Rules
Part of Reading sales and marketing plans with a sceptical eye
Sales and marketing plans review in plain terms
A reviewer's guide to judging whether a sales and marketing section can produce the customers the forecast needs, at a cost the margin carries.
A sales and marketing plans review is not a judgment of the marketing. The question is narrower: can the activity described produce the customers the forecast needs, at a cost the margin can carry?
Read the section with the revenue line open beside it, and start at the end. A reviewer who starts at the channel list ends up arguing about tactics, which changes nothing.
What to take away
- Rebuild the customer count from reach, response and conversion. If you cannot, the revenue line and this section are unconnected.
- Mark every customer-path step that names no person. Passive voice is where the plan fails in practice.
- Selling time is usually the largest cost in the section and the one most often left uncounted.
- Concentration is a finding even when everything else holds up.
- Rank findings by what a lender tests firstthe arithmetic, then ownership, then cost.
First pass: rebuild the revenue line
Take the customers the forecast assumes in a normal month and reconstruct them: reach, times response, times conversion.
Reconstruct the revenue line
- Reach
- Times response rate
- Times conversion rate
- Equals customers per month
- Check against delivery capacity
Three outcomes. You can do it and every input is labeled, which is a section that works. You can do it but one rate has no origin, which is one finding. Or you cannot do it at all, which means the two documents were written separately.
Then check the volume against capacity in the operations plan. A marketing plan that succeeds past what the business can deliver is a different problem, and it should be named rather than admired.
Second pass: find the unowned step
Walk the customer path and mark every step that names no person. Enquiries answered, quotes followed up, referrers kept warm, renewals noticed: these four go unowned most often.
Steps that go unowned
- Enquiries answered
- Quotes followed up
- Referrers kept warm
- Renewals noticed
- Each step names a person
The tell is the passive voice. "Enquiries are responded to promptly" has nobody in it. Ask who, how fast, with what, and whether that person has the hours given what else they carry in the team section.
Third pass: the money
- Is every channel costed, including the hours it consumes and whose hours they are?
- Is salaried selling time counted as a marketing cost as well as a payroll cost, without being double counted in the total?
- Where nobody is paid to sell, does the section say whose unpaid hours do it and what those hours displace? A defensible rate for that time is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, and O*NET gives occupation-level detail.
- Does the spend land in the model in the months it happens, front-loaded where activity must precede revenue?
- Is there an affordable cost per customer, computed from the margin rather than taken from anywhere?
A budget set as a percentage of forecast revenue is a specific finding. It means the spending arrives only after the sales it was supposed to cause.
Cost the selling honestly
- Every channel costed
- Hours and whose hours
- Salaried selling time counted once
- Unpaid hours and what they displace
- Spend in the months it happens
- Affordable cost per customer from margin
Fourth pass: concentration
Ask what share of customers would come from the largest single source: one channel, one referrer, one platform, one contract.
Concentration test
What share comes from the largest source?
Most of them -> state the share and the risk
t most -> note the source and move on
Where the answer is most of them, the section should say so and say what happens if that source changes its terms, its algorithm or its owner. This is a finding even in an otherwise complete section, because a reader prices the risk whether or not the author mentions it.
Fifth pass: claims made in public
Check that each claim in the messages and offers is one the business could support if asked. The federal rules on substantiating advertising claims — the Federal Trade Commission's truth-in-advertising enforcement under Section 5 of the FTC Act — apply to the smallest business as much as the largest, and the evidence has to exist before the claim runs, not after a complaint.
Two items come up repeatedly. Anything given in exchange for a review or a referral mention has to be disclosed wherever the recommendation appears, under the FTC's Endorsement Guides at 16 CFR Part 255. And prices used in marketing have to match the prices in the product and service section.
Writing the feedback
Three columns: the claim, the evidence that would confirm it, and who could supply it.
| Claim | Evidence that would confirm it | Who supplies it |
|---|---|---|
| 40 enquiries a month from one channel | Stated response rate and the source it came from | Whoever runs the channel |
| Quotes followed up within two days | Named person with the hours to do it | The owner of that step |
| Cost per customer under the margin ceiling | Arithmetic from margin, not a percentage of revenue | The plan author |
| Largest source under a set share of customers | Count of customers by source, last twelve months | Bookkeeping or CRM export |
Rank the rows by what a lender tests first: the arithmetic from activity to revenue, then the ownership of steps, then the cost.
"The plan needs forty enquiries a month and describes one channel with no stated response rate" is actionable. "The marketing section could be stronger" is not.
If you are reviewing your own draft, hand it to somebody who has sold in your trade and ask them for the same three columns. What the section is supposed to contain, so an absence can be told from a choice, is set out in Business Plan Authoring's sales and marketing plan guide.
What not to spend the review on
Do not argue channel selection in general terms. Ask what observation led to it. Do not rewrite messaging. Do not ask for more channels, which is the opposite of what most of these sections need.
And do not read a long tactics list as thoroughness. Eight channels with no owners is weaker than one channel described properly.
Common questions
Four questions come up in almost every review of this section.
How long should this take?
Forty minutes, plus the reconstruction of the arithmetic. That reconstruction is where the findings are.
The business has not traded, so every rate is assumed. What do I check?
That each is labeled as an assumption, that the affordable ceiling is computed, and that a test is described which would replace the assumption within a stated period.
Can I review this without knowing the industry?
Yes. Ownership, arithmetic and consistency are checkable from outside, and an outsider is more likely to notice the step written in the passive voice.
What if the author says word of mouth will do it?
Ask who asks, how often, and what it costs in time. Referral is a channel with an owner like any other, and the answer is usually that nobody has the job.
