5 Tips to Write Your Annual Sales & Marketing Plan

It's that time of year again where many people set resolutions and goals for the upcoming year. However, many small business owners don't know how to go about setting effective goals and planning for sales & marketing. They know they want to have a strategic plan, but not sure how to create one (and stick to it).

In this article, I'll share some tips from my perspective of working for large corporations and running my own small business. I'll also provide a brief overview of the steps for outlining your goals, then 4 more strategies to give you a jumpstart on your planning. If you would like to get more support and a detailed, customized plan for your business, contact me to discuss booking an annual planning day for you and/or your team.

OUTLINE YOUR GOALS

1. Define what you want to accomplish

One way to define what you want to accomplish is by setting specific, measurable, and time-bound goals. For example, you might want to add new team members, launch a new sales campaign, update your marketing materials, take a leadership course, or get a business coach/consultant.

Example: The upcoming year is promising for my business. I have 10 prospects that I am working on to turn into leads, and I am confident that I can convert 75% of those leads into customers. My ultimate goal is to increase my gross revenue by 20% in the next year. To achieve this, I will focus on increasing my marketing efforts by speaking at least 1x a month in meetings where my ideal clients are, running monthly retargeting ad campaigns on Google, attending 1 conference or networking event per month, creating a referral partner program, hosting monthly educational webinars to increase influence, and increasing my connections on LinkedIn by 1,000. To support me, I’m going to add one part-time virtual assistant and one marketing intern. In addition, I’m going to hire a sales and marketing coach/consultant to help keep me on track and who has sales & marketing experience to help me uplevel.

Questions to ask yourself:

You want to increase your sales, but by how much over last year and where do you expect the increase to come from?

How many new clients do you need to make your revenue goals?

What's your plan for replacing clients who decide not to continue?

Do you have multiple profit centers? What are they and what is your strategy for increasing and managing each one??

What are you top 3-5 goals you want to accomplish in your business?

How can you measure these to ensure you are successful?

When do you want to accomplish these and if they are bigger or long-term goals, what milestones can you set to measure your progress?

2. Set deadlines for your goals

Breaking down your goals into actionable tasks and setting deadlines can help keep you accountable and motivated to stay on track. You can use a planner or calendar to create a timeline of when you want to complete each step and the ultimate goal itself. I like to use Google sheets so I have easy access to it on my iPhone any time an idea pops into mind! You can also go "old-fashioned" with a pen and paper so it's easy to access on your desk. You could use a digital tool like a Trello board, if that's your cup of tea. Whatever method you decide, make it easy to access so you don't start it and never come back.

Questions to ask yourself:

What are the top 3 most important goals and deadlines for your business next year?

What tool will you use to track your goals, tasks and timelines?

3. Delegate more tasks

One of the biggest issues I see with busy business owners is they take on too much of the work themselves. Every responsibility falls back into their laps. It's as if you are the accountant, finance manager, sales rep, marketing manager, customer service rep, staff, operations manager, human resource director... and whatever other hat that's needed in your business in the moment. Is this sounds familiar, stop it. If you want to build a business that continues to produce more sales every year, you cannot continue to be the chief everything officer.

If you need help completing tasks or reaching your goals, consider delegating them to a virtual assistant or a few virtual assistants, get a fractional CFO or an offsite HR consultant, or a marketing intern. This can free up time and allow you to focus on the most important aspects of achieving your goal. I set three main priorities for my business, and I try to find others to do the rest. My three priorities are serving clients, generating sales, and speaking to audiences. If my schedule starts to get crazy, I look at what I'm doing and assign tasks outside of these three areas to others.

Questions to ask yourself:

What tasks are you doing that take too much of your time?

What tasks are you doing that you can hire someone else who is an expert at completing those tasks?

Who on your current team could take on more responsibility and gives them more opportunities for growth?

What tasks are you doing that suck the life out of you? What are the top 3 main priorities you should keep?

4. Monitor progress weekly or monthly

Keep track of the progress you make along the way by using a tracking system. This can help you stay motivated, assess your progress towards the goal, and identify any areas that need improvement or adjustment. This also goes for your team. Ask them to create their own tracking systems. That's what I did with my team. I asked them to find a system to track our projects. They came back to me with Asana (an online project management tool). They put all their tasks in the tool, and I have access to check it out whenever I need to. We host a monthly meeting to review the task list and my team adds my tasks into the tool for me. It's an excellent way to make sure our projects keep momentum without me having to keep my eyes on every detail.

Questions to ask yourself:

What goals do you need to monitor?

Who would you like to oversee tracking?

How can you co-create a system with your team to get buy-in from them?

How can you ensure your system doesn't fail?

5. Celebrate milestones

Celebrating milestones is an important part of setting goals. Make sure to reward yourself for the small successes along the way, as well as the big ones at the end. This can help keep you motivated and remind yourself of your accomplishments. Celebrate and reward your team too! I schedule an annual team planning retreat with my team. We start by focusing on their goals (not related to my business), then the business goals. We enjoy activities together, such as dining out at nice restaurants, I teach them cardio drumming, and we do a fun activity. I also host them on my VIP client destination retreat. They work the retreat for me, but they also get to participate in any of the activities my clients do. This year, I added a special bonus and treated them to a day at the spa. My team members who are far away get gifts or bonuses to celebrate their milestones.

We also celebrate our clients' successes. We honor them by posting their successes on social media, when appropriate. I host annual planning workshops for them and start with celebrations. We host an annual VIP destination retreat that is focused on personal development and fun, not business planning (which we do all year long).

Questions to ask yourself:

How will you celebrate your success?

How often should you stop and look back at what you've accomplished?

Who will you celebrate with? How would you like to celebrate with your team?

What should you measure and how should you reward your them?

What would be most meaningful to support them?

How will you support your clients in celebrating their achievements.

What is something special you can do for your clients to honor them?

DETERMINE YOUR TARGET MARKET AND CUSTOMER BASE

To determine your target market and customer base, you need to first identify your prospects. Prospects are individuals or businesses that you think might be interested in your product or service. Once you have identified your prospects, you need to generate leads. Leads are individuals or businesses that have expressed interest in your product or service. You can generate leads through marketing campaigns, speaking, networking, online forms, paid advertising, or contact lists. Finally, you need to convert leads into customers. Customers are individuals or businesses that have purchased your product or service. To convert leads into customers, you need to have a sales and marketing strategy in place. By understanding your prospects, generating leads, and converting leads into customers, you will be able to determine your target market and customer base.

Questions to ask yourself:

How would you describe your ideal customer?

What are their demographics (age, gender, location, education level)?

What characteristics (psychographics) describe them, for example what are their behaviors, values, and lifestyles that relate to your products or services?

What are the top challenges they have that you solve?

What are the outcomes they are looking for when hiring someone like you?

How do you know these things to be true?

When is the last time you conducted customer focused or prospect research?

RESEARCH YOUR COMPETITION AND WHAT THEY’RE DOING TO STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE

It's important to research your competition and know what they're doing to stay ahead of the curve. This way, you can anticipate their moves and make sure you're always one step ahead. There are a few ways to go about this. First, look at their online presence. What kind of content are they posting? How often are they updating their blog or website? What kind of tone do they take with their audience? Next, look at their marketing campaigns. Are they running ads? If so, where are they appearing? What kind of messaging are they using? Finally, reach out to your own network of industry contacts and see what insider information they might have about your competition. By taking the time to research your competition, you'll be able to stay ahead of the curve and keep your business one step ahead.

Questions to ask yourself:

Who are my top 5 biggest competitors?

What are they doing in terms of marketing?

What’s their website like?

How often are they posting on LinkedIn?

When and where do I see them at networking events and conferences?

Who are their top clients?

What are our key differentiators?

Why do I believe our customers are better off working with us?

Create a content marketing strategy that will engage and educate your audience

Any good content marketing strategy should have two main goals: engage the target audience and educate them about the product or service being promoted. There are a number of ways to achieve these goals, but one of the most effective is to create informative and entertaining blog posts. Start by Identifying the needs and interests of your target audience, and then creating content that addresses those needs. Be sure to use an engaging writing style and include plenty of imagery to break up the text. You should also make use of social media to promote your blog posts and help them reach a wider audience. Finally, don't forget to track the results of your efforts so you can fine-tune your strategy as needed. By following these tips, you can develop a content marketing strategy that will effectively engage and educate your target audience.

Use your content on social media, LinkedIn for business professionals, on your website as a blog, and in your emails. Ultimately, the goal is for all your social media followers to be on your email list. You never know what can happen on social media and you don’t want to put the effort in and lose the connections because they are not on your list. Develop a great lead magnet and serve them educational content and they’ll want to be on your list! Not sure what a lead magnet is, read this article to learn more: (4) Lead Magnet: #1 Way to Capture & Convert Leads | LinkedIn

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Do you have a 12 month content calendar?

2. How many social media followers do you currently have? What’s your goal for next year?

3. Do you have an email list? If so, how many subscribers do you have? What’s your goal for next year?

4. Do you have an enticing lead magnet? Who have many people opted in for it?

5. How often do you send educational emails to your list?

6. How often do you invite your list to special events like webinars, training courses, or executive roundtables?

MAP OUT YOUR MARKETING AND SALES FLOW

A sales and marketing funnel is a process that helps you convert leads into customers. The funnel begins with generating, which is then followed by converting those leads into customers. The funnel ends with retaining customers and driving further sales. There are a number of steps involved in this process, each of which is designed to move the prospect closer to becoming a customer. The steps in the funnel typically include:

1. Identifying your target audience

2. Generating leads

3. Converting leads into customers

4. Retaining customers and driving further sales

That's the simple version, but it’s more complex than this. A marketing map often looks like a winding rollercoaster! There are many steps, layers and diversions in a prospect's journey to doing business with you. A well-defined marketing journey map and a well-defined sales process map help you to see the gaps in your planning so you can ensure no-one falls through the cracks. Follow up and follow-through are two of the most common reasons businesses lose sales. If you can uncover the gaps and fill them in with the proper activities, you'll convert more customers and serve more people with your solutions.

Questions to ask yourself:

Where does my target market learn about my business?

What steps do they take when they do business with me?

What steps do I have in my marketing plan that takes them from lead to prospect?

What are the steps in my sales plan that takes them from prospect to customer?

In what ways can I increase the rate of returning customers?

CONCLUSION

All too often, businesses go into the new year without a plan, and wonder why they don't see the success they desire. If you want to be sure of achieving your sales and marketing goals for next year, take the time now to answer the questions above and put together a solid plan. Consider your target market, your competition, and most importantly, your sales & marketing plan. Set measurable objectives so that you can track progress along the way and make necessary course corrections. Make sure to share your plan with your team and get their input so you’re all on the same page.

And finally, if you need support in developing ideas, implementing your plan, and staying accountable to it throughout the year, reach out to me at [email protected] - I'd love to chat with you about scheduling an annual planning meeting with you and/or your team! Book a call with me to learn more: https://bookme.name/jenniferdarling/lite/lets-connect

Happy Selling!

Jennifer