Reviews
Part of Reading sales and marketing plans with a sceptical eye
Sales and marketing plans mistakes when the owner does the selling
Sales and marketing plans mistakes in an owner-sold business: unpriced hours, unanswered enquiries, channels with no hours and growth with no extra week.
In a business where the owner sells, the sales section is really a plan for the owner's week. Its faults trace back to hours nobody counted, and each repair is a decision or a count rather than a rewrite.
What to take away
- Selling time is a real cost even when it is your own and unpaid.
- The response to an enquiry is the step that gets squeezed by the job in hand.
- Every channel and every growth line needs hours behind it.
- A week audit of four steps shows whether the plan fits the owner's week.
The owner's selling hours are a cost
Selling time belongs in the cost lines even when the owner is the one selling. Somebody spends half their week quoting, calling and following up, and none of it appears as a cost. The section then says the marketing budget is nothing.
Pricing selling time
- Count the hours spent selling
- Price them at published wage data
- Put the figure in operating costs
- Do not double count in payroll
The repair is to count the hours and price them, using published wage data by occupation where you have not hired anybody yet. Then put the figure in the operating costs of the projections as well as in this section, without double counting it in payroll.
Pricing the hours shows the reader what the owner's time is competing with. An hour spent quoting is an hour not spent on the work, and the plan should be able to say which of the two the business can afford.
Enquiries arrive while the owner is working
The plan says enquiries are handled promptly, which is a sentence with nobody in it. Enquiries arrive while the owner is doing the work described in the operations plan, so the response competes with the job in hand.
Response step ownership
- Name the person
- Set the response time
- Say what they send
- Check their hours in team section
Name the person, the response time and what they send. Then check that person's hours in the team section, because this is usually somebody already fully occupied. For an owner who sells, that person and the one doing the job are the same.
Hours set how many channels the plan can carry
A one-person plan can carry only as many channels as its hours allow. Eight channels, none resourced, is a plan with no channel, because each extra one takes time from the others.
Channel choice test
- Two or three channels only
- Name the main one
- Name the one being tested
- Why customers are reachable there
- What it costs to try
- Result that makes you stop
Choose two or three, and say which is the main one and which is being tested. Write the hours each takes beside it, with the result that would make you stop. A channel with no hours beside it is a wish.
The cost per customer carries the same hours. An industry figure leaves out the one input the owner controls, which is time, so the number that matters is the one your business produces once paid selling time is counted.
Acquisition cost: before and after trading
Before trading
- What to compute
- Maximum affordable cost
- Inputs
- Your margin
- Method
- Design a channel test
- Number used
- Your ceiling
After trading
- What to compute
- Everything spent to win
- Inputs
- Paid selling time included
- Method
- Divide spend by customers won
- Number used
- Your actual cost
How a reader checks that arithmetic is covered in reading sales and marketing plans.
Writing the path when you are every step
When one person does every step, the path still needs seven lines. Write how they find out, what they see next, what makes them get in touch, who responds, what has to happen before yes, how they pay, and what brings them back.
The customer path, seven lines
- They find out
- What they see next
- What makes them get in touch
- Who responds
- What happens before yes
- How they pay
- What brings them back
Each line gets an owner, and in a one-person business the owner is the same name seven times. That is not a flaw to hide. It shows the reader how many hours the plan needs, and which step a first hire would take over. Worked paths with an owner for each step are in the customer-path examples.
Growth that needs more hours
A growth rate with no mechanism puts the forecast in doubt. Revenue rises because a percentage was applied, and nothing in the section changes to cause it: no new channel, no hire, no longer opening, no tested campaign.
Make every increase trace to something in the section. If nothing changes, the line stays flat, and a defended flat line is worth more than a rising one nobody can explain. This is the fault the fundamentals guide treats as the plainest sign of an assembled document.
An owner who already sells all week has a ceiling on what the same hours can produce. A rising line needs a named source of new hours or a tested channel beside it.
A week audit in four steps
The audit turns the hours above into one number the plan can defend. Do it on a normal week, before the section is written, and keep the answers short.
- List every selling task in the weekquoting, calling, following up and answering enquiries.
- Write the hours beside each task, and mark the ones that happen while a job is waiting.
- Price the total with published wage data and add it to the operating costs.
- Set the total against the owner's whole week. If selling and the work do not both fit, the plan needs a hire, a longer week or a smaller forecast.
The SBA's business plan guide tells owners to describe their complete marketing and sales strategies thoroughly, because they refer back to that section when making financial projections. The hours from this audit are what that section hands to the projections.
Where the hours show up in the plan
Each fault above has a question about hours and a place where the answer belongs. The table lets a draft be checked line by line before it goes to a reader.
| Fault | Question about hours | Where the answer goes |
|---|---|---|
| Selling time uncounted | How many hours go on quoting, calling and following up? | Operating costs and this section |
| Response with no owner | Whose hours cover the answer time? | The team section |
| Too many channels | Which two or three get the hours? | The channel list, marked main or tested |
| Acquisition cost borrowed | Are paid selling hours inside the cost per customer? | The cost per customer, after trading |
| Growth with no mechanism | What adds hours or reach? | Beside each rise in revenue |
One pass before you send it
Take the customer count the forecast needs in a normal month and try to rebuild it from this section alone. If you cannot, the two are unconnected, and every other fault here is secondary.
Then read the path and mark every step written in the passive voice. Those are the steps with nobody behind them, and each one needs a name or an hour count. The segment the path aims at has to be the one ranked first in the market analysis.
Common questions
I do all the selling myself. Is that a mistake?
No, provided it is written as a cost: the hours, their price and the week they fill. The mistake is a section that shows a marketing budget of nothing.
Where do I find a price for my own hours?
Use the published wage data by occupation named above where nobody has been hired yet, and say in the section that this is what you did.
Which of these matters most to a lender?
The arithmetic from activity to revenue, and whether the spending appears in the model in the right months. Those two decide whether the forecast is believed.
How far ahead should this section plan?
In detail for the first year, with later periods described as intentions and conditions. Channel costs move too fast for anything more precise and readers know it.
