In Sales – ‘Hope is not a Strategy’

I meet with many company CEO’s, Sales Directors and I am sometimes surprised with statements like ‘we are hoping to achieve $X in revenue growth next quarter’. Or ‘we hope that sales results improve’.

If this sounds familiar to you, then it just may be that you don’t have a sales strategy, or if you do maybe it’s not working for some reason.

This is yet another ‘can of worms’ that I have opened and if you think this post is crap maybe you should take that can of worms and go fishing.

The fact is, a sales strategy is a reflection of your business plan, marketing plan, and efficient back end systems and processes in order to grow your revenue in accordance with sales forecasts.

It is not easy – in fact it is bloody difficult to forecast sales results over a month, quarter, year with confidence that the numbers will be achieved. So many variables such as sales staff churn, sales target realism, back end systems and process efficiency regarding CRM and execution of service delivery to meet or exceed your customers expectations.

So what is a Sales Strategy? It is very simple really. Sadly, rarely executed.

For a start:

Know your target market.
Have the ‘right’ people in the ‘right’ jobs – from Management through to admin staff.
Follow your marketing plan – utilise sales resources efficiently and manage and measure outcomes
Support your sales team – provide coaching / mentoring – it will pay you back 10 fold
Prospecting – the toughest part of the sales cycle – stay focussed on your target market – measure outcomes in your CRM
Stick to proven ‘channels to market’ for your product or service. (as per your marketing plan)
Measure EVERYTHING that you can in terms of sales activity and results (as far as is practicable)
Adjust and modify strategy weekly ‘If you don’t change direction you are likely to end up where you’re headed’

This is super basic but I will leave you with one final thought:

‘THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT’

Rick