Now that the New Year has arrived, sales professionals need to develop a clear sales strategy and plan for the upcoming year. First, analyze sales for the prior year. Who were your top customers? Where did new sales leads come from? What sales trends can be noted? What product line was a high performer? Your staffing software should report on this, so organize and examine data to uncover where the most opportunity exists, and apply efforts efficiently going forward.

Discover some slow months? Create campaigns for the month prior to boost sales during these quieter periods. See any patterns emerge when you look at your referral sources? Concentrate on expanding your marketing efforts with these channels to yield the greatest results. Also, examine the most profitable sales, and focus on the activities that lead to them. Emphasize and concentrate on activities that will yield the greatest benefit to your organization. Sales professionals should create a plan and set specific goals. Goal setting should be for both activities and results. Goals can be set for the month, week and even day. Monitoring results against goals on a regular basis will keep the company on track, and ensure that 2014 is the best year ever.

This is the time for salespeople to reflect on what worked best, develop a plan for the New Year, and commit to a specific course of action.

Christos Dousmanis is a Sales Account Manager at Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff staffing software for the staffing and direct hire industry. Ultra-Staff is a full-featured business solution with components for front office, back office, mobile staffing and web portal. For more information on Ultra-Staff go to www.abd.net.