As every business, we have to be aware of settling down all the expectations to the cold world of mathematics, which take us down to forcely plan our activities well and to forecast what our result would be.
Key factors is that our marketing and sales expense has to be well balanced through the whole year, and we can not simply spend it all in just one month, we have to be smart.
So, in order to make a good analysis on spending, sales funnel conversion and plan well what activities will my company do to achieve “X” sales targets, I would consider to review at least, the following topics:
a) Analyze well the traffic of your business store, even if its a web store, a blog, a physical store or any other. Once you analyze the traffic, clicks, views and so on, please make sure to analyze what competitors have (I would recommend for online commerce Compete, Quantcast, Alexa andGoogle Trends / Double Click Ad Planner), those are free of charge.
b) Once the competitive analysis is done, and analyzed hopefully per period, we have to set up what is our target, or where do we want to go, and based on this step up with some action plan to achieve this target. If seasonality shows that April or December are high in traffic for the industry, then lets plan some activity to catch up as much as possible, to not lose market share. Lets also focus on the Sales Funnel, we have to be also smart in being efficient in the process.
c) Once our target is set, and activities are planned, its time to break down the cost for each activity. Our expectations has to be clearly matching the financial reality as well, remember that every business has a long process of development so do not give up in the most difficult part, the beggining.
d) Does my sales plan depends on my pricing?, of course it does!!!. some advanced marketers would say you have to analyze in deep the competitive situation. I would say, lets always look at the customer needs, and the balance between the needs and your costs, together with the financial target you have. Initials businesses prices are mostly 0% price parity vs the competition, and if you want to penetrate the market strong, I would say -10%, but please be careful to deliver the demand since this might become good news (to have tons of demand), but not delivering is a death sentence.
e) Most important, FOLLOW UP THE BUSINESS. Not following up or just letting it drive by itself, will certainly drive it to a death sentence as well. We have to learn from the results trend and improve (This is what Japanese People called Kaizen) which means that you learn day by day, and improve day by day to be better always than the day before.
Key points for today:
a) Sales planning based on facts and industry data
b) Customer orientation
c) Activity planning
d) Cost breakdown
e) Pricing and positioning definition
f) Follow up…Follow up…Follow up.
I wrote this in my Mac….
Sales, Marketing & Strategy Consulting 