Is your sales planning a box ticking exercise?

This is usually the time of year when Sales Managers and Directors are pulling together next year’s sales plan.

Does this include you? If so, allow me to ask you how much of your sales planning process is purely a box ticking exercise?

When was the last time you threw out the existing planning framework and started again from scratch, with a clean sheet of paper? Depending on the size of your business this can be more or less difficult though just because it’s difficult, it doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable process to complete.

At the start of the planning process should be the question “how do our customer choose to buy and how can we align our selling process to match that?”

The most authoritative work we have used to structure our action in this area is “Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value” by John Devincentis and Neil Rackham. An absolute “must read” for Chief Execs everywhere because it opens up the discussion about the difference between transactional buyers occupying a commoditised space, and strategic buyers who want (sellers) support for their purchasing decisions.

Most customer groupings will include buyers at both ends of this continuum and segmenting your sales offer to match each end at the same time is a real challenge. Have a look at our slide for an overview of the model.

The price of misalignment is either a higher cost of sales (consultative selling to transactional buyers who don’t want or need it) or poor sales conversion and missed margins (from transactional selling that fails to connect with uninformed prospects).

These are strategic questions that have to be addressed if your sales processes are to stay relevant and deliver through time.

And yes, you’ll still need a sales plan, just be sure it’s one that takes your sales activity in the right direction.