Winning Sales Strategies for SMB

Building a winning sales strategy for your small, medium, or small and medium business division can be a daunting process.  Sales strategy is often developed by trial and error instead of careful research and a well thought out growth plan. 

Today's blog includes some key thoughts to consider before you even start to update/devise a successful strategic sales plan for 2007.  We hope these front-end strategic thought considerations help you and your team win in '07:

1. Identify the target market you went after in 2006 versus the actual product/service paying customers before embarking on a systematic sales plan for 2007.  Use a third party research firm or management consulting firm to conduct this study.  (Yes, a shameless plug.)  Sounds simple enough right?  Often times these are vastly at odds.  You would be surprised how frequently.  Something obviously has to change if your target consumer (who you have been going after) is vastly different from who is actually buying the product. This wheel spinning occurs within organizations big and small but don't let it happen to your sales team ever again.

2.Before developing a sales strategy this year consider the learning curve required to successfully implement the plan and train your sales team about your product or service at the same time.  In order to avoid having a crimp in your sales plan execution we recommend automating your sales training process.  This might take time off that plan this year but you'll be thanking me next year when you have increased sales productivity well into the future.  The goal is to develop a process that enables you to plug a new salesperson into your workforce with minimal down time to you and your staff without compromising your sales plan/strategy timeline.

3. If there is any lack of cohesiveness and cooperation between sales and marketing vow to end it as soon as possible.  These functions within an organization should be unified and the technology they share (CRM technology and related lead generation and tracking tools) should help towards this goal.  If necessary, make a promise to yourself and your team to go on a team building retreat together in 2007.

4. Consider matching your sales force process and the team structure to your business peaks and valleys; the overall "business cycle."  Without properly considering your lean months versus those that merely require what we call "reverse telemarketing" (answering in-bound sales calls) you can over or under estimate your sales staffing and process needs depending on the nature of your business cycle. Look at your 2007 sales strategy planning with this factor in mind.

5. Hone and define your existing sales network (contacts, current and potential leads, past customers) and the technology you use to communicate and track results.  If you have one in place, fully utilize it and make sure your database is current.  If you do not have such a mechanism get going on building one today.  There are numerous sales tools for this function.  We prefer Sales force.Com but this is not the only choice on the market.  See Number 3.  This is a great team building activity for sales and marketing to tackle together.

6. Something that we provide for established organizations that is incredibly helpful before, during and after developing a strategic sales plan is a win/loss study.  Common sense tells you that the win/loss analysis enables sales teams to find out why they are winning accounts and why they are losing the same ones but it is usually much more than this at the end of the day.  We often learn about product marketing and aspects of the organizations culture among other things that might be getting in the way of the sale.  Information you never considered is usually revealed through this careful study.  It is definitely a prerequisite to developing any lasting successful sales plan and is best conducted on a quarterly basis to ensure that all parts of the sales mechanism are working towards the same goals.  It is also usually something that you can share with marketing to develop and create a winning partnership in 2007.

As an executive or manager, what are your thoughts for additional front-end strategies to contemplate before developing a plan?