Will your business achieve your 2011 sales plan?

Are you getting a firm sense of whether you are on-track to hit your sales numbers this year? If sales delivery is not matching your starting sales plan, you’ll probably know about it by now.
Often, this is a question of sales execution.

Has your big sales plan been rolled out into a series of sales plans that sellers, either individually or collectively, can action. If your sellers aren’t orientated around the organisational sales plan, how likely is it that the plan will be delivered?

Here are a series of seven questions you can ask your front line sellers to determine whether the big sales picture has been understood and is being actioned. You can download a copy here.

1. What’s the organisational sales target?
   By business / department / unit, however you frame this, can your seller give you a number? Do they understand the organisational picture?
2. What’s your own contribution to this?
   Does your seller understand their own sales target, has one been created / set / agreed with them?
3. Where will your own sales come from?
   How does your seller construct their numbers, new business / account management, target customer groupings / segments?
4. Specifically, how will you achieve it?
   How / does your seller plan their activity?
5. What process will you use to deliver it?
   Does your seller have a sales process to follow?
6. How will you measure your own progress?
   What metrics / measurements are being used to track progress / support feedback?
7. Where will you go when you need help?

Gives an understanding of working style and approach to problem solving.

A good discipline for sales management (if you are a sales manager, try this) is to ensure that all direct reports can easily answer these questions to anyone who asks them, whenever they happen to ask. When you achieve this, you can have a greater sense of certainty that your sales objective is being operationalised.