All senior sales or marketing professionals have to prepare annual plans. Because the success of these plans is so critical to the performance of their organisation, they will - perhaps more than anyone else - be judged on their ability to hit the targets in these plans. The problem is that in most plans top-down objectives are insufficiently reconciled with bottom-up planning. In other words, they don't really reflect what is achievable on the ground and therefore the actions, costs and resources required to meet them aren't properly considered.
Sales and marketing professionals also know that they operate in a very complex environment, with many factors affecting performance, not all of which they can directly control. In large organisations with multiple business or product groups, multiple sales channels, different geographies, varying conversion rates and potential for late-running product introductions it is almost impossible to plan or predict outcomes with any certainty using simple spreadsheets as there are just too many factors involved and too many possible scenarios.
So why do we settle for simple single-scenario plans without exploring all options and with figures entered as if there were no error margin? The simple answer is because we have had no better method - until now.
This is where Sales and Marketing models from Paragon can help. Paragon can quickly create a bespoke model for your specific needs. The emphasis is on flexibility, ease of use and a familiar environment with results presented in an easily understood form. This allows you to condense complex plans into easily compared scenarios, to make adjustments, to select the best, and to predict outcomes and key sensitivities. Our unique “Information Manager” interface makes it all so easy and your scenarios, data and results are organised, stored, presented and compared allowing you to justify your planning decisions.
Because you can update the model using real business data obtained during the year, you can see the predicted effect on year-end results and, if necessary make tactical changes to get things back on track. For the next year you have a record in the model of what actually happened during the year - helping to make your planning even more accurate in subsequent years.
If you can answer yes to most of the following questions, then we can help with your sales and marketing planning:
case studies
A FTSE 100-listed financial services group
Offers a broad portfolio of insurance, pension and investment products and services
A model to set and achieve sales and marketing revenue targets in order to meet investors' expectations at the same time as reconcile top-down targets with the necessary bottom-up planning.
Outokumpu
Worldwide stainless steel manufacture
A generic simulation of stainless steel process enabled them to reduce inventory, increase efficiency, and produce schedules that minimised waste.
people say
"The flexibility of the model is such that the client can…accommodate business changes such as the capacity, operational revisions and additions required for new customers and services, thus ensuring that it will be a useful planning tool for many years."
