Fail To Plan, Prepare To Fail...

The time around and between the holidays can be slow for many. Calls are frequently not returned. Potential clients have little or no approval on budgets, so any new business can be limited. In certain organizations, things grind to a complete halt, awaiting the new year.

Yet productivity wears different disguises and is not always obvious or measurable. Typically, the slow time of the holidays is an ideal time to think deeply about the preceding year, both successes and disappointments. Based on these things, you can do some serious planning, and by so doing, take real steps towards improvement.

Planning by itself, of course, is only a first step. The real key is implementation. This requires breaking your yearly plan into small chunks - monthly, weekly or even daily - and setting up a system of quantitative monitoring progress, Thus, you will know when you are drifting away and can then take steps to get back on target at an early stage. But it all starts with an annual plan.

Planning can certainly be done with the manager solely determining goals, objectives, and means of achieving them based on their own knowledge and creativity. Individual salespeople, of course, can also invent extensive plans with little guidance from management.

However, you will find the entire planning process to be much easier if a simple series of questions is first answered by each person this can then be used as a guide as a more formal plan.

Following is a questionnaire which, when filled out by everyone first and then the manager, will enhance the entire planning process. If you are a salesperson, you should follow this process for yourself

1. What amount of income do you want to achieve in 2021?

2. To do so, what’s the amount of shipments required?

3. What is your average monthly GP?

4. How many new clients must you bring on to achieve #2?

5. What is your first contact to closing ratio?

6. How many visits/prospect calls must you achieve in 2021 to achieve #4?

7. How many meetings must you set up per month to yield #6? How many per week does this mean you must achieve?

8. To achieve your financial goals for the New Year, what is the one most important thing you need to start doing next year?

9. What is the one most important thing you need to stop doing next year?

10. What is the most important thing you need to continue doing next year?

11. In what area of our business do you believe your skills need to improve most?

12. What books, downloads/CDs or DVDs do you believe would be helpful to enhance your skills?

13. What can our company do to assist you in the achievement of your goals?

14. What additional duties or responsibilities do you feel you would like to get involved in by year-end?

15. What do you feel needs to be done to prepare you for these responsibilities?

Once you've done this, take the next step. Planning is only coming up with a big goal; the questionnaire outlined here will help guide you to an effective strategy. However, real implementation is breaking that goal into small bite-sized goals, and then monitoring your results to make corrections early rather than later.

To discuss/plan your hiring strategies or plan your next move, get in contact with the Midas Global team.

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