These are great questions that require time and attention, but when? For those of you who are new to working in the IT professional services industry, you’re probably now learning that business slow downs during the holidays.
For you veterans out there, this is nothing new.
With new sales order activity coming to a halt and active orders stalling, what is one to do with all this down time? How about build a recession-proof sales plan for 2009? From my experience in selling IT staffing and consulting, I always found that a strong Q1 always set the tone for the remainder of the year.
First, a few thoughts on developing your high-level sales strategy:
A very common exercise (and one that I love) in the field of sales is that of “backing in†to your number. What this means is understanding exactly what and how much activity is required to hit your goal.
For example, your manager may tell you that your budget or quota for the year is to generate $1M in Gross Profit. As an example, let’s break down exactly what we will have to do to generate $1M in Gross Profit in 2009.
And for your own purposes, if you email me at dan@menemshagroup.com, I can send you my Excel spreadsheet that will do the calculations for your own personal goals.
I’m going to use arbitrary numbers to simplify this exercise, but you can simply plug in your own numbers for your personal situation.
Goal: $1M in Gross Profit for 2009
Assumptions:
Average Bill Rate      — $120.00/HR (all straight pay)
Average GP%Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â —Â 35%
Avg. Wkly GP or Spread (per consultant)Â Â — $1680.00 (based on 40/hrs)
Average contract     — 4 months/680 hours per contract
Total GP Per Sale       — $28,560 ($1680 x 17 weeks)
# of starts needed    — 35 (35 x 28,560=$1M)
Assumptions:
We now know that we need 35 starts for the year to reach our goal of $1M in Gross Profit. Because we fill or close 35% of all sales orders, we will need to identify or generate 100 orders. Because we generate 1 order out of every 6 prospects we qualify, talk with, and/or meet with, we will need to qualify and add 600 qualified prospects to our CRM system in order to generate 100 sales orders.
In order to get four months of billing out of all 35 consultants before the end of 2009, they will all need to be working by September 1, 2009. This means we will need to have identified and added all 100 sales opportunities to our sales funnel by the end of July. This also means that we will need to have 600 qualified prospects added to our database (CRM system) by June to account for the 60-day lag between initial introductions with prospective customers and their first order. What does this all mean and how does it impact me personally? We better start hitting the phones!!
To add 600 qualified prospects to our CRM system by June and 100 qualified sales orders by July, we will need to have five high-quality conversations with new prospects every day. Qualifying five new prospects per day gives us 25 new prospects added to our CRM system each week and 600 by June, which meets our goal.
How many phone calls do we have to make to reach one qualified prospect? For this exercise I am going to use 25. For every 25 prospecting calls made, we have a conversation with one qualified prospect that will give us a legitimate shot at earning their business (reaching decision-makers who hire IT consultants is a big challenge).
That means we will need to make 125 phone calls per day in order to add five new prospects to our CRM system each day and 625 calls per week to add 25 new prospects each week.
I know this is cliché, but it’s simple and it works: plan your work and work your plan. Without it, who knows where you will end next year at this time.
Happy Selling!
