A Guide to Evaluating Your New Year Sales & Marketing Strategy

This time of year, many organizations start turning their attention to the new year. Why don't they wait until January? What’s the rush?

These organizations understand that setting goals isn’t enough. Growing their business and meeting revenue targets requires planning. Goals without a plan are just wishes. If you wait until January to start planning, then you’ll already be behind. Now is the time to put your sales and marketing strategy under the bright lights and give it a thorough assessment.

But what’s that assessment look like? What should you be reviewing? What questions should you be asking? Every organization is different, but here are a few topics you should cover and questions that will get your discussion started. 

Target Market

• Do you know who your target buyer personas are?

• How do you find this? Is it a hunch or based on research? 

• Does your marketing database reflect your target personas? Is the data accurate? Is the data complete?     

Buyers Journey and Sales Process

• What are the steps your prospects go through before they decide to buy from you? 

• Does your sales process match the way our prospects buy? 

• Is your sales process internally or externally focused?

• Is it designed to guide your prospects through their buying journey or is it designed to support your operational objectives?    

• How can your process be changed to accelerate deals through the funnel?  

Sales & Marketing Alignment

• How do you classify and define leads?

• Are sales and marketing speaking the same language?

• What is your definition of a lead, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)?

• Are your sales and marketing teams aligned?

• Do your sales and marketing teams have shared goals and objectives? What are they? Are they the right ones? Should they be changed?

• What are the marketing team’s expectations of the sales team? Are they reasonable? Does sales know what’s expected of them? 

• What are the sales team’s expectations of the marketing team? Are they reasonable? Does marketing know what’s expected of them?

Lead Generation Tactics

• What lead generation tactics are you deploying? Which ones are effective and which ones aren’t? How do you know? What are the performance metrics? 

• How much did you invest in marketing last year? What is the ROI of that spend? How should it be adjusted next year?

• Do you deploy a mix of both inbound and outbound marketing tactics? 

• How many leads do you need to generate to meet your growth objectives?

• Do you have the resources, talent and tools you need to execute our marketing strategy?

• Do you need to purchase new tools? Which ones?

• Do you need to hire additional resources? What type of talent do you require? Can it be outsourced?
  

Website Evaluation 

• Does your website accurately convey your value message to prospects?

• Are you using your website to share expertise and position yourself as thought leaders? 

• How are you using your website to generate leads? Does your website have lead capture functionality? 

• How many contacts are visiting your website monthly? Does the number of visitors increase month-over-month? Are you attracting the right visitors? How do you know? 

• Does your website content support your sales process and your prospects’ buying journey? 

• Does your website encourage repeat visitors? 

CRM

• Does everyone on the sales team use the CRM tool? If not, why not? Do you need more training? What can you do to increase adoption of the tool? 

• Do you have the right tool? Is it set up to support the sales process? 

• Does your CRM make your sales team more or less productive? 

• Does your CRM produce the reports that you need?

Marketing Content/Sales Collateral

• What marketing content and sales collateral  do you have at our disposal? Which pieces are used for what purposes? Does it meet your needs? 

• Does the sales team know what content is available, where to find it, and how to use it in the sales process?  

• What additional content do you need to create?

• Do you have the resources and time to create what you need or do you need help? 

Sales Enablement

• How productive is your sales team? Do they have all the tools they need to be effective?

• How can you help them streamline their process? 

• Are there tools available that can help them better leverage lead intelligence; improve their communication with their prospects; and make them more efficient?  

Revenue Growth 

• Did you meet (will you meet) the new year's growth objectives? If not, why not?  

• What are your growth objectives for the upcoming? 

• What are the obstacles that could hinder your growth?

• What are the opportunities you need can leverage that can accelerate  growth? 

The first step in developing your plan is to map out what topics your organization should be focusing on and what questions should you be asking. When developing the outline for your strategy sessions, solicit input from everyone on the sales and marketing teams. Everyone has a point-of-view and it’s important to give each team member input. In doing so, the team will be more likely to take ownership of the goals, strategies and objectives you adopt. Obviously, this isn’t an exhaustive list of topics and questions, but it will provide some food for thought and get the discussions started.

Editor's Note: This blog was originally written in 2017 and has since been updated.