Developing a solid sales plan is neglected in many organizations. We are busy maintaining customer contacts, visiting leads and making quotations, because we obviously want to achieve our targets and unfortunately our time is scarce. In the short term, such a policy can be absolutely successful, but in the long term, the lack of a good sales plan can cause a lot of uncertainty and worsen your competitive position. In this blog we list a number of crucial components for your sales plan. Are we missing one in your opinion? Then let us know.

Team composition

As a sales manager you are largely dependent on your team. You are responsible for inspiring and leading your team, but also for expressing the talent within your team. Defining your team is perhaps the most crucial part of your sales plan. Ideally, you even make personality profiles of sales assessments part of this chapter.

Customer persona

In addition to your own team members, you also deal with individuals on the customer side. People do business with people. It is therefore logical that your (desired) customer also gets an important role in the sales plan. Develop one (or more) persona of your ideal customer profile together with your team.

Business model

Although the human factors in your plan are of great importance, there is of course also an important numerical component to it. Your sales plan should contain a short and concise business model, in which you describe which financial parameters a customer must meet to be profitable within your organization. A minimum potential turnover, for example? Or a minimum required margin?

Tooling

If you lead a small sales organization, you may not yet use tooling much. However, think ambitious! Salespeople are not known for being very structured and for reporting on their activities. The right tooling can help you enormously in structuring your department and archiving all work and results. Therefore, describe in your sales plan the tooling you wish to use, so that this is immediately clear to everyone.

Offer & price

In order to optimally distinguish yourself from your competitor, it is important to think about your positioning, your exact offer and the associated price in your sales plan. It is precisely in this area that many companies fail. They simply sell what is available within the organization for the price imposed from above. However, by thinking carefully about your distinctive capabilities (positioning) and the combination of offer and price, you can create major competitive advantages.

Goals

What are your goals for next year? Make them concrete and appoint them at an early stage so that your entire team is aware of the ambitions. Of course, financial targets are part of that set of objectives, but there is more. For example, also set a target on retaining your existing customers and expanding your 'share of wallet' with your current customer portfolio. After all, expanding existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones.

Budget

Last but not least, describe a clear budget that you think you need to implement your plan. Make sure your budget is approved by management before you implement your sales plan. Without commitment (after all, a sales organization also costs money, apart from personnel costs), there is a good chance that your plan will get bogged down. This includes costs for tooling, costs for... education, but also costs for marketing and sales material, so that your salespeople go into a conversation armed to the teeth.