Maintenance
Part of Reading sales and marketing plans with a sceptical eye
The sales and marketing plans checklist that catches what audits miss
A sales and marketing plan checklist: does the activity produce the volume the forecast assumes, is every channel owned and costed, and can each claim be supported.
Run this with the draft, the financial model and last month's enquiry records in front of you. It confirms a drafted section rather than helping you write one.
The whole list is a single question asked seven ways: does the activity described actually produce the volume in the revenue line?
What to take away
- Work backwards from the forecast. Take the customer count it needs and look for the mechanism that produces them.
- Every channel needs an owner, a cost, and a condition that would make you stop.
- Selling time is a marketing cost even when it sits in payroll, and it is usually the largest one.
- Anything you have claimed in public has to be supportable, not just true in spirit.
Pass one: the arithmetic, twenty minutes
Pass one: the arithmetic
- Take the customers per month the forecast assumes and write the arithmetic that produces them: reach, times response, times conversion. Confirm you can do this without inventing a rate.
- Every rate used has an originmeasured, taken from your own trade experience and labeled as such, or assumed and marked.
- The revenue this produces equals the revenue line in the projections, not approximately.
- The volume it implies sits under the capacity in the operations plan in every month.
- The affordable cost per customer is computed from your own margin, and every channel budget sits under it.
- Marketing spend appears in the model in the months it is spent, front-loaded where activity must precede revenue.
- Salaried selling time is counted somewhere. If nobody is paid to sell, the plan says whose unpaid hours do it and how many.
Fix a failure here in the model before touching a sentence.
Forecast arithmetic chain
- Reach x response x conversion
- Every rate: measured, experience, or assumed
- Revenue equals projections line exactly
- Volume under operations capacity monthly
- Channel budget under affordable cost per customer
Pass two: the channels, fifteen minutes
- There are two or three channels, not eight, and the section says which is the main one and which is being tested.
- Each has a reason based on an observation about your customers rather than on a general claim about the channel.
- Each has an owner by name.
- Each has a cost, including the hours it consumes and whose hours they are.
- Each has a stopping conditionthe result that would make you stop spending.
- Concentration is stated. If one channel, referrer or platform would produce most of the customers, the section says what happens if it changes.
- The cost of selling time is priced at a real rate, which published wage data by occupation supports where you have not hired anyone yet.
Pass three: the path, ten minutes
- Every step from finding out to paying has an owner and an elapsed time.
- Step four is answered specificallywho responds to an enquiry, how fast, and with what.
- The payment step says when cash actually arrives, not when the invoice is raised.
- For a considered sale, the stages are listed with a cycle length and a close rate.
- The cost of producing a quote is stated, at least in hours.
Pass four: claims and disclosures, ten minutes
- Every claim made about the offer in your marketing can be supported by evidence you hold, which is what the federal guidance for advertisers requires regardless of the size of the business.
- Anything given in exchange for a review, a testimonial or a referral mention is disclosed in the material itself.
- Prices quoted in advertising match the prices in the product and service section.
- Any comparison with an alternative is one you could show your working for.
Pass five: the measurement, five minutes
Pass five: the measurement
- Four numbers are namedenquiries by source, conversion, average sale value, repeat rate.
- Each has a person who records it and a place it is recorded.
- The review interval is stated.
- The section says what would be done differently if any of the four came in low, rather than only what would be reported.
Items that only apply to some businesses
Mark these not applicable in a line rather than skipping them, because a reader who expects one and finds silence assumes an omission.
| If you | Confirm |
|---|---|
| Sell through a platform or marketplace | Fees, ranking dependency, and what happens if terms change |
| Depend on referrals from other businesses | The margin share and whether anything is in writing |
| Run paid advertising | The learning period cost before results, and who manages it |
| Sell to businesses with procurement | Approved supplier status, insurance requirements, payment terms |
| Rely on seasonal peaks | The lead time on the spending that has to precede them |
Sign-off
Three lines on your working copy: the date the acquisition arithmetic was last rebuilt, the list of unconfirmed rates with a name and a date against each, and the one channel whose failure would do the most damage.
Reopen the section when a channel is stopped or started, when a rate is measured for the first time, or when the margin moves enough to change the affordable ceiling. What the section owes a reader in the first place is set out in the sales and marketing guide.
Common questions
I have no history, so most rates are assumptions. Is that a fail?
No, provided each is labeled as an assumption with the test that would replace it. What fails is an unlabeled rate that a reader assumes was measured.
How is this different from a review of the section?
This confirms claims against records and arithmetic. A review asks whether the approach makes sense at all. Run this first; it is faster and it removes the errors that make a review pointless.
Everything passed but the plan still feels thin. What now?
Look at pass three. Sections that pass on arithmetic and feel thin usually have a path with no owners in it, which means nobody has decided who does the work.
Should the checklist go in the plan?
No. Keep it with the working copy, where its unconfirmed column becomes your to-do list.
