One of the greatest challenges for a sales manager to overcome is the temptation to construct plans based solely on egocentric ambition or antiquated historical data. Yes, it is true that if you are unaware of history’s mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them. But it is even more important to understand the current changes or trends unfolding across the venue in which you are striving to succeed. The starting point is to construct a clear image of ‘‘today.’’ Later you will put these images into motion through trend analysis, but for now, let’s just think about the current environment. There are several contributing perspectives you could review, but let’s focus on the following:

• Technology (Hardware and/or Software). The accelerating evolution of technology is placing a great deal of stress on business planning for two reasons. First, technology is expensive, so it’s of great concern to all as to how long any selected generation of technology will be applicable before it becomes out of date. Second, an effective planner attempts to predict future directions, but that’s amazingly difficult to do when one tries to picture a technology that hasn’t been invented yet and lacks standards that will align the field of potential providers. One only has to think about the history of Beta versus VHS, the current battles over wireless and voice recognition models, or (perhaps) the coming standards setting requirements of quantum computing, hologram imaging, and implanted proximity biochips to understand why decision makers are so concerned.

• Globalization. The world is not actually getting smaller, but it sure seems that way. Just turn your laptop computer over and look at all the countries that have contributed to its design, construction, and approval. The natural contributors that come to mind might include China, Japan, or Taiwan. But take a closer look. In addition to those countries, you might be surprised to see Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, Israel, Argentina, Croatia, India, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, the Philippines, or Slovenia. We have practiced international trade for thousands of years, but it has taken technology to allow a true, real-time global economy to function. That presents two challenges for the sales manager/planner. First, you must now prepare to compete against new global players who come into your home market, often from a well-protected home market of their own that gives them some economic advantage. This is challenging in that you often do not know enough about them to create an effective counter-competitive strategy. Second, your own domestic customers are going global, and they expect you to support them, in some manner, around the world. Going global may sound exciting, but be careful what you wish for—you just might get it. Going global can be a lot more challenging than most organizations believe.

• Competition. In the past, you probably knew a great deal about the competition because your competitors lived in the same ‘‘neighborhood’’ as you did. In those smaller, geographically contiguous markets, our rivals often looked, walked, and talked like you. But that has all changed as the result of the growth of technology and globalization. You now find yourselves competing against virtual rivals that pop up out of nowhere and present an impressive face, via a Web site, to the customers you had thought were your most protected. Your virtual rivals may look as big as IBM, but are actually just three people working out of a garage in Brazil. Thanks to the Internet and FedEx, they can provide offerings to customers anywhere in the world overnight—just like us (maybe)!

  So what do you know about them? Are they partially owned by a foreign government or considered a protected national treasure, making it very hard, in either case, to collect competitive information about them? How important is their competing product to their overall business? How do they view themselves, and how do they make decisions? What is their competing cost? Their structure and distribution model? How do they view us?

• Customers. About 100 years ago, Henry Ford deployed the concept of mass production. I’m sure he wasn’t really the first, but he certainly got credit for it in the new industrial age that was blossoming at the time. Up until Mr. Ford’s time, automobiles were the playthings of the rich, who were the only ones who could afford them. In being able to apply the golden age of manufacturing to the benefit of the average consumer, Ford and his peers required absolute consistency in processes to deliver the exciting new offerings at a reasonable price. He best exemplified the need by stating that buyers could have any color Ford they wanted as long as it was black. He was in control!

  As America grew, and changed, people like Henry Ford found it harder and harder to control the requirements of a consumer who was moving out of the cities and into the pasture lands—better known as the suburbs. Intermediaries were needed to cover this broader, more distributed marketplace. Ford deployed dealers. Others chose to sell through retailers, wholesalers, and distributors. Subtly, the power shifted in the supply chain from the manufacturers to the retailers. Consumers began to care more about where they bought it than about who manufactured it. They wanted convenience in purchasing, and outlets like Sears, Graybar, and, later, Home Depot gained the upper hand. As soon as these intermediaries recognized their new power, they demanded that the manufacturers design and create the products the way they wanted to sell them or they would go to a no-name producer to make them the way they wanted. Americans moved away from mass production and toward mass customization. They even went so far as to demand their own branded labels on products produced by others (e.g., Albert-sons private labels, Gap, and CVS).

  Over the last decade, though, the shift has occurred again. Now, thanks to technology and globalization, consumers are no longer bound by the offerings of outlets within their geographic area. If prospective buyers don’t see their pet’s favorite rice and lamb stew at a local pet-food store, they can go online and find someone in the world who does have what they want. And, thanks again to overnight shipping, they can have it in their homes or offices the next day. With this new-found power, consumers are telling the world they no longer want to be treated like everyone else; they want to be sold to in a manner that is unique to them. Not like their relatives and not like their neighbors. They are now demanding that they be treated as a market of one. The problem for a planner is to understand how that market of one views value and how it goes about making purchase decisions.

• Demographics. It is nearly impossible for a business to integrate the advantages of mass production, the variations of mass customization, and the diversity of markets of one into a competitive sales strategy. Somehow you have to find enough markets of one, even if they are not contiguously located, to take advantage of state-of-the-art production techniques. The problem is that old models of market demographics are based on mass customization models and can’t account for the diversity within a group or category. For example, the fastest growing demographic group (and largest minority) in the United States is a grouping entitled ‘‘Hispanic.’’ In the past, businesses produced Hispanic-oriented advertising to cover this targeted market. But ask yourself about the similarities and differences among Hispanics born and raised in Tucson, those born and raised in Miami, and those born and raised in Brooklyn. The differences between them need to be explored as much as their similarities. In addition to cultures, you must consider gender, age, education, hobbies, interests, professions, and so much more.

  What do you really know about your customers? How do they make decisions? What knowledge must they have to make a decision in your favor? Values, belief systems, and judgment paradigms are not the exclusive realm of the end consumer; they are well entrenched in corporate offices, too.

• Lifestyles. Once you decide what your perfect customers look like, you need to recognize the changes that are going on in lifestyles, not just in the United States, but around the world. Of course, people are more mobile and distributed. That reality may have already sunk in as you manage a virtual home office salesperson in another time zone. But think about this lifestyle change: people are living longer. The question that presents itself to us is, what part of life are you extending? Certainly not childhood or adolescence or even early adulthood. Old age has certainly been extended, but there seems to be another focus these days. When I was a child, you retired at age 65 because you were burnt out. By 70, you were in a retirement or convalescent home because you could no longer care for yourself. Not very good golden years, were they? One of the greatest changes in lifestyles these days is the expansion of the upper-middle-age bracket. How many sixty-five- or seventy-year-olds do you still find actively contributing to an organization or even starting their own new business? A whole lot of them! But if that is the current trend, how will it impact your sales plan? Also a whole lot!

• Psychographics (Consumer Sentiment). There are a lot of variations around this terminology, but I like to consider it the mood of the consumer. How consumers feel about ‘‘things’’ is extremely important to the supply chain. If they aren’t happy, in most cases they aren’t spending money. Some experts contend that there are only two groups that are not affected by the end consumer—the military and the government. I believe that those two groups are also affected because politicians know consumers vote with their emotional feelings about issues they perceive as affecting them, so they had better manage spending in line with the majority of consumer expectations.

• Firmographics (Business Sentiment). Another trend to consider is that of the mood of business, or more correctly, of the business leadership. Often times, this mood is out of alignment with the mood of the consumer mentioned previously. For example, when the economic bubble began to burst toward the end of the twentieth century, consumers thought it was a momentary snag and kept on spending. Business leaders—at least the intelligent ones—knew immediately that they were in trouble. They had built an organizational or corporate infrastructure designed to support the needs of the bubble economy. When the bubble burst, businesses were too big and too expensive to run in the lean and mean economy. What followed were layoffs, restructurings, and bankruptcies (in addition to the broken promises made to employees and shareholders). The businesses you sell to or through will not buy or buy more until their sentiment improves and is once again in alignment with consumer sentiment.

• Economy. Quick, which economy was better? The bubble economy of the 1990s or the bottomed-out economy of the early 2000s? Not sure? Neither am I. There does seem to be a turnaround on the horizon, but if it comes, it will be slow due to a lack of trust generated from so many false promises by pseudoexperts espousing unethical, forged financial forecasts. The bubble economy might have appeared to be better, but it was doomed to failure because of poor attention to detail, including bad or nonexistent business plans.

  As a sales manager, either way you look at it, it is challenging to figure out where the current trend in the economy is going and what it might mean to your strategic sales plans.

• Regulatory Practices. No matter what your political leanings are, you seem to be living in an increasingly regulated world. From consumers through manufacturers, every day brings new guidelines, regulations, and standards. To top if off, thanks to globalization, you may find your products, market approach, or personnel being regulated by governments or industry committees from halfway around the world. Just look at the raging controversy over genetically modified foods or the trade barrier wars at the World Trade Organization.

• Business Practices. Based on what you have just reviewed, there are a lot of pressures on the marketplace that you are trying to sell into. There are also pressures on the company you work for, your suppliers, your partners, your distributors, your competitors, and your customers. As these pressures, from technological to regulatory, have evolved, businesses have attempted to address the changes with adaptations to the way they practice their profession. You now have such things as laptop and desktop computers, pooled resource networks, personal digital assistants, e-mail, voice mail, wireless links, global pagers and walkie-talkies, tele-conferences, contract employees, and virtual or home offices. The struggle has been to incorporate these new practices into traditional practices. Unfortunately, most businesses have responded to this practice change by relying more on activity-based measurements than on performance measurements.