Sellers who win consistently plan to win from the start. They're methodical in their approach to opportunities. They carefully map their sales process to the buyer's, set goals for every meeting, and do an exceptional job of communicating value. Moreover, top sellers build strategies to proactively drive sales opportunities. The sales opportunity plan we use at RAIN Group is made up of six core elements we’ve refined over years of use. In this article, I’ll share each of the six elements in detail.
In this video, Andy Springer shares an overview of the components of a buyer-centered sales opportunity planning approach.
The idea behind sales opportunity planning is to accomplish four tasks: create and communicate maximum value for the buyer; leverage your resources; satisfy buying criteria; and edge out the competition. A thorough sales opportunity plan will accomplish these tasks by answering the following questions:
The primary goal of sales opportunity planning is to improve the likelihood of winning the deal.
Successful plans are built and aligned around creating and communicating value for the buyer. Everyone claims their company is buyer-focused. But consider the following statistics from our Top-Performing Sales Organization study:
It's tough to have a buyer-focused sales organization when the planning tools and prompts are all about the seller and their goals.
For example, many opportunity plans contain prompts for capturing the seller’s mission, sales objectives, and sales positioning. What about the buyer’s mission? A case for buyer value? Buyer objectives and possible solutions?
Writing your plan is like crafting a business plan. It’s iterative. Nonlinear. You move back-and-forth between sections. You edit, adjust, and refine your thinking based on research, meetings, and discussions.
It’s the same for opportunities large and small. You still cover the same elements, you just move more quickly through the process depending on deal size. Maybe you selectively work on areas that you believe are essential for a given opportunity.
As to what your plan should include, here are the six elements of an effective, value-centered sales opportunity plan.
Also, determine whether you're pursuing the right opportunities and applying the correct pursuit intensity. Ask questions like:
A common complaint sales leaders have is that their sellers don’t complete a thorough needs discovery. One of the merits of sales opportunity planning is that it prompts sellers to be thorough. In my experience, when sellers plan to be thorough, they are.
If you want the buyer to answer these in a certain way, it’s immensely helpful to articulate the answers to yourself—ideally as part of your sales opportunity plan. To make the case as strong as possible, understand the true difference your solution will make for the buyer.
Let’s say you drop your completed sales opportunity plan on the floor of a buyer’s office and they stumbled across it. It’s our belief that the buyer should be more inclined to buy from you after reading it than if they hadn’t.
Done correctly, your sales opportunity plan will be all about them—their goals and needs, as well as how your offering creates value for them. They’ll see the thoughtfulness and thoroughness with which you’ve considered them as a buyer.
Too many sales opportunity plans show how a seller will achieve the seller’s goal by using tactics to “close a buyer” at “a high price, unless they push back,” and so on. It’s all seller-focused. Generic. When planning frameworks are too seller-focused, the behaviors and thinking becomes seller-focused, and that’s not good for creating strong relationships, driving maximum value, or winning.
To win sales opportunities, the focus should always be on the buyer.
You've found your buyer's needs—now convince them to move forward. In our How to Make Persuasive Sales Presentations Toolkit, we share resources and frameworks for leading impactful conversations at any stage of the sales cycle. Download now. >>
Last Updated March 29, 2023
