If you're reading this, you're reaching the final stages of a hiring process... Almost there! Now, you've been asked to prepare a 30/60/90 days plan, so chances are you're interviewing for a Strategic role. In this article, we'll provide you with guidance to craft a winning plan that will impress your potential employer and set you up for success in your new role.
When creating your plan, keep in mind that it's not just a document to submit to your potential employer. It's also an opportunity for you to map out your goals and strategies for your first few months on the job, while offering you an amazing chance to showcase your Sales skills. After all, this 30/60/90 is essentially your personal pitch deck.
Here are some essential components to include in your 30/60/90 day plan:
The 30-Day Plan:
During your first 30 days on the job, your focus should be on getting up to speed with the company and its offer. You're most likely doing a lot more listening than talking at this stage:
- Familiarize yourself with the company's products or services: Talk to your peers, your manager, other departments. Review any materials provided by the company to learn more about the offerings. Understand the industry, the verticals they operate it, the positioning, the competition, the company's story.
- Meet with team members: Schedule meetings with your sales team members to get to know them and learn about their experiences. Ask them for their advice on how to succeed in the role and what has worked for them in the past. Talk to the top performers, ask questions (why are they successful? how can you own & repeat that success?)
- Sales support: are you supported by a Sales Engineer or a BDR or anyone else within the organization to be able to close deals? They need to become your best friend - so get your donuts ready and start these conversations asap.
- Start building your pipe: Begin building a pipeline of potential customers by researching prospects and reaching out to them via phone, email, or LinkedIn. Understand the ICP, the USP, the verticals (again), the firmographics of your prospects. You might also have an existing network of past customers that you can leverage, you can also talk to Marketing about inbound efforts as well. Finally, if you have a set amount of accounts, try and get a hold of that list asap.
- Be a sponge: Attend any training sessions offered by the company but try also to have casual conversation with other departments. You'd be surprised by how much Sales knowledge you can get from Product or Technical folks.
- Set your goals: Work with your manager to establish goals for the first 30 days and track your progress regularly. For now, it's just a number, but these numbers will soon become your reality, so make sure everyone is perfectly in sync.
The 60-Day Plan:
In your second month on the job, depending of the length of your sales cycle, your focus should shift to converting prospects into customers and keep adding to your pipeline. Here are some tasks to address in your 60-day plan:
- Continue to build your pipeline: Reach out to potential customers and schedule follow-up calls or meetings. Use your first month's work to your advantage and try to schedule meetings with leads you've already made contact with. If you're supported by a BDR, make sure you're in sync regarding your targets/ICP and the different ways of reaching out to them.
- Conduct discovery calls: Conduct discovery calls with potential customers to understand their needs and pain points, the words they use, what words they like to hear, the motion between different stakeholders and departments etc.
- Look into Proposals: understand the entire Sales cycle to grasp how proposals are made and sent. Is there an approval process before sending proposals? How autonomous are you? Does pricing need to be validated in advance?
- Close deals(?): Again, depends on your Sales cycle. SMB? Chances are you can start talking about contracts. Mid-Market/Enterprise? Not for sure, but some signals should show that you're going in the right direction.
- Attend networking events: Attend local events and industry conferences to meet potential customers and build your personal brand. Use your new connections to gather information, develop relationships, and expand your network. Tradeshows usually accelerate your undertanding of the market you're in, the motion between different firms and the lingo being used. This lingo is your best friend when it comes to prospecting.
The 90-Day Plan:
Third month! It's getting real. At this stage, you should be hitting your stride and starting to contribute to the company's bottom line. Let's make sure you pass your probabtion period:
- Recognize successful patterns: at his point, you probably had a few interactions with prospects and start to recognize a theme. Narrow down your ICP in terms of title, location, pain points, level of responsibilities, size of the firm.
- Own as much of the Sales conversation as possible: your technical understanding of the product should be pretty mature after 3 months. Your goal should be to hold a good amount of the entire conversation so that your deals can progress at your own pace.
- Develop new business strategies: Work with your manager and team members to develop new business strategies to drive revenue growth.
- Establish your credibility internally: we all know that being the new kid on the block isn't easy. It's new business Sales, were OTE & expectations are high. Make sure you nurture your relationships with top Executives with the firm, report on your efforts and progresses, let it be known when you have your first wins.
Remember to keep your plan realistic and achievable, but also ambitious enough. You'll want to go into details in terms of numbers, KPIs, past experiences that overlap, industry knowledge you have. Good luck, and we hope this guide helps you land the job!
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