals

Establish Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) sales goals. These could include targets for revenue, number of new customers, retention rates, or market expansion.

We establish leading and lagging Key Performance Indicators. ( KPIs)

Lagging indicators often include sales, sales by account, profit margin, number of closed orders, net profit by customer, and average dollars per orders closed.

Leading indicators include the number of meetings held. Number of quotes delivered. Number of customer tours of our facility. Number of outbound calls, number of meetings scheduled, number of meetings that turned into a quote.

We have found leading and lagging KPIs are often unique to each company. For example, one of my manufacturing clients found when clients visit and tour their facility, it increases sales and improves retention and customer satisfaction, so we created a KPI for strategic account visits.

6. Craft a Value Proposition That Resonates with Decision Makers

Define a compelling value proposition explaining why your product or service is superior. This should address the unique benefits and solutions you offer that meet your target market’s needs. We develop a value proposition for our company and specific messaging for each decision-making persona.

We must connect the impact we deliver to our customers in these value messages and train sales how and when to use them.

Example

My company’s Value proposition is below.

We help leaders of manufacturing companies drive explosive growth in revenue, profit margins, market share, and shareholder value through our no smoke and mirrors explosive growth process.

We aim to have the person we are speaking with say…tell me more.

Then we share a success story or two from other clients like them that share the process and the outcome they too can realize.

We conduct discovery and qualify and collaborate with the decision-makers.

In my practice, those personas include the roles below.

CEO CFO CRO President Business Owner Learning and Development Leader VP Sales Sales Manager Private Equity Investor

We customize our value proposition based on how the services we deliver can be felt (create value for them) by each of the above based on our knowledge of what is important to them and what we learned in discovery calls.

7. Develop Sales Strategies

Outline the strategies you will use to achieve your sales goals. This could include direct sales, through independent representatives, channel partners, dealers, distributors, online marketing, partnerships, or trade shows. Each strategy should align with your overall objectives and target market.

Here we review our competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and positioning.

We build our strategies based on how we position our products and services compared to our competitors.

We emphasize our distinctive competence and reinforce the impact our product or service will have on the customer’s bottom line.

Leveraging the insights from voice of customer research , trends and transaction data we develop our strategies.

We must align our sales strategies with the growth strategies in our strategic business growth plan.

8. Create an Action Plan

Break down your strategies into actionable steps ( tactics). Assign tasks, deadlines, and responsible parties. An action plan ensures everyone on the sales team knows exactly what needs to be done and by when.

We have seen the best success when we include the salespeople in designing their actions and timelines.

The big difference in when I help build sales plans compared to how most people build plans is getting the salesperson involved and building the plans from our accounts and markets up not a waterfall down plan. Most companies start with the company goal and then assign sales goals and monthly revenue and KPI targets.

The trouble with the model of giving the salespeople a plan as many teams still do today, is if the salesperson does not hit the objectives, they were your goals, it was your plan not their own. We see this when we assess salespeople and they have low accountability and motivation. Often at the root is being asked to deliver on a plan they had not input in when developed. When we include salespeople and collaborate, the goals and KPIs are theirs, and they are accountable to them.

9. Determine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Identify the KPIs that will help you measure progress towards your goals. Standard sales KPIs include conversion rates, sales cycle length, customer acquisition cost, and average deal size, as we discussed above. We want to track results, lagging indicators, and activities and behaviors that lead to sales or leading indicators.

We then establish KPIs by year, by quarter, by month and by week.

Again, I suggest coaching your salespeople. They must write the goals and KPIs and when they plan to achieve them.

Your sales managers will have the goals of their salespeople and a few others like…

Meetings attended with salespeople.

The number of coaching calls with salespeople.

Number of customer interviews.

Sales manager training sessions attended.

10. Implement Sales Tools and Technologies to Support Plan

Invest in sales tools and technologies that enhance efficiency and effectiveness to achieve the plan.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, marketing automation, and sales analytics tools can provide valuable insights and streamline processes.

We develop data dashboards that deliver actionable insights, so salespeople spend more time selling than doing data research. The dashboards should show their progress on key goals and, with a couple of clicks, help them find actionable insights in areas not to our plan.

Working with product management and marketing we develop launch plans and share them with salespeople to support their goals.

We develop tools like email marketing sequences, success story case studies and presentations that emphasize our strategic value drivers identified in our strategic plan.

11. Train Your Sales Team

Please make sure your sales team is well-trained and equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge. We want our clients to refrain from guessing in such a critical area as sales skills, so we conduct a Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis.

We look at 21 sales skills, beliefs, and motivations. The assessment instrument assesses knowledge of skills, motivation, desire, and outlook. We look at skills, motivations, and beliefs to help us identify any limiting beliefs.

We also use this same tool to assess the sales managers and determine their skill levels in recruiting, coaching, and coaching sales through the sales pipeline.

We answer questions like …

What percentage of the sales managers’ time do they coach today?

What do they coach?

Is coaching on demand, or does it follow a coaching cadence…and much more?

Once we gather unbiased skills, beliefs, and motivations we can prescribe training, coaching, process improvements and tools for sales managers.

We often find business leaders create strategic solid business growth plans but need more training, systems, and tools to execute them.

Regular training sessions on product knowledge, sales techniques, and industry trends are crucial for maintaining a high-performing team.

12. Monitor, Evaluate, and Adjust

Please keep an eye on your sales performance against the established KPIs. Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies and make necessary adjustments. I have yet to help write a sales plan that did not need adjusting after we started implementing.Flexibility and responsiveness to market changes are essential to sustained growth. The goal is our goal, and it does not change, but how we reach or surpass it may change as we gather more insights.

By following these 12 steps, you can develop a robust sales plan and strategy that drives explosive growth in market share and profits.

Clear objectives, thorough market understanding, and continuous evaluation and adjustment are the cornerstones of a successful sales strategy.

Does your team need to update your strategic growth plan?

Do you need a sales plan?

Would you like to update your sales plan?

Do you need a marketing plan to support the sales plan?

Do you have sales goals and plans for each salesperson?

Let’s schedule a call if you want to improve your revenue, market share, shareholder value, and profit margins with plans that drive explosive growth.

For those of you with expereince writing sales pans what step have you found to be the most difficult?