We have all heard the phrase that too much long-term vision can lead to short-term failure. 

A 90 day plan is a document that articulates your intentions for a set period of time. The plan needs to revolve around three things: Product, market and customers. 

Ask yourself the below three questions, but instead of thinking about the answers for the next five years, consider them for the next 90 days: 

• What will your product or service look like? Which new features will you roll out, and how will your business evolve?
• How will your market share expand? Which new markets will you have entered?
• How many customers will you have? How much revenue will they generate? How many employees will you need to support them?

Just3Things, a proven OKR software company, engaged Sales for Startups earlier this year to create, implement and manage a 90 day plan to prepare them for investment in 2022. Earlier this month the key stakeholders came together to complete a review. 

“Sales for Startups have brought a lot more rigour and intention in everything we do, from our proposition, to our people to our sales and onboarding process.”

– Kim Atherton, CEO & Founder at Just3Things.

With the overall goal defined, the plan was formed to align all activity to the vision and anything outside of those parameters was moved to a backlog.  

Working with Account Manager Stella Mead and a CRO from Sales for Startups, Just3Things developed an engagement strategy that focused on the challenges they wanted to solve in three key areas: Proposition, People and Process. 

Proposition

The challenge 

• Unclear on unique differentiators and competitive advantage
• Not confident in the proposition and whether it’s really clear and compelling
• Not confident in the blend between enterprise and SME in the core target market

The solution 

Sales for Startups undertook a Feature-Advantage-Benefit analysis, competitor and product review to determine the USPs for Just3Things. We included a stakeholder value propositions considering key concerns for the buyer, consumer and end user and then created and tested the final Value Proposition, adjusting where required. 

People

The challenge 

• Unclear on the right commercial structure and which talent to acquire and deploy for your stage of growth. 

The solution

• Define the structure of the sales and marketing team with clear roles and responsibilities
• Create new commission plan and sales targets
• Recruit new talent
• Key Performance Indicators were considered for both areas of the business.

Process

The challenge 

• Not confident on the current customer onboarding process
• Not confident on how to execute the intent of “land and expand” in practice
• Unclear on the process of converting a free trial to a paying customer.

The solution

Sales for Startups worked with the commercial team to build an agile two-week sprint that aligned customer success, sales and marketing departments. 

During the discovery stage, Sales for Startups identified that an alternative model needed to be explored as a commercial pivot. Without the 90 day plan, this challenge could have been missed or pushed to another year’s initiative. 

Over the course of the six sprints subgoals were created and regular reporting was implemented. 90-day planning isn’t about rigid structure, it’s about seeing what’s ahead and adapting accordingly. It keeps the team accountable and enables them to pivot based on unforeseen changes while avoiding the disheartening task of getting to the middle of the year and wondering where the last six months went. 

Download Sales for Startups 90 day plan template for a simple framework you can follow.