I was reading this really great article on a term that had an equally great buzz to it: operational planning. This piqued my interest as the term “operational planning” struck me. I’ve heard of “strategic planning” before, but never “operational”. Why is that?
While the two terms are very similar, they’re pretty different. Strategic planning has to do with setting long-term goals. The college famously undergoes this process every five years to evaluate where they intend to go over that period of time and choose what to focus their efforts on. Operational planning takes these long-term goals and breaks them down into short-term, achievable goals to get to the long-term strategic goals.
This got me thinking as to how you can incorporate this into a sales process. If there’s a client that poses a larger challenge than you’re used to, you can easily break down the larger steps into smaller, progress-based ones that can help you achieve more. It’s a great process that can easily be utilized to help get that next conversation, appointment, or in person visit to help close your next sale as a salesperson.
Think of operational planning the next time you engage in a sales process.
BoweryJE22
This is such a key distinction to understand. You can be a visionary and a planner, however if your goals are far off or very general, they’re just good ideas. The lifeblood of a mission, a vision, a plan, is made up of bite sized goals focused on every day tasks, operations, and goals.