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The Complete Sales Planning Guide

The Complete Sales Planning Guide for B2B Companies
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Companies invest considerable time in disseminating strategic plans into sales and marketing strategies. The sales strategies are often confused with sales planning, believing they are the same. This complete guide to sales planning sets you on the right path for growth.

The sales strategy is a roadmap that defines how a business plans to approach its target market, including a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses. It analyses market trends, identifies opportunities, and devises plans to capitalise on those findings.

A sales plan is about the execution of the sales strategy. The human resources required, the market coverage, the account allocation, and new business acquisition.

The development of sales plans is an erroneous task that, more often than not, is completed with adjustments made to the previous years. There is little change to the coverage, territories, and accounts defaulted to salespeople in locations. This type of planning enables them to maintain their established procedures to optimise consistency and reduce disturbances for their sellers.

There is a lack of clean-slate thinking and adoption of new practices, including software adoption, to evaluate potential gains for the company. Some individuals may be unaware that improved approaches exist.

In many companies, the presentation of a roll-over-styled plan is often accepted as management places a significant emphasis on sales execution. Their concern is, “Did we make our number?” They believe their current structure and processes do not require examination or adjustment.

The company’s management style is conditioned in its responses to the completion of each quarter and year. Salespeople are compensated for closing deals when they deliver their numbers. Where subpar performance is delivered, sales managers frequently scrutinise even the most inconsequential sales activities for vulnerabilities.

However, maintaining alignment between sales strategy and planning is the cornerstone for these endeavours. Planning for sales has significant effects on team performance. Poor planning can significantly impede the progress of an entire company. Where changes are made to existing plans, there can be repercussions such as:

  • Sales representatives lose selling time and become frustrated when territories and quota plans are released late.
  • As soon as plans are executed, many are erroneous and require correction, depriving your representatives of productive time and devouring analyst resources.
  • Poorly designed quotas demotivate some representatives, while others effortlessly surpass their targets and earn exorbitant commissions.
  • Certain sales representatives will inevitably depart from the company due to planning they perceive as unjust or capricious.
  • Insufficient visibility results in coverage gaps and overlooked opportunities.
  • Misalignments between sales resources and market opportunities contribute to diminished success rates, reduced deal volumes, and extended deal life cycles.

To this end, many sales managers attempt to keep plans as close as possible to the prior year to keep sales stabilised. But is that good for the company and growth?

To download your copy of the Complete Sales Planning Guide, click on the image below.

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About the Author: Adele Crane

A leader in Implementation Consulting.
CEOs and Managing Directors have relied on Adele Crane to solve challenges with the performance of their sales and marketing since 1990. Her consulting experience in delivering results in 90-120 days is unprecedented by any other known sales and marketing consulting professional in the world. As an author of 3 acclaimed books, appearances on major media, and publications in USA, NZ and Australia, Adele’s experience brings fresh thinking and contemporary practices to business.