How to create your Sales Plan for your Startup?
- Dina Khedr
- Jan 28, 2019
- 9 min read
To create lasting growth for your startup you need to create your own strategy and that starts with a solid Sales Plan
What is a Sales Plan?
A sales plan is the "who, where, why, when and how" that will guide you to hit your sales goals for the year. It is a month-to-month forecast of the level of sales you expect to achieve and how you’re going to get there. It covers past sales, market concerns, your specific niches, who your customers are, and how you’re going to find them, engage with them, and sell to them.
Why you must have a Sales Plan ?
A sales plan empowers you to spend more time on growing and developing your startup, rather than responding to the day-to-day developments in sales and you will be able to identify any upcoming problems, sales droughts, or opportunities.
Sales Plan Sections
A. Sales forecasting and goal-setting
B. Market and customer research
C. Prospecting and partnerships
(A) Sales Forecasting and Goal-setting
1. Set realistic sales goals
Your sales plan needs an end goal. You need a number that will tell you whether or not what you’ve done has been a success or not. This number depends on the size of the market, your startup goals, and the experience and resources available to your sales team.
ex: # of customers? $ revenue? % YoY growth?
Be aware of the below pitfalls when you put your goals
Wishful thinking Don't be over-optimistic. Avoid working out the level of sales you need to be viable and putting this as your figure.
Ignoring your own assumptions Don't Assume! Make sure your forecast is based on your assumptions about the market. If you assume the market’s going to decline and you’re going to lose some market share, it just doesn’t make sense to forecast increased sales.
Moving goalposts Avoid making adjustments! Even if you discover you’ve been overly optimistic or pessimistic in your sales plan. This document should be a benchmark to judge your success or failure off.
Not asking for consultation Empower your sales team! They are the experts here and have the best knowledge about your customers. Ask for their opinions, give them time to talk to their customers, and come to an agreement about the targets
Not setting aside time for feedback Get a feedback from a trusted experienced person to review the whole document before taking it to the rest of the team.
2. Define clear deadlines and milestones
To ensure you are always on track and your goal forcasting is close to the mark, you need to break that "big number" down into smaller expectations with strict deadlines; called "milestones" where those milestones to track and monitor whether or not your sales plan is on the right path or not.
Milestones need to be specific with clear goals and deadlines. For example, you might want to increase no. of customers by 30% or increase sales 75% for a specific product. Or even increase the percentage of users on a paid plan by 15% by mid-year. Whatever the milestone is, be clear what your expectations are and set a hard deadline for your team to work towards.
Set individual milestones for your sales team as well. These individual goals need to take into account the differences among your salespeople.
These milestones inform and support your overall sales plan, giving you a clear, actionable plan of how you’re going to hit your overall goals for the year.
(B) Market and Customer Research
1. Pick a niche to focus on and build traction in
You need to know the market you are in and the niche you are going to occupy so you can properly position your business for growth.
What’s a business niche?
It’s what your business specializes in. A niche is the space your business occupies, not just with your products, but with your content, your company culture, your branding, and your message. It’s how people identify with you and search you out over the competition.
When you try to create something for everyone, you end up creating something for no one
Instead, start by looking at a niche and asking yourself these questions:
How big is the market?
Is there a built-in demand for what you're selling?
What’s your current market position (SWOT): Including any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats
Who are your competitors (SWOT)? What are their strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats?
Start by your won strengths. List out your strongest interests and passions. Pick a field where the odds are already in your favor. Where you have a proven track record, more expertise to offer, an extensive contact base, and people who can provide you with intros.
Standout to your niche
Blog, write and contribute to relevant publications.
Be a guest on podcasts.
Speak at events.
Add value to the lives of your prospects before you ever ask them to become a customer.
The more visibility you can have in your niche, the more chance you have of hitting the goals and milestones in your sales plan.
At the begining focus on one niche. Start with one product in one niche and then branch out to a complementary niche.
A niche doesn’t limit you. It focuses you.
2. Understand your target customers
Avoid spending time and money chasing after the wrong prospects and learn as much as you can about your target customer in order to properly sell to them.
Start with basics like company size, geographical information, industry, job title, etc—any traits that are common across your best customers or the types of customers you’d love to have.
Think about whether they’re going to be a good ‘fit’. If this is a long-term relationship you’re developing rather than a one-night stand, you want to make sure you’re speaking the same language and share a similar culture and vision.
Use this information to build out an ideal "Customer Profile". A customer profile helps you qualify new leads and disqualify ones before you spend months chasing the wrong prospects.
Once you know the target segment, it’s time to get inside their head. Start by hanging out where they hang out:
Are they on social media?
What’s their network of choice?
Are they members of any Facebook or LinkedIn groups?
Can you answer industry questions for them on Quora or Reddit?
What podcasts do they listen to or what resources do they read?
Get in your customers’ heads and you’ll be in a much better position to sell to them
3. Map out your customer’s journey
The next part of your sales plan needs to address how that customer becomes your customer. We can do this by mapping out their journey from prospect to loyal customer.
What do you need to know about your soon-to-be customers? Go to the basics:
What do you want our product to do for you?
What features are important to you? Why?
What's your budget for this?
How are you currently solving this problem?
Great Sales people don't stop at the future, they take their potential cutomers on a journey through time.
To fully understand their journey as a customer start by asking about past buying experiences:
When was the last time you bought something similar to our service or product?
Was that a good or bad experience? Why?
How did you make your decision back then?
What was the decision-making process like?
How did you evaluate different offers?
What were the deciding factors that made you chose that particular solution?
If they had a great previous experience, think of ways to align your pitch with that experience and differentiate yourself with your unique "Value Proposition". If they had a bad experience, distance yourself and explain how you would fix that situation.
Next, get your prospect to define their own roadmap to a close by asking them ‘what’s next?’
"What needs to happen to make you a customer?". If they say they’ll have to get approval from the VP of Finance. Ask: "Ok, and let's say he agrees that we're the right fit, what's next?"
Putting your prospect in this future-thinking state of mind makes them imagine buying from you. This is a powerful tool, which can help uncover any potential roadblocks and even help accelerate the sales process.
In your sales plan, be sure to address the entire customer journey from pre- to post-sale
4. Define your value propositions
We know our customers. We know their journey. Now we need to fit ourselves into it in the best way possible. This comes from defining your competitive advantage.
Your competitive advantage is what sets you apart from the competition. Start by asking a few simple questions:
Why do customers buy from us?
Why do customers buy from our competitors and not us?
Why do some potential customers not buy at all?
What do we need to do to be successful in the future?
Customers buy benefits, not features
A strong competitive advantage
Reflects the competitive strength of your business
Is preferably, but not necessarily, unique
Is clear and simple
May change over time as competitors try to steal your idea
Must be supported by ongoing market research
Focus on value, not features
Your competitive advantage is not just an integral part of your sales plan, but will inform everything your company does moving forward, from marketing to product development. It’s a great example of where sales can influence the development of a product and the direction of a business.
Prospecting and Partnerships
1. Build a prospect list
It’s time to build out a list of people from your target segment. A prospect list is where we take all the effort made to define your goals, milestones and target segment and put them into action.
At its core, a prospect list is a directory of real people you can contact who would benefit from your product or service. This can be a time-consuming task, but is essential for driving your sales plan and company growth.
First, use your ideal customer profile to start finding relevant customers:
Search LinkedIn
Check out relevant local business networks
Attend networking events and meetups
Do simple Google searches
Check out the member list of relevant online groups
Target up to 5 people at each organization. As targeting more than one individual will give you better odds for connecting on a cold outreach as well as a better chance that someone in your network can connect you personally.
A solid Sales Plan qualifies your prospects before you even spend a minute talking to them
2. Leverage current client relationships
You’re missing out on a huge opportunity if your sales plan only focuses on finding new business leads. Word-of-mouth, introductions, and current customers can be your most solid lead for growth.
Use LinkedIn to see if anyone you know can introduce you to one of your prospects. Or reach out to your most loyal customers and ask them if they know anyone that would benefit from your product or service (you can even offer a referral bonus or discounted rate).
Now, when leveraging current client relationships, you need to make sure you do it in the right way. When asking for an intro, remember:
A good introduction is two-sided: As the person in the middle, you’re asking your client to vouch for you. If you already have a good relationship this should be a no-brainer. You provided value to them and they should want to help you in turn. Ask them how well they know your target. Would they feel comfortable introducing you to them? By phone? Over email? A good introduction shouldn’t come out of the blue. Ask them to make sure it’s OK to intro and then cc you in on an email with both parties.
Stay in touch, even when they can’t buy from you: Ask how you can help or support them, even if they stop being a customer. It’s a small gesture that can pay off in the long-run. Things don’t stay the same for long.
3. Identify strategic partners (that reach the same customers)
The last group you should include in your sales plan are any strategic partners; individuals, organizations, or companies that reach the same customers. Some people call these Complementary Service Providers (CSPs) as they aren’t the competition and instead offer some product or service that complements yours.
Plan to build your relationship with these groups through things like:
Writing for their publication
Giving speeches at seminars
Providing resources for their websites
Starting a mastermind group where you can swap contacts
Remember, you should be offering all of these services "free of charge". It’s all about providing value to complementary businesses and fostering a culture of ‘growing together’.
The more you add value to the community, the more people will want to send leads your way
4. Track, measure, and adjust as needed
Remember that your sales plan is a living, breathing document and just like the rest of your company, needs to account for and adapt to new features, marketing campaigns, or even new team members who join. You need to return to it regularly to assess whether or not your guesses are turning into reality.
A plan is simply a guess you wrote down
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