Fail to Plan, Fail to Sell!

It is a known fact that sales people hate planning. Let's be brutally honest here, most of us hate planning. Even though most sales people are motivated by actually taking action they wrongly assume that the time it takes them to plan their leads and administration is time that they just cannot afford to lose.

According to the majority of sales people, they say that the fact that they just don't have enough time in the day is the number one reason that prevents them from achieving their goals. The problem is that sales people are extremely busy and the pressure is always on them to show results in the shortest possible times.

There is a simple solution to this problem and that is to focus the available time you have on the things that really matter, i.e. focus your time on the things that will push your sales forward. There is only really one way to achieve this and that is through planning.

What you and your sales team really should have is a 12 month sales plan and I highly recommend that you start preparing this plan as soon as possible. What you will really need to do is decide what your overall goals are, and how much you earn on average, from each sale.

You also need to list what tools and training are required. It should also be noted that each person in your team has their own plan. This is critical as each person MUST know what they should be focusing on. If you don't have a plan it will be very easy to go off completely on the wrong track with all of the distractions that you will face every day. These are the steps required to putting together your business plan

1. Decide what your individual goals are

2. Decide what your past successes and failure are and with regard to the failures plan what you can do to avoid these problems again.

Also look at your successes and how you can replicate them.

3. Include in your sales plan any new ideas that you consider to be viable that you may not have tried before. It is absolutely vital that you review this business plan on a weekly basis and it can be modified as you go along, but when you do modify this plan make sure you modify it in a positive way, for example, whatever you do, don't decrease your sales targets.