I have always been a planner. I often find members of my family making fun of me at how I apply my meticulous approach to every area of my life. Whether its an event, work, business, home, marriage and travel. I often begin with a plan, after all, as the saying goes “if you fail to prepare you prepare to fail”.
Planning in my humble opinion is vital to achieving any kind success. The bible has several scriptures relating to effective planning. if planning was relevant over 3000 years ago, how much more in todays Information age whereby, we are time starved and the need for planning is absolutely paramount.
In this series of planning, I will be sharing my experiences and my thoughts on what I believe my fellow sales professionals should incorporate when being issued their yearly quota.
Ultimately, as sales professionals, we all have a desire to exceed our quotas and not just hit it right?
Well, thats been my mantra and more often than not that becomes the reality when I stick to this plan. Whether you are in a weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or multi-year quota driven role, the underlying principles shared here would be applicable.
As sales professionals, we are business owners in our own right and we should consider ourselves as running a franchise business with our own P&L within a larger business ( I.e. the companies we work for ).
This means on a smaller scale, we need to implement everything a larger business would, to ensure success in the business and in our case franchise. For example, as a sales professional you have access to every resource, and if you feel you don’t then ask for it!
Resources such as marketing, sales operations, finance, legal, leaders and executives, partners and our professional network if well leveraged, would ensure the growth and sustainability of every business – and as a sales rep this is directly relevant to our franchise.
Having recently joined my firm, I had to undergo the exciting journey of creating my business plan and my route to executing on my yearly quota. My VP then asked to share my methodology with the entire team and to use this as a blue print moving forward, this is how I planned my route;
Imagine my quota being a destination, call it “My Dream Destination”. How do I get to this destination?
Well, as the captain ( pilot )of my flight, I need my flight crew ( team ), control tower ( business plan ), onboard navigation ( metrics ) and Pilot ( myself, with a healthy mental and physical state ).
- Flight Crew – colleagues, partners ( strategic and OEM )and anyone who will support you on your journey to exceeding your quota.
- Control Tower – This is your business plan that would keep you honest and help you stay on track.
- Onboard Navigation – These are the metric’s that needs to be defined in your business plan, to assist you in making informed decisions during the course of the journey.
- Pilot – The most important asset, ensuring your physical health and mental state are healthy.
I will be exploring these 4 channels in subsequent blogs following this, refer to part 2 to continue this plan.
If you found this useful, feel free to comment, your contribution is greatly appreciated. Remember, this is a learning blog and our WHY is to use these blogs as a platform to support others.
P.S- do contact me at mike@metricdrivenselling.com should you need any further questions or support.
To Our Growth
Mike
