LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP

AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY

College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Lesson 6: Execution and Business Plan

Introduction

When it comes to planning a new business or launching a new endeavor, an execution

plan is where the pedal hits the metal. While a business plan outlines your entire business and
a financial plan shows where the money will come from and go, the execution plan outlines
what specifically needs to be done and when. You can think of an execution plan as your how-
to guide for your business. It's the tool you will use to review your critical goals or milestones,
as well as to track specific tasks to ensure that everything is on track, on time and on budget.

At end of the lesson, the students will be able to:

1. Roadmap for research, development, and production.
2. Budget and timeline
3. Sales and marketing plans; cost of customer acquisition, customer lifetime value
4. Plans for R&D, operations, sales and marketing, human resources
5. Lean concepts and organization

How to Plan and Execute Shifts in Business Planning

Let’s cut to the chase — over half of all enterprise strategic plans fail the same year
they’re born.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Downstream risks aren’t accounted for, objectives go unmonitored, budgets are

misappropriated and accountability is left static. The result is an organization acting as its own
worst enemy, unable to execute on business opportunities before and while they strike.
However, you don’t need more apocalyptic reminders aggrandizing what’s risked
without agile business strategy execution. Instead, org visionaries need clear, actionable
templates that translate business planning concepts to reality — yet can adapt when reality
decides to keep you on your toes.
That fluid implementation template starts here, with actionable steps, tools and insights
into successful business planning and execution.

The True Objective of Continuous Business Planning

Once institutionalized, continuous business planning enables organizations to quickly

and strategically act on business growth opportunities — even ones it didn’t forecast.
True continuous strategic business planning also means all personnel, at all levels,
across all departments, are familiar with the strategic business plan. They also know what goals
are prioritized, their execution timelines, implementation stages and, most importantly, what
they as staff are individually responsible for every day that contributes to that goal becoming
tangible change.
Enterprise-wide tools — namely, strategy management or resource planning software
— and workflows are available to temperature-check organizational processes continually with
goals. Data measures the effectiveness of goal execution. As a result, the entire organization
has clear visibility into the business plan as its happening, in-situ, regardless of time or place.
Or, put plainly, your organization can now recognize what’s working and what isn’t, then
make the appropriate shifts in plan execution — all ensuring you’re not another business whose
strategic plan failed before it began.

Strategic Planning Business Models

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Successful business plans are often tied to a strategy planning framework. These
frameworks are a competitive and pre-emptive assessment of your organization’s readiness for
strategic planning, delivering historical and market data informing your current strategic
positions.

Enacting a strategy planning model at your organization delivers data-driven,

researched foresight into the internal and external variables affecting the outcomes of your
ideal business plan. Reviewing such data ahead of time prevents risky business strategies from
being implemented without proper parameters — or launching the wrong strategy altogether.
Your organization can use several business strategy planning frameworks to begin
shaping appropriate business plan opportunities.

1. Transformational Business Modelling

Business models are used to document and share the fundamental operations of an
organization — its products, services, customer base, finances, revenue streams and more.
However, few organizations leverage the same cohesive documentation to
communicate its vision for a business plan. Instead, they rely on ad-hoc departmental meetings
and individual leaders to relay core priorities and expectations, without giving staff the
resources to help ground that information.
Enter the transformational business modelling strategy. Organizations with an effective
transformational business model learn how to create visual tools to communicate a strategic
business plan, plus its implementation steps and balanced scorecard methods. This increases

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

business plan buy-in and creates a clear, collaborative and accessible road map for everyone at
the organization to follow.

2. Scenario Planning
Scenario planning imagines future circumstances that could jeopardize the fulfilment
of your business plans. Organizations can then better prepare for these scenarios, analyzing and
comparing best and worst-case trade-offs in costs, resources, employee capacities, profit
margins, customer values and much more.
There are intuitive benefits of scenario planning before creating and executing a
business plan. Scenario planning is one of the only frameworks that truly creates detailed risk
summaries before a plan launches. Organizations that partake in scenario planning pre-empt
many unforeseen challenges and discrepancies in the implementation of their strategic plan,
preventing risks from hemorrhaging into fatal wounds.

3. Business War Games

Don’t let the name fool you — wargaming is an approachable and actionable
business plan model for organizations across industries to understand their competitive
marketplace better and therefore adapt appropriate strategic goals.
Using actual marketplace and competitor data, businesses participate in workshops that
identify a competitor’s future endeavors as well as their own responses and countermoves to
those endeavors. Ideal wargaming strategies then allow that organization to funnel resources
and investments into truly competitive differentiators — differentiators which become the core
tenets of their new strategic plan.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Creating an Agile Strategic Business Plan

As the famous Abraham Lincoln quote reminds us, “Give me six hours to chop down a
tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”
So it goes with creating your agile business plan. After conducting an appropriate
business planning model — and reaping the data and insights from its findings — your business
is ready to begin outlining its actual business goals and strategies.
Consider these best practices when drafting that strategic plan, as each is an essential
preparatory step before plan execution.

1. Know Your Why

Understanding your organization’s driving “why” goes beyond its mission
statement. It’s even beyond your list of corporate values, which are often noble and
promising but locked in the abstract.
Instead, strategic business planning must be driven by objectives, advantages and
outcomes. These are your plan’s true “whys” influencing what ideas you choose to execute.
Determine, with detailed granularity, your target objectives, the competitive advantages of
those objectives and how you’ll measure their success outcomes. Doing so sets the
framework for an actionable and value-adding strategic vision.
2. Compile a Cross-Functional Team
Strategic business plans must have insights from every major department or domain
at your organization. Consider the alternative — how can you expect to implement
enterprise-wide strategy goals without input from across the enterprise?
 Pick your change agents: Your planning team should include members of the board
or other executive leadership as well as reps from major departments including
marketing, sales, finance, accounting, operations and HR. It should also include IT staff
as well, particularly if you intend to implement strategy management software.
 Determine business process owners and overall strategy directors: The former
spearhead the actual, tangible changes made in their teams during plan implementation,

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

while the latter represent the top plan overseer or administrator and will often be
someone in your Office of Strategy Management.
3. Create “Living” Timelines
Fight strategic fatigue by creating realistic yet prorated schedules for your strategic
plan. This means going against the traditional strategic planning timeline, the one where
most organizations set annual business goals and then macro-review their progress only a
handful of times throughout the year.

Instead, consider allocating more meetings that are granular in topic and scope.
Schedule these meetings as early as possible before you begin any official plan implementation,
and share their agendas to keep focus relevant. Creating this kind of micro-timeline also equips
your management team to respond more fluidly to business strategy changes that reveal
themselves through benchmarked or scorecard data. After all, it does your organization no good
if data tells you a process isn’t working, but you don’t address that issue for another three
months.
4. Perform Competitive Research Analyses
A competitive research (CR) analysis builds an accurate profile of the strengths,
weaknesses and overall operational health of your business compared to other companies in
your vertical.
Similar to the business strategy models discussed earlier, your competitive research —
otherwise known as competitive intelligence (CI) — gives you the most honest, quantitative
assessment of where your organization currently sits versus where it aims to be. Many
organizations opt to bring on an external consultant to perform their CR or CI
assessments to enrich findings and paint a more accurate competitive portrait.
5. Assess Your Technological Infrastructure for Enterprise Harmony

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

How do departments communicate essential information with one another? Where are
projects and progress tracked? Who has access to these resources, and could you expand that
access?
Siloed departments are one of the most common reasons strategic plans fail. If your
internal teams can’t communicate data reports, information and plan updates with one another,
then goal execution will only go so far.
Technology like stratic management software and enterprise resource planning
software provides a solution. These technologies serve as the primary repository for all reports,
documents and information related to the status updates and benchmarked measurements of
the strategic plan across departments, today and tomorrow.
6. Develop an Accessible Strategy Management Framework
Your strategy management framework will assign the individual activities and
initiatives necessary to execute your business strategy. It will also set up those activities’
timelines, as well as outline team responsibilities and set up benchmarking scorecards to
measure and report progress.
All these concerns must be represented and shared in a cohesive format. Each
department will use the strategy management framework to gauge their own activities, relay
and receive plan updates and pivot actions, when necessary.
Select the framework most suited from your operations. Once the cross-departmental
strategy team finalizes implementation activities, you’ll create a graphic framework
representation depicting every activity, in every team, across the implementation timeline.
Have team leader’s conduct training with personnel on how to access and read the framework
so everyone is on the same page.

There are dozens of strategy management frameworks on the market today, including
leading models like:
 SWOT Analysis
 Porter’s Five Forces
 The Balanced Scorecard
 Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
 Theory of Change Model
 The Strategy Map

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

7. Employ Technological Onboarding

At this stage in the strategic planning process, your organization should currently have
— or be in the process of adopting — strategy management or resource management software.
These pieces of enterprise technology are pivotal for streamlined communication and
collaboration across your strategic initiatives. The system houses all major and micro-projects
that scaffold the complete business plan, plus designates who’s in charge of what, when and
why. It’s also the portal all employees will use to make activity updates and signal status
changes related to those activities.
Remember, strategic business planning must be a cross-functional endeavor. All
representatives must plan and execute relevant training for new project or resource
management systems within their departments, be that sales, HR, IT or operations. Failing to
properly train employees on strategic planning technology is like handing a teenager the car
keys and telling them to go on a road trip but never teaching them to drive.
8. Consider a Strategy Management Office (If You Don’t Already Have One)
Strategy management offices can be their individual division reporting directly to the
COO or CEO. Other organizations wrap these offices into their finance departments.
Regardless of organizational structure, your strategy management office is the
overseeing body coordinating end-to-end strategic plan design and implementation. They’re
tasked with:
 Facilitating the strategic plan’s timeline
 Setting up and maintaining more granular meetings to review plan benchmarks
 Updating documents, information and files within the strategy management software
 Administering enterprise-wide updates on the strategic plan’s achievements and
ongoing activities
 Serving as the go-to resource for questions, concerns or directions when change
situations do strike
9. Adjust Budget Allocations to Match the Upcoming Strategy Implementation

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Strategic planning and budgeting cycles are complementary activities that can easily
run asynchronously. Business spend is known to proliferate across budget cycles, with
forecasted expenses often ballooning on top of ad-hoc, unexpected costs that inevitably occur.
Review your budget structuring to ensure their alignment with the tenets and action items of
your strategy framework. Of course, not every dollar will end up dedicated to strategic plan
initiatives. Yet non-value-adding expenses should be analyzed and minimized, ensuring
resource allocation is linked to your top priorities and adjusted routinely as you become more
familiar with those purposeful contributions.

Implementing and Executing Changes in a Business Strategy

All the strategic planning in the world leads to this moment — implementing the
business strategy and staying on top of its progress through completion.
Implementation centers on translating goals into smaller action items, with teams
chiseling away at their assigned items, then consistently reporting performance for leadership
to assess progress and adopt any changes. Those adaptations are then communicated swiftly
and clearly back to the teams and departments executing them, typically through regularly
conducted strategic planning micro-meetings and strategic management software’s project
dashboards.
How do you create a fluid business plan that executes like clockwork? Consider these
strategic plan implementation building blocks to successfully execute — and even change —
your strategy.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

1. Establish a Formal Change Communication Workflow

Automated communications provide the ideal solution here. No business strategy will
come to fruition if teams and departments simply don’t know how they’re supposed to be
contributing to the plan — or worse, if what they’re currently undertaking adds to or detracts
from the organization’s strategic vision.
There are several ways to keep employees engaged and informed on changes with the
strategic plan, from its origins through each phase of implementation:
 Automated strategy status updates or reports: Created by the strategy management
office and sent to key department heads or directly to employees.
 Visual project trackers within the strategy software: Mimicking other project
management software, with user-friendly dashboards relaying the current statuses and
workflows of initiatives.
 Multimedia announcements: Keeping employees engaged through print, video, email
and other media on updated objectives, scope or deliverable, plus the wider impact of
these changes.
 Feedback channels: Ensuring all strategy is a two-way street, with employees’
thoughts, opinions and experiences valued.
2. Practice Prorated Report Timelines
Annual strategic reports don’t cut it. When business plans adapt, waiting months — or
even just weeks — to officially announce pivots silos teams and makes employees feel left
behind.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Any process or operational change to the business strategy will likely affect your staff
within days anyway. Withholding status reports because you’re adhering to formalities should
be done away with when you embrace living project timelines.
At a minimum, announce strategic plan reports every quarter. Even better, pick specific
action items straight from the strategy management framework and hold monthly meetings
reviewing its progress or fluxes, connecting how these changes will improve long-term
business outcomes.
3. Institutionalize Reporting Software and Benchmarked Measurements
Tracking and measuring the progress of action items in the overall strategic plan is
paramount to its continuous success — and one of the most cited reasons plans putter.
Without some digital repository centralizing project updates, it will be far more difficult
for any member of the organization to gather and assess data, update project components,
communicate horizontally with other departments and signal information to leadership. In other
words, no one will be on the same page. Siloed communication is the bane of modern business
planning and is best countered with a cohesive piece of reporting software that monitors
progress and shares process changes with all.
4. Hold Regular Status and Accountability Meetings

We know, we know. Another meeting? We can hear the sighs from here.
Yet one of the most challenging aspects of shifting a business plan often involves
communicating those changes downstream. What’s more, strategic changes must come with
a compelling “why,” one relevant to employees and aligned with the company’s cited values
and vision.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

In-person meetings remain a meaningful way to review shifting business processes

based in data, both for constituents within and outside the organization:
 Amongst the cross-functional leadership teams: Executive decisions can be
leveraged after reviewing performance feedback and benchmarked progress data in
person, all while still maintaining the integrity of the overall strategy management
framework.
 Within individual departments: Regularly conducted status meetings let teams
review resource allocations and process pain points in their daily activities against the
cited outcomes of the business strategy. It turns the overall plan from a static, top-down
set of directives to a collaborative endeavor employees associate and identify with their
roles.
5. Avoid Corporate Speak
Business jargon can easily come off as insincere or out of touch. In fact, industry
surveys find managers who use corporate speak during meetings and interactions with their
teams actually make their departments less productive, less motivated and more likely to
experience high rates of turnover.
When executing shifts in your business planning, it’s important to emphasize the
human. After all, the whole goal behind continuous business planning is to be able to tweak
and tailor processes fluidly after performance feedback, then funnel those changes seamlessly
back into daily operations. Using technical language and corporate speak when explaining
process shifts makes these conversations stiff and mechanical — the opposite of what’s needed.
6. Review Emerging Data Trends
Conducting regular reviews of performance feedback and data is the most objective way to
temperature check the execution of the business plan.
Employees and managers may feel everything is being managed perfectly. But when
performance metrics indicate otherwise, executive decision makers and the strategy
management office can rectify inefficiencies or discrepancies, then use the established
communication channels and management software to notify personnel of the “why” behind
plan shifts.
7. Consult With a Strategic Planning Firm

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Strategic planning consultants deploy personalized — and often proprietary — research

methods with one goal in mind — to make their clients an industry poster child for growth,
innovation and profitability.

Firm research directly translates into strategic planning by creating tangible goals suited
for your organization. Their objective, external lens can be the difference between a generic
business strategy plan and a comprehensive, substantive and fitting one.
Strategic planning firms offer many services that directly inform a fluid business planning
system, including:
 In-depth industry and market research
 Competitive analyses
 Transformational business modeling
 Wargaming
 Scenario planning and risk mitigation
 And more services

Learn How to Recognize and Update Business Opportunities as They Occur

Organizations today can’t practice agile planning without first establishing a successful
strategic vision. Doing so puts the proverbial cart before the horse — and prevents resources
from aligning with daily actions to create a truly value-adding, competitor-busting business
future.
Looking to get your business priorities straight? Proactive Worldwide provides one of
the most renowned, substantive intelligence-based strategic planning portfolios in the industry.
When you’re ready for research-backed insights delivering progressive strategic change tactics,
you’re ready for us.

Sales and Marketing Plan: Why Do You Need One?

A sales and marketing plan is a document that outlines strategies for creating awareness
of your product or service among a defined group of prospective buyers. It also describes
pricing and distribution structures that provide the highest anticipated return on investment.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

A successful sales and marketing plan is based on the estimated market share and sales
included in the business’s original business plan. It requires research into the demographics of
the intended customer base and an algorithm to determine pricing along with a well-defined
budget tied to a particular time frame (quarterly, annually, etc.). It should also specify the
advertising channels, such as social media, television spots or direct mail, with the highest
probability of successfully delivering your marketing messages relative to the money invested.
In addition, a sales and marketing plan establishes benchmarks that can guide you if
circumstances force you to change course. “Without a sound strategic plan in place,” financial
journalist Samantha Gluck notes, “those in charge of the sales and marketing responsibilities
may make rash decisions during times of uncertainty and stress that are not well thought out
and not best for business.”

How a Sales Plan Differs From a Marketing Plan

Wait. We just defined a “sales and marketing plan” as if it’s a single entity. Now we’re
breaking down the difference between a “sales” plan and a “marketing” plan as if they’re two
different things. What gives?
In reality, both of these perspectives are valid. Yes, a “sales” plan is distinct from a
“marketing” plan. But to be effective, the two plans need to be so closely linked that it helps to
think of them as part of a single overarching strategy as you write them. Basically, the
marketing portion of the strategy is designed to locate prospective customers and the sales
portion is designed to convert them into actual customers. One can’t succeed without the other.
So, with those qualifiers in mind, let’s break down both the differences and the similarities and
also look at different sales and marketing plan templates.

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan helps you figure out exactly where you’re trying to go so you can
determine how to get there. Opening a business without a marketing plan would be like starting
a car trip without a map, a GPS or the address of the location you’re trying to reach.
When writing your marketing plan it’s important to remember the difference between
strategy and execution. Email, for example, is not a marketing strategy; it’s simply a delivery

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

system for your marketing messages. If your marketing message is muddled, even a highly
targeted email list won’t produce good results. It will just result in an expensive failure. What
Thomas V. Bonoma wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 1984 still remains true: “Good
execution of bad strategy acts as the engine on a plane in a nosedive — it hastens the crash.”
Sales Plan
While your marketing plan determines who your customers are, the sales plan
determines how many there are and whether you can efficiently deliver your product in
sufficient numbers to be profitable.
In practice, this is often not as abstract as it sounds, especially among small businesses.
Let’s say you decide to open a pizza parlor with the idea of selling a good-quality pie at an
affordable price. In that case, your marketing plan is practically implicit. With most small
businesses, “Your brand should be instinctual by the time you even have your first customer
interaction,” said Curt Doherty, a member of the Forbes Business Development Council.
What matters far more in that case is the sales plan — determining how many
prospective customers there are within your geographic range, how many competitors you’ll
have and whether your “affordable” pizza will bring in enough revenue to cover your expenses.
In situations like that, Doherty said, “I've found that you can help keep the lights on by placing
a greater emphasis on your sales plan.”

Taking It Step by Step

Now that you know what’s involved, here are the specific steps you’ll need to write a
sales plan and a marketing plan. And again, because the two are so closely linked, you should
create them in parallel so that they are effectively a unified “sales and marketing plan.” Here
are some basic templates.
Marketing Template
 Always Include an Executive Summary
This describes your company’s reason for being. What’s the marketing opportunity that
led you to start your business, and what is your basic plan for executing it? Here you
briefly describe the strategy that you will then break down in greater detail.
 Define Your Target Market

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Who needs your product or service or at least will want it enough to pay for it? How
large is this market segment, where are they and how will you reach them? Conduct
a TAM analysis to help determine market segment size.
 Explain Your Differentiator
There are many different ways of expressing this concept, such as “unique selling
proposition.” It’s the thing that sets you apart from your competitors. Maybe you offer
a “boutique” version of a product that’s otherwise available only in standard, mass-
produced form. Or the opposite; maybe you offer a cheaper, mass-produced version of
a boutique product. Regardless, you have to be different enough in at least one key area
— price, quality, service or convenience — to stand out in your field.
 Attract Attention
Nailing the first three steps will mean nothing if you don’t have a plan for getting your
message in front of the right people at the right time and right place. In a B2B
environment, that means identifying the decision-makers. Once you’ve done that, it’s a
matter of tailoring your message in a simple, two-part format: “We feel your pain …
and we can solve it.” Also, as you refine your messaging, be alert to related pain points
within your target market that can form the basis of a growth strategy.
 Find Your Why
In a book of the same name, author Simon Sinek calls this “the most important step any
business can take.” You need to articulate your passion for your product. Because if
you’re not fully committed to what you’re selling, you can’t expect people to commit
to buying it.

Sales Template
 Pricing and Positioning
Like sales and marketing, pricing and positioning are actually separate considerations
that have to work in concert. Take fast food. The name “fast” connotes convenience —
an inexpensive meal that you can acquire quickly. A pricing structure for a full-service,
made-to-order meal that’s more aligned with the fast food approach would likely be a
shortcut to bankruptcy because the pricing and positioning are so far out of balance.

 Distribution Strategy

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Depending on the nature of your proposed business, this could be the most important
component of your entire plan. Do you have a method for delivering your product or
service to prospective customers in a cost-effective way? If you’re selling software as
a service (SaaS), the answer is probably yes. If you’re selling a tangible item that is
unusually large, heavy or requires hazardous materials, the answer is far more
complicated.

 Special Offers and Promotions

Once again, sales and marketing overlap. Think of the classic coupon. In one sense, a
coupon is a piece of marketing collateral: It’s created, printed and distributed among
your prospective customer base to raise awareness of your product. But in this case the
actual selling point is a reduction of the sales price in some form — either as a free trial,
50% off, BOGO (buy one, get one) or some other discount. Many businesses can benefit
from promotional opportunities that occur organically, such as back-to-school sales. Be
sure your sales and marketing plan includes these opportunities and budget for them
accordingly either by adding the cost of the marketing collateral or subtracting the
discount from anticipated sales revenue.

Tailor a Sales and Marketing Plan That’s Right for You

Your sales and marketing plan could be far more detailed than the basic templates
outlined here. But granularity for its own sake isn’t necessary. The goal is to figure out what
works for your particular business.
As Gluck observed, “Large companies produce in-depth sales and marketing strategies
that may include hundreds of pages and quarterly divisions. Smaller businesses usually have
smaller marketing budgets, so their strategic plans might have fewer than 10 pages. [But] the
brevity of the plans produced by smaller companies should not give the impression that writing
one is not important.”

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

And whether you write your sales plan and your marketing plan separately or together,
it’s vital that the sales and marketing components complement each other as part of your overall
company strategy.

R&D in Your Marketing Success

Marketing forms a crucial foundation for any business. You put in a lot of hard work to
build a team in order to develop your business. You also learn about your target audience, their
personas and the market competition around you.
But there is nothing much that you can do with all these efforts till you start marketing
your products. Marketing is the reason even small and medium enterprises are turning global
these days. Once you get a palpable picture of marketing, there comes an important factor of
research and development.
Research and development refer to the activities of investigation conducted by any
organization to either search or innovate new processes in their businesses.
The companies dealing with consumer goods spread across all sectors and industries
utilize this research and development to come up with innovative marketing styles and ways to
experience significant growth and improvements in their organization.
Research and development (R & D) also help in the significant amelioration of the
marketing of the products and services of a business.
For example, consider 3M’s Scotch bright, which is an example that stressed on the
hygiene factor for marketing its product. Similarly, many businesses and firms have converted
problems into beneficial marketing opportunities because of their R&D efforts.
Research and development are entirely different from other operations in any
organization that might focus on an immediate cause and effect.
However, it forms an important and extensive set of activities that is typically not
performed with the goal or ambition of immediate profit of a business. Instead, R&D focuses
on long-term profitability and marketing success, when used for any business.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

R & D has proven to be a valuable tool for the growth of your business. It begins with
researching your market and the needs of your target customers. And then forming strategies
based on the collected data for better marketing of products for the business.

Market research suggests that businesses that employ research and development in their
organization have a greater chance of achieving marketing success than those who don’t. It
also helps your business by increasing productivity and providing an edge over other market
competitors.
This competitive advantage can be on account of performing in some or the other way,
such that your competitors are not able to replicate.
So, if you are wondering about the role and implications of research and development
for your marketing department and strategies, keep reading because the following may open
new arenas and styles for your business in order to guarantee a complete marketing success:

Improved Marketing Efficiency

Talking about marketing refers to dealing with the return on investment for any product
or service. Businesses don’t often realize that they are throwing away money without much
increase in their return on investment.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Research and development can be used to back all your marketing efforts. As a result
of this, businesses would be spending money on marketing as per the requirement.
The key role of market research and development here is to maximize the benefit of
each dollar that you invest in marketing.

Unparalleled Innovation in Marketing

Innovation is the key differentiating factor of your business from other competitors in
the market. Your brand reputation is one of the most important things that come to play when
you decide to establish yourself as the leader in your market.
At this point, innovation turns out to be a major contributor in your brand reputation.
With the help of research and development to understand the vital needs of your market and its
ongoing trends, you can easily place your business in a position to cater to those vital needs of
the market.
This practice also helps in projecting the image of your brand as an innovative business.
R&D thus, gives you the tools and tricks to gain exposure and increased authority in the market.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Realization of Internal Issues while Forming a Marketing Strategy

As an entrepreneur, there are chances that you might not be able to look at some
important issues related to your brand that might be slowly killing your marketing efforts.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Petty issues such as poor quality image, inconsistent voicing etc remain unnoticed for many
businesses. Market research and development can come to your rescue in a situation like this.
It provides you numerous objective ways to access your brand’s marketing
characteristics and other vital issues from an outsider’s point of view. This life-saving
opportunity can help you identify and fix problems before they become critical and start
hampering your marketing efforts.

Great Help to Overcome the Competitors

Once an organization starts employing research and development for their business,
there are many other advantages they can gain apart from achieving their marketing success. R
& D can help you overcome your competitors in the market.
Once you get to know the market around you with the help of R & D, you can easily
promote your brand using the ongoing trends and tactics of the market and perform even better
than your competitors.
In other words, you can use the existing market vocabulary to advertise your brand.
You can directly address and cater to their concerns or find innovative uses of the existing
product and services in the market as compared to your competitors.
Research and development ensure that your efforts earn you improved conversions and
lead generations along with making sure that your marketing is reaching the proper audience
that your business intends to target.

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LEARNING MODULE IN TECHNOPRENEURSHIP
AGUSAN DEL SUR STATE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
College of Engineering and Information Sciences
MAIN CAMPUS, BUNAWAN AGUSAN DEL SUR

Image via: QAT Global

Marketing research and development has quite many benefits in coming to a definite
and successful marketing plan for any business. All these benefits of R&D are not just limited
to your marketing success but also reach and improve every corner of your efforts in your
business.
Though, it can also be used as a tool for the overall modernization and recuperation for
your brand.

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plan.html#:~:text=A%20sales%20and%20marketing%20plan%20is%20a%20document%20t
hat%20outlines,highest%20anticipated%20return%20on%20investment.

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