Developing your sales plan can seem like a daunting task- better left to the sales leader or sales manager for you to follow when it’s done. But the sales plan is more important to the individual sales rep than most sales teams realise. This is due to the fact that the sales plan needs to be made up of the individual sales goals of the sales rep themselves.
Velocity Selling TV: Episode 33- Developing Your Sales Plan
Matthew: Good morning, it’s Matthew here from the sunny Gold Coast. We’ve got Bob Urichuck up in Ottawa, Canada. G’Day Bob.
Bob: G’Day. But it’s good evening to me now Matthew.
Matthew: We are on the opposite sides of the world but we are certainly aligned with how we do sales.
Bob: Exactly, ‘cause it’s the opposite as well. That’s fantastic.
Matthew: Perfect. Hey look Bob, over the last little while we’ve spoken about goals, we’ve then talked about organisational goals, last week you mentioned about sales people developing a draft sales plan. Actually, I just wanted to get a bit more under the hood about that, how do we actually do that?
Bob: Ok. I think the first thing is, for the sales leader and the sales rep to have discussions where the sales rep comes up with their target for the year. In other words, it’s negotiated back and forth. We help them to discover and come up with that number so that they own the number. That’s step one. Step two is: Ok, now that you’ve got that number, how are you going to achieve it? So what you do is, you take out the goal log form and the goal log has all the different elements in it that you need to address. So what we do is we start to use that as a draft sales plan. It’s a goal. Let’s say for example we want to hit a million dollars. We take them through all of the goal log. But what we need to do now is do this- and this is an important part for the sales rep to understand and the sales leader- the biggest challenge for people is when they establish a goal, that goal is humungous. Let’s say we use an even, nice round number. The goal is- you got to do a million dollars of sales this year Matthew.
Matthew: Ok.
Bob: Now, that sounds like ‘Ah!’ to some people. Some people they’ve got hundred million dollar sales. I mean, do you remember the contract I had in Dubai?
Matthew: Sure.
Bob: Their goal was 5.7 billion! You know, and that’s humungous. But here’s the thing, that goal blew everybody away. But when you take it down to the individual rep, now you have a goal, and let’s say you’re responsible for a million, well let’s take that million and let’s break it down into quarters. Let’s take the quarters and break it down into months. Let’s take the months, break it down into weeks. Let’s take the weeks and break it down into days. And then, let’s define our daily behaviours that will help us to reach that goal. In other words, we’re simplifying it, simplifying it, simplifying it, right down to what I like to call- I called it behaviours, but I also call it daily disciplines. What are the things you need to do on a daily basis to get you where you want to go? Now, when you prepare it, from annual to quarter to month to week and everything, you go to look at the past year’s numbers. What was produced? When were you on holidays? When were there sales conventions? You got to take a look at all the different factors that come into play here and get serious about narrowing it down, narrowing it down, narrowing it down. Because where I’d like everyone to go next in the future is to what I call, tracking your daily behaviours so that you can identify where you’re getting the best ROTI- The best return on your time invested. The problem is, we’re so busy just moving forward, moving forward, and sales people don’t like administration or paperwork, and this is- I’m not asking sales leaders to force this on your people, it’s the last thing I want. As an independent business man, I track my behaviours. I know where I get my results and where I don’t. So I put my focus on here’s what I’m going to do to get the best ROTI. Now ROTI is a new word that I’m bringing in here and it’s return on time invested, but in about four or five episodes from now, we’re going to be talking about ROTI in great detail, so make sure you stay tuned on that. And it’s all about our behaviour towards buyers.
Matthew: Fantastic.
Bob: So for now, the draft sales plan is use the goal log, and break down your numbers by quarters, by weeks, by days. Define your daily disciplines. It’s a draft. Now, why do we call it a draft Matthew?
Matthew: So we can actually go ahead and change it and modify it and allow the sales person or the sales leader to take ownership.
Bob: Exactly. We want other people to take ownership and be part of the team to help us get there. And that’s the whole idea. Until everybody’s got their input and you’re feeling comfortable, you’re ready to put it into action, well, you sign it, you commit to it, and you make it happen.
Matthew: Fantastic Bob. Well that’s great. We’ll come back next week and we’ll keep expanding on this idea of really inspiring the sales people and your sales team to greater heights.
Bob: That’s great Matthew, thank you and have yourself a great week ahead.
Matthew: Thanks a lot, bye-bye.
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Matthew has been involved in the growth of many businesses across multiple industries including, health products, software development, IT consultancy, Real Estate and franchise sales with personal sales of over $100 million.
After all of this hard work Matthew took a year off with his wife and two children in Bali. After returning to Australia Matthew was ready to take on his next challenge, following his passion in Sales, and joined the Velocity Selling team as CEO.
