How do you want to reach your sales goals? How do you need to adapt your plan for 2020 and beyond?

To create real and lasting business growth you need a solid sales plan.

To be on the front foot for 2020 we are planning NOW – are you?

A sales plan is the roadmap of the ‘who, where, why and how’ you will meet – even exceed – your goals for next year.

8 questions to help you develop your plan

1.     What are your goals for next year? Think big!

• What do you want to achieve?

2. What did and didn’t work in 2019?

• What insights do you have that will inform next year’s plans

3.     Do you have a month to month forecast based on insights and results from the previous year?

• What are your month by month actions to make this happen?
• What needs to happen to ‘farm’ these opportunities?
• What are the key milestones and deadlines?

4.     What are your specific niches to gain traction?

•  Target the main ones that you can help the most and grow your business the fastest?
• Are they already your top clients?

5.     Who are your top clients?

• How do you plan to add more value to them in 2020?
• What offers in your product suite are the natural next step for them to meet their goals?
• What’s going on in their business? They too are looking for new opportunities so what can you do to help them meet their goals?

6.     Who are your prospects?

• How do you plan to find more just like them and why?
• Who is sitting in your CRM just waiting for some help to plan their 2020?

7.     What partnerships or joint ventures can you develop to add mutual value to each other’s client base?

8.     Are there events or tradeshows where you should have a presence?

• If so, how will you leverage this activities?

2 tactics to be in the strongest mindset to develop your plans

1.     Remove all distractions

• Turn email notifications off
• Or even better – close your email down.
• Turn your phone to silent

2.     Change your environment

• Change your thinking by moving away from your desk
• Sit in a quiet meeting room where no one can interrupt you
• Take yourself out of the office

3.     An attitude of success

• Remind yourself of the successes/wins of the previous year
• Anchor those feelings to elevate a sense of optimism and possibility

How do and your sales team create your plan and how often do you review it once it is done? We like to have a ‘sales plan on a page’ and it’s up on the wall and it keeps us motivated and on track.

The post A Bullet Proof Sales Plan For The Year appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Over a century ago, Russell Conwell was famous for his travelling lecture, delivered more than 6000 times. What’s interesting about the lecture, is that Conwell was preaching customer-centricity over a century ago!

Let me share the parable at the centre of this lecture and how it applies to the development of your sales growth plan.

There was once a wealthy man named Ali Hafed who lived not far from the River Indus. “He was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented.” One day a priest visited Ali Hafed and told him about diamonds.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor.

Ali Hafed sold his farm, left his family, and travelled to Palestine and then to Europe searching for diamonds. He did not find them. His health and his wealth failed him. Dejected, he cast himself into the sea.

One day, the man who had purchased Ali Hafed’s farm found a curious sparkling stone in a stream that cut through his land. It was a diamond. Digging produced more diamonds — acres of diamonds, in fact. This, according to the parable, was the discovery of the famed diamonds of Golconda.

The point of the story is that we often dream of fortunes to be made elsewhere. We ought instead to be open to the opportunities that are around us. And so often I talk to and coach dejected and worn out salespeople that have looked everywhere for new business except their own backyard!

Until you’re confident that you have genuinely mined for all the opportunity in partnering more effectively with your existing customers it just doesn’t make sense to be cold calling and spending hours on LinkedIn trying to build your brand and create inbound leads.

If you generate ongoing revenue as a result of the relationship and value, you deliver to existing customers you should first consider retention. There’s always a need to balance out the ongoing service delivered with the ongoing revenue. BUT in my experience, too many salespeople miss out on retention, referrals, re-pricing as delivery gets more expensive and taking care of more customer needs, because they’re not focused enough on delivering value once the sale is complete.

The point is, take a little bit of time out to consider what the opportunities are inside your existing customers.

If retention is important, consider ranking all your customers from highest retention risk to lowest.

Consider whether there are re-pricing opportunities across your portfolio of customers. So often when I coach salespeople, their portfolio of clients is full of people or businesses that promised growth in volume for lower pricing but never delivered on their side of the bargain. Even if you can’t achieve upward re-pricing, you may be able to negotiate referrals for maintaining the discounted pricing.

Consider whether there’s an opportunity to take care of more needs for your customers. This doesn’t have to be just about cross-selling other solutions you sell. You may be able to partner up with someone in an aligned business and do mutual referrals. As an example, if you’re a lawyer, you could introduce your clients to an Accountant, Real Estate Agent or Banker on the basis that they reciprocate.

And consider whether there’s an opportunity to grow within the client. This isn’t just about big enterprise customers with lots of divisions. If you take care of my personal mortgage, there’s an opportunity to grow within my extended family. If you take care of a property developer there’s an opportunity to grow within their network of suppliers and that includes builders, architects, plumbers and a host of other companies and people.

If you don’t have existing customers or you don’t earn ongoing revenue from existing customers—that’s ok.

The post How To Grow Revenue From Existing Customers appeared first on Head Of Sales.