Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Simple Steps to Sales Success
Focus on Sales and Marketing
Many business people who acknowledge the value of planning, especially sales and marketing planning, still don’t get around to doing the planning they know they should do. Among the many reasons for this are lack of know-how and concerns about the amount of time and/or money that may need to be invested.
Here is a simple five-step process that will help you focus on your sales and marketing planning for the 2003/4 Financial Year and get it under control.
Step 1 - Find out the facts. Take stock of your current situation. You need to look at the key 80/20 relationships in your business in respect of your sales staff, your customers, your suppliers, your sales volumes and each product’s contribution to profit. Your customers need to be categorised and you need to do a SWOT analysis of your sales and marketing function.
Other questions that need to be answered include: What markets are being targeted? What results have emerged from previous sales promotion activities? e.g. telemarketing, face-to-face calls, Yellow Pages, newspaper advertising, direct mail campaigns, flyer campaigns etc.
The activities and strategies of your competitors need to be analysed. An audit of your staff’s sales skills and activity levels needs to be conducted.
In addition, your business’s Key Competitive Advantages need to be confirmed.
Step 2 - Outline your sales and marketing goals. When doing this it may be helpful to think of your goals as forming a pyramid-shaped hierarchy.
At the top is your Primary goal for 2003/4 (“If you could achieve only one goal what would that goal be?”). At the next level down are the second-level goals, the achievement of which will lead to the achievement of the Primary goal. At the next level again are the third-level goals the achievement of which will lead to the achievement of the second-level goals.
While doing this also ask the questions “Do we need new products in our range...
