Strategizing for Success: Keys for Planning Annual Sales & Marketing Goals, part 1 of 2

Each fourth quarter as the New Year approaches, it’s prudent to prepare a profitability plan for the coming year, especially with respect to your sales and marketing endeavors. Doing so can give you a notable competitive edge, particularly given the extraordinary number of professionals that don’t bother producing this strategic tool. But, whether developed before or after the start of the New Year, the importance of creating a tactical plan for sales and marketing success cannot be overstated. Here’s how to set yourself up for annual planning success.

Successful annual planning requires one key ingredient: your mindset. Indeed, the first step towards successful financial planning is setting an intent to successfully complete your plan. What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done. Make a commitment now to complete an annual financial plan by midnight of December 31. If you need some help getting this done, you can sign up for my annual Sales and Marketing Plan training and you’ll have an opportunity to submit your plan to me by December 31. If for some reason you don’t end up reading this until after December 31, make a commitment to create an annual plan over the next month so that you have it ready by the start of the next quarter.

[wcm_restrict]Asking Yourself the Right Questions

Creating your plan is largely a matter of asking and answering a series of questions that help you identify your sales and marketing goals and other financial goals and then verbalize steps to achieve those goals. You should ask yourself questions about key annual sales goals such as how many leads you want to generate, how many appointments you want to set, and how many sales you want to make. After defining some annual goals, you can break these down into smaller time frames by quarter, month, and week to make it easier to define concrete steps for achieving your goals. I’d encourage you to create a Word document or get a notebook where you can ask yourself some annual planning questions.

Examples of the types of sales and marketing goals that can go into creating your annual plan include:

• Ultimate outcomes for the year
• Annual revenue projections (sales results)
• Annual marketing strategy (marketing tactics)
• Ultimate outcomes for each month
• Monthly revenue projections
• Monthly marketing strategy
• Monthly projects (if any)

You can break each of these goals up into more specific areas. For instance, you can break your target sales results down into lead generation, appointment setting, and sales.
You can also break each category down by quarter and by month. You can break it down even farther by week or by day if you so choose.

Supplementary Goals in Other Areas

In order to achieve your marketing and sales goals, you may find it helpful to set goals in other areas of your business or personal life. For example, in your business, you may set a goal of hiring more staff, adopting new automation tools, or developing and releasing new product and service lines.

Achieving personal goals can also help you achieve your business goals. For instance, if you haven’t been sleeping on a regular schedule, setting a goal of getting on a more consistent sleep cycle next year may help make you more productive. Similarly, you can set goals in areas such as your personal finances, health, relationships, and spiritual development.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Eric Lofholm is a Master Sales Trainer, author, business success guru, communications expert and lauded speaker who has presented his proprietary, proven sales and success systems to Titans of Industry and thousands of other professionals world-wide. He founded and serves as CEO for Eric Lofholm International, Inc. — an organization that professionally trains achievement-minded individuals and employee groups on the art and science of selling. Connect with Eric online at www.SalesChampion.com.