What is Sales Planning?

While it’s simple – sales planning is making projections about what sales (and cash) you want to create that month. While you may have an income goal in mind for the month – this is getting into the nitty gritty of what you need to do to get there

As James Clear once said “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there”

What it currently looks like in your business?

Every month I bet you have the same goal: Sign More Clients

So, you make a plan to sell anywhere and everywhere…but then the 15th of the month rolls around and your hours of planning turn into waiting for the perfect moment to sell.

HINT: there is no perfect moment to sell 

Being Realistic with your Sales plan

As a human (I hope you are a human reading this) – you operate under the least amount of effort. The problem that I see with most early stage business owners is going 0- 60 MPH when wanting to make more money/

With your plan, make it something that does stretch you but doesn’t require you to burn out. I want you to think more about the effort that will be required than just the goal in mind. In Scale to $5k, there are opportunities to sales plan and get my eyes on it.

Further Reading: How I closed $37.5k in sales in August 2020

Seasonality can Affect it

At the time of writing this – we are walking into Black Friday Season. The way my clients are taught to approach this is that the season can be a bonus but not to only rely on the idea of Black Friday sales or securing income for the following year. There SHOULD be a sales plan in place that is influenced by the seasonality but not reliant on it.

Determine the offer you are going to focus on

It takes the average customer up to 42 times to hear something before they decide to act upon it. Now, the customer wants to spend a minimum of 7 hours with you. Finding one offer and focusing on that FIRST, will be key.

If your offer isn’t exactly clear on how it helps someone and why they should buy, going back to your ideal client will be the first step.

Knowing what you are offering and who you are helping is a HUGE piece of your sales plan which means you need to have clarity on this FIRST before moving to the other pieces.

Further Reading: What you should sell first as a business owner, How to Launch A New Program

Down Selling and Up Selling

If someone inquires and they don’t quite fit the criteria you’re looking for with that offer, you can always upsell/down-sell them to another offer of yours that fits their needs.

The old adage is sell them what they want and give them what they need… but what happens when you know that offers isn’t a good fit for them based on their needs. That is where the down sell and upsell can create opporuntity. The catch is not making this required in the sales plan. As hick’s law states – the more options you give someone, the more time it takes.

And with more options – it doesn’t mean that you will naturally make more money. The spilt focus and creating these numbers that rely on someone downselling and upselling is NOT the goal.

Down-selling in your Sales Plan

When you hear a pricing objection: You have two options, you can let them come back to you or you can give them options. The problem is more entrepreneurs aren’t comfortable handling objectives and providing new options to their ideal clients. Before you just offer a super extended payment plan to get them in the door – consider this

Less Deliverables = less price

Is there a way you can cut the number of deliverables? Thus bringing the value down, to help them come in at a more “affordable price” (remember affordability is subjective to the person, so what is affordable to you could be out of your ideal client’s budget. )

This can look like decreasing the number of calls, providing a template, or other things. Get Creative and find options for them.

Upselling in your Sales Plan

Would you be open to looking at options that are better based on where you are at?

I say this probably 10 times during a Scale to $5k launch because people inquiry where they are currently at and it’s not a good fit for them to be in a group program scaling to $5k months when they are at $4500/month and focusing on $10k months (but don’t want to say it out loud.)

Upselling isn’t providing the same information in a program but now upgrading to 1×1 to make more money. It’s that the ideal client is AHEAD of the offer they are inquiring into.

Content Creation

4 Buyer Types

The way you buy is the same way that you sell, and with that knowledge – you could be missing up to 75% of your audience by not including things that could get them to buy.

When creating content, the problem I see is a heavy focus on ONE buyer type that is natural to you because that is how you buy. The missing piece is the other 3 buyers and the pieces that could get someone to buy.

If you are unfamiliar with the buyer types, I break it down in a blog post here and have a mini-lesson on it in the sales society.

5 Stages of Buying

Problem awareness is not the only stage you should focus on in the buying cycle. While it’s the most popular because it can create a cash infusion. There are MULTIPLE stages in the buying process to focus on. Those stages are:

• Problem awareness – knowing the problem they have and WHY they have that problem
• Agitation – Why is now the time to change things in a way that allows them to create internal urgency.
• Solution awareness – knowing what they want after they solve the problem (what it looks like in clear specific visual imagery)
• Product Awareness – how the offer will solve the problems, and the details that make them buy (think different buyer types wanting different
• You Awareness – knowing your unique value proposition and the connecting to you that allows them to say “You are my person”

Pairing Stages of Buying and Buyer types in your Content Plan

Here is an example to allow you to start breaking it down with just ONE topic. T

CONTENT  STAGES/ BUYER TYPER

• TOPIC – Problem awareness
  • DRIVER – RESULTS – why they aren’t getting results// direct 
  • ANALTYICALS-  PLANNERS – why their plan isn’t working to solve the problems they have 
  •  EMOTIONAL –  FEELINGS –  current feelings they have and why they have them 
  • Frustrated → Sitting at your desk staring at your computer screen for the ONE Instagram post you put this week 
  • CONNECTIVE – RELATIONSHIP – they don’t feel connected to their ideal client /// extrovert responders 
• TOPIC -agitation
  • DRIVER –  things they have tried to get results + why it didn’t work 
  • ANALTYICALS –  things they didn’t consider in their plans (and getting stuck in everything being perfect) 
  • EMOTIONAL –  why you feel the way you do and what you have tried to fix it 
  • CONNECTIVE –  more isn’t better = social push or more free calls (attempting to connect and go person to person) 
• TOPIC – Solution Awareness
  • DRIVER –  RESULTS (authority-based results) 
  • ANALTYICALS – plan they could make 
  • EMOTIONAL –  feelings they could have 
  • CONNECTIVE – connecting with your audience 
• TOPIC – Product awareness
  • DRIVER – REsults from the product 
  • ANALTYICALS- details in results of the plan and goal 
  • EMOTIONAL – feelings they have 
  • CONNECTIVE –  community // how they can help other people 
• TOPIC – You awareness
  • DRIVER – results, credentials, results from your clients 
  • ANALTYICALS- talking about your story with details, case studies, handling objections 
  • EMOTIONAL – HOW IT FEELS//storytelling 
    • Define 5 brand stories you can alternate through
  • CONNECTIVE –  your own connecting with them (sales convo) or how you view your audience 

The Selling Piece in your Sales Plan

This wouldn’t be a sales plan without selling. The average consumer needs to hear something 42 times before they buy, so rest in your repetition and focus on the two times of sales (ps if you don’t want to come up with your own ideas – there is 30 prompts in the sales society that you plug and play – click here to join)

Hard Sell

Jus the pitch without doing any fluff before. Hard selling can take a VARIETY of ways, but it includes talking about the offer, what it includes, and important details they need to know. You aren’t giving education, client wins or leading in with anything.

Soft Sell

Leading in with education, client win or something to “warm up” the ideal client to sell. Most of the sales prompts in the Sales Society and the 365 in Salesy focus on this type of selling. Why? because if you are someone who doesn’t sell regularly the hard sell may feel like too much

Soft selling is still selling.

Further Reading: Sign more More Clients with this 7 Day Promotional Plan

What makes you hesitate when you know this is what you need to be doing?