How good is your sales activity planning?
In this latest in our series of “12 StepChanges to a better business”, we set out our thinking around the importance of structured sales activity planning and the benefits that can be gained from having a consistent, committed approach to your sales and marketing activities that are aimed at your key clients and also your prospective clients.
What is sales activity planning?
Sales activity planning is the tracking of every touchpoint with a client or prospective client. We encounter many advisers who keep detailed files, made up of both online and paper records. These files are often based solely around the advice given to clients. This of course is very important from a compliance perspective and is a requirement for you to stay onside with the regulator. We’re talking about an additional piece here – our focus is on helping you to build long-term, engaging relationships with your clients at every turn.
We believe that the following type of information should be recorded and available to you,
- Where every new client came from – introducers / referrals / other marketing activities etc.
- How many times you’ve spoken to each contact this year and when most recently
- Have they received marketing (not advice / customer service) emails from you
- How many times you meet each contact and when you most recently met
- Have they signed up to your newsletter
- Have you connected on social media
- Have you invited them to a seminar / social event / game of golf etc.
We believe that you need to be able to see this information at all times for a minimum of every high value client and prospective client.
What is the benefit of good activity planning?
Sales activity planning links back to the segmentation of your clients. We’ve set out previously here the value of effective segmentation and offering appropriate services to different groups of clients. Apart from your high value clients deserving a deeper level of service from you, they also need to feel the love… Sales activity planning will help you to ensure that none of your high value clients get forgotten about – this can easily happen with clients who are quiet and don’t place a lot of demands on your time. Until they quietly and unexpectedly move their business to a more proactive adviser. And these are the very clients that you really want to retain forever!
Well structured sales activity planning will also give you visibility of your overall marketing efforts. Have you been working hard enough on social media? What events have you had or have planned for this year? Are you making enough sales / relationship calls to your prospects and key clients?
How can StepChange help in sales activity planning?
We can help you build a structured approach to your sales activity planning. While some advisers have developed the capability in their CRM system, many have not. We can develop for you an easy to use sales activity planning system that will track the key contact information that you require. This will ensure that no more of your important contacts are forgotten about and it will also keep you honest in terms of delivering your marketing activities…
If you would like to find out more about how StepChange can help you to track your sales activities, please contact Eamonn at eamonn@stepchange.ie or at 01 8396972.
