Three Must-Haves for Your 2023 Sales Plan

These three things might not be what you’re thinking. You might be thinking you have to fix your outbound, sales process, or sales methodology. But those are general issues. They’re everyone’s issue at some point. That doesn’t mean they should be your focus in 2023.

The new year is around the corner, and you have a million and one priorities that you want to implement or fix in your 2023 sales plan.

You know that realistically you can’t get to all of them in a year and do it well, and you definitely can’t get to all of them in Q1. So, where do you start?

The three things I’m going to talk about that you must have in your 2023 sales plan you might not agree with at first. But stay with me.

You might be thinking that you have to fix outbound, your sales process, and your sales methodology because something isn’t working, and you’re not hitting your numbers.

These three things that you should include in your sales plan will help you hit your numbers, but they will also help you simultaneously identify the real gap or bottleneck so you can focus on the right areas and start moving the needle. 

Here they are. But continue watching/reading to get the full breakdown.

1. 1. An updated customer journey that reflects how modern buyers want to buy
   2. Having cohesive data and reporting across the entire revenue org
   3. An outbound strategy that isn’t just a repeat of last year and works by incorporating numbers 1 & 2

Recap: Three Must-Haves for Your 2023 Sales Plan

The important bits

• • 2:24 – The #1 thing organizations should be doing to prepare for 2023 is mapping their customer journey, or you’re not going to fix the right problem.
  • 5:28 – Your sales bottleneck might not be a process or methodology problem but a skills gap.
  • 7:16 – “Our sales cycle is 64 days, and we need to shorten it.” Typically it’s not the cycle as a whole that needs to be fixed. It’s just a piece. 
  • 9:03 – You must map the journey every 60 to 90 days.
  • 11:45 – The second must-have is cohesive data and reporting across the revenue org. This is the boring one… and the one no one wants to focus on.
  • 14:20 – Often, when it comes to data, we think of it as management, RevOps, or someone else’s job. But the reality is that understanding the complete picture can also improve the sales process.
  • 16:03 – Companies are only using 20-30% of their tech stack
  • 17:40 – Last but not least, the third must-have in your sales plan is about outbound strategy – and it combines numbers one and two.
  • 19:05 – Currently, Sales only updates sequences every 6-12 months and thinks new sequences are like a new sprint or campaign instead of continuously optimizing and A/B testing.
  • 20:25 – What process do you have in place to continuously optimize your outbound performance?
  • 22:10 – Right now, Sales is not set up to work in a way to support SDRs and optimize performance.
  • 22:45 – On a positive note, all of this is very fixable with these three things.

Map/Remap Your Customer Journey (2:24-10:13)

The #1 thing organizations should be doing to prepare for 2023 is mapping their customer journey.

Now, I know your first thought is that mapping your customer journey sounds interesting, and yeah, maybe you should do it, but what about your outbound, sales process, methodology, etc.

But I guarantee you, stopping the madness for a few hours to go through this exercise will help you focus on the true bottleneck.

I’ll put it this way. Imagine a pipe (I wonder why we call it a pipeline) that needs to flow water. And in different parts of this pipe, various calcium deposits are blocking the flow more than others. 

What many Sales and Marketing organizations do is they see one calcium deposit (big or small) and think I gotta fix that. A new technology will probably do the trick, or let’s change the process to X. BUT, this doesn’t actually fix the water flow problem because the big deposit or bottleneck was actually in a different part of the pipe. 

Maybe they saw some improvement, but it didn’t really change the output. 

All this to say, you have to look at the whole picture to diagnose the problem. I’ll give you an actual sales example now and a question I get a lot.

Say your sales cycle is 64 days long, and you’re trying to figure out how to shorten it. Well, the sales process is made up of six steps. Step one takes an average of X days, step two takes Y days, etc. And then that average varies wildly from rep to rep, making shortening the sales cycle a much more complex undertaking that a new methodology may not fix.

So you map the customer journey, you break down your process, and you find that when you compare the conversation rate of your trial process from top performer to bottom is really low. All right, now you know you need to change the playbook on how you run a proof of concept. Boom. You’ve identified the bottleneck or that large blockage in the pipe that will make a huge difference in flow once you get rid of it.

Prioritize that one first.

Cohesive Data & Reporting Across the Revenue Org (11:45-17:39)

I really know what you’re thinking on this one.

Cohesive data and reporting… that sounds boring just reading it. And maybe you think it’s not your job to look at or fix it. It’s for the big guys way up here or management over there, or RevOps. It’s definitely RevOps’ problem.

Understanding the complete picture of what happens at every step in the customer journey may not feel like it affects Sales, and the reality is that Sales (and every other department) only cares about their stats.

But it does. Don’t gather this big-picture data for the board, arts and crafts, or because you just think you should. Do it because it will improve your own sales process. Making sure that the system is set up to track each step of the process is mission-critical. 

If you’re unsure of what that is and what’s most important to track, go back to your customer journey and then how or what technology you need to do so.

Most companies are only using about 20-30% of their tech stack; chances are, you may not need another piece of technology to gather the data you need. You just need to optimize and integrate what you have.

Related Content: The #1 Area Sales Orgs Bleed Money: The Tech Stack

Outbound Strategy That Isn’t a Repeat of Last Year (17:40-21:22)

All right, now I know this one will resonate with you. Almost everyone is looking for ways to generate more qualified meetings and improve their outbound strategy and prospecting in 2023.

Not surprisingly, I’m going to tell you that must-haves one and two will affect the success of your outbound strategy, but this is what’s really going to up your game.

I’ve given this comparison before, but imagine you’re a company that spends $200K on social or google ads each year, and you simply wrote your ads in January, turned them live, and didn’t change or iterate on them for months…

No one is going to do that.

The same goes for outbound. Most teams are not creating enough variations and testing their outbound sequences, channels, triggers, messaging, etc.

If you do not have a process in place to continually review and optimize your outbound performance in your 2023 sales plan, create one ASAP.

Who on your team can look at the data on a regular (daily/weekly) basis and check steps, sequences, and different rep’s messaging and pull out insights on what you should double down on across the team, what should you remove, or tweak and redeploy? 

If you don’t already have this person, appoint someone, and work with them on creating an always-optimizing process.

To Recap, Your 2023 Sales Plan Should Include…

Three must-haves will improve your numbers by making sure you’re focusing on the right things, tracking what’s working and what’s not, and continuously optimizing your outbound because it’s an always-evolving game.

1. 1. Focus on the customer experience and the customer journey, and what are the touchpoints.
   2. What are the data points at each step so you can improve your sales process. If you don’t have these data points, you can’t improve, and you’re just guessing what works.
   3. Is your outbound strategy set up to optimize performance and support your SDRs, or are you using the same sequences and messaging that are not working for six months at a time?

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