A 90 Day Plan Needs Baseline Facts.

A 90-day or indeed a 100-day plan is a critical component for any new sales or regional leader. Showing your new business that you can start quickly and make a tangible difference is crucial. But watch out, a plan without baseline facts is going to make your life much harder than it need be.

A strategy is only useful if you know where you currently sit. Once you know the state of play, then you can start to build on that and move the organization in the direction that it needs to go. But the question is - do you know where you currently stand? Particularly if you are in a new company, as well as a new role. At Viewpoint Analysis, we help business leaders to get that level of detail about your baseline - where your team is today. Not where you think they are.

Let's start with why your team is losing deals - and why they are winning deals. For us, this is crucial. You need to know the reasons for your current sales position. This feedback only comes from the mouths of your customers. You can't guess this or you will quickly get into trouble. The Viewpoint Analysis Win/Loss Review (www.viewpointanalysis.com/win-loss-review) is where our team interviews your clients or lost prospect accounts. We will ask the difficult questions and we will get to the bottom of the challenge or opportunity.

Next, how do your most important stakeholders feel about your business. Depending upon the industry that you operate in, you may have different priorities but generally, most leaders want to know how they are perceived by the following groups:

* Partners - your closest reseller partners or suppliers are really crucial to your success. How do they feel about working with you? Are they committed for the long term? Are they supportive of your strategy? Do they have suggestions for how you can improve the business from their vantage point?

* Customers - are you doing a good job as far as your customers are concerned? You hope that you are, but are you really giving them what they need? Are your sales team and service staff doing what they should be? Are you communicating with them? Does your R&D team provide what they need to grow? Are there opportunities that you are missing?

* Prospective Customers - do they know who you are? Do they know what you do? Are your messages reaching them? Are you perhaps over-communicating? An important question might be whether they would buy from you if they did have a need.

* Your Staff - what do they feel can be done better? If they were in your shoes, would they bring forward any specific action plan? How is the morale?

When we look at how your business is perceived by your closest supporters, we call this the Market Perceptions 360 service (www.viewpointanalysis.com/market-perceptions-360). We build the 360 to the needs of the individual business as some areas may be more important than others.

Finally, there are always a host of questions that you may want to ask - but finding the right format is difficult. This is where our www.viewpointanalysis.com/viewpoint-panel comes in. The Viewpoint Panel allows you to ask a group of people anything - literally anything at all. It may be a panel consisting of your customers, partners, or prospects. You may be releasing a new strategy or sales messaging and want to test the market before you do that. The Viewpoint Panel is built to your specification to find out whatever you need to know.

With this 'baseline' information you have the facts that are needed to really chart the new course. You can build a plan - and measure against the baseline to see how you are progressing. For some, this is a one-time effort - but for most, we would recommend running more analysis at annual intervals.

A 90-day or 100-day plan - it really does need a 'baseline'.