Columnist and author Steve takes a green-fingered approach to getting your sales to blossom

The amount of businesses that lack even the most basic sales plan will never cease to amaze me. But lets say you do have one – how relevant is it?

Is it up to date? Are you continually revisiting it? Are you constantly re-evaluating as you follow innovations in your sector?

Well, if you’ve said ‘yes’ to all the above you are allowed to crack open the champagne and if you’ve not (and it’s fair to say I’ve not heard many corks popping so far!) you definitely need to make a robust sales plan a priority.

Your sales plan should be integral to your business. It’s your direction of travel, it’s the ‘big picture’ of what you want your business to look like and it’s there to ensure you don’t leave everything to pure luck.

I find an easy analogy with gardening puts things in perspective.

Imagine you have a garden that is just soil and you want to transform it with beautiful flowers and trees.

You want it to be something you’re proud of and can admire.

So what would you do to achieve this? Well, you wouldn’t just start planting – would you? Of course you wouldn’t.

You would first of all think about what kinds of flowers and trees you wanted, and where you wanted them.You’d plant at the optimum time for each seed, you’d map everything out, you’d be meticulous.

And even when everything had grown you would tend it regularly, weeding, trimming and watering. It’s a year-round process that continually evolves.

It’s a similar process with your sales plan.

Does the thought of making a plan fill you with dread? It shouldn’t.

Having a plan gives you a road map. It should always make the process easier – especially if you follow a tried and tested system.

I recommend the P.E.A.R. system which is a process that will avoid your plan going pear-shaped! It breaks down as follows:

Your ‘P’ is your planning – it covers your route to market. It defines your objectives. It covers everything from how big you want to grow to what you actually want out of your business.

‘E’ is the execution of your business. This plans everything into your diary. It ensures your business runs like an efficient machine.

Now the ‘A’ is for adapt. You need to keep at the cutting edge of your industry. You need to see the changes as they appear and be ready to adapt. You need to spot those trends and change as require.

And the final step is ‘R’ for review. Remember I said nothing stands still? You need to continually review your plan to ensure it’s working to optimum effect.

*If you want to read more about how to write a robust sales plan then try my best-selling book ‘FunnelVision – Sales Made Easy’. It’s on Amazon for £4.79 Kindle/ £9.95 physical edition.

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