A proper sales strategy helps small companies grow and scale their business. Sales planning is key to ensuring you receive a high return on investment from your sales and marketing initiatives.
Whether you own a local law firm, a med spa, or an HVAC company, small business sales planning is crucial to your overall success. Here’s everything you need to know about small business sales planning:
What is Sales Planning?
Sales planning is the process of developing a sales strategy for your small business. Your strategy should outline your revenue goals and all the sales or marketing activities you use to achieve your goals. This strategy will be the framework for your team’s future success, ensuring that you’re maximizing your outreach and capitalizing on all revenue-generating opportunities.
When planning a small business sales strategy, you want to create actionable goals that your sales and marketing team can use to ensure they hit their goals. You also want to stay realistic with your expectations and use data-driven insights to inform your strategy.
How to Create Your Own Sales Plan for Success
Your sales plan strategy is a strategic framework that helps your sales and marketing team stay on task and stay innovative during the workweek. Without proper sales planning, you may find it more challenging to grow your book of business. There are five key components you should include in your sales planning strategy.
Here’s what your sales plan should include:
Marketing Strategy
Your marketing strategy will help you nurture leads into paying customers. It’s also key to ensuring you build connections with your prospective audience and keep your current customers engaged. When defining your marketing strategy, ensure your strategy contains a healthy balance between acquisition and retention to maximize profits. Retention efforts should focus on engaging with your current customers and your acquisition efforts should focus on reaching a new prospective audience.
Budget
Including a budget will ensure you’re allocating your funds wisely. It also ensures you’re not overspending on resources. The budget should include how much you plan to spend on marketing campaigns, software, and staffing. You should reference your budget regularly so you can reassess if needed.
Sales and Marketing Goals
Your sales plan should include marketing and sales goals for your team. The goals should be realistic and attainable. Common sales goals include revenue targets and market share. Your marketing team may focus on increasing brand awareness, increasing engagement, or improving customer retention.
Sales Forecasting
A sales forecast is an estimate of future sales. This process uses your current sales data and market trends to predict future profits. Sales forecasting can help you identify future revenue and identify potential pain points.
Customer Journey Visualization
From the moment a prospect lands on your website to the day they sign a deal, you want to ensure you fully understand the customer journey. Visualizing your sales funnel will make it easier to identify opportunities. You should think through the seven stages of your customer journey and make improvements to customer pain points that will drive more sales.
Small Business Sales Planning Tips
Ready to start sales planning? Once you have the framework of a small business sales strategy, here are some quick tips you can use to plan accordingly.
1. Review and Assess Your Strategy Regularly
Sales planning is an ongoing process. You’ll likely review and assess your success on a quarterly or monthly basis to ensure that your strategy is working. If your team isn’t meeting your targets, adapt to the changes and find ways to improve your approach. Every small change can have a big impact.
2. Invest in Automation
Automation is key to maximizing efficiency and productivity in the workplace. You can use automation to schedule follow-ups, SMS marketing campaigns, or newsletters. Townsquare Interactive’s business management platform includes a a suite of automation tools your team can benefit from. It features email marketing templates and communication tools your team can use to streamline your strategy.
3. Sales and Marketing Alignment
Ensuring your sales and marketing team are fully aligned is the best way to maximize results. This will ensure your marketing team brings in quality leads for your sales reps and help you develop a seamless buyer’s journey. Scheduling regular meetings between the two departments will ensure they are on the same page and working towards a common goal.
4. Conduct Competitor Research
Your competitors provide key insight into what does and doesn’t work in your industry. You can learn from their mistakes and take inspiration from campaigns. Taking some time to review their landing pages, marketing campaigns, paid advertising, and sales tactics will help you make informed decisions about your strategy. You can gather inspiration from their tactics and find creative ways to enhance your sales planning strategy.
5. Invest in CRM Software
CRM software can help you enhance your sales processes, giving your sales reps more time to focus on tasks that require a human touch. When building your tech stack, you’ll want to ensure you invest in efficient business management software. This is the best way to manage your sales funnel and ensure your client’s needs are always met. Our platform has a suite of tools including a cloud-based CRM to increase productivity and efficiency.
Get Set up for Success With Townsquare Interactive
Small business sales planning is vital to your future success. Taking the time to get strategic with your sales and marketing processes will help you maximize your ROI and help you build life-long connections with customers.
Townsquare Interactive’s business management platform is designed with small business owners in mind. Our software will help you automate marketing campaigns, schedule follow-ups, and connect with customers. We also offer local SEO, web design, and social media services.
We’re here to help you take your small business sales planning strategy to the next level.