Strategic Planning is an Effective Sales Technique

There isn't a connection between strategic planning and sales for you if you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your sales goals. Yet, if you'd rather make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales and your sales success. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make. Unfortunately most sales people take the approach of being incredibly active hoping that all that activity will result in at least some sales for you. Even though that approach sounds logical both and I know people who've tried that approach, worked themselves beyond the point of frustration and still failed. You're constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others that if you're just active enough you'll succeed but the facts don't support that logic.

At best that approach never provides much more than a meager inconsistent living. It fails because just being highly active is never enough. Rather you need to be focused on the right activities and eliminate non-productive activities.

When you focus on right activities you position yourself with the right people so when you meet you're meeting: for the right reasons, people who are highly likely to do business with you, and people who've preselected themselves as being ideal customers for you. When you focus on activity rather than productivity you're meeting: anyone who can fog a mirror, people who aren't likely to do business with you, and people you have to try and coerce into doing business with you. As you see it written out it's pretty obvious the activity based approach just isn't a good business model for anyone.

The better approach is to focus and limit your activities to those that are highly productive for you. As you focus on doing the right things it's much easier to put money in the bank for you. You'll find you'll have a whole lot more time and money because you aren't running around like a chicken scratching everywhere trying to find the worms.

You understand there is a difference in approaches and that one produces better results than the other, but you may not see the connection to how strategic planning fits in. In fact, you probably think strategic planning is something only large corporations do, but you need to do too on a smaller and more focused way. A strategic planning process helps you to gain clarity about what you need to effectively attract the ideal customers you want.

Strategic planning helps you to determine the potential you see for your business, and through that clarity you can begin to develop a plan for how you'll get that potential. Ultimately you end up with a dash board that serves as a working document for you, so you know exactly what you need to do when. And you can track, measure, and adapt so you don't miss your sales targets.

As a result of the strategic planing process you start your day knowing exactly what you need to do to get the results you want. You know who you want to do it with, and you have a clear plan for how to attract those people. You have plans and systems in place that filter out the people who aren't right for you and gather in the people who are, so you don't spend all your time hunting for your next appointment.

About the Author

About the author: Cheryl A. Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Look here to see how your Sales Skills match up. How could you succeed faster if you just had more time? Improve your Time Management Skills, check this out. Click here to get your own unique version of this article.

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