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Basic Pillars Of Sales And Operations Planning

By Anthony Rogers


Successful businesses have mastered the best sales strategies. These strategies are developed as part of your overall market penetration plans. Sales and operations planning helps you to establish the approach you will give the market, resources to be provided and returns expected. Though each business is unique, there are underlying principles that will guide all your endeavors.

The urge to plan must be anchored on understanding of the benefits you stand to get. If you wish to grow your profit margins, plan how you are going to sell the product. By planning, you have a better grip of all activities that lead to actualization of your business goals, resources required and how much to expect in returns. Your inventory excesses will also reduce because you will understand the market better. Stock-out incidences are reduced since you know what each customer wants. Meticulously done plans will help you meet customer expectations.

Develop plans that involve gradual growth. Start small, including resource allocation. This is the trend for all organizations. You only invest where there are returns. This helps you avoid wastage of resources on envisaged future activities yet you are not sure that they will bear fruits.

Invest in the right people and the equipment or tools they require. Understand the activities and people at the center of the business. Know what the persons or systems require and provide it. If these people are not facilitated, they cannot deliver the expected volumes for your business.

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.

The plans made must be unique to your operation environment and goods you are selling. Consider the needs of your customers and what they would consider as satisfying. Plans made should be in line with changes in demand and supply through the week, month or year. Revenue should be allocated to cater for high and low seasons through your operation year.

Take advantage of cloud technology. It allows remote access to files so that your operations are faster. Agents in the field do not have to travel to the office to access files. Different agents can access the same file simultaneously. You also have an inexhaustible storage for your documents. Decision making and collaboration will be easier using cloud technology.

All plans made should be supported by executives in the business. The decision makers are usually in charge of resources. Their vote of confidence is important to the team since they are assured of any support they may require. Without support from executives, you cannot do much.

Monitor the effectiveness of the plans you make. Some will work while others fail to deliver desired effects. You end up allocating resources to channels that are not profitable at all. Monitoring reports help you to only allocate resources where there are returns to avoid hemorrhaging your investment.




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