My Father-in-Law taught me the 5P’s. Positive Planning Prevents Poor Performance! As we move towards the end of the year it is a good time to document your creative ideas into a working action plan for the year ahead. This is the plan that will contain your SMART goals and form your high-level aerial view for the year.
Your goals are key to a successful to working action plan. You need to be fully committed and believe in the goals you set, ultimately these are the goals that will drive your Sales number next year. I encourage you to spend as much time as possible to ensure you are comfortable with them. Once you are clear on your goals the rest of the plan will fall into place.
Action planning may appear daunting if you are new to it. However, remember you are the biggest expert in the world of your job and what is needed to achieve your goals next year.
What should be included in a good action plan?
- Key SMART Goals. Think Big, be strategic, creative and realistic.
- SMART Actions to support your goals. These should be specific and measurable.
- Action Owner. Who is accountable for executing each action item?
- Review Date/s. Remember this is a working action plan.
- Notes section Next to each working action item.
- Creative Ideas Tab
Action planning doesn’t need to be time consuming, once you are clear on your goals and have a suitable template a good action plan can be put in place in a couple of hours.
Action plans must be a working document. Having created it, you need to implement it and ultimately execute your plan to achieve your goals. I highly recommend printing a hard copy of you plan, or at least your key goals, and put them somewhere highly visible. You need to commit to reviewing the plan, I recommend a quick monthly review with a more detailed quarterly review.
This is your plan! During the review process new action items can be added if they will help to take you towards set goals. The review process may uncover other Creative ideas for goals or action items that may be more relevant for future years. Document these in a Creative Ideas Tab so you can utilize in future action plans.
You need to be committed to executing your plan!
If you require action plan templates or if you would like to learn more about Sales by Design, please contact SalesAde.
