Advertising Sales Planning
/by Jim Elliott, President James G. Elliott Co., Inc.
November 3, 2021
Tis the season…the season for planning. For the past few weeks, Elliott Co. media sellers have been working on their advertising sales plans for 2022. Now those plans are finished, and commitments are being made. By reviewing the main features of the past year and anticipating the coming year, our sellers and management create a map to follow.
Of course, things don’t always go the way we plan. Nobody expected a pandemic. Nobody expects recessions, supply chain disruptions, bad weather, or earthquakes. Some of these can make it much more difficult to hit the numbers we’ve negotiated. But when we have a clear goal, we have a much better focus and chance of success than if we were to just “do the best we can.”
Recently, our blog and newsletter carried the story about one of our clients whose events business was wiped out by Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021. But the sales staff rallied and finished 2021 with higher total sales than they brought in during 2019. How? By putting their efforts toward lead generation products such as webinars and whitepapers. Sales went up!
The sales team did great work, and part of the credit must go to the planning they had done. It’s much easier to pivot when you have given a lot of thought about your options.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe World War II and later the US President, said his experience taught him that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” We agree.
The year 2022 won’t turn out the way we planned it, but we’ve taken inventory, we know what we have to accomplish, and we’re ready. Bring it!
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”