Do not let your sales plan make selling more complicated than it already is. Simply put, the best sales plans should immediately propel us into our best next actions that win us more sales.
Some sales plans are beautiful works of art with complex, high-IQ analyses that make us feel like we have everything covered while we are building them. We leave the room pounding our chest thinking we are ready to go. We wake up the next morning and find ourselves saying, “Now what do I do?” These are the worst plans because they take the most time and they result in no meaningful action.
Plans need to make us more productive. They need to articulate what we are selling, to whom and a path for how we get the win. They help teams of people understand the specific things each member has to get done in order for the team to win. The best plans make our actions more specific and the clarity of purpose helps us make corrections more quickly.
Simple – The sales person owns and creates the sales plan. When we are building these plans, we need to remember that there will be many other stakeholders involved in helping us win the sale. All those stakeholders need to have a clear understanding of what they need to do and that direction comes from the sales plan. To reduce complexity we need to be clear on what we need, and why we need it. The “why” helps other stakeholders move beyond just taking directions and onto creating their own best next actions.
Dynamic not static – We learn new things every time we meet a customer. The customer might have new information, we get clarification on key decision criteria and, simply, we get a deeper understanding of the decision-maker’s motivations. Plans have to accommodate this continued learning, which means constantly tuning those plans is what makes them the best.
I am a big football fan and I recall an interview with Pete Carroll, head coach of the Super Bowl Champion, Seattle Seahawks. Their running game had been unproductive in the first half but it was great in the second half. A reporter asked Carroll why the halves were so different. He said, “We did what we came here to do in the first half and we learned a lot from what wasn’t working. That allowed us to make changes and I think you saw the results in the second half.” It is the same in sales. We learn as we sell and make changes to our plan so we finish the competition with a win.
Messy not neat – The best sales plans are messy because they are used. As we learn in each customer interaction, we need to record what we learn and make the necessary changes to our plans. As we develop our new best next actions we want to keep a record of our original thinking so we do not make the same mistakes again. We also want to leave institutional memory for team members and sales people who come after us. Therefore, the best plans, whether digital or on paper, have many noted corrections for good reason making them messy not neat.
If our primary goal is for sales plans to propel our sales people into the best next actions we need to move away from demanding the prettiest plans and instead demand the most productive plans which are simple, dynamic and messy.
©2014 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities, LLC
