Tips for Developing Your 2016 Sales and Marketing Strategy

Analyze Your 2015 Sales and Revenue Trends

Where did your sales and revenue come from in 2015? Is most of your company revenue from existing customers or new customers? How long was your average sales cycle? Who were your best (and worst) customers - why? What are your best lead sources? Are prospects getting stuck anywhere in the sales cycle? Why did you lose the prospects you think you should have won? Could your close rate be improved? Document your lessons learned, and start thinking about improvements you’d like to make in 2016.

Analyze Your 2015 Marketing Trends

How much traffic did your website get? How many leads did you generate online and offline? How many leads converted into customers? Did certain blog posts perform better than others? Are you happy with the return you’re getting on your investment?

Define Your One-year Company Vision

Where do you image your business by the end of 2016? Create a one-page information and facts of what factors will look like 12 various weeks from now - be particular, and don’t be scared to desire big! Don’t ignore to are the perfect image of what your marketing and promotion would look like if you had a miracle wand!

Set Your Company Goals and Aims for 2016

What’s status in the way of obtaining your vision? What projects need to get done in order to achieve your vision? Make a list, and pick 3-4 elements to focus on in the first quarter. How are you going to determine success? Make sure you have metrics that you can track! We like to use the Vision Traction Organizer (V/TO) from the Entrepreneurial Operating System for this step.

Review and Update Your Excellent Client Profile and Celebrities. Look back at your best client and make sure you identify the characteristics that make them profitable and enjoyable to work with. Make sure your Excellent Client Profile and buyer personas are accurate and reflect the kinds of customers who will help you reach your growth goals.

Document Your Buyer's Journey

You've got your buyer personas, but have you plotted out every step they take along the path to becoming a customer? Your prospects take lots of tiny steps along the way to becoming a buyer. Plot out every interaction point your personas will have with your content or your company. Start at the end—what will they do immediately before signing a contract with you? What's the step before that? The one before that? At each point along the way, identify the persona's main questions, motivations, and potential objections. Then identify the kinds of content you'll need to create to meet the persona at each point along the buyer's journey.

Check Out Your Competitors

You accomplished a lot in 2015 - chances are your competitors have been busy too! Get into intelligence gathering mode and complete an analysis of your top three or four competitors. Take a look at their websites to see what may have changed, look at their company profiles on LinkedIn, and spend some time on Google looking for news and press mentions. Run their websites through the HubSpot marketing grader and see how their online presence compares to yours.

Confirm Your Differentiators

Make sure you are clear on what makes you different from your competitors. Talk to some of your customers and find out why they chose to buy from you - and what could make them switch teams and buy from your competitors instead.

Review and Organize Your Marketing Collateral

Make sure that your printed and digital marketing materials are written and designed to attract your ideal customers and communicate your company’s unique qualities to prospects and customers. Make sure copyright dates are updated, that your style guidelines are being followed, and that everyone on your sales team is using the right version!

Review Your Website and Online Marketing

Take a look at your website and social media programs to make sure they're developed to attract and educate your perfect client. Is your branding and messaging consistent? Are you interesting with the right target audience? Is your content compelling and educational? TIP: HubSpot’s Marketing Grader can give you a quick snapshot of what you’re doing right, and where you could improve.ient Profile and Celebrities.

Review and Document Your Sales Process

Is your sales method set up to close the quality and quantity of customers you need to reach your company’s development goals? Does everyone on your sales team follow the same process for getting qualified and nurturing prospects? Is your process documented? Is your CRM (customer relationship management) system set up to support your process efficiently and effectively? Could you be using any automated tools to make your process more efficient?

Review Your Proposal Templates

Ask a colleague in another department (or company) to review your proposal templates to make sure everything is as clear as you think it is. Be sure everyone is using standard language where appropriate, and consider using a tool like BidSketch or PandaDoc to streamline your process.

Identify Gaps in Your Sales and Marketing

Document any issues you uncover while you’re reviewing your collateral, processes, and templates. Look for “dark pools” - areas of your process where prospects or customers get lost or ignored due to lack of time/energy/resources.

Document Your Sales and Marketing Strategy

Prioritize the issues you have discovered and develop a phased technique to tackling them over the next four quarters. Depending on the problems you have discovered, you may need to develop strategic plans for content/inbound marketing, social media, lead generation, lead growing, or account development.

Set Your Budget and Get to Work

Make sure you have assigned enough sources (people and money) to accomplish the priorities you have identified. The size of your advertising budget will also depend on how much you have accessible to invest, and how quickly you want to see results. If you have caviar dreams and a tuna fish budget, you'll be dissatisfied by your lack of results, and your team will be frustrated by their inability to meet your expectations. Once your budget is aligned with a genuine plan, get to work and start gathering data!

Track Your Progress and Evolve Your Tactics

Make sure you have metrics defined for measuring success, and have assigned individual team members to be accountable for solving each issue. Set up regular meetings to review progress, identify and solve issues, and align activities across teams. Learn from your mistakes and victories, and evolve your tactics as needed to maintain your traction!