Designing Your Sales and Marketing Plan

“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.” – Henry Ford

In previous blogs, we’ve talked about the key elements of a sales and marketing plan, and how to start designing one. In this post, we will look at the nuts and bolts of designing the plan, so roll up your sleeves and let’s get started!

Create a List of Potential Clients - You have already defined your conditions of satisfactions for who you want to do business with. Now take that list and find companies that fit those characteristics. There are numerous online resources like Jigsaw, Manta and ZoomInfo where you can learn more about company revenues, number of employees, locations and industries. Individual company websites are obviously full of information. Put together a list, preferably on an Excel spreadsheet, of your potential clients, and rank them in order of their probability of buying your product. Try to put 100 names on this list.

Identify Your Prospects’ Concerns - Why do the people on your list need your product? One of my contacts recently told me that she looks for people who have “imminent events” on the horizon, things like a move, downsizing, a new product launch, an expansion, etc. Those are the things that cause companies to re-evaluate suppliers and needs. Maybe they need more phones, more computers, more file cabinets. If you sell those things, you can find companies in transition who have needs for those services. For every contact on your list, make a note of why they need your product or service.

Determine How Your Product Solves the Customer’s Concerns – This is the logical next step in the process. Next to each customer, make a note of which of your products or services fit their needs and why. The “why” is important because it is the thinking behind what distinguishes you from your competition. It’s not just why they need file cabinets; it’s why they need your file cabinets.

How Will You Approach the Prospects? – Look at your list and determine the best way to reach out. Is it a phone call? An e-newsletter? A LinkedIn invite? Some of this work may require educated guessing, but it pays to plan your strategy in advance. Think about the industries you are targeting and how they tend to deal with vendors. Your approach may be another way to set yourself apart, but if you are working with clients who have very set rules about dealing with vendors, it pays to follow those rules.

Review Your Budget – Now that you have a list of potential clients and ideas for approaching them, do you have the resources to execute your plan? It’s not just money; it’s time and energy as well. Do you need additional staff to reach out to your prospect list? Review your marketing budget to make sure it aligns with your list of actions. If not, decide where you can delegate tasks or add resources to deliver on your plan.

Your marketing plan should be a living document, not just ideas in your head. You should constantly have a visual track record of who your prospects are, what you are doing to meet them, and how your company is a fit. Find time in your calendar daily or weekly to review your lists and keep pressing toward your objectives. Before you know it, you will have a viable, targeted pool of possibilities with a high probability of doing business with you. And that is a winning proposition!

Are you ready to win?

Starting Your Marketing Plan

“Our success is a direct result of knowing how to market a brand and having the right people representing the brand.” – Greg Norman – Professional Golfer and Entrepreneur

We all know we need to have a sales and marketing plan if we expect to meet our sales objectives. Last week we talked about the key elements of a Sales and Marketing plan. But what’s the best way to get started on a designing a system that will generate results?

Perform a SWOT Analysis. Your SWOT analysis will show you what’s working now and what resources you currently have to begin a disciplined marketing plan. The SWOT analysis shows you where you need to expend extra resources and where you can hit the ground running.

Define Your Conditions of Satisfaction for a Client. Who is your ideal customer? Who needs your product or service? What are your minimum orders? What tolerance do you have for high-maintenance customers? Take time to get clear on who you want to be doing business with and who you’re going to pass on. Not all sales are good sales.

Create a Marketing Budget. How much do you have to spend on marketing? And over what period of time? Based on your ideal client profile, what are the best avenues for reaching out to those clients? With the funds you have available, can you reach enough people to achieve your sales intention? Do you need to look for additional resources for marketing? How can you creatively stretch your budget, for instance, aligning with complimentary service providers and sharing some advertising costs?

Determine How Many Hours You Will Commit. Your marketing budget isn’t just financial. You also have to budget your time and commit to how many hours a week you will devote to networking, phoning, blogging, or whatever marketing activities will yield results. These hours have to be scheduled into your calendar, and you have to show up.

Get the Right People on Your Marketing Bus. If you don’t have enough time to market, consider hiring some part time help or delegating some marketing tasks to your staff. That being said, you need to make sure you’ve got the right people reaching out to prospects and contacts. Not everyone enjoys or is well-suited to marketing. Be sure to communicate your intentions and create a common vision that is shared by your whole team. If one person is not generating results, reorganize tasks or hire someone else.

Once you have the building blocks in place, your marketing plan will be much easier to implement. Taking these initial steps will ensure that you are pursuing the right kinds of clients and using your resources wisely. The key here is to make sure your sales intentions are always at the top of your mind, and remain the driving force behind your budget, time and marketing decisions. When you put the right kind of gas in the car, you have a much better chance of winning the race!

Are you ready to win?

Strategic Account Management & Planning

"Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan." - Tom Landry, NFL football coach.

Strategic Account Management and Planning is a concept large corporations use to zero in on decision makers at high-profile companies with whom the organization is interested in doing business. This process of planning and managing key accounts enables companies to build strong, productive ties to their most valuable targets/clients.

Strategic Account Managers: This approach requires a sales team to transform into strategic account managers. Salespeople typically need additional training to acquire the skills they need to successfully manage accounts. Strategic account managers must be visible, have senior level leadership abilities, and be able to direct the company's response to selling or service delivery opportunities. These situations require Strategic Account Managers to sell both internally to these cross-functional teams and externally to senior-level clients.

Senior-level buyers have a different perspective to the buying process than lower level contacts. Your Strategic Account Managers must build credibility and understand executive issues and values to be able to sell to senior-level contacts.

Strategic Account Planning: Questions to consider when determining if an account should be considered a strategic account:

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  What are the keys to getting in the game?


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  What is the potential for doing busienss with this buyer?


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  Are we equipped to handle this level of selling?


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  What will it take to get us there?

Strategic accounts are targeted as follows:

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  Size of company


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  Demand for your type of product across multiple lines of business


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  Large global footprint


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  Financially healthy


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  Executive sponsorship

Each Strategic Account Manager must evaluate each account's long-term revenue potential, as well as strategic importance. This way, you can invest the right level of resources to serve them profitably.

Each account plan requires a significant amount of homework including:

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  Research background and overall strategy


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  Identify key business issues


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  Research overall company direction


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  Build and know the org chart


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  Determine opportunities to make executive-level contacts and touch points at every decision-making level with each department within the buyer's organization for which your products or services are a fit


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  Understand how your value proposition provides a perfect fit for their business


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  Determine high level tasks and activities


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  Track progress – how many opportunities in the pipeline


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  Measure progress against plan goals - how many real sales and in what timeframe

Account Plans contain the overall objectives such as revenue targets, account goals, and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis. Strategic Account Managers must define how they plan to achieve their revenue targets and allocate them appropriately by division/department for each account. Account plans should:

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  Define goals and qualitative objectives for each account


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  Align account goals and compensation with corporate objectives


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  Identify critical success factors for reaching goals


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  Outline the value proposition required to meet the customers’ needs

Strategic Account Management and Planning is not just for the big guys. Even the smallest company will benefit from strategies for finding and servicing key accounts. Take the time to plan for the big game, and you will see your efforts pay off on the bottom line.

Are You Ready to Win?

Sales & Marketing, The Heartbeat of Business

“You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional.” Joe Paterno, Head Football Coach, Penn State University.

Never stop selling. Selling is the heartbeat of your business. If you stop selling your company will flat line.

There are four basic elements, or consistent action steps, of marketing and sales:

1. Create A Marketing Network: Create opportunities to meet new people. You have to have a system in place to create enough opportunities for making sales. Anyone can make lots of sales if they have lots of opportunities for sales. Your system might include monthly chamber of commerce meetings or leads clubs. You should also be asking for referrals all the time.

2. Create A Sales Plan: The sales plan is really a schedule for sales activities. Schedule time for phone calling each week. Schedule time for networking groups, for getting referrals. Put these activities in your calendar and stick to it! Create measurements of performance for your sales efforts - how many calls, how many new leads, how many new clients, and how many actual sales you need on a weekly basis. Have a system for reporting these results to a sales manager or business coach.

3. Selling: You must spend time engaged in the act of selling. You have scheduled the time to sell and you must follow through. You have to be having conversations with current and potential clients every week if you want to sell anything. Most importantly, you want to be having conversations with people who have the potential of buying your product.

4. Your Unique Sales Approach : What is your commitment to your customer? What makes you different from your competition? How are you going to deliver your service? All these things need to be part of your marketing and sales plan. You must distinguish yourself to the customer in order to develop a relationship that will lead to sales.

If you want to learn more about how to craft a sales and marketing plan, listen to Consulting2Win Radio where we discuss this and other important business techniques every Wednesday from 11:00 am to 12:00 noon PST.

Are you ready to win?