Developing a Sales and Marketing Plan

 By Jim Hingst

 

After you establish your sales and marketing goals, you need to develop an action plan. See my blog post on Setting Goals for Your Business.

 

Some major goals can seem daunting, even unachievable. A large annual sales goal is more manageable and attainable if you break it into monthly targets and divide a team sales budget into individual sales goals.

 

Brainstorming. 

 

Sales goals are also more acceptable, if you include the sales reps in the planning process. Brainstorming sessions are one way to engage them in planning and create a list of those actions or tasks that you need to take to achieve your goals. Involving your associates in planning can also serve as a catalysis for bringing individuals together and operating as a team.

 

As you brainstorm with your sales reps, SWOT analysis can stimulate the interchange of ideas. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

 

This technique is effective in enumerating the strengths that make your shop unique and give you a competitive edge. These strengths comprise your product differential or unique selling proposition which you should communicate in your sales and marketing messaging.

 

Your SWOT analysis should also identify any weaknesses that put you at a disadvantage. These shortcomings may include outdated equipment, limited machine capacity, or a lack of manpower or technical expertise.

 

The technique also helps uncover opportunities as well as threats to your business. Threats could include new developments in printer technology, downturns in the economy, changes in local legislation or new competitors.

 

After your sales and marketing people identify new opportunities, you should generate a target list, which you will work through as you qualify these prospects. In the qualification process and initial sales interview, your reps should quantify the sales potential for each account. In comprising your target list be sure to include former customers lost to competitors.

 

Based on a competitive analysis, you can then assess the probability of closing the sale. This is all the information needed to construct a rolling forecast.

 

In developing your plan, you should detail what actions are required as well as who is responsible for undertaking those activities and achieving the goal. You should also describe how you will measure your progress throughout the year.

 

An easy way to outline your plan is to create a spreadsheet, listing the tasks, the person or people responsible for each task, the deadline for completion, key performance indicators (or KPIs) and any associated costs. The spreadsheet provides you with an overview, which allows you to track your progress.

 

As you review your plan each month, you can measure your progress and see what works and what doesn’t. As conditions change in your business, the spreadsheet is an uncomplicated format to modify.

 

In developing your plan, keep it simple. You will find it impossible to maintain focus, if you have too many goals. If you are working in a larger shop, you can assign a few goals to either individuals or teams of employees.

 

In helping your sales people manage their sales efforts, you need to set objectives for each of their activities in the sales process. Here are some activities that you might include in your sales plan:

 

Sales Activities

• Qualify 50 sales leads each week.

• Conduct 25 face-to-face sales meetings each week.

• Quote on $25,000 of new business each week.

• Close $5000 of new business each week.

 

The Importance of CRM Software. A spreadsheet or Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) is essential in tracking the activity of your sales people. Today CRM software is relatively inexpensive and can help you in supporting the activities of your sales associates as well as improving their odds of hitting their targets.

 

Utilizing CRM software can help you store customer information (past purchases, new opportunities, key contacts) and strengthen the bonds with your account base, which can help you increase repeat sales. CRM can also make it easier to generate email blasts and direct mail to your sales targets and integrate with social media platforms. It also helps schedule next call dates and generate sales reports.

 

Using a CRM software program will also help sales reps to build customer profiles, recording critical information such as decision makers, upcoming opportunities and areas of interest.

 

As a manager, sales software can help you determine how much time your reps are actually spending on actual selling. You can also use the information collected in customer profiles in your coaching efforts.

 

 

In selling to your existing customer base, you can establish several strategies for protecting your established accounts and growing sales to these clients. Sales and marketing activities could include:

 

• Contact each current customer once a month on the phone to identify new opportunities, generate referrals and to promote new product offerings, such as window and wall graphics, safety signage, tradeshow graphics and floor graphics.

 

• Create an e-newsletter for distribution to customers and prospects each month. Stories could focus on profiles of successful graphics programs. The newsletter should provide links to your website and blog. Click here for Tips on Building an Email Marketing List.

 

• Create weekly social media posts showcasing examples of your work. Read my article on Where Social Media Fits in Your Marketing Plan.

 

• To protect your business base, your marketing plan could incorporate a variety of forms of communication, such as telemarketing, direct mail, email blasts, website updates and social media. Your plan should also include networking with businesses that serve some of the same customers.

 

Your Marketing Plan.

 

Below are other examples of what your marketing action plan might also contain as well as a suggested spreadsheet which includes responsibilities, estimated cost, target date and action steps:

 

Marketing Activities

• Enter 100 prospects into your database each week

• Make 200 telemarketing calls each week

• Send 200 direct mail packages as follow up to the phone calls each week.

• Write a blog article each week.

• Generate a report at the beginning of each week recapping the sales and marketing activities of the previous week.

• Once a quarter, research your competitor’s pricing, increasing your prices to whatever the market will bear thereby improving your bottom line. 

• Each year increase your profit margin by 10%.

  

Small shops typically don’t have a budget for market research. In many cases, your sales people can help provide you will all the information that you need. They can help identifying market opportunities, target accounts and threats to your business. Information harvested through any business connections is also invaluable.

 

With a thorough sales and marketing plan you can focus the energies of your associates on growing the business. The plan doesn’t need to be too complicated or described in a voluminous theoretical tome. In fact, it is best if you keep it simple. You can compose all of the details of your plan in a spreadsheet.

 

For each activity, you should describe the implementation of the action step, and a quantifiable target for the step over a specified time period. Here is an example of the format that you may use in creating a plan:

 

Marketing Plan
Activity	Priority	Responsibility	Cost	Target Date	Action Steps
Database	Medium	Office Mgr. Sales Mgr.	$50/mo. for CRM software	12/31/22	Increase dbase size by 1200 annually. Add 25 records each week.
Phone Prospecting	High	Office Mgr. Sales Mgr.	$0	Generate marketing report 1st day of each week	Qualify 25 prospects each week. Identify opportunities, decision makers and competitors.
Sales Forecast	High	Sales Mgr.	$0	Update forecast 1st week of each month	Identify $500000 in new sales opportunities for the year. Enter opportunities into forecast each week. Review opportunities with sales reps weekly.
.E-Newsletter	Medium	Office Mgr.	$1200	1st week of each month	Write and distribute newsletter monthly Enter leads generated into the dbase.
Marketing Activity Report	High	Sales Mgr.	$0	1st day of each week	Generate a weekly report for management recording additions to the dbase, prospects qualified, opportunities identified, and website and social media results.

 

The Best Laid Plans.
 

The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote that “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” While it helps to have a positive attitude in business and expect the best, also prepare for the worst.

 

The key to overcoming problems is remaining flexible. No plan, no matter how thorough and brilliant should be cast in stone. Things change. Remember that your competitors have plans too. In many cases, they are planning to grow their businesses by taking your market share.

 

Be prepared for the unexpected. As boxing legend Mike Tyson noted, everyone has a plan when they step into the ring until they get punched in the mouth.

 

When you get punched in the mouth, you better change your plan and change it fast. Better still, always have a backup plan or a “Plan B” as insurance. The term “Plan B” was originally known a “Bismarck Plan”, after Otto von Bismarck, the famous German chancellor, who always had a backup plan.

 

Failure to produce a wanted outcome can be caused from an ill-conceived plan or a failure in execution. Of course, some problems, such as an economic downturn or a technology shift in your industry are difficult if not impossible to predict and beyond your control.

 

Common mistakes in planning include underestimating your competitor’s competencies or overrating your own abilities. Even among the best organizations this can result in the choke, according to famed basketball coach, Pat Riley.

 

To avoid the choke, you and your sales reps need to continually be aware of changes in market conditions, new challenges from competitors, and the introduction of innovative technologies, which can put you at a disadvantage.

 

There is no shame when a plan fails. The fault is when you fail to change the plan and continue to do the same thing, expecting to produce a different result. That’s business insanity.  

 

What’s important is that when your plans do not produce the desired results, you need to do identify any problems and modify your plan.

 

Unfortunately, many action plans simply die of neglect. They are written, tucked away in a desk drawer and forgotten until it is unearthed a year later or longer. For action plans to be effective, they should be a living document, that you review monthly if not weekly and modified as business conditions change.

About Jim Hingst: Sign business authority on vehicle wraps, vinyl graphics, screen printing, marketing, sales, gold leaf, woodcarving and painting. 

After fourteen years as Business Development Manager at RTape, Jim Hingst retired. He was involved in many facets of the company’s business, including marketing, sales, product development and technical service.

Hingst began his career 42 years ago in the graphic arts field creating and producing advertising and promotional materials for a large test equipment manufacturer.  Working for offset printers, large format screen printers, vinyl film manufacturers, and application tape companies, his experience included estimating, production planning, purchasing and production art, as well as sales and marketing. In his capacity as a salesman, Hingst was recognized with numerous sales achievement awards.

Drawing on his experience in production and as graphics installation subcontractor, Hingst provided the industry with practical advice, publishing more than 190 articles for  publications, such as  Signs Canada, SignCraft,  Signs of the Times, Screen Printing, Sign and Digital Graphics and  Sign Builder Illustrated. He also posted more than 500 stories on his blog (hingstssignpost.blogspot.com). In 2007 Hingst’s book, Vinyl Sign Techniques, was published.  Vinyl Sign Techniques is available at sign supply distributors and at Amazon. 

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