Marketing plan for the development of the sales department. How to make a sales plan - step by step instructions

As far as I have seen, in most Russian companies the head of the sales department independently ensures the fulfillment of from a quarter to a third of the revenue plan. Is this good, and why is this happening? If the sales department is not recruited immediately, but is formed in stages, by improving and optimizing, usually the best salesperson becomes its boss.

This logic of the leader is quite acceptable: this person sells the most, which means that he knows better than others how to do it, let him teach the rest.

Such a situation is quite viable and can bear fruit for the time being (see the stages of the company's development). After a while, we notice that, for example, if the head of the department goes on vacation, this means that the entire sales department goes to rest.

In addition, the too obvious success of the head of sales against the background of low sales of the rest should alert the head. This suggests that his time is spent not on organizing the work of subordinates, but on “plugging holes” in fulfilling the revenue part of the budget, or distributing excessive preferences to his own (department head) clients.

As I already wrote in another note "On Politics and a Shovel": not every tiler can be a good foreman, since the tiler's tool is grout, and the foreman's are estimates and plans. Guided by this, the head of the sales department should be an administrative manager, and not the best seller.

If it so happened that in the absence of a leader, such a good salesman became the head of the department, let's teach him managerial skills as soon as possible. He must be able to plan and organize the work of the department, motivate employees for labor exploits, and also monitor the implementation of plans and current orders. Just let's accept that even so "not every cook can govern the state" .. even if she is taught this.

About the system

The main task of the head of the sales department is to create such a system, which it takes him no more than 20% of his working time to maintain in “combat readiness”. At the same time, a good system can function effectively even in the absence of its developer or creator.

If the sales department is functioning normally, then only targeted tactical interventions by management are required, and not regular adoption of fateful decisions to change the “strategic course”. A good sales system is like a good engine. It only needs to be filled with oil regularly, and not sorted out every six months.

Plan

Every leader has a different approach to planning. Some believe that the plan must be carried out, no matter what. Perhaps, for employees of sales departments, motivation should be based on this principle. But management must understand that the plan is not an end in itself. The plan is a derivative of dozens of factors, but not a constant.

Others believe that sales planning is of little use. Supporters of this point of view argue that, firstly, changes in the market make serious adjustments to the plan, and secondly, it is difficult to force sales managers to fulfill their obligations. However, these arguments are debatable.

Many consider the most productive approach when the plan is perceived as a guideline. The same as a buoy for a swimmer, a fairway for a pilot or a compass for a tourist. In this case, planning allows you to predict how the company will develop in the next month, quarter or year. And also how and on what the earned money will be spent. At the same time, it is not the specific figures that are important, but the conclusions that can be drawn on their basis.

Plan - Forecast

In all the above views on the plan, there is one systemic error associated with attempts to put under one concept "plan" the entire system of views, requirements and work to achieve the result. I always say that you can plan the execution of tasks, as a result of which the required sales indicators are achieved. So: the plan is the sequential execution of work; the result is the fulfillment of indicators for profitability, turnover, etc.

What we set for the sales department, before the start of the work plan (and each manager sets himself a task - as part of the overall task of the department) - forecast figures for those very indicators of profitability, turnover, sales forecast.

Thus, all contradictions are removed when the manager does not understand (due to ignorance, not changing, not having managerial tools) how, when performing the planned work: calling, controlling dealers, developing new segments, he will fulfill the forecasted profitability indicators with a probability of 80%.

Before planning

When drawing up a work plan, one must take into account that it must be, firstly, honest; secondly, concrete, with an understanding of what predictive indicator of sales activity he will improve, due to what activities, manipulations with clients, buyers. Most importantly, the predicted figures can be achieved equally, both by the correct planning of the manager’s work, and by the manager’s proper provision with resources (whether there are enough people, money, whether the company’s pricing policy, product policy is correct).

Before starting work planning and determining forecast indicators, it is necessary for the head of the sales department to answer the following questions:

Is the market volume growing, decreasing or staying stable?

Is the number of competitors increasing?

How is the company and sales team doing?

Are you on the rise or is there a decline in activity?

How difficult or easy was it for you to complete previous work plans?

Depending on the answers to these questions, it will be possible to make appropriate amendments to the finished plan that increase the likelihood of an event occurring: 100% fulfillment of forecasted sales indicators.

Prediction Technology

The first step in sales forecasting

At the first stage, you need to answer the questions: how much do we want to earn and how much can we earn? In this case, you need to determine how much you can earn:

On the first purchases, "new" customers, new regions (or segments);

On the first purchases, "new" customers, "old" regions (or segments);

On repeated purchases of "old" customers;

On the first purchases of "new" goods (for all sections above).

In this case, the fulfillment of the forecast by 100% involves a combination of employees' actions in four areas - work with new customers, new segments (regions) and with regular customers. Each direction requires different actions and solutions.

The forecast must be made in two indicators - pieces and money. One figure in money is not enough, since it is not clear how many customers will provide this sales volume, or when planning for a long time, how inflation expectations or a change in the competitive field will affect the decrease in income with the same sales forecasts "in pieces". Therefore, it is important to indicate that we expect to receive such a volume of sales from, say, twenty contracts.

At the second stage of sales forecasting

The second stage includes the formation of a budget for sales costs (expenses for presentations, business trips, the bonus part of employees' salaries, subscription fees for telephones, paper, cartridges, lunches with customers in a restaurant, etc.). This budget also needs to be predicted, since it is an investment in your production of income.

The third stage - work planning

At the third stage, the sales forecasting plan, pieces and money by goods, regions and customers is translated into a plan for contacts between sales staff and customers - new and existing ones.

Work plan

Contact Plan

In this case, again, you will have to build on your experience. First you need to figure out how many contacts it takes to attract one new client. There is such a thing as a "sales funnel". It should be borne in mind that the client base is always heterogeneous. Clients can be divided into several groups:

Those who do not know about your company at all, but may be of interest to you;

Those who know about you, but only;

Those who know you treat you well and readily consider your proposals;

Those who made a purchase from you only once;

Those who buy your products regularly.

Almost always, customers who make the first purchase are less than those who have a positive attitude towards your company. And those who have a positive attitude towards the company are always less than those who are simply aware of its existence. This imposes a certain peculiarity on the work of managers. Most of the time is spent working with those who need to be “attached” to the company. The only exception is the distribution business, when the company works with a limited number of contractors.

Client base

There is another important point to take into account. The customer base is a living organism. Some customers come to the market, some disappear, some start buying more goods, and some go to another supplier. Therefore, the sales department must work with the entire base of potential customers, and not just with "hot" customers. In addition, you must constantly search for new companies to include in your database. Otherwise, the circle of customers will narrow over time.

We warm up "cold" clients

As we have already defined above, in order to fulfill the company's plan, it is necessary to attract 12 new customers and conclude a contract with each of them for $5,000. First, your managers must answer two questions:

What percentage of warm customers make a purchase?

How many contacts with a “warm” client do you need to make in order for him to buy a product?

Suppose, on average, one out of three customers makes a purchase, and to get a definite answer (“yes, I’m buying” or “no, we’ll wait”), you need to communicate with him four times.

Next, you need to find out what percentage of customers who move from the state of "awareness" to the state of "positive attitude", and for what number of contacts it is possible to achieve this transition. Suppose managers believe that there are 70% of such clients, and the required number of contacts with them is three.

We do the same with "cold" clients. What percentage of potential customers from our initial base go to the communication and after what number of contacts do they become “aware”? Suppose, in the case under consideration, there are half such clients, and the number of necessary contacts is two.

After that, you can see the status of the client base at different stages of work

Contacts with old clients

A sales manager can easily hold up to three meetings and make up to fifteen productive phone calls per day. Acting according to the described scheme, you get an adequate and understandable tool for planning the daily activities of managers.

Instruction

The development plan of the department must be written taking into account the general development plan of the company. Study and analyze it, as well as analyze the work of your unit, get a clear picture of the available labor and material resources, equipment and computers.

Determine the timing of the plan. If this is a development plan, then its term will obviously exceed a year. The optimal period will be 3 years, maximum - 5 years. Formulate the tasks that are assigned to your department, specify the deadlines for completing each task. Think over the ways and solutions that are necessary for the implementation of the tasks assigned to the department and estimate whether you have enough available labor and material resources to complete the tasks in a timely manner.

If the staffing of the department does not allow meeting the deadlines, then this problem cannot always be solved by recruiting additional staff positions. Since we are talking about development, include in your plan employee training, training and refresher courses. Increasing the professionalism of the department's employees should become an obligatory part of the development plan.

Think about how to draw up and implement a system of work regulations that allows you to get an objective assessment of the activities of the entire department and each of its employees. Learn the principles of the international quality management system, which has already been implemented in many Russian enterprises. Include employee certification in your plan.

In the development plan of the department, provide for the modernization of existing and installation of new equipment, computer facilities. Think about what software you will need to install. Perhaps it makes sense to include in the development plan the introduction of an automated accounting system or information systems, the use of which will improve the productivity and quality of the department.

Schedule the implementation of the plan by month or quarter. Outline the stages and deadlines for their implementation. Appoint executors and responsible persons who will control the implementation of the stages of the plan and proceed to the planned.

If you have had to think about the fate of your country, you must have thought about the fate of your region. If you, when visiting neighboring regions, understand that everything is much better there, you should think about improving the quality of life in your region. See the instructions below for how to do this.

Instruction

Attract investment. In order for yours to prosper, it needs to be invested from outside. Just like that, of course, no one will allocate money to the region, so you need to come up with some kind of money to flow into it like a river. For example, you can organize global events in the region, for example, world or European championships. The best option, of course, is the Olympics, but here the competition is too high, since any world dreams of hosting the Olympic Games. Sports events will cause an influx of investments not only from the federal treasury, but also from various sponsors, including foreign ones, who want to show off on the banners of your sports events. region.In addition to sporting events, the influx to the region may be the opening of some kind of research center.

Limit the level of corruption. In order for the money to go to the region, and not into the pockets of officials, it is necessary to carry out a global “cleansing” of the bureaucratic ranks. The best option is until the money for development flows region.When the region receives money for targeted development, it is worth continuing to follow their path.

Pay attention to strengths region. If your region is southern, then it is worth doing for the development of its agricultural program. If there are a lot of useful things in your area, or metallurgy is developed, then you should develop the industrial component of your region. And in this case, the development of industrial will have a positive effect on the development region generally.

Related videos

Sources:

• Modern instruments of state regional policy

Thinking about the future, we draw colorful pictures, but in ordinary life they rarely come true. The main problem is the lack plan individual development. Without prioritizing, we often confuse the important and significant things with voluminous, but unimportant things. Working on yourself in such a chaotic mode, it is difficult to achieve the desired goal.

Instruction

Definition of a specific goal. We choose a goal, then write on paper what is needed for this goal. Don't procrastinate, write specific steps towards the goal and everything you need to complete each step. Break the big goal down into small ones. This will help you reach your main goal faster. Be sure to include a due date. Your first basic individual plan development ready. It is recommended to make additions to it, which will more fully reveal each step.

Execution of an individual plan. The most difficult stage. It is very important to follow the plan, not to delay the implementation of specific intermediate goals. For every small goal you achieve, don't forget to praise yourself and motivate yourself. If you fail to complete the planned step or delay the deadlines, you must limit yourself in some way. In this way, you will achieve the desired result.

Related videos

Sources:

• child development plan

If you are constantly missing a working day and you are constantly forced to work in emergency mode and stay after work in order to finish things, then you should analyze this situation. It is likely that this is not happening at all because you have too much work. The reason for this may be that you do not know how to organize individual planning of your working time.

Instruction

It is not enough to outline a list of things that you are going to do in a day. An individual plan must be drawn up taking into account the fact that your performance changes during the day and, for example, in the morning and at certain hours in the afternoon it is maximum. You know yourself better, so identify these periods of increased performance. Consider in the plan those daily tasks that you must complete at a strictly agreed time.

Review your daily to-do list and prioritize those that require maximum focus. Schedule them for those hours when you can boast of high performance. Try to use them as much as possible and eliminate distractions, focus and ask colleagues not to distract you.

Form large and similar tasks into blocks, this will help you not to waste time on reorganizing. Such an organization of work on the principle of "conveyor line" will contribute to a more efficient use of working time. When changing activities, take a break - drink tea or just be distracted for a few minutes to "free" your head.

If you are working on a large and long-term project, you should not put it off until later. Include work on it in your daily plan and do some of that work every day. After a while, you will get some concrete results that will serve as an incentive to complete the remaining stages. Thus, you will exclude emergency situations and eliminate the cause of nervousness and stress.

In the event that the order does not have a specific deadline, then set it yourself and systematically work on its implementation. Those things that can be solved quickly, do it right away - after all, you still get to know them first. If possible, immediately after reading the business letter or reading the assignment, give an answer or complete the assignment.

Since the volume of sales affects both the level of income and the image of the company, we decided to figure out how to draw up a competent and realistic sales development plan. We read below about what interesting tasks to come up with for sellers and how to implement the corporate strategy of the organization.

Prerequisites for creation

The well-being and stability of the company is directly related to the work of managers and the productivity of management. Before you upgrade, you need to work on the policy of this unit. A detailed action plan to increase sales will help to structure the workflow and achieve incredible heights.

A sales plan is a comprehensive document that formulates the basic directions, principles and methods for achieving specific goals within the framework of the company's overall commercial strategy.

The primary reasons for developing a sales development plan include:

• Creation of a sales department.
• Lagging behind the existing sales plan.
• Transition from to "hot" clients.

The absence of a sales development plan is not critical for small-sized companies, because often employees perform the functions of several specialists. To reflect the sale of goods, a pair of schematic diagrams or graphs is sufficient.

The absence of a sales development plan is not critical for small companies, where employees often perform the functions of several specialists.

For large organizations with an impressive customer base, having a plan is a must. In them, the sales department is engaged not only in the search for potential buyers, but also in the execution of contracts and other services. Thus, the company's corporate strategy is being implemented, which provides for the promotion of the brand and the capture of a partial market share.

Primary requirements

In order for the compiled document to be useful and cost-effective in work, its creation must be approached with due attention and attitude. The key aspects of the plan to increase sales include:

1. Assessment of the situation. Based on macro- and microeconomic market trends, problem areas of the company's work are presented that require immediate intervention by the sales department.
2. Goal setting. The new strategy is determined according to the company's global business plan.
3. Choice of strategy. A new work tactic is being developed, aimed at improving the situation and adjusting the existing principles and ways of developing the sales department.
4. List of actions. A well-defined list of tasks is developed that contributes to the operational achievement of the goal both monthly and quarterly. Responsible executors are appointed.
5. Definition of chronological framework. The deadlines for the implementation of each task separately and the period for the implementation of the entire plan in particular are outlined. Usually it is 3-5 years.
6. Objective analysis. The presented algorithm of actions should be adequate and commensurate with the time, numbers and capabilities of the company.
7. Search for optimal means. To implement the sales plan, the most effective methods and tools (planning, reports, etc.) are selected.
8. Personnel planning. It turns out the required number of personnel and its compliance with the professional level.
9. Process automation. In order to save time and simplify work, the possibility of upgrading hardware or software is foreseen.
10. Plan approval.

Example in practice

There are many options for the development of work on the sale of goods. A brilliant example of sales optimization in one organization can be successfully applied in another with similar goals. Two situations will serve as an approximate sales development plan.

The first strategy is a clear division of the areas of responsibility of all managers, where each is assigned a specific task in the intended direction. The second tactic is a strict division of the sales department into two separate structures, each of which is exclusively occupied with its own field of activity: either searching for potential customers or servicing attracted customers.

The first strategy is a clear division of the areas of responsibility of all managers, where each is assigned a specific task in the intended direction.

The specifics of developing a sales development plan is that for its preparation it is important to have special knowledge, understand the optimization of each tool in the advertising environment, and analyze marketing components. From the choice of the strategy for the development of the sales department, the strategic direction of the company, the opportunities and risks of selling the goods are determined.

Hello! In this article, we will talk about how to create a sales plan.

Today you will learn:

• Why do you need a sales plan?
• How to calculate and arrange it;
• How do you get your employees to stick to the plan?

Why you need a sales plan

Do you need a sales plan for your business? The answer is unequivocal - yes. And not only for those who sell specific goods, but also for service workers, it is also simply necessary.

1. For the organization of work. The enterprise should function as a well-established mechanism, when each employee has a goal for his work and knows what he must do in order to achieve it. Employees should have clear ideas about what awaits them after the implementation or failure of the sales plan.
2. To increase profit. Try moving a salesperson from a fixed salary to a minimum wage and performance bonus, and you'll see how employee motivation translates into company revenue.
3. For development. fades if it stays in one place. Setting a goal and achieving it is the task of a successful entrepreneur. Otherwise, he will be overtaken and "crushed" by more ambitious businessmen.

Types of planning

At the heart of any sales plan is an understanding of the minimum and maximum quantities a company must sell in order to exist.

The most important for start-up entrepreneurs is the minimum allowable value, it means a “bottom”, below which it is no longer possible to function. For companies that have embarked on the path of growth and development, it is more important to achieve maximum plans.

There are several types of planning:

• Prospective - long-term strategy for 5-10 years;
• Current - is developed for a year, clarifies and corrects the indicators of long-term planning;
• Operational and production - tasks are divided into shorter segments (quarter, month, etc.).

Rules for creating a sales plan

The volume of possible sales depends on many factors. When creating a plan, you need to take into account all the points that are important for your field.

For example, these could be:

• seasonality;
• Dynamics of development and trends in the market;
• Reasons for the decline in past periods;
• Changes in politics, economics and legislation;
• Change of assortment and prices;
• Sales channels and potential buyers;
• Employees;
• Advertising.

The procedure for developing a sales plan

A full annual plan, based on in-depth analysis, is created over several months.

To get an adequate result and not miss anything, you need to:

1. Analyze trends in politics and macroeconomics. How is the country's GDP changing? What happens to oil and gas prices and exchange rates? It would not be superfluous to get acquainted with the opinions of experts, leading economic media.
2. Study the market situation. Will demand increase or decrease? Have new competitors and potential customers appeared?
3. Display sales statistics for past periods. For the year in general and for each month in particular.
4. Analyze the causes of recession and growth. This may be seasonality, changes in company policy, a new assortment, personnel changes. When planning for next year, be sure to rely on significant moments.
5. Compile sales statistics separately for salespeople and departments. Focusing on leaders will be too optimistic, but try to bring the average value closer to them.
6. Build a base of loyal customers. How much profit do they bring, how often and for what goods do they come? Of course, this stage does not apply to companies focused on one-off sales.
7. Set a goal. Based on the analysis made earlier, it is already possible to imagine what sales were last year, and how much they can be increased in the future. It is better to set two goals: feasible and ideal. It is the presence of the second that will remind you that you should not stop there.
8. Discuss the plan with subordinates. Set deadlines and personal instructions.
9. Create a budget. Having a clear sales plan, it is easier to calculate how much you will have to spend on purchases, advertising, and employee bonuses.

Sales plan calculation methods

When calculating planned sales, you can use the following methods:

1. Subjective: surveys, questionnaires, decisions based on the entrepreneur's experience;
2. Objective: test sales, analysis of early periods, demand statistics.

There is no universal method for developing a sales plan for any company. Each company chooses its own way, based on the needs and characteristics of the activity.

There are many methods, but it is not necessary to know them all. It is enough to choose a few suitable for a particular business and use them in combination.

Let us consider in more detail several basic methods used in calculating the sales plan.

Time series analysis

moving average

Using the moving average method, projected sales in the future period will be equal to sales for past periods of time. This does not take into account any other factors. The more periods are taken into account, the more accurate the forecast will be, which is why this method is not effective for young companies.

Example. The stationery store sold 2,700 ballpoint pens in 2016, 3,140 in 2015, and 2,900 in 2014. Forecast for 2017: (2700+3140+2900)/3=2910.

Exponential Smoothing

A method for creating short-term forecasts based on historical data analysis. Convenient for forecasting the development of retail sales. Allows you to calculate how much goods will be needed in the next similar period (month, week).

The smoothing constant (CS) can be from 0 to 1. With an average level of sales, it is 0.2-0.4, and during growth (for example, holidays) - 0.7-0.9. The most appropriate value of the COP is determined empirically - the value with the smallest error for the past periods is selected.

Formula:CV * Actual demand for the current period + (1-CV) * Forecast for the current period.

Example. During the month, 640 notebooks were sold in the stationery store, while the previous forecast was 610, SC - 0.3. Forecast for the next month: 0.3*640 + (1-0.3)*610= 619.

Decomposition and seasonal factor

The decomposition consists of seasonality, trend and cyclicality. In practice, many entrepreneurs stop at applying the seasonality factor. It is used when creating a sales plan based on historical income for an enterprise whose turnover is seasonal.

Step 1. Determination of seasonal dynamics. A clear numerical indicator here will be the seasonality coefficient.

1. Take last year's total sales and divide by 12 to get your monthly average.
2. The amount of sales for each month of the billing year divided by the average.

Example. Over the past year, the store carried out sales of 850,000 rubles. Of these, 44,000 in January, 50,000 in February, and so on. The average monthly value is 850000/12 = 70,830 rubles. January seasonality coefficient: 44000/70830=0.62, for February: 50000/70830=0.71.

As a result, each month will receive its own coefficient. For reliability, it is worth calculating such coefficients for the past few years and leaving their average value for further actions.

Step 2. Determine the goal. For example, you set a goal to increase sales by 20%. The calculation is simple: you need to add 20% to the amount of sales for the last year.

850000+20% = 1,020,000 rubles

Step 3. Make a sales plan for the month. The general plan for the year will be further divided into smaller periods - in our example, these are months.

1. Divide your yearly goal by 12 to get the average plan for the month.
2. Multiply the average plan by the seasonal factor for each month.

Example. Average monthly plan: 1,020,000/12 = 85,000 rubles. Plan for January: 85,000 * 0.62 = 52,700 rubles, plan for February: 85,000 * 0.71 = 60,350 rubles.

The result will be a sales plan for each month. If the monthly plan is met, then the overall goal of increasing sales for the year will also be achieved. It is much easier to monitor the implementation of the plan for small time periods, and take prompt measures than to try to catch up with the goal in the last months of the year.

Making a sales plan

The sales plan as a document consists of several items.

We list all the main ones in order:

1. A header consisting of a title (“Department sales plan ....”) and an indication of the author (“Composed by ...”, then the position and full name of the person who compiled the plan).
2. The first point is employees and achievements. Here it is worth listing all the employees of the department, indicating the need for new personnel, if any, and also mentioning key achievements over the past period.
3. The second point is the results of the last period. For clarity, you can include in the document a graph of growth and decline in sales, bring the totals not only for the department as a whole, but also for each employee in particular, indicate in percentage terms how much the previous plan was overfulfilled or underfulfilled.
4. The third point is a plan for the future. The amount of the plan is indicated, the main planned transactions are listed, customers who are already ready to conclude a contract and other points that provide a guarantee of profit in the new period.
5. The fourth point is the necessary measures. Further, we are talking about the actions that have yet to be performed to achieve the goal. These can be price policy changes, promotions, updating the company's technical base, and many others.
6. Date and signatures of the managers who approved the plan.

All employees of the company should familiarize themselves with the resulting document. Only after collective discussion and approval can the plan be officially recognized as a “compass” by which the company will move in the new year, quarter or month.

Structuring the plan

A sales plan is a map for the development of any business that sells goods or services. Without this map, the business runs the risk of getting lost, going in circles, or even moving in the opposite direction. And the more detailed the map, the easier it is for the traveler not to go astray.

Based on the features, set goals in several directions at once:

• Share of regional and macro market;
• Overall sales volume;
• financial profit.

Break each large plan into smaller ones if possible. For each direction, product, number of customers, and so on, depending on your business.

The larger the company, the more plans will have to be made. In addition to the general sales plan common to all employees, each branch, division, department, manager and simple salesperson should have their own goals.

Such a detailed plan is necessary for every enterprise.

Ideally, the structuring of the plan should take place along all available sections:

• Regions (where and how much will be sold);
• Sellers (who will sell and how much);
• Goods (how much will be sold);
• Time (when and how much will be sold);
• Sales channels (to whom and how much will be sold);
• The nature of sales (how many sales are guaranteed and how many are planned).

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1. Sales forecast instead of a plan. The forecast may be part of the sales plan, but cannot replace it in any way. The forecast only describes a situation that may or may not develop in the future.

The plan contains a description of the goal to be achieved, and the conditions that will need to be met for this. It implies a set of certain tools with which the result will be achieved: promotions, employee training, price reduction.

Mistake 2. The plan is built on the basis of only last year's achievements. The analysis of the sales plan should take into account all the important factors. It is unacceptable to discount the economic situation in the country and region, competitors, new technologies and other changes that will certainly affect sales.

Mistake 3.Combining all buyers into one. Even the smallest trading enterprises have certain groups of buyers. They can be combined according to various criteria: buying one category of goods, regular customers or new customers, making random purchases at a point of sale or finding your products on the Internet. When forming a plan, you need to consider what you can offer each of the groups, and what you can get in return.

Error 4. The plan does not indicate the deadlines and responsible persons. In terms of sales, everything should be clear: what is the goal, when it must be completed, by whom and at the expense of what tools.

Mistake 5. The plan is not structured enough. Each department and the seller in particular should have their own individual plan. Agree that when there is no own plan, the temptation is too great to lay all the responsibility on colleagues.

Mistake 6. The plan was not discussed with the sellers. A plan will never be worked out to the end if it was compiled by one manager, guided only by reports and graphs. Front line salespeople should at a minimum be able to discuss the plan with management, and even better be directly involved in the creation of the sales plan.

Be sure that you made the plan correctly if at the end of the period it was completed by 85-105%.

How to get the plan done

It's one thing to make a plan for yourself. This can be done by an entrepreneur seeking to increase profits or a manager aimed at career growth.

But the situation with plans for subordinates is completely different. It is not necessary to punish in the strictest way for each failure to fulfill the sales plan and keep employees in a tight grip - this is ineffective.

Better listen to the advice of experienced entrepreneurs:

1. Briefly, but as fully as possible, formulate what you want from your employees. It is better to convey this to them in writing.
2. Incentivize financially. The best employees deserve a bonus.
3. Set bonuses not only for 100% completion, but also for each overcoming of a certain minimum threshold (for example, 60%). Although the worker did not fulfill the plan, it is clear that he tried.
4. Penalize for systematic violations.
5. The entire vertical of employees (from an ordinary seller to a top manager) should be financially dependent on the implementation of plans.
6. Respect and value your employees and strive to ensure that they love their place of work and are interested in the development and prosperity of the company.

During the high season, sales volumes are examined under a microscope almost every day. How to be sure that the maximum possible profits will be extracted, and competitors will be far behind? Where is the guarantee that your key customers will choose you as the main supplier? Will sales managers be able to work one hundred percent? And how do you keep selling more? It turns out that these questions can be not only answered, but also completely solved by consistently implementing a series of simple changes. Let's see what these changes are and why they bring great results?

Organization of the sales process - who should do what

Properly organized sales are at least half of the overall success. Regardless of what your company sells - plasma TVs or pantyhose - the sales process looks the same and can be divided into 3 key stages: finding new customers, actually selling and documenting the transaction. If the process is so easily broken down, why does your sales manager call new customers and prepare invoices? After all, the principle of division of labor is as old as the world and no one has canceled it yet.

The main and only task of a sales manager is to sell. Sell ​​to existing customers who are assigned to it. After all, he knows how to sell best, so let him do just that. Hence Rule #1: "A sales manager should only sell to assigned clients and do it 100% of their time."

Sales managers are the key people in any wholesale company, because it is they who, directly interacting with customers, bring the company money. Do you really want these gods to print invoices and fill out shipping orders? That's what sales assistants are for.

There are many reasons why it is beneficial for a company to hire sales assistants.

First, this resource is so inexpensive that most often the monthly cost of it will pay off with just one additional transaction that the sales manager will make in the free time (the average salary of a sales assistant does not exceed $450 per month).

Secondly, this is the best way to create a talent pool. When you need another sales manager, you won't need to run to your HR department or recruiting company. you will surely find a worthy candidate among the sales assistants already working in your company. Capable assistants, especially if the company has programs for their development, can take the position of a manager after 6-9 months of work in the company. Take a close look at these people - they do not need time to acclimatize in the team, and they already know everything about the sales process in your company!

And thirdly, don't forget Rule #1 - Sales Managers must sell 100% of their time. If you don't give your managers assistants, how else will you follow this rule?!

Now let's talk about finding clients. Surely you are familiar with this paradox: every company has many customers who do not. Your company's client base probably has some of the largest retail chains in Novosibirsk (which someone once called and they said that if they need something, they will contact you themselves) or the central store in Kaliningrad ( who was your big customer 2 years ago, and then for some reason he began to buy less from you, and for the last 6 months he has not placed a single order with you at all). It is quite possible that these clients are even assigned to some specific managers. Amazing! But put yourself in the shoes of the sales manager who is in charge of these customers. Tell me, in order to fulfill the plan, with whom, first of all, you will work: with Pyotr Petrovich, with whom you went on vacation together last year at sea, or with Ivan Ivanovich, your knowledge of which is limited to the first name and patronymic (and in are you really not sure about them)? You will hardly be surprised when you find out that your sales manager will also prefer Petr Petrovich. But then what to do with Ivan Ivanovich? After all, there are many like him, and if you do not work with such clients, you will not receive any profit!

The answer is no mystery. Hire a special person who will take care of such Ivan Ivanovichs and finally remove the headache from your sales manager. How to call such a person? There are no uniform standards here yet, but personally I prefer "sales development manager". After all, it is precisely the development of sales that a person in this position should be engaged in.

What is meant by sales development? By and large, there are only two components: the search for new customers and the "awakening" of "sleeping" customers, i.e. customers who have stopped buying from your company or have significantly reduced the share of their purchases from you. But these two components hide truly golden possibilities! After all, it is the acquisition of new customers that allows your company to increase turnover and market share.

The sales development manager should only deal with sales development. Acquiring new clients for the company, he transfers them to managers who carry out regular sales, controls the first few transactions, and after that, at certain intervals, monitors work with the clients transferred to him. From this functionality, we extract rule No. 2: "The search for new customers and work with "sleeping" customers should not be handled by a sales manager, but by an individual person - a sales development manager."

In Figure 1, you can see how streamlined and logical the sales process becomes when aligned with the rules outlined above. Now, each stage in the sales process has one responsible person - the "stage owner".

Sales planning - where should sales plans come from

Let's now try to answer the next important question: how to plan sales after the sales process has been rebuilt. Surely you have more than once met with the implementation of the monthly sales target by 74% or by 128% (in both cases, the figure is very different from 100%). How to set monthly plans? And how should they compare with quarterly or annual plans?

Let's start with long-term planning. It is absolutely pointless to argue that an annual sales plan is necessary. After all, if it is not there, then how to plan working capital or advertising budgets? However, the attitude towards planning for the year ahead should be reconsidered.

Now more than ever, we are doing business in an era of constant and rapid change, in an era where reacting quickly to new opportunities often brings in far more money than sticking to a long-term strategic plan.

Imagine that you are trading in computer equipment, and a new type of device appears on the market, for which a large demand will form in a short time. You will start selling new devices, and due to this, you will meet your annual sales target by 130%. What will you do with this figure, given that at the time of the approval of the annual plan, you did not yet know about the new product, largely due to which you achieved such results. But does this mean that your company has worked super-efficiently? No. Most likely, the level of implementation of the annual sales plan will not be the only (and not even the most important!) indicator that you will rely on in the analysis.

Or let's take another example. You trade in metal structures. Six months after the approval of the annual sales plan, a large company enters the steel structures market, surpassing all players operating in the market in terms of financial capabilities, distributes commodity loans right and left, and some of your customers leave you just because you simply cannot offer the same conditions . At the end of the year, you find that you have achieved 72% of your annual sales target. Sadly. But is that a reason why all of your sales people don't get their annual bonuses? No, it is not, because at the time of the approval of the annual sales plan, the balance of power in the market was different.

Thus, we have come to a very valuable rule number 3, which is rarely used in practice to this day: "The annual sales plan should be exclusively a guide for company employees, the emphasis in planning should shift to operational plans - quarterly and monthly."

Now let's consider the actual operational planning and understand where the figures should come from in the plan.

To begin with, a simple question: who knows better than anyone in the company how much a particular customer is able to buy? The answer is just as simple: of course, the sales manager who works with this client. Therefore, when planning sales for each client, ask the manager working with this client how much he will sell to him in the next month / quarter. If you provide the manager with the most detailed information about the company's plans for this time and provide all the necessary statistical calculations about the client (Fig. 2), then you will receive the most correct answer to your question.

At the same time, you should not be afraid that the sales manager will underestimate the numbers, because. any manager understands that his career growth is directly related to the increase in personal sales volumes.

After the head of the sales department or other sales department collects data on the planned sales for each client from all managers, he must discuss with the managers the monthly plan for each client. As a result of the discussion, the manager together with the manager receives the manager’s personal plan for the month (Fig. 2), while the manager understands where this plan comes from, which strengthens his faith in achieving the goals.

The sum of personal plans of all sales managers automatically gives the company's total sales plan for the month. So we came to another rule number 4: "The operational (monthly or quarterly) sales plan of the company should be formed from the bottom up (as the sum of personal plans), and not from the top down (as a figure that must be proportionally divided among all managers)".

Figure 2. An example of a sales planning form

Motivating sales managers - how to get the most out of the human resource in your company

Speaking of motivation for sales managers, I would like to paint a few strokes to the picture, but by no means the whole picture, because. magazine space is still limited.

* Tip #1: Keep the manager's scorecard as simple as possible so that the manager can easily calculate his current results on any day of the month.

* Stroke #2: If you already have a sales development manager, i.e. source of constant emergence of new customers, then inscribe in the motivational scheme of each sales manager a plan for new and "sleeping" customers.

* Tip #3: Don't be afraid to differentiate salespeople. Even a small company should have at least 3 categories of managers, and in large companies this number can reach up to 10! At the same time, clearly state the rules for assigning each category and the motivational scheme for each category. In other words, the manager must understand exactly what results he must achieve in order to assign a higher category, and how much more he can earn.

* Tip #4: Sales Development Manager and Sales Manager are different positions, so don't use the same schemes to motivate them.

* Tip #5: All sales plans and incentive schemes should be prepared with managers, not for them. If you manage to involve managers in this process, it will increase the self-importance of managers, give them confidence in the fairness of sales plans and motivation systems, and, as a result, increase their loyalty to your company.

Using these strokes, we get rule number 5: "To win the heart of a manager, draw a path to success with him, not for him."

You have decided to act - how to implement changes in the company's sales system

So you've decided to make changes to your company's sales system. First of all, you need to answer the following question for yourself: does the existing sales system need tweaking or rebuilding?

In this article, we will consider only the customization case. All the changes proposed above can be divided into 3 main blocks - reorganization of the sales process (division of labor), changes in the planning system and adjustment of the motivation system. You won't be surprised to learn that this is the sequence in which changes should be implemented. At the same time, however, the implementation of one stage may well overlap in time with the preparation for the implementation of the next stage (Fig. 3).

Although the full implementation cycle will be completed in about 3 months, after 1-1.5 months you will see the first positive results associated with the reorganization of the sales process in your company.

5 Sales Myths

In conclusion, I want to once again dispel a few myths about sales.

Selling myths:

MYTH: The sales manager must look for clients himself, so he will better feel the market.

TRUTH: A sales development manager should look for customers, and a sales manager should only sell.

MYTH: Short-term (operational) sales plans should automatically be derived from long-term ones.

TRUTH: The short-term plan should always be calculated separately as the sum of the personal sales plans of all sales managers.

MYTH: If you give a manager the opportunity to set a plan for himself, then plans will decrease dramatically.

TRUTH: Managers are rational, just like everyone else. If they understand why it is profitable for them to sell more, then they will ask for appropriate plans.

MYTH: If the sales manager is not motivated to be profitable, sales profitability will plummet.

TRUTH: At five companies I removed the return on sales plan from managers' scorecards, and in all cases the return on sales did not change or even slightly increased. Sales managers are not enemies to themselves and their company.

MYTH: Any changes in the sales system give the first results no earlier than six months later.

TRUE: The experience of implementing the proposed changes in more than ten wholesale companies shows that the first noticeable increase in sales occurs no later than 1.5 months after the introduction of the principle of division of labor in sales.

Instead of a postscript

Surely you have already thought about how to plan and implement changes in your sales system - on your own or with the involvement of consultants. There is no universal recipe, but I will try to offer a few guidelines.

If your sales system is effective, ie. characterized by constant growth in sales volumes ahead of the market, and the heads of the selling departments are highly qualified specialists, it is likely that you can make the necessary adjustments to the system yourself.

If your sales system has both clear strengths and weaknesses—for example, rapid sales growth without systematic planning, or slow sales growth with a well-formalized process—then you may decide to implement changes yourself or hire consultants. .

If you are not satisfied with most of the sales figures or find it difficult to assess the current sales system, then you have a direct road to consultants.

The current market order of prices for consultants' services can be seen from the following table:

Knowing the actual and potential sales of your company, as well as the rate of return on sales, you can easily calculate the desired time for which the services of consultants will pay off, and use these calculations in negotiations.