There is a famous saying that says, “The sales are no longer just buying and selling as before, but rather building a close bond between the seller and the buyer.” And if you are a project owner or work for one benefit, then the first thing you will collide with after you launch your project or in the middle of the road is that you will need to increase sales, and of course you know how to make a sales plan.
This is because sales generation is not a random process and does not depend on luck alone; like anything else in the brand world, you need a plan.
Regardless of your exact location in the field of sales management—a beginner, expert, or even a store that expands your marketing skills in general—knowing the mechanisms of how to make a sales plan is your brief path to determining how, where, and why you will take any step within your project or the company that works for it.
What is the sales plan?
The sales plan is a detailed description of the goals of your brand and its long-term plans, as well as an accurate description of its target audience and all the expected obstacles on the road.
You can consider it like any traditional project management plan, but the difference here is that the sales plan focuses on a strategy to attract and upgrade sales rates within your project.
If the project plan determines its goals, the sales plan accurately describes how you can reach these goals.
Sales plans usually include data and information detailed on identifying the target audience for the project, setting profit goals, and structuring the internal and external teams of the company, along with the strategies and sources necessary to achieve these goals.
Super sales plan elements
Furthermore, any plan of executive factors that ensure its success is not dissimilar to the sales plan.To learn how to make an effective sales plan, you have to make sure:
- Clarify the goals and purposes of your company for the sales team.
- Providing the team under the strategic direction of the workflow
- Distributing roles and responsibilities accurately to the team and members of its administration.
- Monitor their performance in achieving the goals the company previously provided.
Steps to make a sales plan
There is an important point that you should notice before we start, which is that making a sales plan does not only mean filling molds and getting files ready with some steps from here or there to improve sales in a theoretical or practical way.
The goal of learning how to make a sales plan is to gain control of the weaknesses and forces within your company and its sales activity, allowing you to collect the desired results.
This process includes the following steps:
1) Collecting information and data on sales from previous years, from the latest to the oldest, in addition to identifying the most common waves in the field of sales in the target market.
2) Defining the goal behind sales, from which your company’s revenue goals and success can be generalized.
3) Defining the standards will determine your success.
4) Evaluating your current situation, including weaknesses that pose a roadblock, as well as areas of strength where you can focus to improve your performance.
5) Trying to monitor and predict any changes in the common gifts and waves related to improving sales in the target market based on the previous and current data.
6) Determine which gaps you must fill in your performance or in the structure of your company in general, which may stand as barriers between you and achieving your goals.
7) Think about new initiatives and ideas to exploit the opportunities your project has.
8) Involving stakeholders from other sections whose opinions can have a strong impact on improving sales performance, such as the marketing department or product development/services.
After all of this, we must remember that developing a sales strategy does not end with a static model on paper.In fact, you will need to repeat this process every year in order to maintain the most efficient sales process in your project.
What exactly are sales plans?
Whether you write it yourself or use a ready-made template, the steps and sections of a single sales plan are the same.Your mission now is to understand the main executive components of the sales plan you are working on and to ensure that you have not overlooked any of its pillars.
The sales plan includes the following sections:
1) The target audience: that is, the consumer category that your company seeks to serve through its exhibits of services and products.
2) Revenue objectives: the volume of revenue that your team seeks to collect during each period Whether it’s every quarter, every month, every 90 days, and so on.
3) Strategies and tactics: the steps your team takes to reach these revenue goals that you previously set
4) Pricing and promotion: documentation of your exhibits of services and products, in addition to any promotional works such as competitions, ads, marketing campaigns, etc. that can attract customers in the future.
5) The timeline and direct officials: Determine the main dates for delivering the proposed results in the plan, as well as the people who must deliver them.
6) The team structure: identifying and naming the team members and the role and responsibility of each of them.
7) Resources: tools, sources, and programs that your team uses to achieve revenue goals, starting with communication programs and scheduling dates for skills improvement exercises.
8) Market conditions: A detailed explanation of the target market and the target field, in addition to the volume of competition in it and customer desires.
How to make a sales plan
After knowing the executive and motor components of the sales plan, now let’s talk about how to make a super sales plan that enables you to double your project revenues and put it on the right path.
1) The mission and the background
Start the sales plan by defining an important objective and seeing your company and project in detail. Then he moved to write a brief and concise definition of the reason for its establishment and the goals behind it.
This will give you – and the rest of your team members – a background and reference that you can refer to for more details in the future.
2) The team
In detail, all the members of the competent team and their roles in completing the sales process This will enable you to assign and distribute tasks, thus measuring results – with reasonableness and moderation.
If there are other individuals from other teams and specializations, you will
The act of adding them, whether from within or outside the company/team, confirms that their numbers are correctly clarified, as is their job description, and that they are included for the team when it intends – or at any stage.
3) The target market
Whether you are starting to make a sales plan for the first time or even the hundredth, the target market should always remain your top priority.
That is, how to work for a successful sales plan that begins with great detail on the shape of the targeted customers, their interests, characteristics, and even their suffering and challenges.
Note that the target market may have several different classifications for consumers for different products or even for the same product.
Children’s games companies, for example, have several targeted segments. Mothers, for example, are a segment that has their preferences, interests, and challenges; or workers in daycare centers are another segment with preferences, interests, and challenges; and so on. But what connects these segments is their desire for the product itself, in this case, children’s games.
Also, keep in mind that this section can drastically alter your sales strategy over time as your solutions and strategies evolve, as you will seek, of course, as the company’s activity and spread, the more the company, to improve your performance and perform your products constantly in response to market demands.
For example, at first, while your product is new and at a primary or unstable price, your target audience may be at a certain social or cultural level. Perhaps, for example, startups.
However, as time passes and the company and its products develop and perform, the targeting of you may, of course, need to be modified.Members of higher social groups, for example, or medium-sized or even large corporations, can be targeted.
4) Tools and Resources
Here you have to supply all the sources, tools, and programs that you use or plan to use in the sales generation process. even to recount a detailed description of the necessity, task, and price of each of them.
The benefit of this section is that it separates for you and your team the means that will help them perform their mission to the fullest, which may also include templates, training, applications, and everything related to improving their overall performance in the process, allowing them to avoid wasting time and effort by performing some tasks manually or without training or anything else.
5) The situation within the market
Now name your competitors. Put them on a list in order according to the criteria that concern you. You may like to arrange them from the largest to the smallest, or from the most similar to you to the least, or vice versa.
Explain in detail how your products differ or are similar to theirs in terms of features, disadvantages, design, and price, and which places exceed you and vice versa.
You must also list all common market waves, whether in sales generation mechanisms or product or service properties.How do your competitors benefit from and employ these mechanisms in their favor, and what are the results they reap?
6) Marketing strategy
In this section, describe pricing and any promotional activities that you seek to implement in the future. That is, the activities you will use to raise customer awareness and achieve the greatest number of buyers and sales.
It may be through competitions, promotions, discount campaigns, and discounts, and it may be digital, visual, or other marketing strategies.
7) The targeting and exploration strategy
Here you have to determine how and by what standards the Leads sales team will be attracted to the marketing strategy that you previously developed (in the previous point).
This step depends heavily on the category of criteria that it has previously set, so that the team can easily and quickly revise them.
Besides this, it is necessary to determine the sales generation tools and programs on which the team will depend for completing deals and communicating with customers – Customer Relationship Management.
8) Business strategy
Once you have the outlines of your destination from the sales plan, you must determine the method and path to reach it. This section summarizes the plan and the road map for you to reach the goals for the revenue that you target.
9) Goals
Most sales goals are highly related to profit, such as the company’s goal of earning $60,000 in annual profits, for example.
But you can always set goals that are more personal. For example, to assemble 100 new customers or complete 500 sales Make sure to make these goals realistic, as we explained earlier. We mean realistically here to fit the capabilities and tools of the team, the company, and even the target market.
That is, how will you ask a team of five medium-experienced individuals to achieve thousands of operations and customers without having enough resources and sources for that or without giving them the necessary training?
Examples of the factors controlling your achievement are the price of the product, the nature of the target market, the target audience, or the demand for the supply in general.
As a result, your objectives must be founded on solid ground and the company must be placed on the market.If you are new in the market, exploration and targeting new companies or customers may be more reasonable and appropriate than setting the goal of completing x sales. This is because the latter will only focus your interest on chasing deals, while the first is focused on acquiring real customers and building a relationship with them first.
And if you want the truth, you will likely need more than one goal. And you must prioritize the most important ones before classifying the rest in order of importance, beginning with the least important.
The important step here is to set a schedule for each of them. The time limit helps you evaluate and measure your performance along the way without pressure or procrastination.
You can also take advantage of the reports from the previous years and months if your company has already existed for a long time. For example, your goal may be to collect $ 15,000 in the first annual quarter, but based on previous year’s notes, you know that the months of January and February are slower and less profitable than, say, March.
10) Budget
This section includes all expenses and costs related to achieving these sales goals and usually includes the following:
- Salaries and commissions.
- Exercises.
- Sales tools and resources.
- Competitions Awards.
- Travel and transportation costs.
Even the costs of recreation from your team members and recreational activities (their job is a dungeon, there is nothing wrong with noticing them in a different way!).
Read also: What is the difference between income tax and sales tax?
