Sales managers occasionally ask me, "How can I make my sales people and my
sales planning process more strategic?" In general, what these folks are asking is,
"How can we look farther into the future as we plan our sales activities?" The
short answer is, "You probably can't!" Before we get too far into why, however,
let's take a look at the real meaning of strategy.
If you thumb through The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, you will find:
strategy \'stra-t -je\ n, pl -gies
[Gk strategia generalship, fr. strategos general, fr. stratos camp, army + agein to lead] 1: the science and art of military command aimed
at meeting the enemy under conditions advantageous to one's own force
2:
a careful plan or method esp. for achieving an end -- strategic \str -'te-jik\ adj -- strategist
\'stra-t -jist\ n
Strategy, in reality, has nothing at all to do with time horizons. What strategy (or
strategic) describes is getting to the issues that are of prime concern or importance. In
the case of sales and sales account planning the strategic issues are those that contain
the greatest value to the customer. If you want to be "strategic" in the sales
world, pay close attention to what is of value to your customer.
How, then, can we become more strategic in sales planning. My answer is to involve your
customer in the planning process. In the standard account planning sessions that I
facilitate, we have a customer executive (ideally the decision-maker for your product or
service) attend part of the first morning and present an overview of the firm, long and
short term goals, upcoming projects and budget overview. Perhaps most importantly, we also
have the customer discuss what's working and what's not working in the business
relationship between the two companies. This last needs is to be carefully probed in order
to ensure that we have all the potentially bad news well understood when we commence
planning.
NOTE
TO SALES MANAGEMENT - In general customers, especially senior executives, understand
why it is important to give your sales team an hour or two of your time. They recognize
that the better your team understands their business and its needs, the better you are
able to provide solutions. Sometimes, however, you will need to sell the concept. One way
to influence the customer executive to allocate time to your planning session is to have
one of your senior executives make the request.
For very large global or national accounts, I recommend a more formal approach to
identifying those issues that have value to the customer. A one-day executive planning
session, conducted in advance of the account planning sessions provides an excellent
vehicle to establish high-level dialog between the two companies. The focus of this
one-day pre-planning session is to establish agreement between the firms on two or three
strategic business initiatives that will be pursued together. Having come to this
strategic agreement, the account team can then convene and develop the action plans to
make it happen.
Now let's talk about the role of "long-term" planning. In the sales arena,
long-term planning is really not operative. In fact, many have come to believe that
long-term planning is passe` in general. To that point, Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer,
authors of the penetrating book "BLUR" say:
"What good are plans if the Speed
of Business means they are obsolete before an organization can understand and implement
them? … If long-term plans are useless, good short-term ones are more valuable than
ever."
So, we've learned that in the sales world short-term planning, with a time
horizon of nine to twelve months, is as far into the visible future as we can see. And
there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Over the course of the year, we'll win some,
lose some, identify some new opportunities, solve some problems and identify some new
ones. The key to success is to get the sales team started down a path of executing the
plan. Unforeseen obstacles will invariably arise - these can be dealt with as they come.
Focus on developing good short-range plans, get the team committed to executing on the
plan and you will soon reap the benefits.
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