Use Your Sales Plan to Drive a High Growth Strategy

Building a sales plan can help transform a slow-growth business into a high-growth one by providing a clear roadmap, align resources, and drive focused actions. Face it, finding new business is hard, it’s even harder if you’re not sure what you are looking for and your resources are not aligned. Move from playing defense to offense to make your growth goals a reality.

Key steps include identifying target markets, setting clear objectives, and KPIs, optimizing sales processes, enhancing training, expanding offerings, improving customer relationships, leveraging data-driven decision-making, aligning sales with marketing, and ensuring continues improvement. These strategies lay the foundation for sustainable and accelerated growth.

Let’s start in an area that is often overlooked. What’s your story, why should somebody who doesn’t know you want to work with you? Or the other question to answer is what do you do and why should I care? Spending time in this area doesn’t make everything else easy, but it does make the planning process easier.

Identify your revenue and profitability goals as defined by existing business and new business development. Establishing these goals helps to provide direction and accountability to the sales and marketing team. What’s your customer acquisition process, how will you execute it, and what are the best practices that have been established for your business?

Working on establishing your ideal customer profile is another area that’s often overlooked. Look at your best clients, or the new markets you are going after and think of the graphics: the demographics, the geographics, and the psychographics of your best customers and opportunities. Identify the common attributes they have in common including buyer persona, vertical markets, geographic location, and why your existing customers keep coming back. The better you can articulate these attributes; the clearer your messaging and tactical approaches will be.

Have a clear understanding of what your business development outreach cadence and messaging will be. Don’t try to make it up as you go, it won’t end well. Determine how you’ll keep score – how will you know if it’s working? Will it be through a CRM, a spreadsheet, or a napkin? No matter the approach you need a solid execution plan.

If your sales team needs additional sales training and coaching, don’t overlook this area. Selling today is not like it was selling 15 years ago. It’s a different game which requires different skills. Don’t rely on the skills that were designed for a time that once was, and not is. Those who are lifelong learners and who continuously “sharpen the saw” know what I’m talking about.

What else? There’s actually a lot more. While there may be a focus on new business development, don’t overlook your biggest asset, which are you’re existing customers. Don’t take your eye off the ball and don’t overlook the additional opportunities that may exist right in front of you.

Map out the introduction of new services and products as well as exceptional sales support. This includes customer service, estimating and pricing, operational excellence, consistent quality and on-time deliveries – these all go towards achieving the sales plan.

Marketing is an area that most printing companies have treated as an expense instead of an investment. If you believe in your sales plan and the targets that you’ve selected, then you need to market, provide content, and get people interested so that when the sales team knocks on their door, they have an idea of who you are. There are many third-party marketing organizations that are world class and provide services to the printing industry every day. Check them out. If you want to build it within your organization, that’s fine too, but make it a priority and not just a sometimes thing. Lead generation, brand integrity and awareness are table stakes in a transformational industry.

Finally, nothing remains static. The sales plan should include regular review points to assess performance, allowing for timely adjustments, and continuous optimization. Implementing feedback loops from the sales team and customers can lead to continuous improvement in the sales strategy, keeping the business on a growth trajectory. By incorporating these steps into your sales planning process, a slow-growth business can build a sales plan that not only addresses current challenges but also lays the foundation for sustained, high-growth performance.

If you have ideas or comments on the subject, please include them below. Good luck and remember, doing nothing certainly is an option, just not a great one!

Mike Philie can help validate what’s working and what may need to change in your business. Changing the trajectory of a business is difficult to do while simultaneously operating the core competencies. Mike provides strategy and insight to ambitious owners and CEOs in the Graphic Communications Industry by providing direct and realistic insight, not being afraid to voice the unpopular opinion and helping leaders navigate change through a common sense and practical approach. Learn more at www.philiegroup.com, LinkedIn or email at mphilie@philiegroup.com.