Cómo escribir un Plan Estratégico de Ventas

Hacer un Plan Estratégico de Ventas puede ser difícil, y seguramente tendrás muchas preguntas antes de empezar a escribir tu informe. ¿Por dónde debería empezar? ¿Qué debo escribir en él? ¿Hay que seguir un formato?

Encontrarás pistas y consejos para ayudarte a construir un plan de ventas infalible. Si estás buscando cómo aumentar tus ventas, tener más ingresos o introducir un nuevo producto, nuestra plantilla puede ayudarte a alcanzar tus metas. Aquí están las ideas claves que debes incluir en un plan de ventas infalible. 

1–Ambiente de negocios

Normalmente, las empresas sólo actualizan su plan estratégico de ventas de forma trimestral o anual. Debido a este tiempo de retraso entre actualizaciones, es importante echar un vistazo al entorno empresarial actual de tu empresa para asegurar que tu plan de ventas se ajusta a los objetivos actuales.  

Estadística

• Mantenerse al día con las estadísticas de la empresa siempre es beneficioso, independientemente de tu posición en ella. Pero como un vendedor experimentado, conoces lo importante que es para tu trabajo usar estadísticas para marcar metas e impresionar a los clientes potenciales. Este plan de ventas estratégico gira en torno a las estadísticas, por lo que es clave que seas consciente de su importancia. Haz un PESTEL para conocer tu macro-ambiente, piensa en usar el análisis de cinco fuerzas de Porter para evaluar el atractivo de tu industria, actualiza tu análisis SWOT y mapas de competidores. Toda esta información será útil para construir un buen plan de ventas.

Declaración de poder

Si aún no has empezado, deberías comenzar creando una declaración de energía que tú y tus representantes de ventas puedan dominar y utilizar. Queremos que este documentos sea muy fuerte y dé una buena idea de lo que su empresa no hace, pero cómo su empresa beneficiará a la perspectiva y su negocio. Las partes más importantes de tu estado de poder son:

• Titular

El título es donde se recoge la atención de los clientes potenciales. ¿Qué hace tu compañía? ¿Cuál es su declaración de misión? Ya sea por teléfono o en persona, es esencial que seas claro y conciso sobre los productos o servicios que tu empresa ofrece. 

• Frase de transición

La frase de transición es la clave para informar al cliente potencial qué tipo de empresas o personas usan sus servicios o productos (por ejemplo, los vendedores comerciales utilizan este software para...). 

• Problemas del cliente / puntos de dolor

Deseas evaluar cuáles son los puntos de dolor para tus clientes. Esta es una de las partes más importantes de la declaración de poder porque quieres afirmar por qué necesitan comprar tu producto o servicio. Debes saber bien para qué tipo de cliente sirve tu empresa y ser capaz de conectar con ellos. 

• Ofrecimiento

Mantenga esta parte corta y dulce. Será un poco más específico que el título y ofrecerá una descripción clara de las estrategias y técnicas que tu empresa utiliza. 

• Diferenciación

¿Por qué tu empresa es diferente que tu competencia? Ser capaz de comunicar eficazmente porqué tu producto o servicio y tú mismo sois especiales, será clave para ganar a los clientes potenciales. Tienes que informarles de por qué tu empresa es especial con el fin de hacer negocios.

2- Objetivos

Antes de empezar a pensar en estrategias u objetivos, una de las tareas más importantes que tendrás que lograr al construir un plan de ventas es la enumeración de tus objetivos. Todo lo que hagas después de este punto se basará en estos objetivos que deseas lograr. Tómate tu tiempo para pensar en las necesidades de negocio y mejoras y escribir objetivos concretos. Aquí hay algunas notas cortas para ayudarte a empezar.

¿Cómo elegir en qué centrarse? Mira hacia atrás en el entorno de negocios para ayudarte a decidir sobre las metas en las que deseas centrarte. Debe contener toda la información que necesitas para tomar la decisión correcta. ¿Cómo está el mercado? ¿Quiénes son sus competidores? ¿Qué quieres ser? ¿Cómo se ve su análisis FODA? De todas estas preguntas que contestaste previamente, debes poder dibujar una lista de metas para mejorar tu negocio e incorporarlas en tu plan de las ventas.

Recuerda que no estás solo en tu empresa, los objetivos del departamento de ventas deben ser integrados en las estrategias de la corporación. Asegúrate de utilizar la comunicación interna para que toda la empresa pueda beneficiarse de tu estrategia. Entender las necesidades del departamento de marketing, tener en cuenta un presupuesto antes de implementar tu plan estratégico de ventas, etc.

Después de dibujar una lista de metas es necesario ajustar el tiempo, presupuesto y prioridades. En los negocios, los recursos son siempre limitados. Lo mejor es centrarse en una lista corta de objetivos en lugar de dispersar la energía en muchos proyectos que resulten ineficaces.

Para mantener los pies en el suelo, te recomendamos que establezcas objetivos mensurables, cronometrados y alcanzables como:

• Aumentar la cuota de mercado de tu empresa en un 10% hasta el final del tercer trimestre.
• Vender 500k de producto al final del año.
• Implementar una nueva estrategia para obtener un 150% de nuevas oportunidades.

Aunque las ventas son el departamento más grande dentro de una empresa, se debe tener consciencia de toda la empresa. Los siguientes pasos son extremadamente útiles.

• The action sales plan should first rely on a price strategy that you can’t decide on your own. Work closely with the financial department to understand the budget you have for the strategies you want to implement. Think about your promotion strategy, and new incentives to get attraction from your target. It is time to go into details and think about all the items you want to add to your sales strategy. Every opportunity to improve processes and sales technique must be fully understood.

• Make predictions on your long-term results and short-term Action Sales Plan’s effectiveness. Look at your revenue history to be more accurate and be able to fund your strategy. Make analyses and draw worst cases scenarios to be able to face any situation.

If you successfully choose realistic goals; the following steps will be much easier to accomplish.

3 - Relación con los clientes

Understanding your clients is important not only to keeping your current clients happy, but is also essential to signing new ones. By understanding current clients, it becomes easier to expand those accounts while also capitalizing on other key opportunities.

SWOT Analysis

Doing a SWOT analysis for each customer relationship allows you to analyze each unique relationship and how it can be improved.

• Strengths

What are the strengths of this relationship? Is it recurring revenue? A short sale cycle? Does the company have to make constant purchases? A short decision process? These strengths will allow the entire sales team to match together other accounts and use similar strategies if need be.

• Weakness

Be honest with the weaknesses of this account. Does it lack communication? You can emphasize this to your sales team. Has this account made a complaint regarding the product? You can make sure the account has more interaction and nourishment. These weaknesses are key to ensuring your current customers remain happy. There is usually strong emphasis on acquiring new customers, but retaining customers is just as important.

• Opportunities

Are there opportunities that this account is showing? Perhaps new management, a future IPO or tremendous growth. Being aware of these things will directly affect how you will approach the account.

• Threats

Is there a possibility that you might lose this customer? What are those reasons? Is there a new competitor in the industry? Was the customer displeased with the product? Knowing the the threats to the account will help prioritize the type of attention that is needed.

Doing a SWOT analysis for the top customers, and even accounts that seem “less” important, can change the dynamic of the sales team. Your management tactics and strategies can help determine the type of plan you make for your team.  

Understanding Client Hierarchy and Decision Making  

As a manager, it is important to understand which accounts take longer or more effort to persuade to make the deal. Identify the right person to contact and the business relationship you’ve built with them. Use your CRM to report history with each customers and highlight key accounts.

Design a pyramidal structure to remember who’s in charge and which interest they have in your company. The more you understand your clients, the more you can customize your message and reach out to them. After this you will be able to communicate the exact message your customer wants to hear from your company and close more deals. This will help save time on your end and allow your customers to save time in their decision making processes.

4- Nuevos clientes

It can be complicated finding new leads when your daily tasks keep you away from searching for targets. Reps are generally so busy taking care of their current clients that it becomes next to impossible to take time to visit prospects.

While writing your strategic sales plan, you should make time to plan how to get new prospects. Your report should describe how you are going to find new leads. Ask yourself questions to seek new prospects: who would be interested in your product/service ? How can you help someone with what you do the best?  

Finding new leads and business avenues requires a good amount of time, energy and imagination, but is essential to both a successful sales plan and growing your client base.

Once you’ve found new opportunities of doing business, you have to go further and select a segment to focus your efforts on. Understand which prospect would have the most interest in your business, and which clients are in your best interest to target. When it comes to lead generation, it is most important to set priorities to the best opportunities using market assessment tools to get optimized results.

A person will fall into one of these four categories:

1. Low value to the company–low value to the customer. Neither the customer or the company are interested in one another, there is no point in doing business. Ex: Young population and a real estate agency.
2. Low value to the company–high value to the customer. Your product is attractive to a group of the population you have no interest in targeting. This may occur for various reasons such as financial, age, etc.... Try to reverse your thinking, why aren’t they valuable to you? How can you make them valuable? Ex: working class and a luxury watch brand.
3. High value to the company–low value to the customer. This segment of population is not interested in your product or service, although your company is targeting this profile. As a solution you can invest your resources in marketing to convert these people while also helping create an interest in your product or service. Ex: Private plane owner and a first class airline service
4. High value to the company–High value for the customer. Your core target is located in this win-win situation and should constitute your client base. Your product or service is easy to sell, since this population wants what you’re selling. Ex: Fashion oriented Athlete and Nike.

Using this market opportunities matrix is a great way to understand which customer to target on your next steps for your sales strategic plan.

Time Management When Prospecting

Create a  plan of attack with your sales reps. Ensure that they realize the importance of establishing a schedule for each day. On a day to day basis, they should schedule a time to prospect, research companies, and do calls. Scheduling consistent times allows a sales rep to strictly focus on one thing, which may be difficult, especially in this day and age with all the information and entertainment at our fingertips.

5 - Estructura del equipo de ventas

It is key to determine what kind of sales team strategy is going to be used. Depending on your business, an outbound or inbound approach might lead to the best results. Each strategy requires its own unique structure due to the different interactions with prospects.

Inbound Flow

Inbound generated lead flow is when all sales and prospects are derived from actions that generally come from the marketing department activities. This can include webinars, email marketing, event leads, case studies or any other technique provided by the company. The prospect is responding to the marketing provided by the company. They, in one way, shape or form, agree with or like the message being relayed by your marketing team and share their contact information. This initial contact marks the beginning of the sales cycle.

Inbound Team Structure

This sales structure begins with the head of marketing. They decide what kind of message is going to be relayed to the potential customers. Once the head of marketing makes those decisions, the Manager of Lead / Demand Generation strategies and implements a certain demand generation program. The inbound leads from here go to the sales reps for them to nurture the prospect and make them a paying customer.

Outbound Flow

Outbound generated lead flow is different because the prospects’ first interactions with the company are from direct contact with the sales team. This can come from cold calls, direct emails, referrals, networking at events or any other form of communication from sales reps. Unlike the inbound approach, there is no reaction to the marketing activities. They directly enter the sales cycle.

Outbound Team Structure

The generation of leads begins with the VP of Sales. They are in charge of formulating the type of outreach that will occur. They also create the team of reps to execute their plan. The Sales Development Rep (SDR) and the Sales Rep work together to create leads and gather people into the sale cycle.

6 - Implementando el plan estratégico de ventas

Now that you’ve created your sales plan and designed it to align with specific management goals, it’s time to share this with your sales team. Too often, managers don’t effectively communicate their strategic sales plans with their sales teams, causing confusion and disorganization.  It’s essential to have your team and reps on the same page so they  know the company’s sales plan on an in-depth level. Below are different techniques and strategies that can be implemented to ensure your entire team is aware and motivated to follow the plan.

Explain

Although it sounds very obvious, clearly explaining the sales plan to all sales levels is the first thing you need to  do. Keyword: clearly. As a sales manager, you must ensure that the team is not only aware of the sales plan, but willing to change their way of doing business to adhere to this plan. After you draw your product and report strategies, create a sales presentation to pitch to your reps. Include all the sales techniques they could use, from the slides to the final sales pitch, making sure that every message is tailored to your sales reps’ specific targets.

You must be able to convince the team why this new plan or strategy is better than the pre existing one.

Now that the team is aware of why this new strategy is better, it is time to motivate them and get them supportive of the vision. This is essentially you selling to your sales team! Just like approaching a prospect, you must approach your team with the benefits such as commission.

Train

Training is something that often gets overlooked.  In order for your sales plan to succeed, you need to have a specific and structured training session for your sales team so they can correctly implement the new strategic elements. You can’t  assume that every employee is at the same level.so it’s important to either meet with your employees one-on-one or have an audit type session to assess what training they need yourself.

Reward

The reward system is fantastic to not only ensure your sales team reaches their quota, but that they also follow the new strategy and technique. For instance, giving each member of the sales team a gift card for doing their first 200 cold calls with the new script is a way of assuring they are using the new script. Verbal praise also has positive results. Even a simple email or letter with a nice “congratulations” can change your rep’s the attitude.

7- Herramientas de rendimiento y control de calidad

Implementing your personalized strategic sales plan is not an easy task. It requires time, attention and forethought to make sure your team is on the right track. To ensure the effectiveness of your project it is essential to have two kinds of control; a quality control process and performance tools process.

Quality control is a process that must be ensured from the beginning to the end of your project. Set up milestones to control your achievements and track your advancement. Control must be part of every step to be certain before you go forward that your bases are rock solid. When you’re experiencing slow sales growth or diverging from your projected sales trends, don’t be afraid to redirect your team accordingly.

Find objections to your prediction and strategy to make your ASP infallible. Using a foolproof technique is a great way to be able to make sure the sales rep won’t misuse the strategy they need to implement. It helps you troubleshoot possible issues in the future. Create two teams to debate and grow arguments.

With performance tools you should be able to make a clear statement about the success or failure or your project. Here is a list of tools that can assist you for your process, pick the most relevant one to your project to integrate into your management:

• Key Performance Indicator
• Milestones
• Gantt Chart
• Management Dashboard

Quality control and performance tools are keys of best practice in project management. Don’t skip over this important step,  or your sales results will suffer.

Following all these steps, you should be able to write your own Strategic Sales Plan. To help you write your strategic sales plan on one page, you can download our template.