There is an old truism that says 'practice doesn't, make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect'. And so it is with the perfection that most organisations hope to achieve from their sales planning practices. Too often the work associated with the development of sales plans fails to deliver the benefit it should because the planning activity is either over-engineered, lacks sufficient grounding in reality or fails to achieve the buy-in of the team who need to bring it to life.
rogenSi's 'Shape of Result' helps our clients get much closer to perfection with the outcomes of their sales planning process. It is based on our experience over the last 20 years helping industry leaders create sales plans that successfully direct and drive sales activity to achieve both short-term and long-term performance goals.
The sales profile of any organisation includes a number of variables, including revenue, margin, location mix, service or product mix, customer mix and so on. The unique 'Shape of Result' sales planning approach involves the creation of special 3-dimensional views of each organisation's revenue-generating profile, enabling leaders and their teams to more easily 'see' where they currently are, where they seek to be and, consequently, what needs to be done to get there.
Our planning process typically involves the building of 3-dimensional sales 'shapes' with our clients, showing:
- their current 'shape'
- the 'shape' it plans to be in three years time
- the shape they would achieve in the next year in order to move towards the longer term target; and
- the most critical activities and performance levels needed to bring the plan to life, together with a plan to execute those activities at the highest level.
Creating the 'Shape of Result' plans includes research and analysis of the organisation's current sales outcomes followed by a robust and highly-interactive planning session that helps senior team members build short, medium and long-term sales plans and strategies. This ensures that all sales activities are aligned with those plans which enables leaders to adopt a shared structure and approach as the foundation for business growth.
Shape of Result planning provides executives with:
- A robust and practical plan for the coming year and an understanding of how it will contribute to an agreed longer term three-year plan.
- Result targets defined in specific terms: revenue, margin, client mix, industry/market mix and product mix.
- An activity and resource plan to achieve the short, medium and long-term goals - and milestones that enable progress to be assessed and recognised.
- An ability to generate plans for each sub-group and individuals that sits in total alignment with the organisational goal.
- A common and consistent review framework.
- A communication plan and tool for leaders to use with their teams
- A team aligned to the outcomes of the process.