Do you plan your sales campaign, or do you believe strategy is the application of expedients? There are two seemingly contradictory, well known, quotes which illustrate differences in philosophy.
Alan Lakein, Bill Clinton‘s guru says “failing to plan is planning to fail” whereas legendary Prussian General, Helmuth von Moltke says “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength (no plan survives contact with the enemy). and Strategy is a system of expedients.”
What’s a simple sales guy supposed to do with such conflicting advice?
Personally I’m in favour of planning what needs to be done, and changing the detail when the facts change. A combination of the two.
You might find some interesting perspectives on sales and sales management, and particularly processes and tools in our Tutorials.
Meanwhile here’s the short version.
Maybe it’s just me, but that’s doubtful. My sales campaigns are always like games of chess – moves and counter-moves. Aggressive advances and defensive fortification. Back and forth, tacking into the wind.
But I’ll always start out with a sequence of events planned to steal the deal. Depending on how things progress I’ll modify the individual steps to take advantage of new information, or I’ll walk away – preferring a graceful retreat to humiliation.
Here’s where I’ll start – understanding:
- The requirement, and how the prospect will benefit.
- The funding, where the money‘s coming from and the justification for the spend.
- The timeframe – when will it happen, and what’s driving that.
- The competition – alternative options for the investment.
- The decision process – and who will decide what.
- The Coach – somebody on the inside to help me.
Finding out all this is my plan on the first call -I call it qualification. Whatever happens after that depends on how the sale develops. That’s when I move into General von Moltke’s way of thinking.
When you go into the first call do you have a plan? What is it?
For the rest of the campaign I have another strategy. It’s a set of objectives we might call milestones but we’ll describe those in another article.
But how do you stay with the game as the rules change?
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You already know about selling, but maybe managing sales is a different matter. How about an introduction to the philosophies, strategies, and processes used by professional sales managers? That’s what you’ll get from our eBook Succeeding In Sales Management – Preview and Buy Here
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