How To Tackle A New Federal Sales Territory [30-60-90 Day Plan]

Whether you are new to Federal sales or a seasoned pro, starting a new Federal sales job can feel overwhelming but an effective 30-60-90 Day Plan can help create and prioritize your sales objectives and goals, set clear expectations and professional accountability, and maximize revenue.

What Is A 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan? 

A 30-60-90 day plan lays out a clear course of action for a new employee during the first 30, 60, and 90 days of their new job. By setting concrete goals and a vision for one's abilities at each stage of the plan, you can make the transition into a new organization smooth and empowering.

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By creating a detailed 30-60-90 plan, you can better focus your efforts toward understanding and ultimately selling into your new territories. A clear plan also helps you stay aware of and accountable to your goals amid the hustle of onboarding. The last thing any federal sales rep wants is to hit the end of their onboarding period and have little in the pipeline to justify their role moving forward.

Components Of A 30-60-90 Day Federal Sales Plan 

Your 30-60-90 day federal sales plan is a blueprint that explains how you will turn your region or location into a profitable operation. This is a crucial framework as it helps you and your organization target the right customers and implement goals for revenue.  

Each section of this plan includes specific goals and priorities, and desired outcomes you should consider when building your own plan.

First 30 Days: The Learning Phase 

Often times, Federal sales rep want to jump right into selling when they move to a new organization, but the most effective sales reps realize they can't sell what they don't know. The first 30 days of your new role should be dedicated to learning and there is quite a bit to learn when it comes to Federal sales. You need to develop an understanding of:

• Your organization's sales rules
• The technology available
• The product(s) you are selling
• Your competitors
• The marketing support/collateral available
• The territory/customers/leads assigned to you
• Your current pipeline and customer titles that are in the decision making roles
• Previous customer purchases and their buying behavior

You will also need to review the Federal sales components available, such as ensuring your marketing collateral speaks the value of your solution to your Federal customer and verifying that your organization has the right product certifications and your Federal customer can actually procure and use your solution. Additionally, if you are an OEM, review your Federal reseller program and understand the margins your partners are receiving. Alternatively, if you are a Federal reseller, review your OEMs solutions and understand the margins your partners are receiving.

This list is certainly not exhaustive but a good starting point for gathering all the areas you need to commit yourself to learning. Your first week on the job should be dedicated to gathering this list and crafting your unique education plan with clear, specific and measurable goals. By the end of your first 30 days, you should: 

• Complete the onboarding process and get access to all the tools, apps, and accounts used for sales  
• Define the high-level priorities for your team, and your company 
• Define the market or environment of your federal sales territory  
• Study and fully understand the demographics of your buyers
• Develop the ideal customer profile for your federal sales territory
• Understand your competition and their selling points   
• Establish relationships with co-workers and colleagues throughout the organization

Review everything you have learned with your manager to ensure you are understanding the tools available to you, the processes you are to follow and that you are not missing anything that the company requires of you to accomplish during the remainder of your first 90 days.

Next 30 Days: The Planning Phases

After the first 30 days, you need to focus primarily on building your sales plan. Some things to consider for this portion of your 30-60-90 Day Federal Sales Plan include:

• What is my total revenue goal for the month, quarter, year?
• What is the likely average dollar sale and how many sales will I need to achieve my revenue goal?
• What is the likely close rate on opportunities and how many opportunities will I need to hit my goal?
• How many leads convert into opportunities and how many leads will I need to hit my sales goals?   

The answers to these questions will help you understand if you have enough existing customers and leads to achieve your goals or if you need to start bringing in more leads within your territory. This is also a good time to start mapping your territory using our Territory Planning Tool to help you get a better idea of your whitespace and opportunities to grow your business.

Once you understand how many additional leads you need to hit your sales goals, you will need to plan how you will get those leads. Some ideas include:

• Partnering with the marketing team on an advertising campaign targeted to your territories or on Federalizing collateral to better speak to your audience
• Leveraging LinkedIn to message potential leads directly
• Using Federal Sales tools such as Leadership Connect or Bloomberg Government to gain contact information for potential leads and cold calling / emailing them

When it comes to generating new Federal sales leads, cold calling or emailing is often a huge component of any plan. That being said, generating a list of compelling events can be especially vital in having your messages received positively and generate a reply back. It is also helpful to create a few sales email templates so you don't need to start your message from scratch each time.

This portion of your plan should also include a process for reviewing your progress with either your manager or a more established federal sales rep within the organization. If you aren't receiving enough replies to your outreach or positive response to your product demos, you want to remedy the problem quickly before it becomes too difficult to overcome. This is where finding someone to review your sales process can be extremely beneficial.

By the end of your next 30 days, you should have a:

• Target number of new leads to contact each day
• Strategy for generating those leads
• Series of sales email templates to leverage in your follow up
• Process for reviewing your sales efforts with a more experienced rep or manager

Final 30 Days: The Contributor Phases

Every 30-60-90 day plan should culminate with the employee evolving into a contributing member of the organization. At this point, you thoroughly understand your role and the resources available to you, you have a plan for hitting your federal sales goals and you should have been executing on that plan for a short time now. These final 30 days should be spent evaluating your sales tactics and finding ways to improve them. This could mean finding tools to automate outreach or optimizing your prospect list with larger or more strategic clients. Fortunately, you will have your own data to analyze and tailor to make improvements that will impact your (and your company's) bottom line. Some focus areas for your final 90 days can include:  

• Developing an optimized prospecting list 
• Soliciting feedback from prospects, sales team members, and customers  
• Refining your sales strategy  
• Performing a sales forecast for the rest of the year 

Most importantly, this last 90 days should stand as a reminder that you can always improve. The learning, planning and execution phases do not stop after your first three months. To be an effective federal sales person you need to be committed to always learning and improving. This is the only way you will continue to grow your federal sales quarter over quarter, year over year.

If you want to become your best Federal salesperson, considering joining the KevinFederal community of Federal salespeople. KevinFederal is uniquely designed to help individuals and organizations close more Federal product sales by providing Federally specific sales content and collaboration with other Federal salespeople.