Sales Techniques - Do You have a Strategic Sales Action Plan?

By Cheryl Clausen

Do you want to shake up your sales results? It's time to rethink you're approach and come up with a plan that will produce results. A strategic sales action plan provides an implementable quantifiable path to significantly improve your results.

Let's begin by identifying the key elements of a strategic sales action plan. The key elements of your strategic sales action plan include: the value you provide, your unique market position, your marketing plan, your sales plan, and your follow-up plan. Each element is critical, but you want to develop or review them in a specific order.

Start by identifying how creating the value that you will provide that people are willing to pay money for. This very simple concept is often overlooked, but people will buy from you if doing so is more valuable than buying from someone else like a competitor. And please realize that this value must be provided by you not the company whose products or services you may be selling.

You as an individual sales person need to establish your position in the market. Otherwise you're just like everyone else and there isn't any advantage to buying from you. There are numerous ways to position yourself, but you may want to start by considering: your areas of expertise, who you work with, what you do for the people you work with, speed, quality, etc.

You need a marketing plan to market yourself to the people you want to sell to. A marketing plan isn't just a list of random marketing activities you plan to do hoping to get results. A marketing plan is the overall plan you devise to generate a specific number of qualified leads that you can consistently and predictably repeat. And every action on your marketing plan must be track-able and measurable so you can make adaptations and improvements.

You're most familiar with a sales plan. Your sales plan should specifically tell you how you will proactively move the qualified leads entering your sales funnel into buyers. And you should be tracking each phase making adaptations and improvements.

Do you have a follow-up plan for building and extending the relationship you've started generating more business and referrals? That's the whole point of a follow-up plan. Once you start a relationship with a buyer you want to at least maintain the relationship so they will buy from you again. And your follow-up plan should include sales coaching to help your loyal buyers to refer you.

Shake up your sales results by developing a strategic sales action plan to get the results you want. Of course, a plan in and of itself won't produce the desired results. You produce the desired results by taking the actions you now know are the most effective actions and expecting your desired outcomes to follow.

Ready to get unstuck? Learn the Sales Techniques used by the top producers.
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That Vision Thing - Strategic Thinking for any Business

By Terry Bass

Whether you are a small business owner just starting a new business or a newly hired CEO of a major corporation, you both have something in common --- that “vision thing”.

An idea of creating or recreating a company. There is a feeling of excitement, of opportunities and possibilities, no matter how practical you may be it’s a new beginning and the sky is the limit.

So you have a vision. You see yourself down the road envisioning an organization much different than the one today. It is bigger, it is better and you are fulfilled in making it so. It is your vision, your dream, your possibility.

And then comes the work and the meetings and the setbacks and before you know it the vision is on the back burner. Your day is handling details, crisis, and all sorts of stuff that get in your way. You started out jumping out of bed full of ideas, empowered to take on the day and now it’s a bit more difficult to crawl out of bed. You may peek open an eye to see if the monster’s that you know are going to get you at work are now in your bedroom.

What happened?
Quite simply, you put the “vision thing” in the desk drawer, maybe even locked it away. You make business plans that plan on 5 – 7% growth next year. You deal with the issues of the day and the work on your desk/counter and the only satisfaction you get is if your (figurative or literal) inbox/stuff to do is at least no higher at the end of the day as when you started. .

Is that really where you want to be?
Or would you rather be excited again? Would you like to wake up the day full of possibilities? Do you wish to look at what you do, whether your own business or your own career and be proud and happy for what you do?

Well, bring back that “vision thing”. Take it out and dust it off. Or what the heck make a new one.

Your vision is where you want your business and yourself to be. Your vision is a destination, a place of where you want to go. Your vision is that sunny beach sipping margaritas or climbing in the Rockies or a whole plethora of visualizations! Your vision is what turns you on and gets you excited.

It doesn’t matter whether you have your own business or not, whether you want your own business or not. Having an idea, a dream of where you want to go creates motivation and exciting possibilities.

Obviously, taking that vision and creating a strategic plan, action steps to ensure you achieve your vision is vitally important. A wise saying first line is Vision without action is a daydream.
But take that first step; create a vision of where YOU want to be. Get excited again. And then do what you need to do to make it a reality. It’ll make the day and your life a lot more enjoyable!

Terry Bass, of CHADONS Resources is a business coach in the ChicagoLand area. He speaks, coaches and facilitates focusing on helping the individual and business succeed. If you can use help for yourself or your organization in identifying, understanding and achieving your goals, then you should contact Terry at 773-769-1992 and begin the conversation. You can also visit http://www.chadons.com to learn more.

Essential Business Communication of Your Strategic Plan Delivers Ongoing Employee Motivation

By Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Would you stop watching a national playoff were the teams were tied before the winner was declared? Would you stop watching a horse race before the winning horse crossed the finish line? Of course not! Yet, many business leaders expect their employees to continue the game or the race without knowing if and when the game or race was won, loss or even a near win.

After 30 years in business focusing on performance improvement, I am still at a loss when companies do not regularly communicate progress toward the business goals as identified within the strategic plan especially when these same business leaders tell me that employee motivation is a problem. This attitude and behavior of not communicating business results negatively and directly affects the performance of all involved and is truly counter productive to achieving the desired results.

When we look at professional sports, everyone usually waits until the game is over because they want to know who won unless the game is a runaway. Even when teams are down in the last inning or in the last quarter, faithful fans stay at the arena or tuned into the television because one never knows when that grand slam or a 80 yard punt return might happen.

Is your business game any different? To ensure consistent and constant execution of your strategic plan demands essential business communication planning and skills. Business communication should be planned so that your employees are continually motivated toward achieving those business goals that you are the business leader have established.

To what purpose does it serve by not communicating the results of the current team's efforts? Are you afraid that someone may say something and reveal proprietary information? As the business leader, you can share information in a general way or use percentages such as:

This month’s sales figures show that we are on course with our strategic plan and business goals.
First quarter productivity is 10% ahead of our business goals

Your current efforts have us ahead of our strategic projections by 5%.

Top down communication from you, as the business leader, will go a long way to executing your strategic plan and motivating your employees. And if you are still resisting this strategy, then turn off the television the next time your team is barely winning in the final minutes. How do you feel not knowing what happened? Do you think that your employees feel any differently?

P.S. Read the 7 Top Tips on How to Execute Your Strategic Plan

Are you experiencing repetitive challenges? Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S., an Indianapolis business coach and Chicago business coach, helps business people just like you to turn these challenges into measurable outcomes using results driven leadership skills for sustainable transformational change.

One quick question,Are you where youw ant to be? If you could improve the leadership skills of your business, increase customer loyalty, what would that mean to your bottom line, your daily productivity or sense of personal achievement? Then, take a risk and call 219.508.2859 for a FREE telephone consultation.

Visit http://www.processspecialist.com/ and explore everything from free articles to learning the "Secret of Success."

P.S. Leanne also speaks to help motivate individuals from keynotes to full days workshops. She can quickly customize her presentations to meet your needs.