Opportunity Plan

A good sales opportunity plan guides you through your sales process by forcing you to consider all appropriate aspects of a sale, at the appropriate times. No one specific plan is the best. The best one for you is determined by what best serves your sales and customer buying requirements.

All good plans share certain characteristics. Consider these as you decide which will work best for you.

An opportunity plan should be a tool that adds value to your sales engagement and enhances your probabilities of winning a competitive sales opportunity. There are some sales they can be closed quickly with very little effort. The added burden of completing an opportunity plan may be inappropriate for smaller deals.

Complex sales that involve longer periods of time, and multiple individuals can benefit greatly from an opportunity plan.

When to Use and Opportunity Plan

A plan is a working document that should be used throughout a sales campaign. Use it early on help you qualify an opportunity and uncover the right issues and the right people. Use it in the middle of a sales campaign to remind you of the gaps in your knowledge that you need to retrieve, and to refresh and update your known information. Use it in the final stages of your sales campaign to solidify your solution and build competitive immunity.

Specifically,you should use an opportunity plan to:

• Prepare your sales team to engage in the best orchestrated activities at the best possible time
• Prepare your management team for corporate visits, high-level sales calls, executive presentations, or pipeline reviews
• Coordinate your sales efforts with other internal and external resources such as technical support, partners, and consultants
• Determine your understanding of a sales opportunity by reviewing and testing your campaign with your mentors and supporters inside the account
• Focus your solution on the key business issues
• Develop your key relationships

Information to Consider Including in an Opportunity Plan

There are many areas of information that can be included in an opportunity plan. Below is a listing of some of the key areas you should consider when building your opportunity plan. Not all the items below need to be in an opportunity plan, but you will want to include as many as are applicable to your specific business.

Account Team Information

List the key members of your sales team and any external members that need to be a part of this opportunity campaign.

• Account team lead
• Other key team members
• What are their roles in this sale?
• List external team members such as partners, consultants, etc.

Customers' Business Information and Profile

Capture the customer's business information that is important to make a sale. There are many sources of information available, like the web, publications, annual reports, Hoovers, etc. Use them to capture useful information that will help your team be more knowledgeable and competitive.

• Customers contact and location information
• Industry knowledge
• Business description and products
• Their customers
• The customer's competition
• Key initiatives
• Financial health and condition
• Primary contacts for this opportunity

Opportunity Profile Summary and Compelling Business Issues

Describe the opportunity available to you, and how it fits into the customer's business. Gather information on people, finances, operations, and business goals that will help you better understand and communicate the opportunity to your team.

• Description of the project or initiative
• What is the budget for the project?
• Key business issues that the customer is trying to solve
• Compelling reason that they have to act now and not wait or delay
• What are the consequences of not acting?
• What is the timing and desired return or results the customer is looking for?
• Should you build a solution map?

Opportunity Qualifying and Assessment Considerations

Qualifying an opportunity is an activity that you do continuously until the close of a sales opportunity. Your team should be assessing the situation every chance they get to fine-tune your knowledge and information about the opportunity. Develop a set of questions around these four areas:

• How will you determine if the opportunity is real?
• How will you determine if you can be competitive?
• How will you decide if you can win the business?
• What criteria will you use to determine that the business is good business?

Milestones and Buying Process

Almost every opportunity has certain milestones, dates and events that have to be met. Your plan should capture these and plan for meeting them.

• Identify the steps in the customer's buying process
• Are there evaluations, approvals, legal, or implementation steps to meet?
• What date deadlines have the customer requested?

Key players, Roles and Decision Criteria

There are multiple players in a complex sale. Each of them has different buying roles, decision criteria, and business and personal agendas.

• Who is the sponsor for this opportunity?
• Who owns the budget?
• Who are the key decision makers?
  • What is their buying role in the buying process?
  • How well do we know them?
  • How adaptable are they to change?
  • How do they currently feel about us?
  • How well have we covered these individuals?
  • What is their preference for our solution?
  • Are there any external players, partners, or consultants of influence?
• Should you build an influence and political map?

Competitive Analysis

Don't let the competition compete with out some defensive positioning by your team. Every game should have an offensive and a defensive component. Your plan should include your defensive plan for your competitors.

• Who are your main competitors?
• What is their history with this account?
• Who are they aligned with inside the customer?
• How do they sell against you and what will their strategy be?
• What are their main strengths and weaknesses?
• What will they say about you and your solutions?
• What things do they not want your customer to hear about?
• What can you do to put down competitive speed bumps?
• How will you build competitive immunity?
• What is your strategy to win against each of your competitors?

Your Solution and Your Unique Business Value

The customer will buy your solution because they feel that you bring more value to them than your competition. Capitalize on the value you bring and focus on the unique aspects of business value that you can contribute to your customer.

• What overall value do you bring to the customer?
• What benefits do you bring to the customer?
• What is your unique business value?
• How will you build your solution to highlight your value as business benefits?
• Have you linked your solution to the business issues and requirements?
• Does your solution map to the discovered information?
• Have you addressed the issues of the key stakeholders?
• Do you have a presentation planner?

Planning your engagement

The key to winning an opportunity is to put all your analysis and knowledge into the highest impact and best orchestrated activities you can come up with which will move you to success, and winning the deal.

• What is our competitive strategy and how will you stop them?
• What objectives will allow you to achieve that strategy?
• What relationships do you have?
• Which relationships need to be made or enhanced?
• What information needs to be provided to the customer?
• What information needs to be retrieved?
• What action items are needed, by when, and who owns them?

Critical Success Factors for You to Win

Every deal has some critical factors that are crucial to your success. Identify them and create action items to assure that they are fulfilled.

• What has to be in place for you to win?
• What has to happen for you to win?
• What resources are required to be successful in this opportunity?
• What tools and support are necessary for you to win?

Partner Roles and Activities

You may or may not have partners. If you do use them, they need to be integrated into your plan.

• What partners can help you win this opportunity?
• What roles will they play?
• What is the timing of their engagement?
• What will they expect from you?

Associated Tools and Templates

There are many tools, templates, and sales aids that are available to help you with your opportunity plan. Some of those you might want to consider are:

• Your CRM system
• Mobile applications and devices
• The opportunity plan
• The discovery map
• The organization, influence, and political map
• The solution map
• Call plan
• Presentation plan
• Commitment tracker

Conclusion

An opportunity plan is a great tool to help you strategize and execute a complex sales opportunity. Whether you're using a plan or not, consider the categories described above, while you're thinking through any opportunity. There may be just one or two items that you need to use which will help you win, or you may want to use the entire plan is a strategizing, execution, and communications tool.

Related Articles

• Opportunity Management
• Opportunity Assessment
• Business Value
• Key Business Issues
• Political Alignment
• Solution Presentation

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