#282: The Ultimate Guide to Preparing Your Sales Plan for 2025

In this episode, you're going to learn why you need to build a sales plan if you want to hit your number in 2024. All right, Dave, can you believe that we are almost at the end of 2024? It has flown. I think like every year, because there's the same amount of days in in the year. But this year just feels like it's just gone at another pace. Um, and often, let's

First week of December, leading into the second, and we're thinking shit, we need to start planning for twenty twenty five. Nah, yesterday. Yeah. And I think, you know, this topic's important, uh It's also a timely reminder that if you if you're listening to this and you haven't done your sales plan, really planning for the following quarter or the following year should really be happening.

sort of mid mid quarter before you finish up because like anything, right, at this point, and I know there's some gurus out there that'll say you're able to close more deals before Christmas, but in the B2B space, Sure, B to C. Christmas is a great time.

to be selling because you've got that compelling reason for people to take action, right? There's a there's an event, there's an emotional event. And then you have the sales at post Christmas, et cetera. But in the B2B world, potentially the bo blocker is the Christmas period. But also, especially in the Australian market, I know the US is a little bit different. It's got a few different nuances to it, but you've then also got the post-Christmas period where people will often use that.

as an excuse to delay things as well. So really it can become quite a risky period of time if you're selling that December January period, right?

So that's why the planning part of this whole process is actually critical. Yeah, this is one of those areas where you need to I think it's a good time to do a bit of a reflection on the year that was. What did you do well? What could you improve on? Did you hit your numbers? Did you miss your numbers? Have a you know, take a real honest uh review uh for for your past year.

And then write down some things that you're going to improve on for the following year. What are the steps that you can take to make 2025 your biggest and best year yet? And another good thing is to list down where you may need some support, whether it might be some internal support from your team, some external support, whether it be some coaching or some resources.

What where are the gaps that you have that can enable you to just smash twenty twenty twenty five in the teeth? Yeah, absolutely, David. I think it you know, the whole self reflection piece, I think it's critical, right? In in any in any In any role where you're looking to do You've got to be able to look back and ask some ask some tough questions. Yeah. It's it's it's it can be hard, right? Like I'm about to um start reading the the same book that I read a couple of times, Atomic Habits.

read the book before Christmas and make sure that I'm I'm I'm I'm re engineering some new habits because I've fallen back into some old old routine, right? In some some some areas of my life. So I've I've identified that and in order for me to make a change, I'm reading the book because every time I read it, I'm able to go, right, I'm gonna start focusing and putting a plan of action in place so I can get these new habits and get them sticking, right? So that's one thing. The second thing is

If you truly want to reflect on oneself, you've got to be able to leave your ego at the door, right? And you've got to be able to disconnect and say, right. I'm not gonna justify why I'm in this position. I'm not to I'm not gonna justify why something didn't go to plan or why I changed because of X. You've actually got to look yourself i at yourself and go, Right.

These are the things that worked really well, but if I could go back and do it again, I probably would have done this, this, that, and the other differently.

And based on what you said, Dave, it's critical that if you do come up with that assessment to say, I'll do these differently, you've got to be able to then say, right, there's an action plan that I'm going to put in place to do this differently next time because, you know, as I've realized, having some some challenges that I'm working through. If you repeat the same mistakes over and over, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

And it's it's a it when you actually think of it in that statement, um, I think it was Albert Einstein who said that. Um, we don't want to keep repeating the same mistakes if we want a different result. So You know, I think the the purpose of of this particular episode and why it should be such a a compelling episode for you listening is that Even if you performed exceptionally well.

Still look back and go, well, what worked well? What could I have done differently? So your sales plan moving forward, there still needs to be that reflective component. If you didn't achieve your target or things didn't go to plan, perfect. Like don't look at it as a negative, look at it as at a positive because you have the opportunity to grow. Yeah. And that's such a great segue uh for what we're about to talk about now.

So, Louis, 2025's coming up. How do you plan for your year? Let's dive deep into your planning process. Any sort of strategies, tools that you use uh that can help everyone out there listening to set up their big ear. Well, first things first, you're listening to this. I want you to DM Dave. So send Dave a DM and say Hang on a second. No, no, hang on, no. I'm gonna g I'm giving I'm giving the answer to our audience. I'm giving it to you listening to this episode.

I need you to DM Dave. If you want to find him, you go to LinkedIn. It's Dave Can't Sell for Stuka. And he'll pop up. And DM me him and say, Dave, can I have the sales plan that Louie uses? I don't want your sales plan because you can't sell, right? So just That's the template message you need to send to Dave. Now, Dave's gonna give you Hang on a second before I go to HR about this uh form of abuse. You do hit me up on LinkedIn. I will give you the link, but it's uh just David Festuoka. And

The thing is what Dave's gonna give you is a one page sales plan, right? So he'll give you that one page sales plan and I think he might also give you a a sales forecasting planner, which is a bit of a calculator. Now I've I've spoken about this on the podcast previously. Very simplistic, right? When you look at your numbers, how do I go about it? It's all about reverse engineering your target. So sales is actually a really simple process.

If I need to get a you know, a million dollars in sales and my average deal size is a hundred K, in twelve months I need to convert ten deals. Like It's actually not that hard of an equation to put together. If it's lower, if it's fifty grand or ten grand per deal, the same formula applies. So the first part of the whole process is going, what's my sales target? What's my average deal value? And how many opportunities do I need to actually acquire in order to hit my target?

That's your top line. Then your middle component. It's all about activities. So again, there's gurus out there that'll tell you activities don't matter in sales anymore. And um look, if they've got a n this formula that they're not sharing with us, I'd love to see it. Because when you r when you break your pipeline down, when you break your funnel down.

There are metrics. There are activity metrics that lead to the result. Right. So break that down. Determine how many prospects do you need in your pipeline to convert to a point of sale. It doesn't matter if you're doing inbound or outbound. The same methodology applies. If you're doing inbound,

And you're like, nah, not gonna do outbound, I'm gonna stick to inbound, I'm gonna spend a lot of money on leads, whatever, right? Or you've got an incredible organic demand gen marketing team that are creating s huge demand of leads. The same formula applies, right? You need to go from how many to come into my top of funnel, how many progress to a meeting, how many progress to a proposal, how many, or you know, and to sale.

There's your activity metrics. So it's fundamental that you really break down what what do the what do what does my activity need to look like that's going to help me achieve my target? And once you've determined that, then it's about saying, what does my week need to look like for me to drive that activity? There's three key elements, right? Top line.

Your big number, opportunities acquired, middle, the activity metrics, and foundational, what does my calendar need to look like to support this rhythm? Because The rhythm in which you execute is how you will will achieve your number. Right. It's not a just a mythical thing that occurs that you just happen to get lucky. You have to create your own luck and you do that by building that framework and by building that three step process that I just spoke about.

But I just want to let you know about a special course that Luigi and I have that we're giving away for free. It's a SalesOS five-part email course. Visit growforum. And sign up to the first time. That's a super detailed process, right? But it's good because you can actually just

Once you've done it, you can print it out, which we recommend. Have it on your desk or even just screenshot it and have it on your phone if you're always roaming around. Uh one cool thing that I've done in the past is have it form part of my wallpaper on my desktop. So then it's always flushing me when I'm uh, you know, starting my my start of the day, ending the day, because it helps build into your subconscious of what you need to do in order to hit your target.

Is there anything else that you do then Louie to ensure that you're reviewing it?'Cause it's like a lot of things, yeah. We start something, we we plan it, then it just sits there and gathers dust. Is there anything else that you do to make sure that you're reviewing it weekly, monthly and so on. Again, that comes back to your operating your operating system and your operating rhythm, right? Like

If you are gonna build that sort of framework out, have a scorecard that you can measure yourself against each week. So Actually building out your scorecard and going, right, these are the things that I committed to and this is how I'm tracking against it.

If you're not achieving that and you're not tracking towards that, then you've got to look at what's stopping me from achieving it. Am I getting bogged down on too much admin? Am I focusing too much on existing pipe? Am I not prospecting enough? Right. Are my ads not working to get me the required lead volume that I need? Like you've got to be asking some questions. But if you don't, if you don't track the progress.

then it's really hard at the end of the quarter, you don't hit the number, things go diabolical, you know, things are wrong. You're not you you're in a position of what am I going to do next? Well, you haven't really controlled the process. Yeah. So that's the whole premise, Dave, of you know, the mindset of in control, out of control. When you're in control, you're kind of measuring that and

You don't have to wait until the end of the billing period to say things are going wrong. If your lead volume's not there from an inbound perspective, You pick that up early and go, right, we're not tracking or the lead volumes there, but we're getting a lot of pi pipeline bloating in top of funnel because

We can't progress, you know, the inbound into discovery. Or if it's outbound, we're having a lot of meetings, but they're not progressing to actually sales qualified opportunities, whichever methodology that you're you you conform to, right? So It's actually really important that there is a level of measurement against the key activity metrics. I know it sounds like yeah, key activity metrics sounds very serious, but

At the end of the day it's a profession, yeah. Like we have to be measuring this stuff, like If we're not, then you're using really the main strategy that you're employing to achieve your number is hope strategy, right? Louis. Mad summary. And again, hit me up on LinkedIn, send me a DM, and I'll give you those resources that Louis mentioned.

And then as well, if you want, we'll be your accountability buddy. So then we want to see, uh make sure you've actually done the work, send me a link of what it looks like and we'll review it for you and tell you and share any blind spots that you might have. So until next time, we'll see you on Grow Forum next week.