As we approach the end of the year, it’s important to take stock before building a new plan for 2023. A great sales strategy is about knowing your buyers and learning from their behaviours. In an increasingly volatile market, which presents significant challenges for wholesalers, business leaders must learn from what went well in recent months and note and tweak the tactics that failed. 

Building a strong sales pipeline is all about your sales cycle, and having a more agile, nimble strategy to support this is the key to building a winning plan to sustain you and your team in the year of yet more change ahead. 

We outline the key steps you need to take to keep your team focused in 2023, with a clear, malleable sales strategy. 

Make use of your data

Your sales and customer data is integral when building any new strategy. Take the time now to examine your data from 2022, and evaluate what went well, and what didn’t quite go to plan. It might be that there are markets you could tap into more, types of products that sold well or promotions that worked wonders for your monthly profits and you didn’t even realise. Likewise, as the cost-of-living crisis continues to wreak havoc, take a look at buyer trends over the past year, and take note of new patterns as the economic downturn impacts these patterns. Taking the time to take stock at the end of this year, could help you to build a better plan for the next 12 months. 

Set a manageable, measurable objective

While it’s good to set smaller, monthly, or quarterly goals, having a set idea of what you might want to achieve by the end of 2023 will also help your team see the bigger picture. Getting on board with a longer-term yearly objective means you’ll encourage real focus, and your team can get on board. Whether it’s to increase your profits by 10%, improve repeat purchasing by 20% on last year, or generate a set number of new leads within the 12 months, having an idea of where your focus should be will help you and your workforce to prioritise. 

Break it down into key milestones 

Breaking that 12-month goal into bite-sized manageable targets throughout the year is important. As the cost-of-living crisis continues into the new year, market buoyancy will fluctuate, so wholesale businesses will need to prepare to be flexible with their sales and marketing plans in line with the state of the economy. Your shorter-term goals can vary too. It doesn’t have to be about simply making more sales. For example, you could focus on higher volume deals of lower-ticket items in January or focus on a specific promotion for a trade show in February. Whether it’s short-term monthly goals, quarterly goals, or set KPIs around key milestones and events in your sales calendar, you’ll need to make sure your team have a reasonable goal for the near future, to succeed with the longer-term objectives. 

Build better customer experiences through tech

The pandemic and the changes that ensued have made business leaders more aware of the importance of business continuity and mobility. But one key trend that also arose from the pandemic era was the huge surge in customer expectations. Businesses suffer if they don’t now provide a more streamlined, and ultimately, satisfying experience for every customer. That means, having the technology in place to meet your customers where they are, and build slicker customer-facing processes into your infrastructure. Technology is undeniably a big investment, but don’t forget that building a tech stack that enables better automation and a digitised customer journey, will also alleviate the stress of manual, administrative tasks for your sales team. That means they can focus on the human connection; building strong, lasting relationships with customers.   

It’s important to review, and evaluate your technology, list out your resources and do a little research to check if there isn’t anything better on the market. Download our latest whitepaper to help you check you’re using the right CRM technology for your team. 

Don’t forget about the pipeline

When analysing your sales success, and setting new goals and objectives, make sure you leave room for your team to nurture new leads don’t forget to look at the hard work your sales team have invested in prospecting, and nurturing new leads. Building a strategy is about building resilience and continuity for your business. While it’s often easier to win repeat business with existing customers, you’ll need a balance between cross-selling, and generating a pipeline of new leads through continual brand awareness and marketing endeavours, so that your brand stays front of mind. Consider conducting market research to make sure you’re targeting the right audiences and reaching key decision-makers through your sales cycle.   

Building the perfect sales strategy takes time, a lot of planning, and ideally some budget so that you can make sure you’re investing in the right channels, tools and resources. But once you’ve harnessed your customer data and analysed buying trends and history, setting out a plan, and breaking it into manageable, short-term goals becomes much easier. With the right tools and sales solutions at your disposal, you and your team will have what you need to build a better sales plan and exceed your goals in 2023 and beyond. For information on how Toucan Sales Analytics could help you shape your sales strategy, book a demo today.