Preparing Your Sales Team for 2012

Sales Leaders, now is a great time to get a head start on your year-end planning and wrap up.   Starting now while the successes and setbacks of 2011 are fresh in your mind guarantees a far better sales plan for 2012.

Sales Leader’s Twenty-Five 4th Quarter “Must-Dos”

  • Plan your 2012 Sales Kick Off meeting
  • Remove the bottom ten percent from your sales team
  • Pre-write a dozen Q1 blog posts
  • Optimize your marketing automation program
  • Make 75 new LinkedIn connections with prospects or clients
  • Finalize your 2012 compensation plan changes
  • Finalize and assign your 2012 team and rep quotas
  • Finish your 2012 sales plan
  • Purge your sales pipeline of dead, dormant and comatose deals
  • Set your January 1 goal for total qualified pipeline value
  • Determine how many leads you need in your lead funnel
  • Update your prospect sweet spot based on next year’s plan
  • Schedule your most promising accounts for December and January account plans reviews
  • Complete your sales manager performance reviews
  • Finalize your 2012 management objectives, goals and bonuses
  • Finish all your client business reviews by mid December
  • Review your client list and purge your dogs (declining revenues, no potential, low margin)
  • Request an SEO and keyword research report on your current website
  • Set your 2012 targeted win rate percentage
  • Thank your proposal team in advance for their hard work during the fourth quarter
  • Prepare your end-of-year revenue forecast for the CEO and CFO
  • Ask your sales managers and reps to email you the five things they will do differently in 2012
  • Share your 2012 revenue and new logo targets with marketing
  • Evaluate an inside sales model for lead qualification
  • Send everyone on your sales team a handwritten note thanking them for doing their best in 2011 and wishing them a happy, restful holidays

How to make sure you finish this list on time!

  1. Copy this list into Word or Excel so you can edit, sort and assign target dates for each item.
  2. Schedule each activity individually into Outlook, blocking enough time to complete every task by its target date.
  3. Review your progress every Friday afternoon and make schedule adjustments as necessary.

Now, think how great you will feel when you email the leadership team your completed 2012 sales plan before everyone leaves for the December holidays!