Aug 22, 2014 By Tibor Shanto

How To Win Before The Sale Even Starts

in Sales

B2B sales people often resemble and sell like the Energizer Bunny. They’re rarely nasty or point fingers, as often the fault rests less with them than with their environment. Their companies, through their front-line managers, wind them up and off they go, bouncing from one opportunity to the next. This is reinforced weekly or monthly in opportunity review meetings—the familiar check-in of "what you got, what are you going to close, and hurry up,” only to be outdone by the month-end frenzy of the close-close-close ritual.

This constant focus on the "finish" prevents many salespeople from stopping to perform an important and overlooked activity: planning. Planning is a core component of successful selling, including long-term, mid-term, and especially near-term planning.

The best and most consistently successful B2B salespeople master one key skill: the ability to effectively allocate their time to high-value activities. Sales success lies not in time management—time already comes managed—but in prioritization. It’s essential for salespeople to understand which activities are high-value, allocate time to those activities, and then stick to their plan.

When I ask salespeople I work with to name their highest-value activities, they list the usual suspects: prospecting, selling, account management, research, admin, and so on. Less than 10 percent include planning as a high-value activity. As a result, they don’t commit time to it, and then they try to execute without a plan.

We have all seen reps creating an account plan at the start of the year. A few will review and update the plan, but most let it sit on a shelf through the year and then update it the following January. It is important to accept that planning is an ongoing process, not an occasional event, and as such should be almost a daily activity.

There are, of course, different degrees of planning. It needn’t be a deep dive every time; instead the plan should fit the circumstance. I recommend having three levels or types of planning.

First, there’s annual planning. In addition to the expected elements, strategic and tactical, it should include specific times to review and update the plan and related actions dictated by events.

Mid-term planning is equal parts tactical and strategic, but clearly skewed to execution. Based on the length and intricacy/density of your sale, this could be a monthly, quarterly or (in highly transactional environments) a bi-weekly exercise. The goal is to ensure you have set aside enough time to complete all of the things you need to win; and to ensure resources are in place when needed.

The third type of planning is the most frequently overlooked, and also among the most crucial to success: daily planning. Take a few minutes to step back and ensure that you are ready for tomorrow. Lining up leads for the next day helps you maximize your prospecting time. Daily planning also helps you adjust your calendar to maximize the 9-5 customer-facing time, ensure the proper resources are in place, and take care that your big plan for winning is not undermined.

If you start with a solid and dynamic plan, you can increase your odds of winning before you start the sale.