Why didn't my sales plan work?

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Did your sales plan not work and you didn't reach your goals? Identifying the bottleneck is essential to improving results.

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You're not reaching your goals, you're not getting enough new clients, and you need to sell more . Is your sales team not closing sales? Is marketing not getting enough leads? What are you doing wrong?

As a manager, you can often be so wrapped up in your business that you lack a clear, costa rica phone number data objective view of reality. Below, we'll give you some clues as to why your sales plan might be stalling.

5 criteria to identify the problem of your sales plan
The key to finding out why your sales plan didn't work is to detect where the bottleneck is . Although we believe that the fault lies solely with the sales team, bad or good results are not an isolated event. Here are some criteria that you should start analyzing:

You don't get enough revenue : A basic rule of the market is that everything is commoditized. But what does commoditization mean ? For us, it is the worst enemy of companies that provide any type of product or service .
A commodity is something that does not have sufficiently differentiating characteristics between different manufacturers of the same product. And when there is no good differentiator, we often choose one product over another based primarily on price .

This forces companies to enter into a price war that is very difficult to escape. What are the differentiators of your product or service? Do your customers perceive it? Imitating is easy, competing for a few pesos when you have the resources is also easy. But innovating and providing is difficult.

If you're not getting enough revenue, it may be because you're not adding value during the purchasing process , from when a prospect visits your website until they decide to close the sale, for example.

You're selling to the wrong customers: We often hear managers say that they are not selling despite investing in campaigns and hiring more staff. As novice salespeople, we always think that customers are customers, however, we are not for all customers, and not all customers are for us .
When we try to sell without knowing our competition, we are losing money. When we try to sell without knowing who our ideal client is and what buyers need, we are losing money. The key question is, have you identified your potential clients?

If you stick to selling to the wrong people, you won't sell anything . The buyer is empowered, informed by technology, impatient and wants a personalized experience. How can we anticipate their needs?

Creating ideal customer profiles or buyer personas helps you put a face and name to your customers, along with their specific characteristics and demands. Remember that the exchange takes place with people and you should treat them as such.

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Your sales plan is inefficient or simply non-existent : Does anyone go to war unarmed? The absence of a sales plan is the cause of the two points above. It serves to establish objectives and guide the actions of the teams to meet them . Without it, it is very likely that you are constantly losing money, time and effort.
How do you know if your sales plan is working? Metrics are essential tools for analyzing the efforts of work teams. Measure the efficiency of your sales process with the help of this article and start evaluating options to correct it.

You have many salespeople but few sales: This is a classic. Remember that quantity does not equal quality. Hiring more staff, hoping that sales will increase is a common mistake but just as serious as the previous ones. Does your company support the operating costs?
You probably haven't considered that sales are not the only factor for growth, but also profitability. How feasible is it to make your business sustainable and profitable by increasing your workforce?

In sales, two plus two does not always equal four. In our experience, increasing the efficiency of the sales team by automating stages of the sales process , as well as helping them attract prospects and channel them until they are ready to speak with a salesperson , helps make the strategy more profitable.

It's worth constantly training your sales reps to act as advisors and recognize customer needs early. Also, provide them with the right tools to do their job. A CRM is very useful for following up with prospects and recognizing when they are ready to buy.
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You're not getting new clients : More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing at 36%, and qualifying at 22%.
This is mainly due to what we mentioned in point 2, when we referred to empowered buyers, whose demands require new prospecting strategies focused on attracting them, rather than interrupting them . How? By anticipating their needs.

If you lack a demand generation system , you are very likely to continue losing money. In the article prospecting techniques that really work , you will find some useful strategies to align your purchasing process with the needs of your potential customers.