Business Planning - Serious Stuff or is it a Joke ?

Business planning is undoubtedly a serious exercise, integral to the strategic success of any organization. It's the process where businesses set objectives for the upcoming financial year, align their resources, and prepare for potential challenges. Even a slight degree of lesser priority undermines the organization's potential for growth, adaptability, and competitiveness. A well-crafted business plan is a roadmap to achieving business goals. Do we end up doing a fair job across the rank and file of the hierarchy or each year, we get into this zone, almost with a very heavy heart, and end up randomly applying some mathematics and some trends analysis to arrive at the next financial years Business Plan?

In most of the Organisations, a Business Planning cycle is almost as sacred as a pilgrimage. The exercise is almost religious, demanding tremendous amount of meticulous work, focus and some of the larger organisations who follow the April – March fiscal year would be already done with FY25 business planning, some organisations would be going through their final iterations barring some organisations, mostly startups and mid-size firms, who are needling on single digit USD Mn size of business - which is perfectly fine.

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The last-minute rush and heightened attention to this business planning exercise for the next financial year can be attributed to several reasons across various levels of an organization and needless to say, larger the organization, deeper the complexity. Understanding these reasons can help organizations strategize better and potentially mitigate the rush in future planning cycles. Here are some common reasons you already know:

1. Procrastination and Delayed Decisions: Often, decisions are postponed until the last moment, leading to a rush when deadlines approach. This can be due to lack of decision making, a lack of urgency, or waiting for more data to ensure accuracy in planning – a viscious loop -Beware.
2. Data Collection and Analysis Delays: Comprehensive business planning requires data from all departments. Gathering, verifying, and analyzing this data can take longer than expected, especially if systems are not integrated or if there's a dependency on external data sources.
3. Changing Market Conditions: Rapid changes in market conditions, such as new regulations, economic shifts, or competitor movements, can necessitate revisions to previously laid plans, leading to last-minute adjustments. (Given the pace at which there is rapid evolution in every sphere of life, I won’t be surprised if we will soon need Half-Yearly business planning to be factored in the corporate calendar, or worst, every QTR. The rapid pace of evolution makes all previous quarter discussions obsolete, null and void)
4. Internal Approval Processes: The need for multiple levels of approval can slow down the planning process. If key decision-makers are not available (which mostly is the case) or if there are disagreements among stakeholders, it can lead to delays and a consequent rush.
5. Budget Reallocations: Decisions regarding budget cuts or reallocating funds to different departments or projects can lead to last-minute changes in planning. These decisions might be influenced by end-of-year financial assessments or shifts in strategic priorities. People hate rework, especially when there is a lot of tinkering that needs to be done in order to recast certain numbers involving a multitide of parameters.
6. Resource Availability: Limited availability of critical resources, including personnel, can delay the planning process. Key contributors may be overloaded with other responsibilities, especially at year-end, reducing the time they can devote to planning.
7. Technological Challenges: Technical issues with planning software or tools can cause delays. This includes problems with integrating new systems or the need to update financial models based on the latest technology. Did I just hear someone whisper “Ai”?
8. Feedback and Revisions: Incorporating feedback from stakeholders and making necessary revisions can be a time-consuming process, especially if the feedback requires significant changes to the plans. Urggghhhh
9. Underestimation of Time Required: Organizations often underestimate the time required to complete the planning process, leading to a crunch as the deadline approaches.
10. Cultural Factors: In some organizations, there is a cultural tendency to prioritize immediate operational issues over long-term planning, leading to a rush when the realization hits that plans for the next year need to be finalized.

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Addressing these challenges requires a proactive approach, including better time management, improving internal communication, leveraging technology effectively, and fostering a culture that values timely and strategic planning.

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Sales Forecasting - it's so much Fun!?

Now lets zoom my other Camera to one of the most important sections of a comprehensive Business Plan – Our favourite Sales Forecasting exercise for the new financial year.

?A common challenge within sales organizations, particularly when it comes to planning and setting targets - The rush to create quarterly business plans and revenue targets can indeed lead to unrealistic expectations and a chaotic scramble to meet those numbers. This can be attributed to several underlying issues:

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1. Need for Continuous Planning on Rolling basis : Effective sales strategies require ongoing planning and adjustment, not just Monthly, Quarterly or Annual updates. When sales teams wait until the last minute, they miss the opportunity to adjust their strategies based on real-time market feedback and changes.
2. Short-term sighted: Organizations often put immense pressure on sales teams to meet short-term goals, sometimes at the expense of long-term strategy. This can encourage a focus on immediate numbers rather than sustainable growth.
3. Insufficient Data Analysis: Crafting realistic targets requires thorough analysis of past performance, market conditions, and future projections. Last-minute planning may not allow sufficient time for this analysis, leading to targets based more on wishful thinking than on data. Please don’t get me wrong here, but there is great excitement in aspiring to do a much larger number as compared to the previous year(s), and then trying to work backwards to see what are the levers that the Organisation would need to tweak in order to make that aspirational number possible with a relative level of confidence.
4. Communication Gaps: In many cases, the rush and scramble are exacerbated by poor communication within the sales team and between sales and other functions within the organisation. Effective target setting requires input from a range of stakeholders to ensure goals are realistic and aligned with broader company objectives and there is a sign-off from all stakeholders towards the destination.?
5. Training and Development: There's often a lack of training on how to set achievable targets and how to create actionable, flexible plans that can adapt to changes. This gap can leave salespeople and their managers ill-equipped to set and meet realistic goals. You will smile at this, but very often, the number is shoved Top-down and the Regional Manager / Sales Territory Manager / Field Sales Exec is expected to work on those numbers and come up with a QoQ forecast.?

By addressing the root causes of last-minute planning and unrealistic target setting, sales organizations can improve their performance, reduce stress on their teams, and position themselves for sustainable success and avoid the every-other-day-scramble, letting these folks lead a peaceful life and enjoy the motions instead of living in a pressure cooker environment.

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When salespeople find themselves at the end of a quarter realizing they don't have enough in their pipeline to meet their targets, it's a clear indication that the sales process may need refinement. This scenario is not uncommon, but it can be mitigated with strategic planning and execution. Here are some pointers to highlight and strategies to consider:

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1. Regular Pipeline Reviews: Ensure that sales pipeline reviews are a regular part of the sales process, not just a monthly / quarterly activity. These reviews should assess the quality, not just the quantity of opportunities in the pipeline.
2. Forecast Accuracy: Improve forecasting techniques to more accurately predict sales outcomes. This might involve adopting advanced CRM tools or Ai based platforms that use a combination of historical data, email conversations and predictive analytics to provide more reliable forecasts.
3. Lead Qualification: Focus on the quality of leads entering the pipeline. Implementing a stringent lead qualification process helps ensure that the sales team focuses their efforts on deals that are more likely to close.
4. Sales and Marketing Alignment: Ensure that sales and marketing teams are closely aligned. This collaboration can lead to higher quality leads and a more effective nurturing process that primes potential customers for a sale.
5. Training on Deal Advancement: Provide sales teams with training on strategies to move deals through the pipeline more effectively. This could include negotiation techniques, understanding customer pain points, and tailoring the value proposition to each prospect.
6. Leverage Data for Insights: Use data analytics to gain insights into where deals typically stall in the pipeline and why. Understanding these patterns can help in developing strategies to overcome common obstacles.
7. Customer Engagement Strategies: Develop and implement strategies for deeper engagement with prospects throughout the sales cycle. Regular check-ins, providing valuable content, and demonstrating ongoing value can help keep deals moving forward.
8. Contingency Planning: Encourage sales teams to develop contingency plans for their pipelines. This could involve nurturing a mix of short, medium, and long-term opportunities, ensuring that there are always deals in the pipeline at various stages of maturity. Very often, salespeople get disillusioned with the added problem of having Happy Ears and then finally when a deal doesn’t go through, Rejection takes over and this is a huge loss to organisations.
9. Focus on Existing Customers: Don't overlook the potential of upselling or cross-selling to existing customers. Often, the path to meeting sales targets can involve deepening relationships with current clients, not just acquiring new ones.
10. Incentivize Early Closures: Consider implementing incentives for sales that close earlier in the quarter. This can help to spread sales more evenly throughout the quarter and reduce end-of-period pressure.
11. Review and Adjust Targets: Finally, it's important to periodically review and, if necessary, adjust sales targets to ensure they remain realistic and achievable based on current market conditions and team capacity.

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By focusing on these strategies, sales teams can better manage their pipelines, improve the accuracy of their forecasts, and reduce the end-of-quarter scramble to meet targets. These practices not only help in achieving immediate sales goals but also contribute to the long-term health and success of the sales organization.

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Timing for Business Planning

?Waiting until the end of the current fiscal year to start planning for the next is a common pitfall. The best practice is to start the planning process well in advance, typically in the third quarter of the current fiscal year. This allows ample time for thorough market analysis, internal review of performance metrics, and strategic discussions. Early planning ensures that the organization is proactive rather than reactive, allowing for better alignment of resources and strategic objectives.

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Continuous Review and Adjustment

?Make the business planning process a continuous cycle of review and adjustment, rather than a once-a-year task.

?According to Salesforce’s “State of Sales” report for 2023, only 24.3% of salespeople exceeded their quotas for the year. This suggests that the vast majority of sales professionals struggled to meet their sales targets, highlighting the challenges faced in achieving quota attainment across various industries.

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The Hockey-stick phenomena

?The pattern of salespeople forecasting higher numbers in Q3 and Q4, with progressively lower forecasts for Q2 and even lower in Q1, reflects several common factors and strategic considerations within sales processes and market dynamics:?

1. Budget Cycles and Fiscal Year Ends: Many businesses operate on a fiscal year that aligns with the calendar year, making new budgets available at the beginning. Irrespective of a Jan-Dec fiscal or an APR-MAR fiscal or otherwise, it often takes time for companies to allocate these budgets, leading to slower sales in Q1. As the year progresses, companies become more willing to spend, either due to greater budget clarity or the need to expend the budget before the year's end, leading to increased sales activities in the later quarters.
2. End-of-Year Spending Surge: Organizations frequently have "use it or lose it" budgets, where unspent funds by the end of the fiscal year are not rolled over into the next year. This creates a rush to commit remaining budgets before they expire, resulting in a spike in purchasing activities in Q3 and Q4.
3. Sales Incentives and Compensation Structures: Sales compensation plans often incentivize achieving and exceeding targets, with bonuses and accelerators that become more lucrative as the salesperson surpasses their annual quota. This structure motivates salespeople to close more deals toward the end of the year to maximize their compensation.
4. Strategic Customer Decisions: Customers may delay significant purchases or contracts until they have a clear understanding of their own business performance and budgetary flexibility, which often becomes more apparent in the second half of the year.
5. Sales Cycle and Pipeline Development: For products or services with longer sales cycles, deals initiated in the early part of the year may only come to fruition in the later quarters. Sales forecasts reflect this timeline, showing an accumulation of potential deals as the year progresses.
6. Psychological Factors and Quota Management: Salespeople might aim for a strong finish to the year, both for personal achievement and to meet or exceed their sales quotas. There's also a strategic element of managing expectations internally and externally, with sales teams potentially under-forecasting early in the year to secure resources or manage pressure, then ramping up forecasts as confidence in the pipeline grows.
7. Seasonal Demand Patterns: Certain industries experience seasonal fluctuations that significantly impact when customers are most likely to make purchases. For example, retail sees a surge in Q4 due to the holiday season, while other sectors may have different peak times.
8. Historical Sales Trends: Past sales performance often influences current forecasts. If a sales team historically closes more deals in the second half of the year, their forecasts will likely reflect this trend, assuming it will continue.

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By understanding these factors, sales leaders can develop strategies to address the challenges of uneven sales performance across quarters, such as smoothing out the sales cycle, adjusting forecasting methods, and aligning sales incentives to encourage consistent performance throughout the year.

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All said and done, a High Performance Sales engine of a dynamic Organisation will always comprise of Sales Pro’s who demonstrate consistent track record across all four quarters pretty uniformly because they understand the science and art of “Selling”, they always maintain a “FULL” pipeline, evenly spread across Early Stages of Prospecting, which they must do every single day to ensure a healthy flow of MQL’s converting to well qualified SQL’s, Well Qualified Opportunities must be shaped up with effective proactive engagements led by a continuous discovery process, gradually helping build deep Trust with the client stakeholders eventually leading in to a very strong Win strike rate, because after all, Hard work pays off !!