There are lots of blogs about sales strategies and plans. However, I think that most of them are somewhat missing the mark. Although they are closely aligned, they are not the same document and serve different purposes.
It is important to understand the difference between the two:
A sales plan defines what you are going to do.
A sales strategy defines why you are going to do it.
Before you do any selling activity, you should know why you are doing it. No product will be of interest to all companies or customers. You have to decide who you are going to try to sell your product to and why you have selected them. You have to decide how you are going to go about selling your product and why you have selected that method. The strategy and plan determines all of this.
The strategy and plan will be specific to each product and each territory. Different products will have different value propositions, with different competitors and different target customers. Each territory will have a different landscape and while they may only be small, changes to the overall strategy may be required.
The strategy covers:
Background. The first part of a strategy is to define why you are building the strategy in the first place. What is the cause of the change? It may be as simple as a new sales year, the launch of a new product or a new sales director seeking to change direction. Whatever the reason, it needs to be clear why you are building the strategy.
What are you selling? When building the strategy, it is important to define what you are actually selling. If it is a product, what are its main features and functions? This is easy to define if your product is a box of apples, for example. However, if it is a complex technology, you need to be able to define its principal functionality. This does not require excruciating detail but does need to define the main features, without stating the obvious.
Value Proposition. What is the potential value of your product to your customer? What are the benefits of it and why are they important to your customer? What will be the outcome of having used your product or services? For all of the principal features of the product, it is important to define a potential benefit to the customer.
Customer Issues. Before your customer will buy anything, they will need to have a problem that your product can help to solve. To successfully identify potential customers, you need to know what sorts of problems your product helps to solve. Just as importantly, how can you recognise that your customer has those problems?
Why change? Most opportunities are lost because the customer chooses not to do anything, so what motivation has the customer got to change? Without any motivation, people and companies do not readily change so just turning up with a new product will not force change. This will define the strategy for approaching potential customers.
What does the market look like? It is not possible to try to sell your product to every possible customer so you need to have some way of focussing your efforts. Are there specific vertical markets that you can approach? Are there specific types of companies that you will target?
SWOT Analysis. Review your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This is somewhat of a summary of the preceding parts of the strategy but it is a good way to provide focus on what you are good at and what your opportunities are. That way you spend time on them. It will also be important to define why your product is unique and how that potential benefits the customer.
Target Customers. To define your target customers, you need to have a good idea of what a good customer looks like. What are the characteristics of your best customers? Are there specific customers that you can target immediately?
Proof. The final part of your strategy will be to provide the proof that you and your product can do what you claim it can do. Great ideas do not solve problems, great products solve problems. You must ensure that your ideas are translated into deliverable products and that you can prove that they can do what you claim.
The sales plan is then derived from the sales strategy. I’ll write more about that next week.