• How much is your churn rate? The answer was 30%. No growth!
• Do your salespeople participate in churn reduction campaigns? She said no, the sales director didn’t want them to lose focus on sales.
• Are your salespeople loyal to the company or do you have a high attrition rate? She said the attrition was high, the sales director struggled to retain good people.
• And do you get along with the sales director? “Well, let me put it this way, we are not close.”

At another client, a highly respected professional services firm, I asked one of the most prestigious partners to show me his sales plan. He said he didn’t need one, the clients were always asking him to perform more and more work, so he didn’t make any sales effort and he kept increasing his billing rate. An enviable situation, due to many years of hard work. Then I asked him a few questions:

• Is your team growing? He said no, the team was stable.
• Are you expanding the client base? He said no, quite the contrary, in fact he was keeping only the best clients.
• Do other partners in your firm refer you to their clients? He said no, never.
• And do you refer your clients to other partners? He answered occasionally, but always with the concern that their quality of service might not match his own.
• How old are you? He said 54 and mentioned that he would retire in a few years.
• And who is going to serve your clients after that? He didn’t answer, but I heard a giant click in his head.

Yet at another client, one of the market leaders in health care services, I asked the CEO about their sales plan. She answered that they didn’t have a sales plan, but she was happy to show me their revenue budget with a break down per health care ite. Then I asked her a few questions:

• How much do you spend to attract clients to your hospitals and clinics? She showed me their marketing communications budget, involving traditional media, social media and public relations. She also mentioned a content marketing team.
• Do your people promote your company? She said no, they were focused on providing high quality health care.
• Do you have a budget per service line? She answered no, because they didn’t know what the clients’ needs would be.
• Are your occupation rates high? She said no, and there were significant variations between service lines and health care sites.
• Are your clients happy? She handed me the latest client survey report, the satisfaction level was good, but it could improve.
• Do your clients refer your company to other people? She said they had no way of knowing.
• And do you have a loyalty program? No.

All these stories have two things in common, the companies don’t get the full benefit of their client base and they fail to plan sales.

In the first case, the insurance portfolio was off limits for sales, therefore salespeople didn’t care about churn and they didn’t participate in nurturing the client base. They didn’t develop long term relationships with their clients because it didn’t show on their numbers. In addition, salespeople felt they were expendable and didn’t feel connected to the company. The sales plan needed to include objectives for obtaining new business – in existing and new clients – and protecting current business. And salespeople needed to be rewarded for both.

In the second case, the highly successful partner was not aligned with the firm. He was not creating room for new partners in his team. His client base was almost of no use to anyone else in the firm and it would be lost after he retired. In addition, the firm was losing good clients only because he kept just the best ones. Instead of being overly focused on billable hours, he needed a sales plan to develop his team and expand the services of the firm in his client base. In addition, he could cease the opportunity to work with the marketing team to execute campaigns to attract new clients, leveraging on his reputation to boost the growth of the firm.

In the third case, the health care services group was not exploring its client base. No loyalty program was in place and the health professionals didn’t act as brand ambassadors. A sales plan was needed, including specific marketing campaigns aimed at maximizing the utilization of their resources in the different service lines at each health care site.

The marketing pyramid

Developing a good sales plan is not easy. It must include sales objectives per month, a marketing campaigns plan and an action plan per territory and channel. And it must be discussed and agreed upon between marketing and sales teams. At the core of this endeavor is the complete understanding of the client base and the non-client universe. The marketing pyramid is the tool needed to achieve that understanding.