Good morning Reader,
We reached halfway last week with the 8 steps to build a bulletproof sales plan.
If you are a new subscriber to the email then 5 weeks ago I outlined the 8 steps to a bulletproof Sales Plan.
I have then over the last 4 weeks shared an email each week relating to these 8 steps
- Targets – The Power of a Target
- Target Customer – Define your Audience
- Finding Customers – Needles in Haystacks
- Creating Content – Building Value in the Plan
It’s great to have several people start testing the ‘Ultimate Sales Plan Course’ which will be launched soon. The initial reactions to the videos and resources have been strong, so join the waiting list if you want details of an incredible offer available to those on my email list.
So onto 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 make them a beautiful cake.
A special one which is in the design of their favourite character. You want them to be wowed by what you create.
On the day of their birthday, you go to the shops and buy the ingredients. You found a brilliant recipe which has a photo which looks amazing. It gives some simple instructions to follow, so what can go wrong? 😅
Flour, Butter, Eggs, Sugar and the Icing to decorate it. You have it all ready to go. You just need to put it all in place. It can’t be that hard surely?
You start off and all seems ok but you forget one 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 picture and what you have produced.
Others come in to take a look and politely say it looks lovely and it’s gone well but deep down they (and you) know the reality.
It hasn’t gone the way you wanted it to.
Maybe you should have brought a cake?
Or maybe you should have asked a professional to do it?
Or maybe you should have prepared better and practiced?
Too often the best plans we have go to s**t because we don’t prepare properly.
We don’t get the right ingredients. Or we don’t practice.
This means we end in failure.
Sales Plans are funnily enough no different – you could create great content which identifies the problems of your target audience, you have their names and contact details, and so you are ready to start reaching out to them… But you drop the ball on the next step – you try and wing it and you make a right pigear of it all.
The 5th step of implementing a Sales Plan is based on the preparation you put in place to ensure your campaign is a success.
- What are you going to say to the target prospects you want to turn into customers?
- How will these differ depending on which media you use to reach them?
- What will you say in response to their initial comments, thoughts or objections?
- How comfortable and natural do you or your team sound in delivering these messages?
Great sales plans are built on a Sales Playbook. There is clarity on what should be created and each message has been adjusted for different media to engage with a prospect.
They have an outline of different emails, messages and scripts to use at different times in the prospect engagement. They also outline what the follow ups could look like if a prospect comes back to us.
With these outlines in place, good teams then set aside training sessions and times when they can do roleplay scenarios to test out how the words sound. They create situations which may be difficult to do but which mean when those difficult times happen during prospecting, the person doing the calling or emailing is prepared.
Too many business owners who are working on prospecting campaigns wing this most important part. They just think it will be ok. Or they start to engage with prospects and then look at doing this on the go. They wing it.
As we know with cake making, winging it can make us look like idiots.
If you want to ensure you implement a plan that works then ensure you do 3 things.
- Create a Sales Playbook which is a plan of how and what you intend to send to the list you have created
- It’s your sales version of the recipe
- Ensure that you put together different messages, words, emails and phrases to use within the communications you make with prospects
- This is the sales version of your ingredients
- Put some time aside to practice
- This is the sales version of ensuring it turns out as you want it to
If you do put these 3 elements into place within your sales plan then it will give you the best possible chance of ensuring all of the hard work you have put in so far gets rewarded.
It will help ensure you and your company look prepared and professional when you engage to share the valuable content you have created for your prospects.
It will set you up for success.
But all of these aspects mean nothing if we don’t then start to do the work.
How can you ensure that you take the action to get great results?
Stay tuned for week 6 to find out!
Until then, keep smiling and stay focused on becoming a fly on the wall of the brain of your buyer.
James
