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Is your sales target based on a tangible sales and marketing plan?

How does your sales plan look? Are there clearly defined targets, quantified prospects and clear marketing initiatives in place to reach them?
Last month we wrote about establishing budgets for your business – or more specifically, empowering your managers to establish budgets for their area of responsibility. This month we take a look at your sales targets and how to best approach this to achieve real results.

Often businesses set a total sales budget based on previous years’ sales – with a bit added on, and send the field sales team out as a collective team to bring in the sales. Sometimes the target is broken down into field areas – so each sales person is accountable for a section of the target.
A much better way is to build the target from the bottom up – just in the same way as the overall business budget and the strategic business plan is built.

In breaking down the business into customer trends and considering what drives each of your key customers, you are forming a trade marketing plan. Further-to, when you share this trade marketing plan with your key customers, you will achieve a buy-in that you would never achieve with one overriding sales target.

Simply by sharing your goals with a customer, you are forming a relationship much more aligned with a strategic partnership with a common and mutual gain. This is smart selling.

To optimise the opportunity, you will need to consider what has gone well for you within that customer’s business and what has been disappointing. In sharing this and exchanging information, both of you will have the opportunity to strengthen your business – and to have a much stronger sales plan – pretty much with double the commitment.

Before heading out for your strategic relationship building – remember your goal is to hit a sales plan that is realistic and will show positive growth. Have your sales team generate the overall sales and trade marketing plan in its entirety before commencing the communication with your customers, add the totals for each of the individual key customers or business channels and feed that information, along with any marketing costs, discounts etc into your financial plan.

Once you are happy that the sum total of your planned segment, channel or key customer group top line and bottom line meet the plan, you can approve the overall activity planned and have your team swing into gear.

In effect what you have done in spending this time before the financial year commences, is strengthen your Sales Plan, confirm your Marketing Plan and ensured your Financial Plan is solid. You have also brought your key players together – your essential managers and your essential sales channels into one comprehensive business plan in line with your strategic business objectives. Now all you need to do is measure progress against the targets established!

How to best approach your Sales Target

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.