A catering sales plan is just like a roadmap. It’s a guide that contains strategies and tactics to help the catering business achieve its sales goals. The sales goal usually comes in the form of sales revenue, but it could also be in the form of sales in terms of quantity or the number of clients or businesses that were converted into closed sales. Sales planning should be flexible enough to meet the business’s needs, operational, or sales requirements since all businesses’ needs are unique. Because of this, there is no strict format to follow when creating a catering sales plan. To be effective though, a sales plan needs to have the following essential elements. 1. Executive Summary A catering sales plan executive summary contains a brief background about the catering business. It briefly explains the catering business’s sales goals and objectives and what are the steps to go about achieving those goals. The executive summary also briefly describes the services offered by the catering business, including its management or organizational structure. Executive summaries often contain a mission and vision statement. A mission statement states the purpose of having a sales plan. It also reflects the catering business’s culture and values. Canada’s Elizabethan Catering Services has a good example of a mission statement. A few lines of their mission statement go: “To provide exceptional value to our customers, using the best and freshest ingredients, superb service staff and equipment. To strive to be the leader in the Catering Business, by constantly striving to be the best at what we do, and by searching for ways to improve.” A vision statement explains what the catering business hopes to achieve in sales, usually within a given timeframe. It serves as a motivation, a call to action for the business’s owner and employees to work together in accomplishing the business’s sales goals. Impressions Catering, a leading Australian catering business, has a vision statement that goes: “To be a leading provider of quality delicious foods and impeccable customer service by offering a versatile and flexible service with consistency and presentation that will leave a lasting Impression. To build an outstanding reputation that we exceed in every service through our dedicated to the success of our customers' important occasions and creating memorable events.” 2. Market Analysis A market analysis of a sales plan looks into the condition of the market, including its target customer market, as well as its existing competitors’ profiles. For a catering business, its target market is very diverse and very broad. It can be of any group of people, of all ages, of all lifestyles, et cetera. If needed, checking the customer target market can be done by doing a demographics classification, which is done by classifying customer groups into age, gender, income, lifestyle, culture, affiliations, et cetera. The market analysis also checks if there is a niche in the market for the particular catering business that you offer. It considers the size of the market, the current market trends, customer patterns when hiring catering services, including the regulations and barriers to entry factors. A SWOT analysis can also be performed when studying the market. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The strengths of the catering business are what made it stand out from the competition. It could be in the form of unique food specialty or preparation that they offer, their added-value services, or their innovative marketing strategies. Weaknesses are those aspects of the catering business that need improvement, or those aspects that are limiting the success of the catering business in terms of sales goals. It could be in the form of lack of funding, lack of manpower, or lack of equipment needed to run the catering service. Opportunities are those features that the business can leverage to boost its chances of successfully achieving its sales goals. These opportunities could be using the current advertising trend of social media or social networking platforms to increase customers or clients base or using influencers to promote the catering business. Threats are those factors that could potentially harm the catering business. The threats could be the increasing presence of competition, lack of investors, and/or strict local business or licensing requirements. 3. Marketing and Sales Strategies The marketing and sales strategies should be anchored on the goals and objectives of the sales plan. A marketing strategy is all about reaching out to potential customers and converting them into actual buying customers. A sales strategy is all about how you position the product in the market. It’s about creating a need within the target market. It’s also about how your sales team can reach their sales quota. An example of a marketing strategy for a catering business is to build an online presence by creating a website, or leveraging social media or social networking sites to increase the market’s awareness about the services that you offer. Aside from creating an online presence, SEO marketing is also another strategy that you can utilize. SEO, or search engine optimization, is about ranking the website to be on top of every keyword search on catering. Making sure that you have a good, trained team answering customer queries and monitoring customer reviews and testimonies through your online media is also another marketing strategy. Sales strategy is product positioning. An example of a catering sales strategy is to host free tasting events. This will allow potential customers to get a taste of the kinds of menu or dishes that you will be serving. Referral or cross-promoting is also another sales strategy. Catering often works together with photographers, florists, event planners, et cetera. During these events, you can hand out brochures as a way of promoting your business. Or, you could have the other groups such as the event planners to promote your business along with theirs, and you could do the same for these groups as well when you’re promoting your own business. 4. Financial Plan The financial plan section in a sales plan describes the current financial condition of the catering business. This is the section that is reviewed by potential investors or by lending institutions to check on how financially stable the catering business is and how feasible and measurable are the strategies to be able to achieve the business’s sales goals. The financial plan section oftentimes contains a cash flow statement, a balance sheet, and a financial projection. Cash flow reflects the capital versus the expenditure. The balance sheet includes the assets versus the liabilities. The financial projection is a financial estimate of where the business is heading in terms of profit or revenue based on capital, expenses, and the projections coming from the marketing and sales strategies.