{"id":8017,"date":"2011-01-18T18:37:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T18:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=8017"},"modified":"2014-10-01T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T18:39:16","slug":"sales-planning-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=8017","title":{"rendered":"Sales Planning Calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Companies that have a defined sales process &#8211; and follow it faithfully &#8211; outperform those that do not.* \u00a0 January restarts the sales calendar for most companies and presents a great opportunity to (re)establish your own sales management calendar.\u00a0 The basic program we recommend for our clients follows.\u00a0 We hope it helps you fine-tune your own or provides a framework for getting started.<\/p>\n<p>For our clients we typically separate sales management activities into the three categories representative of most B2B sales organizations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sales Leader<\/strong> Chief Sales Officer \/ top level sales executive<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sales Managers<\/strong> Responsible for sales divisions, units or teams<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sales Executives<\/strong> Own an individual quota<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-Sales-Calendar.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2097 aligncenter\" title=\"2011 Sales Calendar\" src=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-Sales-Calendar.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"555\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lastly, here is an equally important list of tactical activities critical to a high-performance sales operation.\u00a0 They matter as much as the schedule above and we recommend they become part of your on-going sales management discipline.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Market and segment reviews<\/li>\n<li>Competitive assessments<\/li>\n<li>Target prioritization<\/li>\n<li>Proposal \/ pursuit strategies<\/li>\n<li>Win\/Loss reviews<\/li>\n<li>Lead pipeline reviews (<em>keep that critical eye on the targets above your funnel, not just those that have qualified there way to the pipeline<\/em>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some clich\u00e9s do have value: &#8220;Planning Your Work and Working Your Plan&#8221; is one that does.\u00a0 Following this kind of sales management calendar keeps everyone focused on the activities known to increase probabilities for success.<\/p>\n<p>Now, open Outlook and start scheduling!<\/p>\n<p><em>*<a href=\"http:\/\/www.csoinsights.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">CSO Insights<\/a> in a study published in Harvard Business Review a couple years ago, clearly showed that formal process adoption has a direct impact on sales results.\u00a0 Yet still, 52.9% of companies they recently surveyed on level of sales methodology adoption reported random or informal processes. \u00a0\u00a0Jim Dickie of CSO Insights calls that challenge number one for sales leadership &#8211;&#8220;We need to bring more science to the art of sales.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Companies that have a defined sales process &#8211; and follow it faithfully &#8211; outperform those that do not.* \u00a0 January [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8018,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8017\/revisions\/8018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}