Why Market Leaders Start Annual Planning Early

For many growth leaders, inefficiencies in their value creation plan remain among the most significant hurdles toward their goals. Whether it is poor account segmentation or a weak organizational structure, any shortfall in the plan’s workstream can heavily undermine the effectiveness of the rollout, threatening to put executives’ plans in jeopardy.

From discussions with market-leading growth executives, it’s clear that the most successful businesses also have thorough annual planning processes. They have a systematic process with clear, established steps that seek to answer questions that can help them establish the next step:

Successful growth leaders also start their annual planning process far ahead of Q1. For the plan to work, they understand that many growth levers must be adjusted if they want to execute their bets effectively. Hence, these leaders keep their businesses agile by starting ahead of time and adopting a programmatic approach to planning for their SKO. This blog post explores the seven workstreams that market leaders complete before they conclude their annual planning.

The Seven Workstreams Critical to Annual Planning Success

1. Account Segmentation

The process of planning for growth success must begin with a fundamental understanding of your customers and prospects. SBI recommends that executive leadership teams thoroughly analyze their market segments four months before SKO, identifying targets that would likely generate the most revenue in the coming year.

2. Routes to Market

By utilizing the data gathered in Account Segmentation, growth leaders are provided an overview of low—and high-value accounts, creating actionable insights that allow them to optimize their routes to market. This often takes place three months prior to SKO, giving leaders ample time to plot the most effective routes to high-value customers and the most efficient routes to reach lower-value customers.

3. Coverage Plan

Alongside the Routes to Market, segmentation data will help leaders determine the headcount needed for each role in the coming year. Use this information to preempt talent sourcing needs and ensure that your organization has sufficient manpower to cover every part of your Route to Market.

4. Organizational Structure and Design

Given the understanding of where next year’s revenue will be generated, now leaders must validate if they still have the right organizational design model to capture these opportunities. Taking place just two months before SKO, take the time to refresh your headcount and productivity model, ensuring you have the right number of people in the right places.

5. Talent Assessment

While you are putting people in the right spots, you must also plan for the next wave of leaders. Do you already have them internally, or should you look to external sources instead? Identify the winning players in your organization and work to retain them. Then, develop a plan to transition C-player reps’ accounts to your star reps.

6. Territories, Quotas, and Compensation Plans

With just one month before SKO, market leaders now perform the final checks on their sellers’ readiness. With clear milestones on the horizon, you want your sellers to hit the ground running, so ensure that every rep has clearly defined territories, quotas, and compensation plans to avoid any procedural slowdowns along the way.

7.  Accelerate the Employee Lifecycle

As sales reps get more experienced and prolong their tenure, leaders should also develop an Employee Life Cycle Management Plan to improve bookings performance over the long run. Leverage key inflection points in the rep’s tenure to boost their productivity and drive increased revenue capture.

The steps to driving efficiency in your value creation plan start with a thorough annual planning process. By starting the process earlier, you give your organization time to complete key workstreams that help prime the business for growth in the year ahead. Through our Annual Planning Playbook, you can discover the best practices of annual growth planning and drive alignment across leadership.