The Sales Performance Plan
How to get your sales team to consistently maximize revenue, year after year?
Most sales managers believe the answer lies in being aggressive, increasing sales activity, more proactive business development. The general idea is to keep the pipeline full and increase the abilities of the salespeople so that they are more effective on the ground.
Can this be achieved with better planning?
World-class sales organizations establish aggressive sales objectives to achieve the best possible results. To accomplish these targets, they develop clear and effective sales strategies and performance plans. This plan guides the sales leader’s coaching efforts, providing both them and the salesperson with a clear track to follow.
An effective Sales Performance Plan can work to reduce your sales revenue peaks and valleys. Generally the Sales Performance Plan is a major component of the marketing plan, which is a critical to the overall company business plan. The marketing plan defines your target market and outlines specific strategies, which will attract, promote and sell your product or service. The Sales Performance Plan details the essential steps that are required in order to retain the existing customer base, along with the specifics of how to reach potential customers and convert them from prospects into paying customers.
These plans should include execution details; who is doing what, by when, how and with what resources. The plan should also include details on how to deal with roadblocks and other obstacles. An effective plan anticipates and creates contingency plans against competitive threats, market conditions, product/service demand & supply to name a few.
Leading sales managers have a healthy obsession with planning to ensure they reach their targets. Effective planning is the key to producing consistent and predictable sales numbers. An effective Sales Performance Plan is made up of a variety of issues depending on your own individual sales environment.
Elements of a Sales Performance Plan
A well-constructed Sales Performance Plan will not deliver sales results independently. As with any plan, it must be implemented in order to produce an effective result. A strong result will direct every sales activity, greatly increasing the likelihood of the salesperson achieving their sales goals.
The Sales-Performance Plan details the key objectives and the actions required to achieve the salesperson’s goals. It should be split into 4 X 90 DAY ACTION PLANS with specific dates and strategies for execution. The plan must be documented for easy reference and follow up.
• Effective Sales Performance Plans will create, build and nurture a healthy sales pipeline.
• Well planned and managed Sales Performance Plans ensures your salespeople meet revenue goals and attain their sales quotas. This will also include personal development objectives that have determined to require improvement.
All salespeople should base their sales activity with a clearly specified sales plan by week, month and year. The plan must detail their key objectives and action plans to achieve their desired results. Once the plan is discussed and agreed upon, it needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.
Target Elements to a Successful Plan
• Increase $ volume
• Key account increases; existing and new product purchases
• New accounts targets and customer retention goals
• Margin analysis
• Increase $ volume by customer
• Ratio improvement
• New product objectives
• Increase overall sales volume year over year and average sales value
• Increase sales of specific products/services
• Decrease average length of sales cycle
Territory Sales-Performance Plans is the process a sales team uses to analyze and plan around key accounts and opportunities within their assigned sales territory. For a territory plan to effectively drive revenue, it must include both strategy and tactics and detailed actions for delivery of each objective. It may also include some of the above measures as well as other goals for growing the territory.
Territory Sales Performance Plans Elements
• Analysis and setting specific key objectives around the company’s products and services, market segments, competition, trends, and profiles of key accounts.
• SWOT analysis; strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats
• Account identification and estimate of account potential
• Account situational analysis and detailed account strategy
• Detail on territory/account tactics – What to sell, price and timeframe
• Channel development
• Key account penetration
• Re-establishing contact with lower level customers