Creating an Effective Sales Rep Call Plan Template

When it comes to sales, the top companies leave nothing up to chance. They make the effort to develop a call plan that all sales reps can utilize. What is a sales call plan? It specifically identifies what products or services the reps will be selling, strategies for selling, and it also identifies exactly who the average customers are that will be contacted. A call plan will help ensure that your reps stay on track and, creating an Effective Sales Rep Call Plan Template

When it comes to sales, the top companies leave nothing up to chance. They make the effort to develop a call plan that all sales reps can utilize. What is a sales call plan? It specifically identifies what products or services the reps will be selling, strategies for selling, and it also identifies exactly who the average customers are that will be contacted. A call plan will help ensure that your reps stay on track and, well, stick to the plan. There are two types of call plans that your company should consider—territory plans and account plans. Let’s evaluate both.

The Territory Plan

Solid territory management mandates that you identify A/B/C accounts in the specified territory. The plan should feature vital information such as current revenue, the potential for opportunity, and each account’s specific frequency. The frequency of contact is extremely important when it comes to developing your territory plan and it must be based on your expected return.

Recent studies have concluded that:

• In any territory, the top fifteen percent of accounts are responsible for sixty-five percent of all sales. These accounts can be classified as “A Accounts.”
• The next twenty percent of total accounts are responsible for just fifteen percent of the total sales. These accounts are classified as “B Accounts.”
• The final sixty-five percent of total accounts generated just fifteen percent of the sales total. These accounts are classified as “C Accounts.”

Without having an effective sales call plan template or approach that ensures time is allocated to existing accounts, a sales team is all but guaranteed to spend more time than they should on the C Accounts. You don’t want your reps wasting their time on an account that doesn’t have much upside. In this case, it’s clearly the C Account. Perhaps the sales rep is on great terms with the C Account or maybe there’s not much current competition taking place. No matter what, this is an example of reps wasting time. This is why you must be proactive in making sure your call plan prevents this from happening.

The solution to correctly allocating the rep’s timeframe interactions with their existing accounts is to always keep in mind just what the expected yield of every account will be. Reps must look over the territory plan with their manager at least every quarter so that your company makes sure that the focus always remains on A Accounts instead of the wasteful C Accounts.

The Account Plan

The second major call plan to ensure your team’s success is that of the account plan. Before any account plan can be utilized correctly, a great deal of research must take place, before the phone calls. There are two sectors of research that the sales team must focus on:
1) industry research, incase the salesperson needs to educate himself or herself on the specific industry.
2) The state of the account, to ensure the salesperson is aware of all relevant factors that can solve the buyer’s problems and lead to a sale.

6 Key Call Plan Questions

Reps should answer the following six questions before a call or meeting takes place:

1) Who are the executives that I need to be aware of?
2) Is the company doing well financially or are they struggling?
3) Are there relevant press releases that I can evaluate?
4) What does the organizational structure of the company tell me?
5) What do I know about the person I’ll be calling/meeting with?
6) Are there any internal initiatives that I can investigate?

Most of these questions can be answered thanks to the internet. The reps should not utilize search engines, but also take advantage of social media to learn more about prospects and clients. Effective research will ensure that the salesperson is prepared to confirm the information he or she has already gathered. Clients will be appreciated that they’ve taken the time to be prepared.

You can’t afford to waste time by having your reps call the wrong people. It’s unfortunately often very difficult to figure out who the true influencers and decision-makers are. This is why your company should create a 2 x 2 Matrix for every account plan. The Matrix will ensure that your reps identify two people who are above the contact, two colleagues, and two direct reports. This process will all but guarantee that your reps are working as hard as they can to strengthen relationships for every account.

As part of the calling plan, every sales rep should be adequately prepared with at least two or three call objectives fully determined. Objectives are what your company seeks to gain from the calls and meetings. Don’t confuse this with the agenda/purpose of your meetings. Those are exclusively focused on the potential buyer. The call objectives will position the reps to be versatile in their responses to the prospects, and show that they are eager to solve problems/pain points, while still being on track to push their calls towards the sale.

The Choice is Yours

Whether your company decides to utilize a territory plan or an account plan, the odds are in your favor that results are going to improve. Remember, the planning process s absolutely crucial to consistently getting sales. This needs to be taught to everyone in the sales room because, far too often, there’s too much focus on calls and meetings and not enough when it comes to strategizing.

6 Call Plan Factors to Consider

Whether you decide to go with a territory plan or an account plan, keep the following six pre-call factors in mind so that your reps are positioned for success when you implement your call plan:

1) Thoroughly Research Every Prospect

Again, the research phase is absolutely crucial for both saving time that would have been wasted asking basic questions and ensuring that the sales rep is as educated as they can be about exactly who they’re speaking to. Unfortunately, quite a few sales reps do not view research as being that important and will sometimes skip this step. Sales managers need to make sure that this does not happen.

2) Identify the Competitors of Every Prospect

Learning about each prospect and his or her organization is not enough. Reps must also learn about all of the competitors. Doing this will ensure that your reps’ sales strategies are effective by offering the best possible solutions. The prospects will also be impressed that the rep is knowledgeable about the prospect’s industry and business climate.

3) Clear Objectives Must be in Place for Every Call

Identifying the “who” of a sales call isn’t good enough. The “what” is just as important. Reps will stay on track if they have objectives right in front of them. You can’t afford to have them veer off-course. To help ensure that reps are aware of every objective, notes should always be written in sales software. All the rep needs to do is see where he or she is in the sales cycle so that the next steps are clear.

4) Questions Should Be Written in Advance of All Calls

Even if a sales rep has decades of experience, you can’t just assume that he or she is going to be asking all of the right questions. This is why they need to be written down in advance of every call; however, train your reps to never read the questions as if they have a script in front of them. The questions must sound natural. Open-ended questions should be asked to ensure that simple “yes” and “no” answers are minimized. Reps should also be trained to known when to deviate from the questions in front of them and when to stick to the script, word-for-word. Salespeople should also have a sales rep schedule template to make sure that their time is being allocated correctly each day. This can be encouraged by having them periodically fill out a planning form so that managers can see what their pipeline looks like.

5) Prepare for All Possible Objections

Just like questions should be written in advance, potential objections should be as well. This way, reps will know exactly what to say when they hear almost any objection. Make a list of common objections and then make sure that your team is thoroughly prepared.

6) Don’t Do Too Much Preparation

At the end of the day, your reps need to have authentic conversations in which they don’t sound like robots reading off of scripts; thus, don’t overthink the call plan process to much. The conversations should be natural and authentic, and you can only do so much to prepare for them to take place. Prospects must feel like they are an active member of the conversion and that they’re not just being talked to. This is why your reps must be trained to actively listen to what prospects have to say.

In Conclusion

Don’t stress too much about which sales call plan your company selects. Both a territory plan an an account plan are equally excellent options. Both of which feature many benefits that will prepare your reps fr their calls. If one plan doesn’t work, try the other plan. Call planning is the key to ensuring that your reps are maximizing their skills and techniques. Once the plan you want is in place, those reps will be maximizing sales revenue.

ll, stick to the plan. There are two types of call plans that your company should consider—territory plans and account plans. Let’s evaluate both.

The Territory Plan

Solid territory management mandates that you identify A/B/C accounts in the specified territory. The plan should feature vital information such as current revenue, the potential for opportunity, and each account’s specific frequency. The frequency of contact is extremely important when it comes to developing your territory plan and it must be based on your expected return.

Recent studies have concluded that:

-In any territory, the top fifteen percent of accounts are responsible for sixty-five percent of all sales. These accounts can be classified as the “A Accounts.”

-The next twenty percent of total accounts are responsible for just fifteen percent of the total sales. These accounts are classified as “B Accounts.”

-The final sixty-five percent of total accounts generated just fifteen percent of the sales total. These accounts are classified as “C Accounts.”

Without having an effective sales call plan template or approach that ensures time is allocated to existing accounts, a sales team is all but guaranteed to spend more time than they should on the C Accounts. You don’t want your reps wasting their time on an account that doesn’t have much upside. In this case, it’s clearly the C Account. Perhaps the sales rep is on great terms with the C Account or maybe there’s not much current competition taking place. No matter what, this is an example of reps wasting time. This is why you must be proactive in making sure your call plan prevents this from happening.

The solution to correctly allocating the rep’s timeframe interactions with their existing accounts is to always keep in mind just what the expected yield of every account will be. Reps must look over the territory plan with their manager at least every quarter so that your company makes sure that the focus always remains on A Accounts instead of the wasteful C Accounts.

The Account Plan

The second major call plan to ensure your team’s success is that of the account plan. Before any account plan can be utilized correctly, a great deal of research must take place, before the phone calls. There are two sectors of research that the sales team must focus on:

1) industry research, incase the salesperson needs to educate himself or herself on the specific industry.

2) The state of the account, to ensure the salesperson is aware of all relevant factors that can solve the buyer’s problems and lead to a sale.

6 Key Call Plan Questions

Reps should answer the following six questions before a call or meeting takes place:

1)     Who are the executives that I need to be aware of?

2)     Is the company doing well financially or are they struggling?

3)     Are there relevant press releases that I can evaluate?

4)     What does the organizational structure of the company tell me?

5)     What do I know about the person I’ll be calling/meeting with?

6)     Are there any internal initiatives that I can investigate?

Most of these questions can be answered thanks to the internet. The reps should not utilize search engines, but also take advantage of social media to learn more about prospects and clients. Effective research will ensure that the salesperson is prepared to confirm the information he or she has already gathered. Clients will be appreciate that they’ve taken the time to be prepared.

You can’t afford to waste time by having your reps call the wrong people. It’s unfortunately often very difficult to figure out who the true influencers and decision makers are. This is why your company should create a 2 x 2 Matrix for every account plan. The Matrix will ensure that your reps identify two people who are above the contact, two colleagues, and two direct reports. This process will all but guarantee that your reps are working as hard as they can to strengthen relationships for every account.

As part of the call plan, every sales rep should be adequately prepared with at least two or three call objectives fully determined. Objectives are what your company seeks to gain from the calls and meetings. Don’t confuse this with the agenda/purpose of your meetings. Those are exclusively focused on the potential buyer. The call objectives will position the reps to be versatile in their responses to the prospects, and show that they are eager to solve problems/pain points, while still being on track to push their calls towards the sale.

The Choice is Yours

Whether your company decides to utilize a territory plan or an account plan, the odds are in your favor that results are going to improve. Remember, the planning process s absolutely crucial to consistently getting sales. This needs to be taught to everyone in the sales room because, far too often, there’s too much focus on calls and meetings and not enough when it comes to strategizing.

6 Call Plan Factors to Consider

Whether you decide to go with a territory plan or an account plan, keep the following six pre-call factors in mind so that your reps are positioned for success when you implement your call plan:

1) Thoroughly Research Every Prospect

Again, the research phase is absolutely crucial for both saving time that would have been wasted asking basic questions and ensuring that the sales rep is as educated as they can be about exactly who they’re speaking to. Unfortunately, quite a few sales reps do not view research as being that important and will sometimes skip this step. Sales managers need to make sure that this does not happen.

2) Identify the Competitors of Every Prospect

Learning about each prospect and his or her organization is not enough. Reps must also learn about all of the competitors. Doing this will ensure that your reps’ sales strategies are effective by offering the best possible solutions. The prospects will also be impressed that the rep is knowledgeable about the prospect’s industry and business climate.

3) Clear Objectives Must be in Place for Every Call

Identifying the “who” of a sales call isn’t good enough. The “what” is just as important. Reps will stay on track if they have objectives right in front of them. You can’t afford to have them veer off-course. To help ensure that reps are aware of every objective, notes should always be written in sales software. All the rep needs to do is see where he or she is in the sales cycle so that the next steps are clear.

4) Questions Should Be Written in Advance of All Calls

Even if a sales rep has decades of experience, you can’t just assume that he or she is going to be asking all of the right questions. This is why they need to be written down in advance of every call; however, train your reps to never read the questions as if they have a script in front of them. The questions must sound natural. Open-ended questions should be asked to ensure that simple “yes” and “no” answers are minimized. Reps should also be trained to known when to deviate from the questions in front of them and when to stick to the script, word-for-word. Salespeople should also have a sales rep schedule template to make sure that their time is being allocated correctly each day. This can be encourage by having them periodically fill out a planning form so that managers can see what their pipeline looks like.

5) Prepare for All Possible Objections

Just like questions should be written in advance, potential objections should be as well. This way, reps will know exactly what to say when they hear almost any objection. Make a list of common objections and then make sure that your team is thoroughly prepared.

6) Don’t Do Too Much Preparation

At the end of the day, your reps need to have authentic conversations in which they don’t sound like robots reading off of scripts; thus, don’t overthink the call plan process to much. The conversations should be natural and authentic, and you can only do so much to prepare for them to take place. Prospects must feel like they are an active member of the conversion and that they’re not just being talked to. This is why your reps must be trained to actively listen to what prospects have to say.

In Conclusion

Don’t stress too much about which sales call plan your company selects. Both a territory plan an an account plan are equally excellent options. Both of which feature many benefits that will prepare your reps fr their calls. If one plan doesn’t work, try the other plan. Call planning is the key to ensuring that your reps are maximizing their skills and techniques. Once the plan you want is in place, those reps will be maximizing sales revenue.