Several years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a speech given by the vice-president of marketing for a large food manufacturing and distribution company. As he talked about his company’s retail cookie division, he pointed out that this segment of the company had lost money for the last three years in a row. I remember thinking to myself that this person was definitely not planning for positive results. It was more like he was planning for negative results and hoping to make it up in volume! It also occurred to me that probably no one in their right mind would go into the cookie business under such circumstances.
Wally “Famous” Amos, founder of the Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie Corporation, decided to plan for positive results under this same set of circumstances. He concluded that there was big money to be made by manufacturing and selling cookies if he did things right. He determined that if he presented the prospective customer with a cookie that tasted even better than the ones Mother used to make he could charge premium prices and still sell all the cookies he could produce. Planning for positive results allowed Wally Amos to take this country by storm with his chocolate chip cookies. In fact, his success as a cookie entrepreneur was so phenomenal that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Not only did his customers not complain about those premium prices, they were happy to pay them!
As important as it is, planning is one of those activities for which people have a love-hate feeling. Most people agree planning is an activity essential to the success of just about anything. On the other hand, many of these same people see planning as an unpleasant task that they would just as soon not have to bother with. When it comes to selling, most people would rather sell than plan. This is one of the key reasons why most people who sell things aren’t as successful as they would like to be.
Planning can be viewed as an exciting and worthwhile activity, but only when the results you are trying to achieve are brought clearly into focus. The five specific steps of the planning process are discussed below.
