I’ve led two gross sales groups at SaaS and was a salesman myself. I spoke to lots of of C-level salespeople and founders from enterprises like Coca-Cola to completely different IT distributors.
Once we talked about strategic gross sales planning, it was typically confused with operational planning, as I got here to know by conversations. Again then, I believed it was simply wordplay. In actuality, although, this results in insufficient gross sales quotas and misaligned stakeholder expectations.
Actually, 56% of executives and their groups wasted time on strategic planning, whereas solely 44% spent the strategic planning time productively.
That’s an enormous hole. This truth signifies that over 50% of the gross sales workforce can enhance their efficiency.
Idea apart — let’s dive right into a sensible breakdown of strategic planning in gross sales.
Desk of Contents
What’s strategic planning?
Strategic planning is a course of performed by a enterprise’s management to set long-term targets and priorities for the enterprise, define methods to succeed in these targets, and dictate how progress might be measured. The general aim of strategic planning is to offer a transparent motion plan.
Frequent frameworks for strategic planning embody the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Targets and Key Outcomes (OKR), and the Idea of Change (TOC).
Balanced Scorecard Institute sums up strategic planning properly:
“It’s a disciplined effort that produces elementary choices and actions that form and information what a corporation is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a give attention to the longer term. Efficient strategic planning articulates not solely the place a corporation goes and the actions wanted to make progress, but in addition the way it will know whether it is profitable.”
What’s the function of strategic planning?
The aim of strategic planning is for a corporation to find out the course it is going to head in over the subsequent three to 5 years. You’ll set overarching targets and description the way you need to obtain them. Strategic plans are sometimes adjusted based mostly on market modifications or unexpected threats, so they might be modified to answer modifications within the enterprise atmosphere (inside or exterior).
When you have got long-term enterprise targets, it turns into simpler for various departments in your group to plan their actions, allocate sources, and take actions that may assist what you are promoting meet your targets within the designated timeframe. The plans created from strategic planning are referred to as operational plans, and I’ll focus on the distinction between the 2 ideas under.
Strategic vs. Operational Planning
A company makes use of strategic planning to stipulate its long-term visions and targets for the subsequent three to 5 years. These are the overarching priorities for all the firm. Operational planning helps the strategic plan. Completely different departments and divisions of the group give attention to short-term targets that may be completed inside a yr and impression the priorities set within the strategic plan.
Strategic plans set long-term targets, whereas operational plans define the every day, month-to-month, and quarterly actions to realize these targets.
Operational plans flip technique into motion.
Often, particular person departments or workforce leaders create operational plans to help the broader strategic goals.
For instance, if your organization’s aim is to extend income by 75% in 3 years, every division will develop operational plans to contribute to that aim.
- Customer support would possibly give attention to retention,
- Gross sales might upsell and generate certified leads,
- Advertising could refine purchaser personas to focus on the proper prospects.
Ultimately, every division’s efforts contribute to reaching the income aim.
Why is strategic planning necessary?
Having a strong plan retains the workforce centered and proactive as an alternative of reactive — regardless of the scale of the workforce.
After I labored at startup Signum AI as the primary gross sales chief rent, we’d usually sit along with the founder and description our 12-month plan, which was a combo of strategic and operational targets. We mapped out high-level enterprise targets and aspirations, after which cascaded them into quarterly and month-to-month operational plans aligned with advertising efforts.
It helped us meet gross sales quota virtually each month (like 85-100%).
With out that, we’d be simply blind and pour cash into sporadic movement, because it was once on the very starting (I’ll focus on this later within the article).
Backside line: For gross sales groups, strategic planning straight impacts quota attainment, territory administration, and the way successfully reps use instruments and knowledge.
One other nice instance of the significance of strategic planning is Mary Kelly’s story; she is a company advisor and founding father of Productive Leaders.
Kelly requested her good friend, who owns two profitable eating places, if he was going to revisit his strategic plan going into the brand new yr.
He actually laughed and stated, “What strategic plan?”
His strategy was simply to determine issues out alongside the best way and hold doing what’s been working.
“To be honest, he has been doing properly,” says Kelly. However she additionally made a extremely good level right here: What if he might be much more profitable … with much less stress? That’s what strategic planning is all about.
Kelly explains that each enterprise, regardless of the scale or business, can profit from having a strategic plan. And why is it necessary? Nicely…
- A strategic plan defines your imaginative and prescient and mission. It units the course for the place you need to go and the way you’re going to get there.
- You’re prioritizing what truly issues and placing the remainder apart.
- Markets change quick. With a technique in place, you’re extra ready to pivot with out dropping momentum.
- Everybody (not solely the gross sales workforce) is pulling in the identical course.
- Most significantly, it helps you measure progress. You may examine in on the place you’re versus the place you needed to be, and regulate accordingly.
Strategic Planning and Gross sales Groups
The strategic plan is decided by senior management or executives to develop a long-term imaginative and prescient for the corporate. Then, it’s as much as particular person departments to create plans and methods for his or her groups to align with and work in direction of the goals set within the strategic plan.
Gross sales leaders create a gross sales plan (operational plan) that outlines the short-term methods and techniques used to realize long-term targets. This aligns gross sales groups and salespeople, in order that they know precisely what they’re working in direction of and the way progress and success might be measured.
Advantages of Strategic Planning for Gross sales Groups
If I needed to choose one factor as the perfect a part of strategic planning, it’d be specializing in the proper strikes and making a roadmap for long-term progress, which, in flip, brings much more advantages.
Units the course and improves agility and flexibility.
I used to assume an extended to-do listing was an excellent strategic plan. I realized this difficult lesson after I led a SaaS gross sales workforce of 5 individuals at Signum AI. Within the first months, I noticed we have been simply busy — launching issues, testing channels, hiring reps, and so on. — however we weren’t strategic.
Mainly, we have been chasing quotas with out connecting the dots. That couldn’t final lengthy, and so we needed to rethink our strategy.
Professor Roger Martin calls this the “planning entice.” Groups really feel in management as a result of they’re managing duties, however there’s no cohesive principle of success behind it.
As a substitute of obsessing over execution, strategic planning makes you ask: What’s our guess? What distinctive strategy are we taking that others aren’t?
It connects the dots between your targets, your actions, and your edge.
And right here’s the impression: Organizations that construct this type of strategic readability — the place everybody understands and rallies behind the plan — are 3.4x extra prone to adapt shortly when issues shift.
As I beforehand stated, strategic planning translated into our gross sales progress, too, hitting excessive month-to-month quotas.
Forces us to make onerous, however smarter selections.
Actual technique isn’t about doing extra, it’s about selecting what not to do. That half’s uncomfortable. However each time I’ve dedicated to 1 clear path over three common ones, outcomes adopted.
Strategic planning pushes you to say no to “nice-to-haves” and double down on what you consider will work. It’s a guess, it’s dangerous, however it additionally creates focus.
Analysis exhibits that when corporations give attention to simply 2 or 3 prime priorities, they often hit all of them. However once they attempt to juggle 4 to 10, they have an inclination to solely get 1 or 2 carried out, and in the event that they go over 10, they typically don’t end any.
Aligns gross sales and advertising groups towards a transparent, mutual aim.
When there is not any strategic planning, gross sales groups chase random targets or react to short-term numbers. The identical goes for the advertising division. They shoot campaigns simply to hit the variety of lead targets with out a lot fascinated by their high quality and the variety of misplaced related alternatives.
Guess what? That occurred to us, too. However this time, in all of the SaaS corporations the place I used to be employed. Advertising might launch a loopy marketing campaign that stuffed our pipelines with completely irrelevant leads. The worst time was when 3 SDRs suffocated with 100+ leads over every week, with a 70% disqualification charge. I used to be livid as a result of we will need to have contacted them, gone on discovery calls, and carried out primary SDR stuff to qualify them.
Conversely, a transparent plan means everybody is aware of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Not solely does it sound nice, however corporations with sturdy gross sales and advertising alignment additionally shut 38% extra offers in comparison with these with poor alignment.
Furthermore, a 2024 report from InfoPro Studying discovered that 61% of execs wrestle to attach technique with day-to-day gross sales efforts. However when all workers perceive the plan, they’re 77% extra prone to carry out on the highest stage doable.
Additionally, in keeping with one of the vital skilled salespeople, Anthony Nicks, a transparent gross sales course of results in 15% extra salespeople attaining their quotas and 18% increased income progress in comparison with these and not using a outlined course of.
And talking of progress, let’s shut it out with the ultimate profit.
Turns gross sales right into a long-term progress engine.
When your plan is strategic, you cease measuring success solely by this quarter’s quota. You begin pondering greater: lifetime worth, buyer loyalty, and market positioning.
From my expertise, corporations that take time to construct a strategic gross sales plan (one which connects advertising, product, and buyer success) see compounding progress. Not explosive in a single day wins, however regular, predictable scale.
Right here’s a real-world instance that backs “my” principle up:
Lloyds Banking Group not too long ago pinpointed 18.7 million of its 27 million prospects as key progress alternatives. As a part of a brand new gross sales initiative, they’ve educated a workforce of round 830 individuals to give attention to constructing stronger buyer relationships.
The aim? Increase the typical variety of merchandise offered per buyer by 5% by the tip of 2024. That’s a long-term play constructed on connection, not simply conversion.
Professional tip: I recommend utilizing HubSpot’s Development Technique Template to map out your progress plan. It helps you monitor income, broaden into new areas, add merchandise, and develop your buyer base. Tremendous straightforward to fill out and keep watch over progress.
Strategic Planning Course of in 4 Steps
- Put together for strategic planning.
- Assess the enterprise.
- Define your mission, imaginative and prescient, and key stakeholders.
- Select a strategic planning framework.
- Create a strategic plan.
The strategic planning course of is designed throughout planning classes to outline the enterprise’s general imaginative and prescient and high-level, long-term targets that the enterprise needs to realize. The result of all the course of is a strategic plan.
1. Put together for strategic planning.
Getting your strategic planning off the bottom begins with setting the proper basis. I used to be a part of strategic planning for a charitable basis, a startup, and one other SaaS firm the place I had labored. Here is how we set issues up to verify we have been able to execute:
Select the proper individuals.
First, you want the right combination of individuals:
- Executives and management set the imaginative and prescient and assist information the course.
- The finance workforce retains us grounded. Their enter ensures the technique is financially possible.
- The operations workforce is aware of the nuts and bolts of the enterprise. They make certain our plans are sensible and may truly be executed, even when one thing must be modified.
- The product workforce ensures the technique aligns with what prospects want.
- Gross sales and advertising groups know the shopper and the market. Their enter is vital for focusing on the proper alternatives.
- HR is commonly missed, however they make certain we have now the proper expertise and sources to drag off the plan.
Set a sensible timeline.
When we have now the proper workforce in place, we often need all of it now and as quickly as doable, however that’s not how issues work. Right here’s what to consider when setting a sensible timeline:
- Firm measurement and complexity: Smaller corporations could solely want a couple of weeks, whereas greater ones would possibly want a couple of months. I set a timeline based mostly on the scope of the mission.
- Permit for flexibility: At all times go away room for changes. Plans change, and also you don’t need to be scrambling when one thing sudden comes up.
- Milestones: Break it down into phases (analysis, technique improvement, suggestions, approval) to remain on observe.
Professional tip: I included common milestone evaluations (each 2–4 weeks) to evaluate progress, establish points early on, and make mandatory changes.
Set clear expectations.
The workforce is prepared, we have now deadlines, so it’s time to verify everybody is aware of what’s anticipated of them.
- Dedication stage: Be clear about how a lot time they’ll have to dedicate to attending conferences, presenting knowledge, or main part of the method.
- Preparation: At all times ask your workforce to return prepared with analysis or knowledge that may contribute to the dialog. It makes the classes extra environment friendly, and everybody feels their opinion issues.
2. Assess the enterprise.
At this level, you need to know the place what you are promoting stands. And that is learn how to do it:
Consider inside and exterior components.
Take a look at what’s driving the enterprise and what might maintain it again. Listed below are some key issues I counsel specializing in.
- Development areas: Is a particular a part of the enterprise rising quick? Determine what’s working and determine learn how to help that progress additional.
- Know-how: Are there any new instruments or tech that might make an enormous distinction in enhancing effectivity or processes? In that case, have a look at how you need to use them.
- Laws modifications: Regulate any legal guidelines or laws that might impression the enterprise. If one thing’s coming down the pipeline, make sure you’re ready to reply.
Select the strategic planning frameworks.
I at all times depend on these 5 frameworks as a result of they hold me clear on the massive image, assist me spot what issues, and make it simpler to show concepts into actual steps.
- SWOT Evaluation: Identifies your strengths, weaknesses, alternatives, and threats. It helps you perceive what’s working and the place you’re weak.
- Porter’s 5 Forces: Seems at competitors by analyzing new opponents, provider energy, buyer energy, substitutes, and business rivalry. It helps you see market pressures.
- Balanced Scorecard (BSC): A visible plan that exhibits your mission, imaginative and prescient, targets, and learn how to measure progress with KPIs and motion steps.
- Targets and Key Outcomes (OKR): Decide 3–5 principal targets, and for every, set 3–5 measurable outcomes you’ll be able to observe with a rating (like 0–100%).
- Idea of Change (TOC): Begin along with your large targets, then work backward to determine the steps wanted to get there.
- PESTLE Evaluation: Evaluates the political, financial, social, technological, authorized, and environmental components affecting what you are promoting. It’s about understanding exterior forces that might impression you.
3. Define your mission, imaginative and prescient, and key stakeholders.
What’s what you are promoting’s mission or imaginative and prescient? Determine the core values and priorities of what you are promoting by outlining your mission and imaginative and prescient statements.
Mission: This is the reason you exist. Maintain it customer-focused. What downside are you fixing, and the way does your product/service assist?
- Instance: “We need to assist small companies scale with inexpensive tech options.”
Imaginative and prescient: That is your finish aim. What’s the larger image?
- Instance: “To be the highest supplier of cloud options, serving to companies thrive.”
Determine your goal prospects.
Know precisely who you’re promoting to. Create profiles based mostly on their ache factors, wants, and shopping for conduct.
For instance, in the event you’re promoting a productiveness device, goal enterprise house owners on the lookout for effectivity.
- Concentrate on what’s driving their shopping for choices. In the event that they want extra effectivity, place your product as the answer to that challenge. Promote outcomes, not options.
- Go after high-potential prospects who’re prone to convert and stick round. Take a look at repeat consumers and large spenders, then tailor your efforts to them.
Record all stakeholders.
Embody buyers, suppliers, and board members. Maintain them knowledgeable on how your technique will drive earnings and progress.
Begin with aspirational targets.
Your targets ought to give attention to measurable progress.
- Keep away from imprecise targets. As a substitute of “develop the enterprise,” goal for clear targets like “Get 100 new prospects by Q3.”
- Tie your targets to delivering worth. Instance: “Enhance buyer retention by 15% by enhancing the person expertise.”
4. Create a strategic plan.
Report the agreements and methods in a strategic plan. The strategic plan is a bodily doc that may be shared throughout departments within the firm.
Many corporations have gone digital with strategic planning software program, so their strategic plan could be accessed by anybody within the firm from their digital gadgets. Many of those software program choices are collaborative for individuals in any respect ranges of the corporate, which will increase the transparency of the enterprise’s major targets.
Professional tip: I like to recommend utilizing HubSpot’s free strategic planning template (out there to be used in Phrase, PDF, or Google Docs). It covers all the things from the chief abstract to SWOT evaluation and helps manage market analysis, product particulars, and advertising methods.
Strategic Planning Software program
With all shifting elements, it’s onerous to maintain observe of all plans and techniques throughout the groups. I like to recommend delegating it to strategic planning software program. Listed below are some choices, in no explicit order.
1. Cascade Technique
Cascade Technique helps you create a plan and execute it with its technique planning platform. It permits you to create a technique map, define your targets, and embody particular particulars like aim timeframes and the metrics used to judge aim achievement.
Extra options embody a KPI builder, sensible frameworks, aim and mission administration instruments, and dashboards to report on progress.
What I Like
Cascade’s technique planner helps you outline your long-term targets, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder permits you to seamlessly enter the operational plans that may provide help to obtain these targets.
2. ClearPoint technique
This strategic planning device has Balanced Scorecard Software program that lets you construct your strategic plan. The platform gives you with the flexibility to construct interactive Balanced Scorecards and create dashboards and technique maps to trace your targets.
You may assign components of the strategic plan to completely different house owners to allow them to deal with particular elements of the technique.
What I Like
Lets you visualize your strategic plans and operational plans multi function place, making it straightforward to know aim attainment and areas that want technique upgrades.
3. WorkBoard
WorkBoard gives a strategic planning resolution that is particularly for CEOs and Basic Managers. And with instruments just like the lively OKR resolution, groups can establish and plan utilizing the Targets and Key Outcomes (OKR) method.
The device gives a approach to align organizations and assist them establish dangers with OKR heatmaps.
What I Like
WorkBoard’s goal and key outcomes device helps you visualize aim alignment throughout your group to extend transparency and provide help to perceive progress in direction of assembly your strategic plan targets.
4. CEO-S Software program (Khorus)
Khorus is a technique execution software program that creates transparency for CEOs, administration, and particular person contributors. CEOs set goals after which groups and people can add their very own targets that contribute to the overarching goals.
This strategic planning software program improves the flexibility of companies to execute their methods, and it will increase alignment and transparency.
What I Like
Constructed for government management that places collectively the strategic planning and is suitable with any aim methodology that works greatest for what you are promoting (SMART targets, OKR, MBO).
5. COMPASS® High quality Administration System
With this mission portfolio administration system, you’ll be able to handle concepts and initiatives that will help you and your workforce develop a technique. An attention-grabbing characteristic is the star score system that permits workers to charge every mission. The system takes this data, analyzes it, and charges the mission’s general potential.
The device creates transparency between leaders and workers, and administration is ready to interact with the suggestions to enhance upon their strategic targets and initiatives.
With a strategic plan, your organization and your gross sales group might be well-equipped to set targets and obtain them.
Plan first. Crush it later.
On the finish of the day, even the perfect gross sales workforce can’t hit its stride and not using a clear plan guiding its efforts.
It’s not nearly planning for the sake of it. A strategic plan means smarter choices — quicker, higher, simpler.
With the proper individuals, the proper course of, and the proper focus, strategic planning can flip imaginative and prescient into execution. And execution into outcomes. I witnessed it firsthand — as soon as because the one who fine-tuned gross sales operations, and in one other case, because the one anticipated to comply with orders.
So if you wish to transfer from chaos to readability, begin with a technique. Your gross sales workforce (and your backside line) will thanks.
Editor’s be aware: This text was initially printed in April 2019 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
