I’ve recently customized individual business plan templates for several client sales teams. It is surprising how few sales organizations ask their people to draft annual sales (business) plans. I am huge of fan of having every member of the sales team write and then present their plans to senior management, or even better, to the entire sales team.

Why Individual Business Plans?

  I remember the first time I ran a half marathon, I took off from the start line and ran, no pre-run strategy, no game plan, I just took off, and at about the 16 KM mark, I ran out gas and dragged myself to the finish line.  While I still had a respectable finish for a 50 year old former smoker, I also knew there had to be a better way.

After a bit of reading, I discovered a process described as 10 – 1, the idea being you run at race pace for ten minutes, then ease off for one minute, allowing you to recover mentally and physically, and ready yourself for the next 10 minutes.

As you are probably already aware of, there are a ton of project management solutions available via the cloud. Probably the most famous being BaseCamp by 37Signals, but what other affordable solutions are out there for your business? I've build a list of 5 project management apps that I recommend you take a look at. They all differ in their own ways, see for yourself. The apps are not ranked in any particular order.