BUSI 431 Week 8 Sales Plan Project Analysis Example

Sales Plan Project Analysis: Review of the Lakeside Office Furniture Plan

BUSI 431 Sales Management and Professional Selling, Sales Plan Project Analysis

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The other group's plan and its company are composites; the textbook and the research cited are real, and the structure follows Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 431.

The plan I reviewed was written for Lakeside Office Furniture, a dealer selling furniture and workspace design services to companies of 50 to 500 employees that are expanding or moving offices. Its goal is to grow revenue by 15 percent through 30 new corporate accounts, using three representatives in a metropolitan area. The plan follows the textbook's sequence closely and is clearly written.

Two strengths stand out. First, the prospecting system is specific and practical. The group uses commercial lease filings and hiring announcements as leads, because companies that sign new leases or hire rapidly will need furniture, and qualifies them by timeline and budget, which applies Castleberry and Tanner's (2019) qualification criteria well. Second, the presentation section adapts to different buyers: facilities managers see installation timelines, finance officers see total cost and leasing options, and executives see design renderings that reflect company culture.

My first suggestion concerns territories. The plan divides the metropolitan area into three geographic zones of roughly equal size. Size, however, is not workload. The downtown zone contains most of the large employers and most of the leads, while the suburban zones contain fewer, smaller prospects. Zoltners and Lorimer (2000) report that misaligned territories, some swamped and some thin, are widespread, and that fixing alignment can lift sales with the same headcount. I would recommend that the group count accounts and qualified prospects in each zone, weight them by potential, and redraw the boundaries so each representative has a comparable workload, perhaps giving one representative a smaller downtown area.

My second suggestion concerns the after-sale section, which is one paragraph. For a furniture dealer, the largest opportunities often come from repeat business as client companies keep growing, adding floors or opening new offices. Palmatier et al. (2006) found that relationship investments and the trust and commitment they build drive customer loyalty and seller performance. A plan that wins a growing company once and then disappears gives the next expansion to whichever competitor stayed in touch. I would add quarterly check-ins with each account's facilities manager, an annual workspace review and a system for tracking clients' lease expirations and hiring.

Overall, this is a strong, realistic plan whose prospecting and presentation sections could be used as written. With workload-based territories and a fuller retention program, it would also capture the growth that its best accounts will create. Would the group consider using its lease-filing data to track existing clients as well as new prospects?

References

Castleberry, S. B., & Tanner, J. F., Jr. (2019). Selling: Building partnerships (11th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Palmatier, R. W., Dant, R. P., Grewal, D., & Evans, K. R. (2006). Factors influencing the effectiveness of relationship marketing: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marketing, 70(4), 136-153. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.70.4.136

Zoltners, A. A., & Lorimer, S. E. (2000). Sales territory alignment: An overlooked productivity tool. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 20(3), 139-150. https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2000.10754234