Good morning reader,
Last week we reached the halfway point with the 8 steps to creating a bulletproof sales plan.
If you are a new email subscriber, 5 weeks ago I outlined the 8 steps to a bulletproof sales plan.
I then sent an email about these 8 steps every week for the last 4 weeks
- Goals – The Power of a Goal
- Target customer – Define your target group
- Finding customers – needles in a haystack
- Create content – create value according to plan
It’s great that several people are starting to try the Ultimate Sales Plan Course, which is launching soon. The initial response to the videos and resources has been strong. So join the waitlist if you’d like to hear details of an incredible offer available to those on my email list.
Join the waiting list for sales plans
So in week 5.
Let me paint the picture for you and you tell me what you would do in this scenario.
Imagine your child or someone special in their life has a birthday coming up. And to celebrate their special day, you decide that you want to bake them a beautiful cake.
A special one that features the design of your favorite character. You want them to be excited about what you create.
On her birthday you go to the shops and buy the ingredients. You’ve found a brilliant recipe whose photo looks amazing. It contains some simple instructions to follow. So what could go wrong?
Flour, butter, eggs, sugar and the icing to decorate. You have everything ready. You just have to put everything in order. It can’t be that hard, right?
You start and everything seems fine, but you forget part of the recipe but it should be fine. Right?
3 hours later and with the kitchen looking like a disaster zone, you have the finished production
You look at the image and what you have produced.
Others come in to take a look and politely say that it looks pretty and everything went well, but deep down they (and you) know the reality.
It didn’t go the way you wanted.
Maybe you should have brought a cake?
Or maybe you should have hired a professional to do it?
Or maybe you should have prepared and practiced better?
Too often, the best plans we have fail because we don’t prepare properly.
We don’t get the right ingredients. Or we don’t practice.
This means we are failing.
Funnily enough, it’s no different with sales plans — you could create great content that identifies your target audience’s problems, you have their names and contact details and are ready to contact them… But you drop the ball on the next step — you try it to give wings, and you will turn the whole thing into a real dove.
The fifth step of implementing a sales plan is based on the preparation you do to ensure your campaign is a success.
- What will you say to the target prospects you want to convert into customers?
- How do these differ depending on the media you use to reach them?
- What will you say in response to their initial comments, thoughts, or objections?
- How confident and natural do you or your team appear when conveying these messages?
Great sales plans are based on a sales playbook. There is clarity on what should be created and each message has been tailored to different mediums to engage with a potential customer.
You have an overview of different emails, messages and scripts that can be used at different points in the potential engagement. They also outline what the follow-up might look like if a prospect comes back to us.
With these outlines in place, good teams then schedule training sessions and times where they can role-play scenarios to test how the words sound. They create situations that may be difficult to handle, but when those difficult times arise during prospecting, the person calling or emailing will be prepared.
Too many business owners working on acquisition campaigns ignore this most important part. They just think it will be okay. Or they start contacting prospects and then consider doing so on the go. They inspire it.
As we know from baking cakes, winging can make us look like idiots.
If you want to make sure you implement a plan that works, make sure you do three things.
- Create a sales playbook that outlines a plan for how and what you want to send to the list you’ve created
- It is your retail version of the recipe
- Make sure you compile different messages, words, emails, and phrases that you use when communicating with potential customers
- This is the retail version of your ingredients
- Take some time to practice
- This is the retail version to ensure it turns out the way you want it
By incorporating these three elements into your sales plan, you will have the best possible chance of ensuring that all your hard work to date is rewarded.
This will ensure that you and your business appear prepared and professional when sharing the valuable content you have created for your prospects.
It will set you up for success.
But all these aspects mean nothing if we don’t start working.
How can you make sure you’re taking the actions to achieve great results?
Stay tuned for Week 6 to find out!
Until then, keep smiling and focus on becoming a fly with your buyer.
James
