There isn't a connection between strategic planning and sales for you if you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your sales goals. Yet, if you'd rather make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales and your sales success. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make. Unfortunately most sales people take the approach of being incredibly active hoping that all that activity will result in at least some sales for you. Even though that approach sounds logical both and I know people who've tried that approach, worked themselves beyond the point of frustration and still failed. You're constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others that if you're just active enough you'll succeed but the facts don't support that logic.

You may not understand why that approach fails more often than it works, and from your experience you realize that approach doesn't provide much more than a meager where you're never really sure just when your next pay day will occur. The is a very logical reason this approach fails and that is that just being highly active is never enough. The approach that does work is one where you're focused on the right activities.

When you focus on right activities you position yourself with the right people so when you meet you're meeting: for the right reasons, people who are highly likely to do business with you, and people who've preselected themselves as being ideal customers for you. When you focus on activity rather than productivity you're meeting: anyone who can fog a mirror, people who aren't likely to do business with you, and people you have to try and coerce into doing business with you. As you see it written out it's pretty obvious the activity based approach just isn't a good business model for anyone.

The second approach is based on limiting your activities to those that are highly productive for you. Now you're focused on learning and doing the right things that put money in the bank for you. You have a whole lot more time and money because you aren't running around like a starving wolf trying to find some fresh game each day.

Even though you understand there is definitely a difference and that one approach produces better results, you may not see how strategic planning fits in. You may think strategic planning is something only large corporations do, but it's something you need to do too on a smaller and more focused scale. Through the strategic planning process you develop the clarity you need to effectively attract customers.

Strategic planning helps you to determine the potential you see for your business, and through that clarity you can begin to develop a plan for how you'll get that potential. Ultimately you end up with a dash board that serves as a working document for you, so you know exactly what you need to do when. And you can track, measure, and adapt so you don't miss your sales targets.

Instead of starting each day wondering what you're going to do and what you should do, you know exactly what you need to do to get the results you want. You know who you want to do it with, and you have a clear plan for how to attract those people. Instead of constantly hunting for appointments you develop plans and systems that filter out the people who aren't right for you and gather in the people who are.