It’s always overwhelming at the beginning of a year, cycle or period to think about how you’re going to get all your sales activities done in the next year, cycle or period.

Are you that kind of person that doesn’t have a plan and yet, you can get everything done?

Are you a meticulous planner through every step of the process and can’t seem to get everything done?

Are you possibly the kind of person that knows you must do certain activities that you don’t know where to start?

We can help you to set an achievable sales calendar for your sales activities so you can not only achieve your goals but exceed your goals.

• The first thing you need to do is to download or open our yearly calendar template that you can write on, type in, highlight etc. We advise our clients to print out the largest type of yearly calendar template possible that everybody can write in pencil as it can be edited, erased and added to etc. and it becomes a live working document.
• The easiest way to start is to write in all the public holidays that are applicable to you and to where your customer market segments are.  It’s important to know when your customers have a public holiday and when they’ll be working for weeks.  There’s no point putting in a religious holiday if your customer doesn’t have that religious holiday.
• The next way is to put in special events that might occur within your city and within your customer market segments city, the special events might impact how your product or service is purchased, when it may be or may not be purchased.
• From here the next step you do is to identify your annual leave for everybody within the team, understanding the people might have different amounts of annual leave up their sleeves to use. You will know the best times for people to use their leave because you have an understanding of the historical high and low seasons, so you avoid the high seasons for annual leave. When things are quieter, you encourage leave to be taken then – this will have the least amount of impact to the customers and team.
• Now your decision is to work out whether you book in interstate or international sales missions, attend trade conferences and conventions, client entertaining and/or client’s quarterly productivity sales calls.  Working out what your sales activities will be can help you schedule those at regular intervals throughout the year.
• Usually, you might include a visit to your ‘A’ categorised customers every four weeks. If there is a small group of those that are based in the same city and you would block that time every four weeks to see those customers.  Another thought is that you may decide every eight weeks you will travel to a city to see all the customers within that city, or you may decide that every second visit you will call upon your ‘B” categorised customers, while each visit you’ll call on 4 of your ‘A’ customers.
• If there was a special event planned in a particular city where a cluster of your top performing or key potential customers are based, you could organise a sales customer event based around the theme of that event and city.  It’s a great way to connect business on a social level with your customers, building rapport with them on a personal level which builds the trust and commitment within the business relationship you have.
• Some companies schedule a sales blitz 2 to 4 times a year and you may wish to add this to your sales activity calendar as well.
• Think about adding in regular client appreciation events, end of financial year and end of year customer thank you event for your calendar.
• Now that you’ve added in all of these activities you can feel in the gaps with local sales activities to your customers that situated locally, new business prospecting and other sales activities.

Drafting your sales activity calendar will not only guide you of what’s ahead but will also let you keep track of what activities are aligned with your sales goals ultimately letting you decide on where your focus should be. Not sure how to start your sales activity calendar? We’ve mocked up free templates below just for you!