5 Taking a strategic approach to sales

Taking a strategic approach to sales will enable you to go beyond a short-term ‘just make the sale!’ approach and focus on sales as a long-term enabler of business growth. Any strategy within your business, be it an innovation strategy, HR strategy or sales strategy should reflect the vision, mission and goals of your overall strategy. Should they ever not be aligned, or perhaps even contradict each other, then you may need to rethink what it is that you are aiming to achieve.

Key questions to ask in this regard include:

  • Have you clearly defined your market and market segment?

  • Do you have a clear picture of the value of your offering to that market?

  • Do you understand your customers’ needs and expectations?

  • Do your selling timelines match the customers’ buying timelines?

  • How many customers can you successfully manage and how many do you need to be successful?

  • How do you manage sales to existing customers while simultaneously developing new customers?

The answers to these questions will help you develop a comprehensive sales plan:

A sales plan is a strategy that sets out sales targets and tactics for your business, and identifies the steps you will take to meet your targets.

A sales plan will help you:

  • define a set of sales targets for your business

  • choose sales strategies that are suited to your target market

  • identify sales tactics

  • budget and clarify steps you’ll take to achieve your targets

  • review your goals periodically and improve your approaches to sales.

(Adapted from Business Queensland, 2016)

4.7 Next steps

Summary