4 Strategic Planning Pro Tips for Perfecting Your Sales Operation (Part 1)

Creating a solid sales strategy is something most organizations think they can undertake without too many challenges. But in reality, an organization’s inability to create the right strategic plan often serves as its demise. Without a solid sales strategy productivity and profitability will tank and be that axe that hacks its way into your longevity as it fails to secure a plan for the future.

Should Your Digital Marketing Agency be Accountable for Your Sales Strategy?

If you are working with an SEO agency that only focuses on organic strategies, or you have partnered with a digital marketing agency for PPC services, then no, you should not expect any support in creating a sales strategy. And this is why so many CEOs and CMOs are investing in growth marketing agencies, because digital marketing services that align sales and marketing to foster growth work with internal teams to improve the sales strategy and synchronize its components with a multi-channel approach to generating revenue. According to HubSpot, 56 percent of executives wasted time on strategic planning.

If you want to join the 44 percentile of leaders that grew from productive strategic planning and see a positive impact on your bottom line, this article is for you and will show how growth marketing stacks not only assist in improving your marketing strategies, but align with the sales process to promote business growth from the foundation of a successful sales strategy. Here are four pro tips straight from the growth marketing playbook that will help you perfect your sales operation.

1. Put Together an All Star Team

In order to perfect your sales operations through strategic planning, you must first decide who to include in the planning process. In a utopian society this would include a cross-functional group that includes executives, your CFO, tech experts, operations, marketing, sales and HR personnel. Some of these individuals will be internal team members, and others will be harvested through a digital growth marketing agency.

Once the strategic planning team has been assembled, you need to create a timeline set to run from start to finish. The time it takes to complete the planning phase will be based on the complexity of your company and sales cycle, as well as its overall size. So pick a realistic timeline.

2. Deep Dive Your Business

Deep dive your business and note the external and internal accoutrements that impact your bottom line. Ask questions like these:

• Which areas are experiencing rapid growth?
• What parts are slow-moving?
• How can technological advancements improve the sales process?
• Does the business need to address any passed legislation?

If you paid attention in your university business classes, you will know that a SWOT Analysis and PESTLE Analysis can aid in revealing the strongest and weakest links in your company. They also help you pinpoint growth opportunities while forecasting obstacles. But this will require large teams of people and hours upon hours of time, as well as someone to QC the process to try to help weed out room for human error.

Growth marketing stacks running from advanced CRMs and manned by a small team of your internal members and the experts from your digital marketing agency can fetch the data and carve out a path forward, using the same tactics in a more cost-effective manner that will result in flawless strategic planning for an improved sales operation. With every stream of data accessible from a single platform, upon a single glance, you will quickly discover the ease and efficiency that would otherwise be unattainable.

Download the FREE Growth Marketing Stack Guide and Read Part 2

We have three more parts to cover that tackle the strategic planning pro tips that can improve your sales process. But before you read Part Two, download the guide below, learn more about the WEBITMD Growth Stack, and see if it makes sense for your business. Then give us a call and let’s explore your options.