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As I wrote about last month, it’s important to have a well-thought-out business plan for the upcoming year. If you fail to put significant thought into how you will approach your sales territory, the chances of maximizing your potential are significantly reduced.
As the saying goes: If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. It’s critically important to have a road map that you can execute to keep yourself on track.
However, if you fail to execute consistently, your 2017 business plan will produce little value. Said another way — it’s all about the execution.
As a pro football team practices and prepares a specific game plan for its upcoming opponent, it designs offensive plays that should have a reasonable chance for success, based on the film the players have studied. They compare their strengths to the opponents’ weaknesses and prepare a game plan that will be rolled out on Sunday. Lots of hard work and effort go into this planning. But at the end of the day, if the team fails to execute the play the way it was designed, the chances of success are significantly reduced. Fans watching the game might draw the conclusion that the coach made a bad call, resulting in the quarterback being sacked. However, if all of the players did their jobs and executed the play the way it was designed, most likely the outcome would be different.
Sales execution has two components:
By quality I mean sticking to your game plan and not cutting corners. As a professional sales exec, we know all the necessary steps it takes to bring in the business. Too many times we tend to take a shortcut in a sales campaign to avoid the necessary work that will give us the best chance of winning a deal. We may avoid a detailed proposal, not do our homework on a new competitor, or perhaps avoid making a sales call on a senior executive that we are uncomfortable speaking with. We convince ourselves that we can win the deal without dotting every I and crossing every T. Perhaps it’s because we are lazy, or simply overconfident, but when we lose the business to an inferior competitor it becomes obvious that we did not give it our best effort.
By consistency I mean continuing to execute your game plan through the peaks and valleys you will most certainly face during the business year. True professionals consistently execute when they are ahead of quota or significantly behind quota. They don’t cut corners in their sales campaign because of overconfidence when they are ahead of quota. And they continue to execute on their game plan and not lose confidence when they are behind in quota. In other words, they execute consistently, regardless of where they are in attaining their quota.
In summary, having a well-thought-out business plan to attain your 2017 sales objectives is only half of the equation. It’s all about execution. You’re better off fully executing on a less-than-optimal business plan than preparing a perfect plan but then failing to execute.
UNIVERSAL SALES TRUTH #4
Work your land
Proverbs 28:19-20
Work your garden-you’ll end up with plenty of food;
Play and party-you’ll end up with an empty plate
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