The sales planning process is very
important for an organization as success cannot be achieved by haphazard
actions. Sales planning process is usually done in the second stage of
planning and can be carried out only when the company has a strategic
marketing plan in place.
The first thing that an organization does
is make a strategic marketing plan. Once the strategic marketing plan
is made, the organization knows the segment that has to be targeted, and
also, the consumer buying behaviour for that segment. Accordingly sales
planning is done.
Let us go through the sales planning process with the example of Air conditioners
1) Setting objectives –
Your sales planning is going to start only when you have defined the
objectives for the sales team. For example – The objective of an air
conditioning company might be to increase the market share of the
company. For this, it will have to penetrate a new geographic market.
Thus the objective of sales planning is to penetrate a new market to
increase market share.
2) Determine the actions necessary –
Once you know the objectives of your sales plan, you have to forecast
what actions you need to take and the operations which are needed in
effect before you implement the sales plan. This is a crucial step in
the sales planning process because if you do not forecast the correct
operations strategy, then in future you will face operational
difficulties which will hamper you in meeting your sales objectives.
For example – The air conditioning
company needs to penetrate a new geographic territory to increase market
share. Thus it needs Sales as well as service operation backup in this
territory. The marketing department should also know the new territory
so that they can come up with aggressive marketing tactics to target
that territory.
3) Organize your actions –
Coming back to the first point – haphazard actions will never bring
results. Once you know the operations that are necessary, you need to
organize your sales planning. For example – The first priority of the
air conditioning company in new territory will be to have a service
setup. Than to have a sales setup and the necessary channel in place.
Once that happens, they will have to bombard the new territory with
aggressive marketing tactics. Thus an organized action plan needs to be
made during the sales planning process.
4) Implement – Once you
have your actions planned and organized, implementing them is the next
step. Although it may sound easy, there are many real time and real
world problems you may face while implementing a sales plan. For example
– The customers of the new territory might not respond to the new air
conditioners entering the market. On the other hand, the product might
be picked up readily by the customers and you might not be able to adapt
with the unexpected demand which can make your brand lose face from the
start.
5) Measure results – As
in any planning process, the fifth and very important step in the sales
planning process is to measure the results. Unlike advertising, sales
results are very easy to measure because everything is documented and
recorded. For example – the air conditioning company will measure the
total sales of the geographic territory in study. At the same time it
will find out the competitors sales as well for record keeping.
6) Re evaluate – When
you have the sales records in hand, ensure that you analyse the sales
records to know whether or not the sales planning process has succeeded.
The analysis will tell you what you did right and what went wrong.
Thus, based on the analysis you can know the good work that has to be
repeated as well as the bad work which has to be avoided.
For example – Your sales report shows
that you have succeeded in penetrating the new geographic territory.
This stage will help you set your objectives for the next year and you
will plan increasing your brand equity through quality of sales and
service. If on the other hand, you have failed to penetrate the market,
then you need to study the reasons which caused the failure and in the
next year, sales planning should be done taking these negative results
into account and the sales objectives should be re planned.
Remember that sales is a dynamic process
and your competitors are themselves watching you all the time. In the
above example, the air conditioning segment is one of the vigorously
growing segments across the world and it comes with its own share of
challenges. Thus your sales planning will go a long way in implementing
your organizations visions as well as in implementing the strategic
marketing plan.
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