Tips For Getting 2021 Sales Off To A Fast Start

10/21/2020

Time sensitive advice regardless of what and how you sell, and why sales enablement plays a key part in your business success.

Forrester Blog Post: ramlcpa.link/z9yn

The timing of the Forrester blog post is almost just as good as the message. While the events of 2020 impacted the entire world, winners and losers have emerged which happens almost always with any kind of major event. A significant issue with COVID is the list is heavily skewed to few (bigger and better capitalized businesses) winners, and far too many losers.

That's a bit of what drew my attention to this post as while we continue to deal with new waves of the pandemic, we're also entering a critical business phase with many businesses intently focused on the upcoming holiday shopping season and making the most of Q4 2020. However, if that is to the detriment of 2021, it could be disastrous.
All too often businesses (especially small businesses) expect Q4 to be the quarter that you make up for the rest of the year, but it often comes as a detriment to sales in the first part of the following year. Why, well everything else is secondary, and plans and strategies are often developed to late in the process with the new year just a couple weeks away or already here. Additionally, because the plans come together in a hasty manner, lessons learned, new insights, and data analysis are glossed over, thus causing more problems in the new year.

To this point, since the events of this year destroyed most business plans in early 2020, almost all businesses have been stuck in a cycle of reacting to each problem without solving them. While that's not going to change much for the rest of the year, to get any kind of control over the situation in 2021, the process needs to start now and include plenty of planning and analysis.

A few of the key areas Stephanie highlighted that can be adopted by almost any business are:

Develop a yearlong [channel] sales enablement plan - If we're honest most businesses don't even know what sales enablement is, and when an individual or business is not selling or missing sales targets, it becomes convenient to use any excuse imaginable without considering your own deficiencies. The fact is, if you're not prepared to sell and sell effectively the chances of you meeting or exceeding your sales targets is unlikely. If you don't know where to start with sales enablement here is a link to a great resource I posted in a LinkedIn post. At a minimum it will get you moving in the right direction and leave you much better off regardless of knowledge on the subject.

Refine your [channel] sales strategy - The post mentions "to ensure it's alighted with the company's sales goals and objectives" and "This includes centering your strategy on meeting the need of your target customers or buyers", which is 100% true, I would only add, to make sure your strategy aligns with market conditions and the possible changing needs of your customers or clients.

Personally, I believe these points can be applied to any business by adding or dropping a few words or terms.

One of my own that I will add and important to keep in mind:

Consider an alternative & more flexible sales strategy for 2021 - The point being, a measure of uncertainty (likely great, and elevated for a while) is going to follow us into 2021, even with all the best news possible for the remainder of the year. A quick and easy way to start this is by utilizing some or all of the strategies in the book "the 12 week year" (link to the 41 page summary). While there is no guarantee for success, by focusing on quarterly goals, learning along the way, and applying & modifying what you've learned in subsequent quarters, a framework and pathway for better business results in the future can be developed, something we need now more than ever.

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