Thursday, July 11, 2019

The Basics Of Sales And Operations Planning

By Anthony Rogers


Planning is a crucial part of achieving the objectives of every business. How your sales and operations are organized determines the resources you will require, the ease with which you meet your targets and how well your overall business goals are met. There are principles of sales and operations planning that every business must adhere to.

A business only plans if it understands the benefits it will get from this exercise. Planning helps to expand your profit margin because you will cut expenditure and increase sale volumes. It is the secret to mastering the activities that drive business growth. The reality is that you have specific goals to work for, an idea of the resources you will require and the returns you expect from these plans. You avoid inventory excesses since you know what the market needs. There are fewer incidences of stock-out because data tells you what to offer and when. Once you meet expectations from your customers, your business will grow.

Business activities should be based on progressive growth. Set aside resources based on your present day activities. Have thresholds at the beginning and then collect data to determine areas that can be scaled. You avoid wastage of resources that could have been directed elsewhere and provided better returns.

Right people must be connected to necessary resources. Study the people and activities that are core to your operations. Assess what they require and ensure that they are adequately facilitated. If the persons or entities crucial to your plans lack necessary resources, success will be a mirage.

Integrate technology into your operations. This is meant to ease communication, make it faster and enable you to reach more people. It also reduces drag time for people in the field and those working in offices. Clients and agents should find it easy to talk to your team. Use technology to monitor performance of different channels and also make decisions based on actual business position instead of assumptions.

Develop personalized plans aligned to the sector you are serving and nature of business you are engaged. Buyers and consumers of different products demand unique treatment. The strategies that will satisfy one group are different from those that satisfy another. Your budget will also be unique. Allocate sufficient resources for the low seasons of the year and recoup the funds during high season.

Consider cloud enabled systems to cater for document and information needs for your team in the field. Efficient sales teams require access to all documents while in the office and the field. A single document may need to be accessed by several staff members. A cloud based storage and information management system will make access to these documents easy.

The executive must support plans made by agents in the field. This allows them to release resources required. The agents are also confident that they have support from management in all their endeavors.

The best plans must include a monitoring and evaluation to determine whether the steps taken and resources provided are delivering expected results. Short term measures must be audited to avoid continued spending yet the business is just hemorrhaging. The results of this monitoring will help you to develop new strategies that are more effective. After all, these plans are evaluated and changed on regular basis, based on market response and situation.




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