5 Tips for 2021 Sales Growth and Go-To-Market Planning
The power of sales growth planning
From early-stage startups to seasoned businesses struggling during a pandemic, the number one sales growth issue we observe is the lack of a defined, data-driven sales growth and go-to-market strategy. This includes sales and marketing focus, measurement, and planning.
As the founder or leadership team, the process of analyzing your past results, evolving your strategy, and communicating your plan for the year is an action that everyone should undertake. However, you should also ask your sales, marketing, and customer success leaders to present their draft plans to you. By doing so, you bring out the creative and entrepreneurial spirit, goals are documented, and you see who gets what you’re trying to achieve and who does not (get on the bus, or off). My favorite of all, these plans become the go-to coaching and accountability tool for your teams.
At Growtelligence™, we believe a data-driven and proactive approach to sales planning is one of the best ways to help your company increase sales.
5 Tips for 2021 Sales Planning
1. Sales Focus
How clear were you last year on what new customers you were looking to acquire, and those you were not? Did you enable a smart customer-driven growth strategy? How laser-focused were you on your prospect and customer lists? Were you successful with your ideal customer and partner profiles you conducted business with? How? Did you solve real business pains and achieve the desired goals of your customers?
2. Time Management
How much time did you really spend being customer-focused, looking outside your company, not inside. There are no prizes for hours worked or the total number of formal internal meetings attended that should have been a 5-minute stand-up. Did you prioritize time based on your data-defined customer segments, or wing it based on the fire of the day? If you went through your calendar, what was the % of time spent internally vs. externally?
3. Marketing Messaging
Did sales prospects listen and return messages? How often? Did your messaging give your sales team the confidence to cold call a CEO? Can a teenager understand (and repeat) what problem your business solves? Did your website bounce rate and marketing qualified lead velocity improve? Did you deliver a prescriptive onboarding strategy that worked? When you lose sales opportunities, is it because of poor sales messaging and execution or deficiencies in your product or service?
4. Customer Acquisition Strategy
How will you iterate on how you attract, find, and delight new customers? How many experiments did you run, and what did you learn? Did your results come from having a top-down or bottoms-up acquisition strategy, inside sales, field sales, channel, freemium, mixed? Where will you invest more in 2021? Does everyone in your company understand who your target customer is and how they can help find and assist in adding them as happy customers?
5. Benchmarking Sales Results
Are your sales compensation plans competitive? Driving the right sales behaviors? Easily tied back to overall company goals? Do you have the right investment mix between marketing, sales, support, and customer success? How do you stack up with peer companies?
We have seen the results when our customers follow this sales planning strategy to set their teams up for success. Asking these questions is the first step to understanding how to not just meet, but to exceed your 2021 revenue goals.
Need help creating a strategy to grow your sales or benchmark your results? Get in touch below.
About The Author
Ross Reed is a company growth expert and entrepreneur who has developed and led high-performing companies, from bootstrapped start-ups to global technology corporations, including INC 5000 fastest-growing companies.