When it comes to your business and selling to your customers there is a standardised approach to sales. You can look at ways to approach your customers and how to go about selling to them. With enough insight, you can create a sales game plan. This will give you a clear-cut approach to your customer’s needs, expectations and processes to achieve sales. This can be useful in training employees or refining your sales methods. Let’s look at what a sales game plan is and how you can create one for your business.
What is a Sales Gameplan?
A sales game plan is a dynamic document that empowers salespeople to excel in your company’s sales efforts. This game plan serves as a central resource to onboard new sales staff and captures the best strategies used by successful salespeople in your business. The sales game plan gives you a suggested path or paths for prospective clients. So you or your sales team will have a suggested approach to any prospective clients. Here are the five steps to creating an effective sales game plan.
Five Steps to Creating a Sales Gameplan
Step 1: Review Your Sales Process
Begin by documenting your sales approach. You will need to understand the current customer journey. How do you generate leads? What qualification process do you use? Consider all aspects of your sales process and outline them. Once you have the current outline we can move to step 2.
Step 2: Assemble Your Team
When designing your game plan, involve key stakeholders who need to contribute their insights. Collaborate with your marketing and sales teams, and consider including subject matter experts who can provide specialized information. However, if you do not have a sales team yet and are starting from the beginning the important point is to identify your customer needs. What do the customers respond to?
Step 3: Define Your Buyer Persona
Gain a clear understanding of your target customers and create a comprehensive buyer persona. This is the most crucial step because it gets down to the true motivation of customers. You can read more about the concept of buyer personas in a previous article.
Step 4: Strategize Your Plays
Plays are the strategic methods employed to achieve specific objectives within your business. In the context of a sales game plan, you will focus on plays tailored to different stages of the sales funnel. You can also include general plays applicable throughout the sales process. Some examples of plays include:
Personalization: How to tailor the sales message to engage the specific buyer persona effectively.
Prospecting: Outlining the channels, platforms, and tactics to target the best prospecting opportunities.
Lead Qualification: Efficiently qualifying the best leads for your business.
Demonstrations: Utilizing product demos to showcase how your offering addresses customers’ needs.
Use Cases: Highlighting real-world examples of your product’s benefits for the target audience.
Step 5: Select Playbook Content
Customize the game plan according to your business’s unique needs. While some sections may not be relevant, ensure the playbook offers your salespeople the best chance of closing sales. Consider including these seven sections:
Company Overview: Introduce your company, industry, mission, values, and long-term vision.
Industry Overview: Provide insights into your industry and link to key websites for up-to-date information.
Sales Process: Detail the customer journey through your sales funnel, including handling inquiries, referrals, and meeting cancellations.
Content Library: Include images and messaging that salespeople can leverage across different platforms to connect with customers.
Operational Best Practices: Outline the recommended software and hardware for various sales process aspects.
Metrics: Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring salespeople’s success and other relevant sales metrics.
Strategies: List the effective plays tailored to your buyer persona.
By following these five steps, you will develop a powerful sales gameplan that empowers your sales team to convert more leads into loyal customers. This can be refined over time as you better understand the average customer. Ultimately it will help you to streamline your sales process shorten the distance between a prospect and a sale.
