Planning with FOCUS

Many business people who acknowledge the value of planning, especially sales and marketing planning, still don’t get around to doing the planning they know they should do. Among the many reasons for this are lack of know-how and concerns about the amount of time and/or money that may need to be invested.

Here is a simple five-step process that will help you focus on your sales and marketing planning for the up-coming quarter and get it under control. (The acronym FOCUS will help you keep things in order.)

Step 1 - Find out the facts. Take stock of your current situation. You need to look at the key 80/20 relationships in your business in respect of your sales staff, your customers, your suppliers, your sales volumes and each product’s contribution to profit. Your customers need to be categorised and you need to do a SWOT analysis of your sales and marketing function. Other questions that need to be answered include “What markets are being targeted?” “What results have emerged from previous sales promotion activities? eg telemarketing, face-to-face calls, your website, any directories you may use, newspaper advertising, direct mail campaigns, flyer campaigns etc”

The activities and strategies of your competitors need to be analysed. An audit of your staff’s sales skills and activity levels needs to be conducted.

In addition, your business’s Positive Points of Difference need to be confirmed.

Step 2 - Outline your sales and marketing goals. When doing this it may be helpful to think of your goals as forming a pyramid-shaped hierarchy. At the top is your Primary goal for next quarter (“If you could achieve only one goal what would that goal be?”). At the next level down are the second-level goals, the achievement of which will lead to the achievement of the Primary goal. At the next level again are the third-level goals the achievement of which will lead to the achievement of the second-level goals.

While doing this also ask the questions like “Do we need new products in our range? If so, which products?” “Do we need to move to new markets? If so, which markets?” “Do we need to develop new strategies?’

Put your goals in writing, be specific, use numbers and dates to make them measurable; make sure that they are stretching but realistic.

Step 3 - Choose your ‘ways and means’. Do some brainstorming and generate a list of all the potential ways and means available that may assist you to achieve your goals.

When the brainstorming is complete select the most promising ways and means and organise them into written Action Plans.

Don’t throw out your rejected ideas just yet; you may need to use them later if things don’t work out as planned.

Step 4 - Unify your team in support. Enlist the support of both your formal team and your informal team. The membership of your formal team is fairly obvious and comprises business partners, shareholders and your employees. Your informal team may include members of your family. It may also include your landlord, banker, accountant, business mentor and other professional advisers as well as key suppliers and customers.

Your objective is to share ownership of your plans in order to enlist the support of your key team members. Ask your team for their comments and give them a genuine opportunity to offer their ideas for improvement. Be sure to listen carefully to their suggestions and incorporate their good ideas, giving credit where credit is due.

Step 5 - Systemise and supervise; make sure that you and your people adopt the goals and plans that you have set and agreed – be absolutely systematic in your approach and be prepared to ‘inspect what you expect’ in order to achieve your goals.

As you do this your resolve to improve the results of your business may be tested. There are reasons for this. Sales and marketing is more art than science. Therefore, things do not always happen in a nice predictable way.  As a result you must be prepared for some ‘trial and error’ learning. This means maintaining your commitment to success even if, initially, things do not work out as planned.

Remember also that human beings tend to resist change. This means that, because you are changing things, you can expect resistance. You may even feel some resistance within yourself. The remedy is patient, persistent, positive supervision of your team (and yourself). Hang in there! Eventually, good things will start to happen and the results you want will start to emerge.

When good things start to happen remember to give feedback to your team and celebrate your victories with them. They’ll be excited and want to continue with their support.


(The up-coming post for Monday 26/1 is About WIIFM. It's about a key question that customers want answered.)