‘The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.’ Poet Robert Burns understood a fundamental truth: detailed planning doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.
Take your annual commercial forecast: you’ve crunched the numbers, scoped out hot prospects, analysed market trends and spent hours thinking through contingencies. Then, at the eleventh hour, an unexpected resignation throws everything off course and forces you to start over.
But what about the dangers of not having a plan in the first place? Imagine the scenario: your best salesperson is poached by a rival. They’re the only guy or girl on your team with a strong relationship with your most important account.
The client, hearing the news, has a wobble: they don’t want to deal with anyone else but your star seller. Before you know it, they’re high-tailing it to your closest competitor – taking their generous budgets with them.
Disasters of this kind can be avoided with an effective succession planning strategy – the process of identifying and nurturing the sales leaders of the future. But how do you go about it? We asked the experts for their top five succession planning tips…
1. Ensure key customers aren’t reliant on one person.
Topics: Sales management B2B sales strategies and trends Sales strategy
Related articles