Sales organizations demand a daunting breadth of planning expertise: from prioritizing high-level objectives to align with firm strategy, to allocating limited resources to adequately cover opportunities, to establishing tactical performance goals at multiple levels within the organization, and, along the way, coordinating input from many corporate functions, on behalf of widely distributed sales force members, all while cultivating active participation and buy-in from disparate participants.
This research investigates how firms meet these planning challenges. It surveys planning practices in business-to-business sales organizations, identifies emerging trends, and prioritizes management’s planning priorities. It focuses primarily on sales team and organization-wide planning efforts (rather than call, opportunity, or customer-level planning).
An initial review of findings was also featured in a webcast, which may be viewed here: