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9 Stunning Sales Business Plan Templates to Close Deals

Written by: Orana Velarde

When sales and marketing teams work together, amazing things can happen for a business. Take, for example, the creation of an integral sales business plan that covers not only the goals the team aspires to but also all the data to support the actions, timelines, roadmaps and org charts.

Your business plan for sales and marketing activities is the guideline by which both teams undertake their tasks, aiming for a common goal. Creating a sales business plan collaboratively can help the teams see the big picture faster and be ready for any eventuality along the way.

In this guide, we will share nine business plan templates to help you build the perfect plan for your teams to work with. Share it digitally with your sales and marketing teams; they will be more productive and close more deals.

Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is a sales business plan, what is the sales business planning process, what goes in a sales business plan template, 9 business sales plan templates, sales plan faqs.

• A sales business plan is a document that outlines the goals, strategies and tactics of a company’s sales department, including current state and future plans.
• The sales business planning process includes figuring out the scope, organizing the team and assigning roles, collecting critical information in a centralized location, setting up branded templates, customizing the templates and collaborating with the team to finalize the document.
• The five different types of strategic sales planning are goal-oriented planning, account-based planning, product planning, relationship planning and sales process planning.
• Explore the nine templates provided according to sales business plan examples and choose the one that matches your sales goals.
• Sign up for Visme to create your sales business plans and all your sales and marketing collateral without needing any design skills.

A sales business plan—sales plan for short—is a document or presentation that defines the strategies your team will undertake to close deals, retain clients and bring in new leads. With a business plan , sales are contrastingly better overall.

Each section defines the steps toward hitting milestones and achieving goals. It lays a forecast for all activities that have to do with selling and hitting sales targets. The team members who benefit the most from a sales business plan are the sales reps and marketing strategists. It gives them all a vision of the big picture, a mission to aim for and a roadmap to achieving the goal.

Overall, a well-crafted sales business plan is crucial for optimizing the sales cycle and achieving success in the competitive world of sales.

To create a business plan for sales activities, follow an industry-standard format and add your team's unique content plus the company’s branded elements. Build a sales action plan based on your strategies and goals, backed up by your chosen sales plan template .

Here’s the path to take:

1. Figure out the scope

First, you need to know the scope of possibilities for the sales business plan you’re working on.

To figure this out, you need to answer these questions:

• What do you intend to cover in your sales plan?
• What aspects of the business will the sales plan cover?
• How far can this plan take you?
• Will it span weeks, months, a quarter, or an entire year?
• How many people will need to work together from how many teams?

This is the perfect opportunity to use mind maps . Visualizing your scope with mind maps makes it easy for you to organize the information and communicate it with everyone. And if you want to gather ideas from your sales team, brainstorming is the way to go.

Read this article to learn how to maximize your brainstorming meetings using online whiteboards.

Brainstorm the sales plan with your team using Visme’s infinite whiteboard . Our infinite whiteboard supports real-time collaboration and has more than enough space for you to lay out all the information.

Once you’ve mapped out your scope, create an outline for the overall plan. The outline will be the foundation for the pages and sections in your sales business plan. The next section, “What goes in a business plan” includes a list of essential sections that will help create a business plan for sales.

2. Organize the team and roles within the team

Part of the planning includes organizing a group of people who will work together to meet the goals laid out in the plan. Create a branded org chart visualizing team roles and responsibilities. Include this chart on a page in your sales plan; make it part of the process.

Using hotspots and hyperlinks, connect each team member's photo to their task list on monday.com or your favorite productivity platform.

Do you need more people to achieve the goals you’re pitching? Use this template to assign roles and tasks to team members.

3. Collect all information, analysis and data in one digital location.

No plan gets anywhere without data. Research, analysis, and investigation are your best friends at this point. Collect all the data you need and organize it in an accessible way. This will help immensely when building the sales plan .

Gather raw data about your current sales activities and performance, competitors, user persona, target market, industry analysis and more. Keep all visual documentation and relevant research samples inside a folder in your Visme workspace and name it accordingly.

Give access to those folders only to people involved in the project. The permission settings are in the brand controls for your workspace.

When you take advantage of the workspace organization features in your Visme account, you can plan your team's activity productively.

4. Set up a branded template

Are you regularly creating the same document more than once to share with different people? Branded templates are your secret weapon for any visual asset creation task. It saves time and serves as the guideline for all future versions of that document.

Applying your brand to industry templates is simple. First, pick one of our professionally designed templates, and then use our intuitive editor to change the color scheme, fonts and other design elements. You can also create a master layout to control fonts and logo placements.

Better yet, try Visme's Brand Wizard feature . Input your website URL and follow the steps. In the end, you’ll have a full set of templates with your brand colors and fonts.

5. Create each page in the document/slide in the deck

Transfer content from the outline to the document, section by section. Analyze and customize the visualization of each slide or page so it's optimized for the story you will tell. Yes, even sales plans can use storytelling techniques to be functional and effective. It’s the single most important communication tool in your arsenal.

Customize the sections, pages and slides with all the design elements available inside your Visme editor. Tap into all the interactive features to create an interactive sales business plan experience or make your digital PDF more engaging.

Take note of all the pages and slides as you create them to help you build the "table of contents" page. Use hyperlinking to let readers navigate the sales business plan however they wish.

6. Collaborate with the team

Involve the teams from the start. Task them with providing information or creating sections of the plan that pertain to their sector. Create the pages together, tag team members and leave comments to share information.

Ask managers for feedback through the Visme workspace; send them a live link to the project where they can leave notes and comments for edits.

Use a template to create an org chart that explains and details everyone’s role in the plan moving forward. When you make the process, plan and action collaborative, the team culture is strengthened. It’s a win-win in all directions.

7. Finalize and Share Your Plan

Take care of the last edits and proofread all the content. Double-check all image permissions and finalize all the layouts. Now that all the slides or pages are ready, it’s time to share and present the finished project. Use Presenter Studio to add a personalized message to the sales plan presentation, which is ideal for remote teams.

How do you wish to share the sales business plan with your team?

If there's any degree of interactivity in your plan, digital is the way to go. In the settings tab, publish your Visme project to the web and generate a live link to share with anyone you wish.

Download or share your sales business presentation as a video, a flip book, an interactive PDF or an interactive digital experience. All of these and more are possible with Visme.

There are templates, and then there are branded templates. A regular template has a color palette chosen by our designers for anyone to use. A branded template has all your company colors and fonts ready to fill up with content and finalize.

Here's a comprehensive list of the actual slides or pages in a sales business plan template. These apply to the document or presentation format of a top-down sales business plan.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

 Start with the stunning cover page, then follow up with an interactive table of contents and other pages such as:

• Executive summary. Summarize your company goals, sales objectives, revenue targets, and top-level strategies. This lays the foundation for the rest of your document.
• Business goals (SMART goals & KPIs). Provide clear goals that you'll use to guide your sales plan activities and resources. 
• Current sales performance.  Use data visualization to present an overview of your current sales performance. 
• Industry and market overview.  Provide actionable insights on data or trends to support your sales plan.
• Description of sales strategies and tactics.  Break down the sales techniques that will be used to execute your plan.
• Customer segments.  Define your customer persona , target audience or segmentation, answering the question, "Who do you plan to sell to."
• SWOT Analysis.  Take a look at your sales team or brand's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and potential threats. 
• Resources and team capabilities. Using the organizational chart , visualize the team roles and list resources to accomplish your goal.
• Timeframe for execution.  Provide an estimated timeframe you'll need to execute your sales plan. 
• Budget.  State how much you plan to spend or need to accommodate your sales plan's resources.  

Here’s the collection of sales business plan examples you’ve been looking for. They are available in different selling styles, covering an array of industries. Simply add your brand content with elements of storytelling to make it unforgettable.

If time is running out or you need a speedy start for your sales business plan, Visme's AI business plan generator can get it done in just a few minutes.

These business sales plans are a great starting point for sales managers looking for more templates to use with their team.

1. New Product Sales Plan

Plan the sales strategy for a new product with a new product sales plan template. Put together a strategy to promote the new product to existing clients and new prospects. Look at the data from previous campaigns and use it as the foundation for future product launches and sales plans.

The document-style sales business plan template below has all the pages you need to share information about the products, the goals, the KPIs to follow and the team in charge of getting it done. Finally, there are data pages for the budget and market analysis.

2. SaaS Sales Plan

SaaS companies need effective sales plans to grow their client base and increase quarterly revenue. A comprehensive sales plan for a SaaS company needs specific sections for each item and clear strategies for reaching team goals. Link to the materials the sales team will use, like sales playbooks and surveys .

This sales plan sample template, designed especially for SaaS companies, concentrates on the strengths, opportunities and unique selling points. The color blocks and data widgets offer a quick overview of the foundation, goals and team in charge of taking care of it.

Beyond creating a sales plan, you want to visualize your sales pipeline to see where your sales prospects are in the purchasing process.

3. 30-60-90-day Sales Plan

Maximize the efficiency of your sales team by utilizing this comprehensive sales action plan template. This 30 60 90 day sales plan example template is based on the idea of time. The strategies in the plan are laid out in three sections of one month each. Roadmaps have a timeframe, and there are three sets of goals. The purpose is to integrate new technology better or train a new sales rep into the team.

Get the most from your 30-60-90 sales business plan with the template below. Each page concentrates on the dedicated time period, explaining everything expected from the employee or the team.

4. Territory Sales Plan

Territory sales business plans are based on a specific geolocation or localization where the sales will occur. You need this type of sales plan if your company has client bases in different areas of the country or world. Culturally, each location can have different approaches and sales tactics. Use the dynamic fields feature to reuse territory sales presentations and easily change the location information.

Across nine pages in a purple color scheme, this territory sales plan is ready for your team’s detailed strategic planning. Create a document per location, or use interactivity to create hotspots that change the data or information according to the reader’s choice.

5. Business Development Sales Plan

Strategic business development can mean increasing client reach, improving business partnerships and many other business activities that increase revenue. Using this business development sales plan, your team can strategize different approaches to achieve positive goals.

In the business development sales plan template below, you’ll find all the graphic organizers to help your team see the big picture across different factors. Create timelines , Gantt charts and roadmaps to organize tasks and measure goals.

6. Market Expansion Sales Plan

Expanding the market is a large part of many sales strategies. And it also needs a solid sales business plan for the team and higher-ups to know what they can expect. To expand your target market efficiently, you’ll need to do a lot of research. All the data you collect goes on the pages of the market expansion sales plan in attractive data visualizations and infographic layouts.

Get inspired to set bold market expansion goals with this colorful and clean-cut template design. Each page has a specific function and purpose, and charts and data visualizations grace the pages without visual obstacles. This template is great for fast and easy information sharing.

7. Revenue-based Sales Plan

The name of this sales plan says it all. The entirety of this plan stems from revenue-how much there is, how much the company wants, and how to get it. These are ideal for sales teams that separate the big picture into actionable parts.

With the template below, your team can create an actionable sales plan that moves the needle forward. The angled leading lines on each page take the reader on a visual journey across goals and timelines to success. Part of the plan is to inspire the team members and stakeholders to believe in the process and work together.

8. Real Estate Sales Plan

In real estate, you’ll have to plan strategies for your agents and teams to follow together. Real estate agents must work with the marketing team to be on the same page about messaging, strategies and goals. With a sales plan, you can put it all together into one.

In this template, all the marketing, prospecting, and target market calculations work together to improve your sales strategies. Strategic planning can improve revenue for the agency, the agents, and the homeowners.

9. Sales Training Plan

New sales reps perform better when their onboarding and training are inspiring and motivating. Use this template to plan your training and onboarding strategies and create a better company culture. Instruct new hires in the systems and explain timelines of expected performance during the probation and orientation phase.

The choice of color palette and design elements is important for telling the story of your sales training plan. Cover both high and low levels of the sales process by training efficiently. Plan how to train and get results.

After personalizing your preferred sales business plan template, the next step is to download and share it with your team and stakeholders.

With Visme, you have complete freedom over how you use your documents. You can download the design in various formats, such as PDF, JPG, PNG, and HTML5, or share it online via email or a shareable link.

You can even publish your content anywhere on the internet by generating a snippet of code from the Visme app.

One of our satisfied customers, Sean, a Web Designer & Digital Marketing Specialist, has shared their positive experience with Visme's templates and sharing options.

Web Designer & Digital Marketing Specialist

Q. What Are the Different Types of Strategic Sales Planning?

As a sales leader, it is crucial to avoid poor planning, as it can result in missing up to 10% of annual sales opportunities . Your responsibility is to ensure that your company does not experience this setback.

To help you avoid this pitfall, here are five distinct approaches, each with its own unique flair.

1. Goal-Oriented Planning: This approach begins with setting ambitious yet achievable revenue targets, followed by reverse-engineering your sales process to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) necessary to reach those targets. Sales activities are then meticulously aligned with the overarching goals to create a cohesive roadmap to success.

2. Account Planning: It focuses on developing a comprehensive strategy for managing individual accounts. This type of planning involves researching the account, identifying key stakeholders, and creating a plan to engage with them. Account planning benefits businesses that rely on a small number of large accounts for their revenue.

3. Product Planning: Product planning involves the development of a strategy for selling a particular product or product line. This type of planning focuses on understanding the market for the product, identifying key features and benefits, and developing a plan for promoting and selling the product.

4. Relationship Planning: Relationship selling is a long-term approach focusing on building strong customer relationships. It involves understanding the customer's needs, building trust and providing ongoing support and value. This approach requires excellent communication skills, a customer-centric mindset and a commitment to delivering exceptional service.

5. Sales Process Planning: This involves developing a comprehensive plan for managing the sales process, from lead generation to closing the sale. This type of planning involves identifying the critical steps in the sales process, developing a plan for each step, and establishing metrics to measure the effectiveness of the process.

Q. How Do I Write a Sales Business Plan?

After learning about the various types of sales planning and their advantages, as well as the components of a sales business plan, it's time to delve into the process of drafting one. Let's explore some tips for writing a successful sales business plan.

• Define Your Sales Objectives: Start by defining your sales objectives. What are your revenue goals? What products or services do you want to sell? Who is your sales ICP ? Defining these objectives will help you create a clear roadmap for achieving your sales goals.
• Conduct a Market Analysis: Conduct a market analysis to identify opportunities and threats in the marketplace. Analyze your industry, competitors, and target audience. This will help you understand how to position your product or service in the market.
• I dentify Your Unique Selling Proposition: Identify your unique selling proposition (USP)—what makes your product or service different from your competitors? What are the benefits of your product or service? Understanding your USP will help you market and sell your product or service better.
• Develop a Sales Strategy: Develop a sales strategy that aligns with your sales objectives. This should include a plan for lead generation, lead qualification and the sales process. You can revisit the types of strategic sales planning sections to choose the one that fits your sales goals. Consider the sales channels you'll use, the sales team structure and the sales tools you'll need.
• Define Sales Metrics: Define sales metrics that will help you measure your progress toward achieving your sales objectives. This could include revenue, sales growth rate, conversion rate and customer acquisition cost.
• Develop a Sales Budget: Develop a sales budget that aligns with your sales strategy and objectives. This should include expenses related to lead generation, sales team compensation, sales tools, and marketing.
• Review and Refine: Review and refine your sales business plan regularly. This will help you stay on track toward achieving your sales goals and make adjustments as needed.

Additionally, you can read this article on creating a strategic sales plan to get more help writing your own sales business plan.

Create Your Sales Business Plan With Visme

Jumping right into a project isn’t always the best idea; you won’t be prepared for the obstacles and hurdles. Every layer of your sales stack should be potentially planned and brainstormed for optimal results.

This is where sales business plans come into play. With well-designed and personalized plans, you create meaningful connections with prospects, turning them into loyal clients.

Create an interactive sales business plan to engage your team in a shared journey toward a common goal. Designate roles and link them together in the sales plan and your productivity platform so everyone is always on track.

Visme has plenty of features to help you and your team close deal after deal. Not only can you create a sales business plan collaboratively, but you can also brainstorm, create other content, share it online, track performance and keep all assets organized within your workspace. Make your team more efficient at creating visual content at every level of your organization using our third-party integrations .

Ready to up your company's sales game and close more deals? Book a demo or sign up today to see how we can help your sales team succeed.

Easily put together winning sales business plans in Visme

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About the Author

Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com

Sales | How To

How to Create a Sales Plan in 10 Steps (+ Free Template)

Published March 9, 2023

Published Mar 9, 2023

REVIEWED BY: Jess Pingrey

WRITTEN BY: Jillian Ilao

This article is part of a larger series on Sales Management .

• 1 Establish Your Mission Statement
• 2 Set Sales Goals & Objectives
• 3 Determine Your Ideal Customer
• 4 Set Your Sales Budget
• 5 Develop Sales Strategies & Tactics
• 6 Implement Sales Tools
• 7 Develop Your Sales Funnel
• 8 Create Your Sales Pipeline
• 9 Assign Roles & Responsibilities
• 10 Monitor Progress & Adjust Accordingly
• 11 Examples of Other Free Small Business Sales Plan Templates
• 12 Sales Planning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• 13 Bottom Line

Sales plans enable businesses to set measurable goals, identify resources, budget for sales activities, forecast sales, and monitor business progress. These all contribute to guiding the sales team toward the company’s overall strategy and goals. In this article, we explore how to create a sales plan, including details on creating an action plan for sales, understanding the purpose of your business, and identifying your ideal customers.

What Is a Sales Plan? A sales plan outlines the strategies, objectives, tools, processes, and metrics to hit your business’ sales goals. It entails establishing your mission statement, setting goals and objectives, determining your ideal customer, and developing your sales strategy and sales funnel. To effectively execute your sales plan, assign roles and responsibilities within your sales team and have metrics to measure your outcomes versus your goals and objectives.

Ten steps to creating an effective sales plan

Download and customize our free sales planning template and follow our steps to learn how to create a sales plan to reach your company’s revenue goals.

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Free Sales Plan Template

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💡 Quick Tip:

Once you’ve created a sales plan, give your sales team the tools to execute it effectively with robust customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Use a CRM like HubSpot CRM to help your sales team collaborate on deals, develop sales reports, track deals, and create custom sales dashboards

1. Establish Your Mission Statement

A mission statement summarizing why you’re in business should be part of your action plan for sales. It should include a broad overview of your business’ products or services and your brand’s unique selling proposition. For example, you wouldn’t say, “We provide customers with insurance policies.” Instead, you might frame it as “We provide customers with cost-effective financial risk management solutions.”

It’s essential to fully understand your unique selling proposition before creating a mission statement. This allows you to learn why you’re different from competitors in your industry. It also helps you determine how your unique proposition suits a niche market better.

Steps on how to create a unique selling proposition

For instance, using the same insurance example above, you may realize specific markets are easier to sell based on that selling proposition. Therefore, it’s a good idea to narrow in on your mission statement by saying, “We provide startup businesses with cost-effective risk management solutions.”

2. Set Sales Goals & Objectives

Once you have summarized why you’re in business in a mission statement, begin setting sales goals . Typically, business goals will include one year, but may also include three- or five-year projections.

Steps on how to set sales goals

Here are a few options for how to set sales revenue goals for your business:

• Set sales amount: You may have a specific amount in mind for a sales goal. For instance, you may determine that $200,000 is a reasonable sales goal based on prior sales and your company’s ability to generate new business.
• Desired profitability: First, calculate the total anticipated expenses for the set time period to find the break-even point. From there, you can calculate how much revenue your team needs to bring in to make a certain profit margin. For example, if annual operating costs are expected to be $100,000, and you want to make a 30% profit, your sales goal is $130,000.
• Projected sales forecast: Based on an industry-standard or estimates you attained by running a sales forecast, you may find it’s better to use a projected sales forecast as your sales goal.

Pro tip: Projecting sales can be challenging without a suitable sales forecasting model. Our free sales forecast templates help you create simple, long-term, budget-based, multi-product, subscription-based, and month-to-month business sales forecasts. Some customer relationship managers (CRMs) like Freshsales have sales goal-tracking functionalities that allow you to set and assign sales goals for your team.

Five-year sales forecast template example (Source: Fit Small Business )

Sales goal tracking in Freshsales (Source: Freshsales )

Sales goals must reflect new business revenue and sales from existing or recurring customers. Then, you must add specific sales objectives that identify and prioritize the sales activities your team needs to complete to meet sales goals. This creates an objective way to measure success in hitting goals at all levels: organizational, sales department, team, and individual sales rep, which is an essential part of sales management .

For example, imagine your total revenue goal is $200,000 in year two and $300,000 in year three. You then add an objective, such as stating you want your business’ revenue from existing customers to grow 15% in year three. This can be measured by evaluating your percentage of revenue from existing customers in year three compared to year two.

3. Determine Your Ideal Customer

Determining the ideal customer or target market is the next step of your business plan for sales reps. It may have been accomplished when you developed your mission statement, but also when you set your sales goals and discovered how broad your market needs to be to reach them. Describing your ideal customer helps dictate who you’re selling to and your selling approach.

One way to establish your ideal customer is by creating a series of unique customer profiles . Each profile specifies key demographics, behaviors, interests, job positions, and geographic information about one of your ideal buyer types. Based on your customer profiles, you can then develop more targeted marketing strategies for lead generation and nurturing to move leads through the sales process more efficiently and close more deals.

Pro tip: Making a customer persona can be challenging, especially if it is based on the wrong data or if you just focus on the demographics. Check out our article on creating a customer persona to help you define your company’s ideal buyer types and guide your lead generation and marketing activities.

4. Set Your Sales Budget

After establishing your objectives and identifying your ideal customer personas—and before developing your actual strategies and tactics—you must identify a sales budget to work with. It should include estimated expenses for salaries, travel expenses, and the cost of any software tools or service providers used to help with sales and marketing. While these are meant to be estimates, research and due diligence should be done to avoid financial errors.

One way to set your sales budget, particularly for software tools and services you may be interested in, is to create and issue a request for proposal (RFP). Issuing an RFP allows you to post a summary of your needs to solicit proposals on potential solutions. In addition to providing accurate budget estimates from various qualified vendors and contractors, it may also help you discover cost-effective or high-performing options you were previously unaware of.

5. Develop Sales Strategies & Tactics

A sales strategy explains how you plan to outsell your competitors and accomplish your sales goals. It defines specific, detailed tactics your team will use to pursue your sales goals. These may involve using Google Ads, cold calling, and drip email marketing campaigns as part of a lead generation strategy. Available strategies differ depending on your company’s resources, skill sets, sales operation, and product or service offerings.

Strategies and tactics should be personalized for your ideal customers based on their unique interests, behaviors, and the best ways to connect with them. For example, some customer profiles show your ideal buyer generally only makes purchases based on trusted referrals. In this case, you could implement a referral strategy that provides incentives to generate more customer referrals .

Plus, different sales strategies will be needed to acquire new business vs keeping existing customers. When selling to existing customers, for example, your strategy could include cross-selling tactics where additional products are recommended based on prior purchases. The short-term cross-selling tactics could require customer service reps to send 30 emails per week recommending a complementary product to existing customers.

For a new business strategy, sales reps might rely on emotional selling methods when using cold calling as a tactic. Instead of product features, cold calling scripts would be geared to evoke feelings that lead to buying decisions. Tactics could reflect the objective of having reps make 15 cold calls each week. They could use a script that opens with a story about how a purchase made a customer feel or how someone felt because they didn’t purchase the product.

Pro tip: Ensuring your strategies are properly executed requires excellent sales leadership and a healthy environment for sales reps to operate in. Our how-to guide for building a positive sales culture shows you how to create an environment that promotes high job satisfaction, low employee turnover, and profitability.

6. Implement Sales Tools

Your sales strategy template should reference the software, hardware, and materials you use to manage the sales operation and make each team member more efficient. One of the most notable tools to include is the customer relationship management (CRM) system . It allows your team to organize contact information, streamline sales tasks, and facilitate communication with customers and leads.

HubSpot CRM , for instance, makes it easy to organize information about leads, contacts, and deal opportunities. Additionally, from a HubSpot CRM lead profile, you can initiate a conversation with that contact by calling, emailing, or scheduling an appointment.

HubSpot CRM contact profile (Source: HubSpot )

CRMs are also used to monitor and report sales progress. For example, many have dashboards and functionality, such as alerts, which make it easy to identify where your team may be underperforming. These could also tell you which leads are most likely to convert and should be focused on. Sales information such as deals closed, revenue generated, and leads created can be presented in a detailed report .

These types of insights can also be shown on the CRM’s system dashboard . Pipedrive is an example of a CRM that has a customizable dashboard that displays both activity information and performance-based data. Activity data include emails sent, received, and outstanding tasks to be completed. Performance-based data, on the other hand, have deals lost or the average value of won deals.

Pipedrive’s customizable dashboard (Source: Pipedrive )

Other sales enablement tools can make your sales team more effective. These include voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone systems , lead generation platforms, email campaign tools, content creation platforms, and task automation software. These tools can be found within CRM software or through CRM integrations and standalone applications.

In addition to technology tools, sales and marketing templates should be used to streamline outreach initiatives. Scenario-based, premade sales email templates , for instance, allow salespeople to have an email already crafted for their specific situation.

Creating and storing business proposal templates in your CRM also streamlines the contact procurement and business proposal generation process . This way, whenever a prospect says they’d like to receive a quote or you’re responding to a request for a proposal, you already have a customizable template ready to go.

Pro tip: Effective cold calling scripts sales reps can use as a guide when placing calls to new leads is a tremendous sales tool to include in your action plan for sales. Get started using our guide for writing a cold calling script , which includes examples and free templates.

7. Develop Your Sales Funnel

Setting up a sales funnel within your sales strategy template lets you visualize the stages of the customer journey, from becoming aware of your business to buying from it. By creating and understanding the different statuses of your leads, you can track progress and determine how effective you are at converting leads to the next stages in the funnel.

Using a sales funnel with conversion rates also makes it easier for you to adjust your sales strategies and tactics based on how effectively you’re getting leads through the funnel. For instance, let’s say you have 100 leads in the awareness stage of the funnel. You decide to cold call 50 of them and write a sales email to the other 50 to qualify leads by setting up a product demonstration.

After each campaign, you find you were able to qualify seven of the leads that were cold-called and only two of the leads you had emailed. Based on these funnel conversion rates of 14% (7/50) from cold calling and 4% (2/50) from emailing, you would likely adjust your tactics to focus more on calling instead of emailing.

Do you need help creating a sales funnel for your business? Our guide to creating a sales funnel explains the step-by-step sales funnel creation process and provides free templates and specific examples.

8. Create Your Sales Pipeline

Once your sales process’ sales funnel stages are identified, develop the sales pipeline stages . These stages include your team’s sales activities to move leads through the funnel. For example, you need to get a lead from the sales funnel stage of brand awareness to show interest in learning more about one of your services. To do this, you could add a sales pipeline activity like setting up a demo or presentation appointment through a cold call.

Adding your sales pipeline to your sales strategy is essential because it describes all the activities your sales reps need to do to close a sales deal. CRM systems like Freshsales allow you to create and track the pipeline stages for each lead or deal within the lead record.

Funnel view of Freshsales’ deal pipeline (Source: Freshsales )

Listing each pipeline stage also helps you identify tools and resources needed to perform the activities for each stage. For example, if you use phone calls to initiate contact with or introduce a product to a lead, you could develop outbound sales call scripts for your team.

After the initial contact by phone, you may use email to follow up after a call and then nurture leads throughout the sales process. As part of your follow-up, create and automate a sales follow-up email template to get them to the next pipeline stage.

The sales funnel shows where a lead is in the sales process. The sales pipeline, on the other hand, lists activities needed to drive leads to the next stage in the sales funnel. Both should be used in your sales strategy when defining the repeatable steps required to generate leads and close deals. Check out our article to learn how to create a winning sales process with insights on both creating a sales process and measuring its success.

9. Assign Roles & Responsibilities

Regardless of the size of your business or sales operation, your business plan for sales reps should include the role and responsibility of each person in the sales team. Each role should have a name, such as someone being a sales development representative (SDR). There should also be a summary of their responsibilities, such as “the SDR is responsible for setting up sales appointments using the activities listed in the sales pipeline.”

Measuring the performance of any sales position is simple through key performance indicators (KPIs). Specific KPIs should be used to measure performance for each role and should be included in your plan. Below are some examples of KPIs that can be used by the members of the sales team and their respective responsibility:

• Sales development representative: Responsible for introducing products and services, qualifying leads, and setting up appointments for the account executive. Performance is measured by calls placed, emails sent, and appointments generated.
• Account executive: Responsible for nurturing qualified leads, delivering the sales pitch , sending quotes, and closing deals. Performance is measured by business proposals sent, the average time in the proposal consideration stage, deals closed, and deal closing rate.
• Customer service representative: Responsible for managing customer needs, handling billing, and managing service tickets by assisting customers. Performance is measured by customer satisfaction, retention rates, and total tickets resolved.
• Sales manager: Responsible for the entire sales operation or team for a specific region or product/service line. Performance is measured by job satisfaction rates of sales reps, pipeline and funnel conversion rates, team sales deals closed, and team revenue growth.

While assigning roles in your plan, a sales rep’s territory could be based on geography, industry, potential deal size, or product/service line, creating more specialization for better results. Our six-step process on proper sales territory management is an excellent resource for segmenting, creating, and assigning sales territories.

This section of the business plan is also a prime spot for individually setting sales quotas for each rep or team needed to hit your organizational sales goals. Sales quotas should be a specific KPI for that sales role and be set based on the experience, skill level, and resources of that individual or team. These quotas should also be based on your organizational, department, and team goals and objectives.

10. Monitor Progress & Adjust Accordingly

Once the strategic business plan is in motion, monitor its progress to make any required adjustments. For instance, while your sales operation is running, you may find certain sales tactics are working better than expected, and vice versa. Your sales goal template should account for using that tactic more, as well as any new sales tools, budgetary changes, new roles, and possibly even a new sales goal.

As in the earlier example, if you found that cold calling was significantly more effective than emailing, reduce or abandon the email method in favor of cold calling. You could also invest in sales tools especially useful for cold calling, such as power dialing using a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone system, or hire additional staff to place calls. All of these will be part of your updated business plan.

Pro tip: Focusing on the big picture by creating, executing, and adjusting a strategic business plan is one of the most critical traits of an effective sales leader. For more insights on what it means to be a sales leader and how to become one, check out our ultimate guide to sales leadership .

Examples of Other Free Small Business Sales Plan Templates

Apart from our free downloadable sales strategy template, other providers have shared their version of a free strategic sales plan examples. Click on our picks below to see if these templates fit your business process better:

HubSpot’s free sales planning template helps users outline their company’s sales strategy. It contains sections found in most sales plans, as well as prompts for you to fill out your company’s tactics and information. These include company history and mission, team structure, target market, tools and software used, positioning, market strategy, action plan, goals, and budget.

HubSpot sales strategy template (Source: HubSpot )

HubSpot’s sales goals template with the mission, vision, and story of the company (Source: HubSpot )

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Asana’s free sales plan template helps organizations analyze their current sales process, establish their sales objectives, identify success metrics, and plan actionable steps. The sales business plan template is embedded within Asana’s platform, automatically integrating aspects such as goals and measuring them against results or sales performance.

Asana sales plan example (Source: Asana )

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Sales Planning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is sales planning.

Sales planning is creating a document that outlines your sales strategy, objectives, target audience, potential obstacles, and tools to achieve goals within a specified period. This may include your daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and long-term revenue objectives.

What is included in a sales plan?

A sales strategy plan template typically includes the following key elements:

• Target customers, accounts, or verticals
• Stock-keeping units (SKUs)
• Revenue targets or forecasts
• Strategies and tactics
• Pricing and promotions
• Deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs)
• Team structure and coordination
• Market conditions

What are the different types of strategic sales planning?

The type of strategic planning for sales that you choose for your team ultimately depends on different factors. These include your revenue goals, available resources, the ability and bandwidth of your sales team, and your personal commitment to your plans. Once you have determined the details of these factors, you can choose from these types of strategic sales planning:

• Revenue-based sales action plan template: This is ideal for teams aiming for a specific revenue goal. It focuses on in-depth sales forecasting, improvement of conversion rates, and closing more deals.
• Sales business plan based on the target market: This plan is best for businesses that cater to several markets that are different from each other. In this situation, you must create separate sales goal templates for enterprise companies and small businesses.
• Sales goals plan: This focuses on other goals such as hiring, onboarding, sales training plans, or sales activity implementation.
• New product sales business plan: This plan is developed for the launch and continued promotion of a new product.

Bottom Line

While any business can set bold sales goals, creating a sales plan outlines how your team will achieve them. By following the best practices and 10-step process laid out above, your sales goal template defines what your sales process will look like. It will help establish baselines for accountability and identify optimal strategies, tactics, and the tools needed to make your team as efficient as possible.

About the Author

Jillian Ilao

Jill is a sales and customer service expert at Fit Small Business. Prior to joining the company, she has worked and produced marketing content for various small businesses and entrepreneurs from different markets, including Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore. She has extensive writing experience and has covered topics on business, lifestyle, finance, education, and technology.

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How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps

A sales plan is the first step toward defining your sales strategy , sales goals and how you’ll reach them.

A refined sales plan is a go-to resource for your reps. It helps them better understand their role, responsibilities, targets, tactics and methods. When done right, it gives your reps all the information they need to perform at their highest level.

In this article, we outline what a sales plan is and why it’s important to create one. We also offer a step-by-step guide on how to make a sales plan with examples of each step.

What is a sales plan and why create one?

Your sales plan is a roadmap that outlines how you’ll hit your revenue targets, who your target market is, the activities needed to achieve your goals and any roadblocks you may need to overcome.

Many business leaders see their sales plan as an extension of the traditional business plan. The business plan contains strategic and revenue goals across the organization, while the sales plan lays out how to achieve them.

The benefits of a sales plan

A successful sales plan will keep all your reps focused on the right activities and ensure they’re working toward the same outcome. It will also address your company's specific needs. For example, you might choose to write a 30- , 60- or 90-day sales plan depending on your current goals and the nature of your business.

Say your ultimate goal for the next quarter is $250,000 in new business. A sales plan will outline the objective, the strategies that will help you get there and how you’ll execute and measure those strategies. It will allow your whole team to collaborate and ensure you achieve it together.

Many salespeople are driven by action and sometimes long-term sales planning gets neglected in favor of short-term results.

While this may help them hit their quota, the downside is the lack of systems in place. Instead, treat sales processes as a system with steps you can improve. If reps are doing wildly different things, it’s hard to uncover what’s working and what’s not. A strategic sales plan can optimize your team’s performance and keep them on track using repeatable systems.

With this in mind, let’s explore the seven components of an effective sales plan

1. Company mission and positioning

To work toward the same company goals, everyone in your organization must understand what your organization is trying to achieve and where in the market you position yourself.

To help define your mission and positioning, involve your sales leaders in all areas of the business strategy. Collaborating and working toward the same goals is impossible if those goals are determined by only a select group of stakeholders.

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To get a handle on the company’s mission and positioning, take the following steps:

Collaborate with marketing: Your marketing teams live and breathe the positioning of your company. Take the time to talk to each function within the department, from demand generation to performance marketing to learn what they know.

Interview customer success teams: Customer support reps speak with your existing customers every day. Interview them to find common questions and pain points.

Talk to your customers: Customer insights are a foundational part of any positioning strategy. Speak directly with existing and new customers to find out what they love about your product or service.

Read your company blog: Those in charge of content production have a strong understanding of customer needs. Check out blog articles and ebooks to familiarize yourself with customer language and common themes.

Look for mentions around the web: How are other people talking about your organization? Look for press mentions, social media posts, articles and features that mention your products and services.

These insights can provide context around how your company is currently positioned in the market.

Finally, speak with the team in charge of defining the company’s positioning. Have a list of questions and use the time to find out why they made certain decisions. Here are some examples:

What important insights from the original target audience research made you create our positioning statement?

What competitor research led us to position ourselves in this way? Does this significantly differentiate us from the crowd? How?

What core ideals and values drove us to make these promises in our positioning statement? Have they shifted in any way since we launched? If so, what motivates these promises now?

How to communicate mission and positioning

In this section of the sales plan, include the following information:

Company mission : Why your company exists and the value you’re determined to bring to the market.

Competition: Who your direct competitors (those who offer similar products and services) and indirect competitors (brands who solve the same problem in different ways) are.

Value propositions: The features, benefits and solutions your product delivers.

What is brand positioning: The ultimate guide with 4 examples

2. Goals and targets

Define your revenue goals and the other targets sales are responsible for.

As mentioned earlier, sales goals are usually aligned with business goals. Your boardroom members typically establish the company’s revenue goals and it’s your job to achieve them.

Revenue goals will shape your sales strategy. Use them to reverse engineer quotas, sales activity and the staff you need to execute them.

Break your big-picture revenue goal down further into sales targets and activity targets for your team. Activities are the specific actions you and your reps can control, while sales targets are the results provided by those activities.

9 steps to creating the perfect sales strategy (with free template)

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10 predictable revenue hacks to grow your sales

Use data on sales activity and performance from previous years to calculate sales targets. You should break this down by pipeline stage and activity conducted by reps across all functions.

For example, how many cold emails does it take to generate a deal? What is the average lifetime value (LTV) of your customer?

Breaking down these numbers allows you to accurately forecast what it will take to achieve your new revenue goal.

This part of your sales plan might include setting goals like the following:

200 total cold emails sent per day

200 total cold calls made per day

25 demos conducted per day

5 new sales appointments made a day

100 follow-up emails sent per day

Breaking down your goals into specific activities will also reveal the expertise needed for each activity and any required changes to your organizational structure, which will come into play in the next step.

How to communicate goals and targets

Within this section of the sales plan, include the following information:

Revenue goals : Reverse engineer the boardroom revenue goals to identify achievable sales goals and the number of staff needed to reach them. Sales targets : Use data on sales activity and past performance to define quotas and metrics for each stage of the sales pipeline.

Expertise needed for each activity: What qualities and attributes do your staff need to achieve these predefined activities? How much experience do they need vs. what can be learned on the job?

3. Sales organization and team structure

Identify the talent and expertise you need to achieve your goals.

For example, a marketing agency that depends on strong relationships will benefit more from a business development executive than a sales development representative (SDR) .

Use the targets established in the previous section to identify who you need to hire for your team. For example, if the average sales development rep can send 20 cold emails a day and you need to send 200 to achieve your goals, you’ll need around ten reps to hit your targets.

Include the information for each team member in a table in your sales plan. Here is an example.

Visualizing each role helps all stakeholders understand who they’re hiring and the people they’re responsible for. It allows them to collaborate on the plan and identify the critical responsibilities and qualities of their ideal candidates.

You want to avoid micromanaging , but now is a good time to ask your existing teams to report on the time spent on certain activities. Keeping a timesheet will give you an accurate forecast of how long certain activities take and the capacity of each rep.

How to communicate your sales organization and team structure

Team structure: These are the functions that make up your overall sales organization. The roles of SDR, business development and account teams must be well-defined.

Roles and responsibilities: These are the roles you need to hire, along with the tasks they’re responsible for. This will help you produce job descriptions that attract great talent.

Salary and compensation: How will the company remunerate your teams? Having competitive salaries, compensation schemes and sales incentives will attract top performers and keep them motivated.

Timeline: Attempting to hire dozens of people at once is tough. Prioritize hiring based on how critical each role is for executing your plan. Take a phased hiring approach to onboard new reps with the attention they deserve.

Building a sales team: How to set your group up for success

4. Target audience and customer segments

A sales plan is useless without knowing who to sell to. Having clearly defined customer personas and ideal customer profiles will help you tailor your selling techniques to companies and buyers.

Whether you’re looking to break into a new market or expand your reach in your current one, start by clearly defining which companies you’re looking to attract. Include the following criteria:

Industries: Which markets and niches do you serve? Are there certain sub-segments of those industries that you specialize in?

Headcount: How many employees do your best accounts have within their organization?

Funding: Have they secured one or several rounds of funding?

Find out as much as you can about their organizational challenges. This may include growth hurdles, hiring bottlenecks and even barriers created by legislation.

Learn about your buyers within those target accounts, learn about your buyers. Understanding your buyers and personalizing your sales tactics for them will help you strengthen your customer relationships.

These insights will change as your business grows. Enterprise companies may wish to revisit their personas as they move upmarket. For small businesses and startups, your target audience will evolve as you find product-market fit.

It’s important to constantly revisit this part of your sales plan. Even if your goals and methodologies are the same, always have your finger on the pulse of your customer’s priorities.

How to communicate target audience and customer segments

Profile: Include basic information about their role, what their career journey looks like and the common priorities within their personal lives.

Demographics : Add more information about their age, income and living situation. Demographic information can help tailor your message to align with the language used across different generations.

Attributes: Assess their personality. Are they calm or assertive? Do they handle direct communication themselves or have an assistant? Use these identifying attributes to communicate effectively.

Challenges: Think about the hurdles this persona is trying to overcome. How does it affect their work and what’s the impact on them personally?

Goals: Analyze how these challenges are preventing them from achieving their goals. Why are these goals important to them?

Support: Use this insight to define how your product or service will help these people overcome challenges and achieve their goals.

Behavioral segmentation: What is it and how can it drive engagement and loyalty

5. Sales strategies and methodologies

Define your sales approach. This includes the strategies, techniques and methodologies you’ll use to get your offering out to market.

This part of your sales plan may end up being the largest. It will outline every practical area of your sales strategy: your sales stages, methodologies and playbooks.

Start by mapping out each stage of your sales process. What are the steps needed to guide a prospect through your deal flow?

9 essential sales stages

Traditionally, a sales process has nine sales stages :

Prospecting and lead generation : Your marketing strategy should deliver leads, but sales reps should boost this volume with their own prospecting efforts.

Qualification: Measure those leads against your target account criteria and customer personas. Ensure they’re a good fit, prioritizing your time on high-value relationships.

Reaching out to new leads : Initiate emails to your target customers to guide new leads into the sales funnel. This outreach activity includes cold calling and direct mail.

Appointment setting: Schedule a demo, discovery call or consultation.

Defining needs: After the initial meeting, you’ll understand your prospect’s problems and how your product or service can solve them.

Presentation: Reveal the solution. This can be in the form of a proposal, custom service packages or a face-to-face sales pitch .

Negotiation: Dedicate this stage to overcoming any objections your prospect may have.

Winning the deal: Turn your prospects into customers by closing deals and signing contracts.

Referrals : Fostering loyalty is an organization-wide activity. Delight your customers and encourage them to refer their friends.

Not all of these stages will be relevant to your organization. For example, a SaaS company that relies on inbound leads may do much of the heavy lifting during the initial meeting and sales demo . On the other hand, an exclusive club whose members must meet certain criteria (say, a minimum net worth) would focus much of their sales activity on referrals.

Map out your sales process to identify the stages you use. Your sales process should look something like this:

To determine your sales methodologies, break each sales stage down into separate activities, along with the stakeholder responsible for them.

With your sales activities laid out, you can do in-depth research into the techniques and methodologies you need to execute them. For example, if you sell a complex product with lengthy sales cycles , you could adopt a SPIN selling methodology to identify pain points and craft the best solution for leads.

Finally, use these stages and methodologies to form your sales playbooks . This will help you structure your sales training plan and create playbooks your reps can go back to for guidance.

How to communicate sales strategies and methodologies

Within this section of the sales plan, include the following:

Sales stages: The different steps required to convert prospects into paying customers.

Sales methodologies: The different practices and approaches you’ll adopt to shape your sales strategy.

Sales playbooks: The tactics, techniques and sales strategy templates needed to guide contacts throughout each stage of the sales process.

6. Sales action plan

You have the “who” and the “what”. Now you must figure out “when” to execute your sales plan.

A well-structured sales action plan communicates when the team will achieve key milestones. It outlines timeframes for when they’ll complete certain projects and activities, as well as the recruitment timelines for each quarter.

The order in which you implement your sales action plan depends on your priorities. Many sales organizations prefer to front-load the activity that will make a bigger impact on the bottom line.

For example, when analyzing your current sales process and strategy, you may find your existing customers are a rich source of qualified leads . Therefore, it would make sense to nurture more of these relationships using a structured referral program.

You must also consider how recruitment will affect the workload in your team. Hire too quickly and you may end up spending more time training new reps and neglecting your existing team. However, taking too long to recruit could overload your existing team. Either can make a big impact on culture and deal flow.

To complete your sales action plan, get all stakeholders involved in deciding timelines. When applying this to your sales plan, use GANTT charts and tables to visualize projects and key milestones.

A GANTT chart shows you the main activities, their completion dates and if there are any overlaps. Here is an example:

By prioritizing each activity and goal, you can create a plan that balances short-term results with long-term investment.

How to communicate your sales action plan

Key milestones : When do you aim to complete your projects, activities and recruitment efforts? You can map them out by week, month, quarter or all of the above. Let your revenue goals and priorities lead your schedule.

Short- and long-term goal schedules: With a high-level schedule mapped out, you can see when you will achieve your goals. From here, you can shape your schedule so that it balances both short- and long-term goals.

7. Performance and results measurement

Finally, your plan must detail how you measure performance. Outline your most important sales metrics and activities, how you’ll track them and what technology you’ll need to track them.

Structure this part of your plan by breaking down each sales stage. Within these sections, list out the metrics you’ll need to ensure you’re running a healthy sales pipeline.

Performance metrics can indicate the effectiveness of your entire sales process. Your chosen metrics typically fall into two categories:

Primary metrics act as your “true north” guide. This is commonly new business revenue generated.

Secondary metrics are those that indicate how well specific areas of your sales process are performing. These include lead response time and average purchase value.

The metrics you select must closely align with your goals and sales activities. For example, at the appointment setting stage, you might measure the number of demos conducted.

Each team also needs its own sales dashboard to ensure reps are hitting their targets. Sales development reps will have different priorities from account executives, so it’s critical they have the sales tools to focus on what’s important to them.

Finally, research and evaluate the technology you’ll need to accurately measure these metrics. Good CRM software is the best system to use for bringing your data together.

How to communicate sales performance metrics

Sales stage metrics : Identify the metrics for each specific sales stage and make sure they align with your KPIs.

Chosen sales dashboard: Explain why you chose your sales dashboard technology and exactly how it works.

Performance measurement: Outline exactly how and what tech you will use to measure your team’s activities and metrics.

How to track, measure and improve your team’s sales performance

Developing a sales plan involves conducting market research, assessing current sales performance , identifying sales opportunities and challenges, setting measurable goals, creating a sales strategy, allocating resources and establishing a monitoring and evaluation framework.

To write a sales business plan, include:

An executive summary

A company overview

A market analysis

A target market description

Sales strategies and tactics

Financial projections

A budget and timeline

Make sure that you clearly articulate your value proposition, competitive advantage and growth strategies.

Final thoughts

An effective sales plan is an invaluable asset for your sales team . Although you now know how to create a sales plan, you should remember to make one that works for your team. Writing one helps with your sales strategy planning and aids you in defining targets, metrics and processes. Distributing the sales plan helps your reps understand what you expect of them and how they can reach their goals.

Providing supportive, comprehensive resources is the best way to motivate your team and inspire hard work. When you do the work to build a solid foundation, you equip your reps with everything they need to succeed.

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How To Write A Business Plan For Sales Teams

Business Success

According to the Small Business Association (SBA), 30% of new businesses fail during the first two years of their launch; 50% fail during the first five years, and 66% of new businesses fail during the first 10 years.

Most successful business owners, including Jon Ferrara (co-founder of two successful global technology companies), ensure their sales team is set up for success from the very start. Jon developed a social sales business plan outlining the companies’ route to success — both in the near term and for years to come.

Nimble unifies your emails, contacts, calendars into one powerful relationship manager. Start your 14-day trial now.

According to Ferrara, a comprehensive sales business plan spells out your long-term and short-term goals, the methodology you’ll use to evaluate and optimize your approach, the pitfalls you anticipate could come up along the way, and how you plan to address them.

In this article, we will discuss what a successful sales business plan entails, its goals and its structure. We will also highlight a successful example of business plans for sales , the plan which launched Goldmine and now Nimble into the CRM stratosphere.

What is a Sales Business Plan?

At its core, a business plan is the infrastructure shaped by your overall goals for the future of your business, fleshed out by the strategies implemented to make those goals a reality. The Nimble team subscribes to the Entrepreneurial Operating System , a system of business principles and set of simple, practical, real-world tools to help entrepreneurs get what they want from their businesses.

Complementary to your overall business plan, a sales business plan sample focuses squarely on (surprise!) sales and marketing . It also outlines what your target market is as well as your approach to market or sell your products to your prospective buyers.

It’s crucial to outline all of your immediate and long-term goals from the get-go and measure them weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually to ensure you’re on track to achieving your goals,  and can quickly identify issues that may be standing in your way.

You can also use project management apps such as Traction Tools (which is part of the EOS System) or Teamwork , (which helps you manage multiple projects on a more granular level) to hold the sales team accountable for incremental steps that will help you achieve your goals as the quarters turn into fiscal years.

What Are Your Goals?

It’s far too easy to get swept up in the day to day of starting a business and lose sight of why you started your business in the first place.

To avoid getting bogged down by the small details, start by identifying your ten-year goals, your five-year goals, your three-year goals, and your one-year goal. The easiest way to do this is to start at the end, and work backward from there; where do you want to be, and how do you get there?

Treat a sales business plan like a set-by-step outline of how you aim to achieve your long-term and interim goals.

The first step is to identify exactly what you want to achieve and define your KPIs (key performance indicators): Are you trying to drive a certain level of revenue? Achieve a specific percentage of conversions? Drive leads? Acquire new clients?

The best business plan examples for sales aim to keep your ambitions organized while turning even the loftiest goals into a tangible reality.

Having a written roadmap of your road to success keeps you grounded and focused; plus, nothing feels better than being able to cross achievements off your list and physically seeing the progress you’ve made on a tactical level.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

It’s always beneficial to consider the worst-case scenarios of starting your new business, as it will enable you to troubleshoot problems that haven’t even risen yet. Working this strategy into your business plan template for sales will also help you pinpoint your areas of growth and optimize your strengths.

Maybe you’ll realize that you’re short staffed, and need more internal support to execute all of your goals. Perhaps your relationship management system is inadequate and holding you back.

Whatever the forecasted setbacks may be, it helps to face them head-on in order to effectively scale your business. Write down what you consider potential threats to your company’s success and review them with your team in order to brainstorm the best path forward.

The Elements of a Strong Business Plan

Aside from outlining your goals, a strong sales business plan template is fleshed out by a few other pivotal elements:

• A thought-out marketing strategy accompanied by a thorough description of your target market. Know who you are selling to, and how you are going to sell to them.    Gabriel Weinberg , founder, and CEO of the multi-billion dollar internet privacy company, DuckDuckGo , outlines the 19 marketing channels you can use to build traction, and how to determine which strategies to focus on at any one time in his book, Traction .
• A breakdown of your sales strategy and the tactics you will use to execute it. How will you initiate the sales conversation with prospective clients, or define your sales story?  Jon Ferrara is a big fan of building team members’ personal brands and networks to scale sales .  
• An ambitious (yet attainable) timeline . What do you want to achieve this week? This quarter? Next year? Break your timeline out in a way that makes sense for your business model.
• A high-level competitor analysis . Become familiar with the competitive landscape and garner knowledge from studying key players within your industry. Learn their strengths and weaknesses (as well as your own) to help solidify your own sales plan.
• Develop a projected month-to-month sales forecast to get you through at least one year (preferably two or three). For brand new businesses with no historical data to shape a forecast from, look at established products or services from a competitor to get a grip on potential sales.  

Sales Business Plan Structure

The best sales business plan examples tend to follow the same structure across the board. When drafting your plan, it’s important to get granular; small details can add up.

Here is the general outline for best practices in drafting your business plan for sales sample, as well as the questions you will be addressing:

• Objectives – What are you doing?
• Customer Focus – Who are you selling to?
• Strategies and Tactics – How are you going to talk to them, and through what medium?
• Tools and Systems- How will you stay organized and optimize your internal processes?
• Metrics – What KPIs will you be measuring?
• Team – Who will you be calling on to help you achieve your goals?
• Budget – How much are you capable of investing in certain aspects of your company?

With these specific bases covered within your sales business plan, your new endeavor will be off to a sturdy, well-focused start.  

Sales Business Plan Example: Nimble

In order to illustrate an effective strategy in a sea of business plan for sales examples , we would like to share the sales business plan that set Nimble on the road to success.

During the years of 2008-2010, the future of social media and its role in marketing wasn’t entirely clear.

The industry had yet to work out the kinks and gaps between social networks, enterprise systems, and personal productivity tools such as inboxes and calendars.

The introduction of CRMs created a single system of contact records and communications history, but most were too cumbersome to use. Jon saw the opportunity to turn the CRM industry on its head with a revolutionary product.

He created Nimble with the intention of providing a single, socially enriched system of record that helps businesses and salespeople cultivate relationships at scale. In order to achieve his goal, a solid sales business plan was a must. Here is a snapshot of the winning sales business plan that helped shape Nimble into the industry leader it is today:

• Objectives – To provide a single, socially enriched system of record that helps businesses and small business teams cultivate relationships at scale.
• Customer Focus – Small business teams working primarily in small businesses of up to 30 people.
• Strategies and Tactics – Nimble’s primary sales strategy is Guerilla PR and building relationships with social influencers, industry analysts, press and channel partners in and around the areas of Nimble’s brand promise.  
• With channel partners, in particular, we focus on empowering and incentivizing partners to resell Nimble as part of a solution-focused cloud migration.
• We use Nimble for outbound prospecting; templated, trackable 1:1 messaging, delivered at scale; and for sales funnel management. Nimble is integrated with Outlook 365, G Suite, and 366 degrees marketing for easy access and a light-weight, end-to-end sales and marketing solution.
• Intercom is our go-to system customer support.
• We use Power BI for reporting on business metrics

With this outline in mind, Nimble has become a key player in a well-funded and heavily saturated market.

The business world can be treacherous and uncertain. Oftentimes, even the best ideas can fall flat without a solid framework to map out the path to success. In order to avoid having your newly established business tank in a highly competitive market during its first year, develop a solid business sales plan right off the bat.

As discussed, a business plan for sales sheds light on your new business’ strengths and weaknesses, gives direction to your marketing strategy and pinpoints your target market, outlines your short-term and long-term goals, identifies potential roadblocks that may come up along the way, and digs into the small details of planning a professional endeavor that tends to creep up on people.

Set yourself up for success and give yourself as much of an advantage as possible by mapping out where you want to go and how to get there right from the start.

If you’re looking for a customer relationship management CRM system  to help you build your new business  try Nimble’s 14-day free trial .

To extend your customer relationship management beyond standard practices, try Nimble CRM for free to see what benefits automation and centralization of client relationships and business workflow brings.  

About The Author

Nimble Editorial Team

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How to Write a Sales Plan

This guide explains the purpose of a sales plan, what it contains and how to write one that works for your business. It also includes a free template for your own sales plan.

Table of Contents

Every business needs a business plan as well as more detailed road maps that offer guidance to each department working toward that common goal. As the revenue-generating engine of your company, the sales department should be a top priority for this type of document, aptly named the “sales plan.” This guide introduces the concept of a sales plan and gives you all the guidance you need to create a sales plan that works for your business.

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan details the overall sales strategy of a business, including the revenue objectives of the company and how the sales department will meet those goals. This may also include revenue goals, the target audience and tools the team will use in their day-to-day. In addition, the sales plan should include examples of the hurdles and pain points the team might encounter, as well as contingency plans to overcome them.

“[A sales plan] is essential to support the growth of an organization,” said Bill Santos, vice president of the ITsavvy Advanced Solutions Group. “A sales plan helps individual reps understand the priorities of the business as well as the measurements by which they will be evaluated.”

Business plans vs. sales plans

Business plans and sales plans are closely linked. A sales plan, though, should outline the actions that the sales department will take to achieve the company’s broader goals. A sales plan differs from a business plan, though both work toward the same end.

“A business plan is a ‘what’ [and] a sales plan is a ‘how,'” said James R. Bailey , professor of management and Hochberg Professional Fellow of Leadership Development at the George Washington University School of Business. “Business plans are where a firm wants to go. A sales plan is a part of how they can achieve that. A business plan is direction; a sales plan is execution.”

For example, a software company that developed a new mobile application might state in its business plan that the app will be installed by 1 million users within a year of launch, while the sales plan describes how that will actually be achieved.

How to write a sales plan

Every sales plan should suit the individual needs of a different company, so they come in all shapes and sizes. There is no one-size-fits-all sales plan; the one you create will be unique to your business. With careful planning, you’ll have a much clearer vision of what you need to accomplish and a road map for how to get there. 

Chris Gibbs, vice president of global sales at Centripetal Networks, named some additional items that every sales plan should include.

• Targeted accounts: Assign each salesperson a few key accounts to focus on, and grow from that base.
• Targeted verticals: Sales teams might focus on specific market segments or verticals, such as a particular industry.
• SKUs: Salespeople should emphasize certain SKUs or inventory items rather than get lost in a broad catalog of merchandise to sell.
• Sales and marketing coordination: Sales and marketing teams should work together to create promotions to help generate sales.
• Product road maps: Every company has a road map, and each product should have a road map that shows the plan and direction for a product offering over time to chart out when a product will launch and when it might sunset or be replaced by a newer model.
• Forecasts: Sales forecasting is projecting sales volumes and expectations by comparing them historically to sales of previous years, and then conducting market comparison to determine where sales will fall against the competition.

“Sales plans are extremely important to ensure there is cohesiveness between product teams, sales and marketing,” Gibbs said. “In addition, they’re important for ensuring that timing of new products and/or new version releases coincide with sales objectives and forecasts.”

What are the steps to create a sales plan?

A sales plan is necessary for businesses of every size, from an individual entrepreneur to a Fortune 500 company. When you’re ready to actually write your sales plan, follow these steps:

1. Define the objectives. 

Clearly outlining your goals and stating your objectives should always be the first step in creating a sales plan or any other business venture. You should include the expected sales volume and any markets or territories you expect to reach. 

For example, let’s say you own a retail store selling household goods and electronics. If your purpose is to establish yourself as a trusted local retailer, ask yourself the following questions:

• If so, are they purchasing anything or just browsing?
• Was it word of mouth?
• Was it through marketing efforts, such as email marketing, direct mail or social media?
• How many are new customers?
• How many are repeat customers?
• Where do you want your sales to come from? 
• What are some external and internal factors that could impact your sales? These include industry trends and economic conditions.

When you can precisely state your key objectives, you are setting yourself up to plan later steps around achieving your goals.

2. Assess the current situation.

The next step is to create an honest overview of your business situation in relation to the goal you set in the first step. 

Review your strengths and assets. Take a look at your resources and how you can apply them to your goal. This can include personal relationships and competitive advantages like new products or services.

For example, if your goal is to enhance your relationship with your customers, you’d need to ask yourself some questions to examine your current situation:

• What is your current relationship with your customers?
• Where did most of your sales come from?
• Where would you like to expand your sales?

3. Determine and outline the sales strategies. 

Sales strategies are the actual tactics your team will use to reach customers. They can include marketing channels as well as procedures for lead generation and client outreach employed by your salespeople.

Here are two examples of potential sales strategies: 

• Use your POS system to retain customer information so you can track current and new customers.
• Employ email marketing, text message marketing , social media, outbound call center services and direct mail marketing campaigns.

4. Define roles for the sales team. 

Each member of the sales team should be assigned clear roles, whether they vary from person to person or everyone performs the same functions.

Defining the sales direction of the team is crucial, as it shows the focus of the company and helps the team target and execute sales most effectively.

The plan of attack for the sales team should be communicated clearly by leadership, whether it is from team leaders or the CEO.  

5. Inform other departments of sales objectives.

A sales plan shouldn’t just update a company president or C-suite; it should inform the whole organization of the sales team’s objectives. 

Clearly outline your plan for the rest of the company to help them understand the goals and procedures of the sales team. Other departments become more efficient when interacting with the sales team and clients. This also conveys a certain level of quality and professionalism to the clients about the company.

6. Provide tools for the sales team.

Provide the tools each member of the sales team needs to achieve the stated goals, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software. The best CRM software is customizable to meet a company’s needs, making it much easier for your team to use the software and work efficiently.

7. Detail how the department will track progress. 

Offer strategic direction and insight on how progress will be monitored. Having a quarterly review to assess whether the company is on target is just as important as the plan itself.

Markets change, and so should your sales plan. Keeping it up to date will help you capitalize on the market and achieve your goals. Tracking progress is made easier by the tools you use to collect data. That data will then have to be analyzed and presented in a way which all departments can understand and use for future growth. 

Key elements of a sales plan

Every sales plan should also include the following elements.

Realistic goals

You need to set achievable goals . Challenge your sales team, but don’t push too hard. Bailey said that these “deliverables” are among the key points to include in a sales business plan. 

“Deliverables need to be as specific as possible and moderately difficult to achieve – specific inasmuch as being measurable in a manner that is uncontested [and] moderately difficult inasmuch as making sales goals too difficult can lead to failure and discouragement.”

Midpoint goals also help build morale and keep the team working toward a larger goal. Instead of having one giant goal, creating smaller goals to achieve along the way will keep your team focused.

Sales tools

Tracking sales throughout the term is helpful, and you can employ tools to keep track of each team member as well as the department overall. It also helps establish a culture of accountability among salespeople.

“Tools can help, especially project management and CRM software,” Santos said. “Having a weekly cadence of update and review is also important, as it sends a message that ownership and updates are important.”

Clear expectations and a defined commission structure

Assign goals and responsibilities to each team member to make expectations clear. This is true whether or not each team member has the same goals.

“We meet with each individual to come up with a plan that works for them so that they can reach their goals,” said Leah Adams, director of client success at Point3 Security. “We measure results based on numbers. Each team member has his own plan and how they’re going to get there.”

It’s also necessary to spell out the commission structure in full detail.

“The only real difference is how sales count,” Bailey said. “In petroleum-based products … a few big clients are necessary. Compensation needs to be structured not just in contract value, but in graduated terms: Above $1 million, commissions move from 5% to 9%, and so forth. In smaller-volume enterprises, commissions might be front-loaded with higher percentages early, then graduated down. You have to reward what you want.”

Training programs

Along the way, some training might be necessary to maintain the momentum.

“What’s important to us is that we’re teaching these individuals to be the best salesperson they can be,” Adams said. “We help them do that by constantly training them and giving them knowledge of what’s going on in our industry. Everything stays on track because each member of the team knows their individual goal; though each person has a number, they also know the ultimate goal is for the entire team to hit.”

Adams said that an effective CRM keeps things organized and helps delegate tasks and responsibilities on a schedule that uses the company’s lead information.

Key steps to follow when devising a sales plan

Here are some best practices for creating a sales plan:

• Refer to the business plan. The sales plan should directly address the objectives of the business plan and how those objectives can be achieved.
• Advance clear objectives. The clearer the objectives are, the easier it will be to reach your goals.
• Reference prior sales data. Chart sales over the previous few terms, and project the trend for the current term. New businesses can create sales projections based on expectations.
• Outline the commission structure. This will help motivate your team and help you calculate anticipated costs.
• Be clear about how progress is measured. There should be no dispute about this. If larger clients carry more weight than lower-volume buyers, that should be stated upfront.

The benefits of a sales plan

A sales plan keeps the sales department on track, considering the details of how they must operate to hit their targets and achieve company objectives. Because the sales team is the primary driver of revenue, it is an incredibly important document. [Related article: Adopting a CRM? How to Get Buy-in From Your Sales Department ]

“It’s extremely important to have a sales plan in place, almost a must,” Adams said. “Without this plan, it’s almost impossible to get through the year and hit the company’s sales goals.”

It’s not uncommon to encounter obstacles along the way, however. A good sales plan accounts for that.

“Almost always, you’ll run into the speed bumps along the way, but with a plan in place, it makes it a whole lot easier to navigate through it all,” Adams said. “The sales plan allows you to adjust when necessary so the goal can still be hit. I strongly believe a plan allows you to stay in control and reduce the risk while being able to measure the team’s results along the way to that finish line.”

Sales plan templates

Sales templates are helpful in that many of them are based on tried-and-true formats that have been used by businesses across several industries. They can also provide structure so that it is clear to each employee what their role and responsibilities are. 

“A template helps plan each individual’s daily activities in a structured way,” Adams said. “If you know what each person is doing daily, it’s easier to help correct what’s going wrong. It helps with things like conversion rates, etc. Yes, these templates can be customized in any way a team’s manager sees fit, based on how he believes the team will perform better.”

Sales plans should be unique to the company; however, there are key components they should always include. Because there is somewhat of a formula, you can use a template.

Templates are extremely helpful, Gibbs said. “It creates uniformity for the team, as well as a yearly or quarterly sales plan to present to senior management.”

Gibbs added that templates can easily be customized to meet the needs of a particular business or sales team.

Keeping your team on track with a sales plan

Planning is vital for any business, especially when dealing with sales targets. Before selling your product or service, you must outline your goals and ways to execute them. Essentially, a sales plan enables you to mitigate problems and risks. When there is a clear plan of action, you will know how to proceed in order to attain your goals. 

Enid Burns contributed to the writing and reporting in this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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How To Build a Strategic Sales Plan + 10 Examples

• March 28, 2024

Every sales team has some sort of plan, even if it’s just “sell more of the product/service that you’re employed to sell.”

A sales plan is a portfolio that includes a layout of your processes, target audience, objectives and tactics. It’s used to guide your sales strategy and predict cost and returns. 

Yet without a codified sales plan, it can be difficult to give a sales team the motivation and purpose they need to successfully engage customers and continue to generate revenue.

Not having a sales plan that’s written down and signed off on by stakeholders can lead to confusion around what sales reps should and shouldn’t be doing , which can be demotivating.

It might seem daunting or time-consuming to put together an entire sales plan, but it doesn’t need to be. Here’s how to create a thorough sales plan in 10 simple steps. 

What Is a Sales Plan? 

A successful sales plan defines your target customers, business objectives, tactics, obstacles and processes. An effective plan will also include resources and strategies that are used to achieve target goals. It works similarly to a business plan in the way it’s presented, but only focuses on your sales strategy. 

A sales plan should include the following three components: 

• Ideas: If you use specific business methodologies, you may choose to outline key principles and examples of them in action within your sales plan. An example could be conversation tactics when pitching your product to your target customer. 
• Processes: In order to streamline productivity and business strategy, you’ll want to make sure your processes are defined within your sales plan. Your sales team should be able to refer to the sales plan when they’re in need of direction. 
• Tools and tactics: The most effective sales plans include not only high-level business strategies, but also step-by-step approaches for your sales team to utilize. These tools can include key conversation pieces for your sales reps to use when pitching a product or content to close out a deal. 

Solidifying a sales plan is crucial for a strong business model. Taking the time to narrow in on the components above will set you and your business up for success down the road. 

Sales Planning Process

It’s important to keep in mind that sales planning isn’t just about creating a sales plan document. A sales plan should be a go-to item that’s used every day by your team, rather than sitting on your desk collecting dust. Creating an effective sales plan requires high-level strategy.

You should: 

• Decide on a timeline for your goals and tactics
• Outline the context
• Write out the company mission and values
• Describe the target audience and product service positioning
• Include sales resources
• Draw out an overview of concurrent activities
• Write an overview of your business road map
• Outline your goals and KPIs
• Outline an action plan
• Create a budget 

 Below we dive into each of these steps to create your ideal sales plan. 

1. Decide on Your Timeline

Setting goals and outlining tactics is not going to be productive if you’re not working toward a date by which you’ll measure your efforts.

Determining the timeline of your sales plan should therefore be your number one consideration. When will you be ready to kick-start your plan, and when is a reasonable time to measure the outcomes of your plan against your SMART goals?

Remember that you need to give the plan a chance to make an impact, so this timeline shouldn’t be too restrictive. However, you also want to make sure that you’re flexible enough to adjust your plan if it’s not producing the desired results.

Most sales plan timelines cover about a year, which may be segmented into four quarters and/or two halves to make it a little more manageable.

2. Outline the Context

Use the first page of your sales plan to outline the context in which the plan was created.

What is the current state of the organization? What are your challenges and pain points? What recent wins have you experienced?

Do you have tighter restrictions on cash flow, or does revenue appear to be growing exponentially? How is your sales team currently performing?

While you’ll discuss your business plan and road map later in the document, you can also outline the long-term vision for your business in this section. For example, where do you want to see the business in five years?

Tip: Comparing the current situation with your vision will emphasize the gap between where you are now and where you need to be. 

3. Company Mission and Values

It’s essential that you put your mission and values at the heart of your business. You need to incorporate them into every function – and this includes your sales plan.

Outlining your mission and values in your sales plan ensures that you remember what the company is striving for, and in turn helps ensure that your approach and tactics will support these objectives.

Remember: A strong brand mission and authentic values will help boost customer loyalty, brand reputation and, ultimately, sales.

4. Target Market and Product/Service Positioning

Next, you’ll need to describe the market or markets that you’re operating in.

What is your target market or industry? What research led you to conclude that this was the optimal market for you?

Who within this industry is your ideal customer? What are their characteristics? This could be a job title, geographical location or company size, for example. This information makes up your ideal customer profile .

If you’ve delved further into audience research and developed personas around your target market, then include them in here, too.

5. Sales Team and Resources

This step is simple: Make a list of your sales resources, beginning with a short description of each member of your sales team.

Include their name, job title, length of time at the company and, where appropriate, their salary. What are their strengths? How can they be utilized to help you hit your goals?

You should also include notes around the gaps in your sales team and whether you intend to recruit any new team members into these (or other) roles.

Tip: Communicate the time zones your team members work in to be mindful of designated work hours for scheduling meetings and deadlines. 

Then, list your other resources. These could be tools, software or access to other departments such as the marketing team – anything that you intend to use in the execution of your sales plan. This is a quick way to eliminate any tools or resources that you don’t need.

6. Concurrent Activities

The next step in creating your sales plan involves providing an overview of non-sales activities that will be taking place during the implementation of your sales plan.

Any public marketing plans, upcoming product launches, or deals or discounts should be included, as should any relevant events. This will help you plan sales tactics around these activities and ensure that you’re getting the most out of them.

7. Business Road Map

For this step, write up an overview of your business’s overall road map, as well as the areas where sales activities can assist with or accelerate this plan. You’ll need to collaborate with the CEO, managing director or board of directors in order to do this.

In most cases, the business will already have a road map that has been signed off on by stakeholders. It’s the sales manager’s job to develop a sales plan that not only complements this road map, but facilitates its goals. 

Tip: Highlight areas of the road map that should be touchpoints for the sales team. 

Ask yourself what your department will need to do at each point in the road map to hit these overarching company goals.

8. Sales Goals and KPIs

Another important part of the sales plan involves your sales goals and KPIs.

Outline each goal alongside the KPIs you’ll use to measure it. Include a list of metrics you’ll use to track these KPIs, as well as a deadline for when you project the goal will be achieved.

It’s vital to make these goals tangible and measurable.

A bad example of a goal is as follows:

Goal 1: Increase sales across company’s range of products and services.

A better goal would look something like:

Goal 1: Generate $500,000+ in revenue from new clients through purchases of X product by X date.

9. Action Plan

Now that you’ve laid out your goals, you need to explain how you will hit them.

Your action plan can be set out week by week, month by month, or quarter by quarter. Within each segment, you must list out all of the sales activities and tactics that you will deploy – and the deadlines and touchpoints along the way.

Tip: Organize your action plan by department – sales, business development and finance. 

While this is arguably the most complex part of the sales plan, this is where sales leaders are strongest. They know which approach will work best for their team, their company and their market.

Budgets vary from team to team and company to company, but whatever your situation, it’s important to include your budget in your sales plan.

How are you going to account for the money spent on new hires, salaries, tech, tools and travel? Where the budget is tight, what are your priorities going to be, and what needs to be axed?

The budget section should make references back to your action plan and the sales team and resources page in order to explain the expenditures.

6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples 

You can create different types of strategic sales plans for your company, depending on how you want to structure your sales plan. Here are a few examples.   

Customer Profile 

A customer profile outlines your ideal customer for your service or product. It will usually include industry, background, attributes and decision-making factors.  

Creating a customer profile helps narrow in on the target customer your sales team should focus on while eliminating unproductive leads.  

Buyer’s Guide

A buyer’s guide is an informational sheet that describes your company’s services or products, including benefits and features. This document is useful both for your sales team but also for a potential customer who requires more information on the product before purchasing. 

30-60-90-Day Plan

This plan is organized based on time periods. It includes outlines of goals, strategy and actionable steps in 30-day periods. This is a useful sales plan model for a new sales representative tracking progress during their first 90 days in the position or meeting quotas in a 90-day period. 

This type of sales plan is also ideal for businesses in periods of expansion or growth. It’s helpful to minimize extra effort in onboarding processes. 

Market Expansion Plan

A market expansion plan clarifies target metrics and list of actions when moving into a new territory or market. This sales plan model is typically used with a target market that resides in a new geographical region. 

You’ll want to include a profile of target customers, account distribution costs and even time zone differences between your sales representatives. 

Marketing-alignment Plan

Creating a marketing-alignment sales plan is useful if your organization has yet to align both your sales and marketing departments. The goal of the sales plan is finalizing your target customer personas and aligning them with your sales pitches and marketing messages. 

New Product/Service Plan 

If your organization is launching a new service or product, it’s best to create a sales plan to track revenue and other growth metrics from the launch. You’ll want to include sales strategy, competitive analyses and service or product sales positioning. 

Sales Plan Template

4 additional sales plan templates.

Here are some additional templates you can use to create your own unique sales plan. 

• Template Lab 
• ProjectManager

5 Tips for Creating a Sales Plan 

Now that you’ve seen and read through a few examples and a sales plan template, we’ll cover some easy but useful tips to create a foolproof sales plan. 

• Create a competitive analysis: Research what sales strategies and tactics your close competitors are using. What are they doing well? What are they not doing well? Knowing what they are doing well will help you create a plan that will lead to eventual success. 
• Vary your sales plans: First create a base sales plan that includes high-level goals, strategies and tactics. Then go more in depth on KPIs and metrics for each department, whether it’s outbound sales or business development . 
• Analyze industry trends: Industry trends and data can easily help strengthen your sales approach. For example, if you’re pitching your sales plan to a stakeholder, use current market trends and statistics to support why you believe your sales strategies will be effective in use. 
• Utilize your marketing team: When creating your sales plan, you’ll want to get the marketing department’s input to align your efforts and goals. You should weave marketing messages throughout both your sales plan and pitches. 
• Discuss with your sales team: Remember to check in with your sales representatives to understand challenges they may be dealing with and what’s working and not working. You should update the sales plan quarterly based on feedback received from your sales team. 

When Should You Implement a Strategic Sales Plan? 

Does your organization currently not have a sales plan in place that is used regularly? Are you noticing your organization is in need of structure and lacking productivity across departments? These are definite signs you should create and implement a sales plan. 

According to a LinkedIn sales statistic , the top sales tech sellers are using customer relationship management (CRM) tools (50%), sales intelligence (45%) and sales planning (42%) .

Below are a few more indicators that you need an effective sales plan. 

To Launch a New Product or Campaign 

If you’re planning to launch a new service or product in six months, you should have a concrete marketing and sales strategy plan to guarantee you’ll see both short- and long-term success. 

The sales plan process shouldn’t be hasty and rushed. Take the time to go over data and competitor analysis. Work with your team to create objectives and goals that everyone believes in. Your sales plan should be updated formally on a quarterly basis to be in line with industry trends and business efforts. 

To Increase Sales

If your team is looking to increase revenue and the number of closed sales, you may need to widen and define your target audience. A sales plan will help outline this target audience, along with planning out both sales and marketing strategies to reach more qualified prospects and increase your sales conversion rate. 

Now that you’ve seen sales plan examples and tips and tricks, the next step after creating your sales plan is to reach those ideal sales targets with Mailshake . Connect with leads and generate more sales with our simple but effective sales engagement platform.

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How to Create a Sales Plan: Tips, Examples & Free Sales Plan Template

Tactics and strategies are great. But when you create a sales plan, you set a clear path to success, with each step mapped out ahead of you.

The Internet is full of people who will tell you all about the success they’ve found from their strategies, whether it's personalizing a newsletter subject line or changing the color of the 'Buy Now' button.

But, news flash—these tips and tricks aren’t actual sales strategies .

To create real, lasting growth for you and your company, you need to create your own grand strategy. And that starts with a solid sales plan .

So, what’s your plan? How do you build it (and stick to it)?

We’re about to take a deep dive into sales plans. By the end of this guide, you’ll be completely equipped to win the fight for business growth. And we can't recommend it enough—grab our free sales plan template here in the Sales Success Kit today:

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What is a Sales Plan? (And What Makes for Successful Sales Planning?)

Armed with the information you'll compile within your sales plan, you can quickly identify any upcoming problems, sales droughts, or opportunities—and then do something about them.

If done correctly, the right sales plan template empowers you to spend even more time growing and developing your business, rather than responding reactively to the day-to-day developments in sales.

Sound exciting? Let’s jump right in.

Download Your Free Sales Plan Templates Today

Want to build your own sales plan template that'll clarify your business plan and accelerate your growth? Grab the Sales Success Kit , including...

...and more to help you set up strategic sales planning and quotas for your team.

Want to stand out in the competitive market? Explore the insights of challenger selling .

What’s in a Sales Plan? 6 Elements Every Sales Plan Needs

In basic terms, a sales plan template includes:

• Sales forecasting and goal-setting
• Market and customer research
• Prospecting and partnerships

Each part of the sales plan naturally works itself into the next, starting with your high-level goals, then considering market factors, and finally looking at who you know, and how to find more prospects to help hit your sales goals .

Here are the key elements to include in your plan:

1. Mission Statement

What gets your sales reps out of bed in the morning? What’s the clear mission that pushes your team to keep fighting for that win?

Your mission statement is a concise statement of the ‘big picture’—the main idea and goal you want to achieve. Think about your company mission and how the sales team forms part of that overarching goal.

2. Sales Goals and Revenue Targets

A sales plan must include achievable sales goals and the targets your sales reps will be working to reach. Use previous years' results to tell you what's reasonably possible for your team to do. Include specific metrics and KPIs , how these are performing currently, and what you plan to do to improve them.

This may also include information about your product’s pricing , planned discounts, and how your team can focus on the right customers to get the most revenue possible. Link these sales goals to the business goals your company is working to achieve.

3. Analysis of the Target Market

Your plan should clearly identify your ideal customer profile and information about the target market and demographic you plan to sell to. Are you breaking into a new market? Are you targeting small business or enterprise customers ? Give a concise description of your target audience and the stakeholders you’ll need to sell to.

4. Sales Strategy Overview and Methods to Reach Target Customers

This should include a brief overview of the customer journey , pain points , and how your salespeople will engage and follow up with new prospects throughout their journey to purchase. You'll likely outline specific sales activities you'll focus on, such as improving referral numbers, testing new cold-calling email strategies, or dipping your toe in social selling.

You may also include information about the marketing strategy and lead generation methods used to gather new leads and how sales managers will support the team.

5. Use of Resources and Sales Tools

How much does it cost your team to close a new deal? What is your budget for the sales team, or for sales tools ?

Inside your plan, list the resources you have available to you, and how you plan to use them during the year. This includes monetary resources, as well as human resources.

Next, show how your resources will be used. For example, how much will you spend on sales tools? Which CRM software is your team depending on? Briefly explain how you plan to use each tool and why you’ve allocated resources in that way.

6. Sales Team Structure

The structure of your sales team includes which reps are available during what times of the year, their specialties and skills, and where they focus in the sales process .

Also, include information about the sales managers, their teams, and the incentives you offer your reps.

The Benefits of Sales Planning: Why You Need a Sales Plan

Creating a sales plan from scratch can be daunting, even with the right sales planning template. So, why should you have your sales strategy written down and ready to act on?

Let’s talk about the benefits of sales planning to attract new business and grow your market share.

Clear, Time-Bound Goals Help You Reach Revenue Targets

There’s a reason they say, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

If you want your sales team to execute on and accomplish your sales goals, you need to have a plan in place. When targets are linked to specific timeframes and actions, your whole team will see how their individual work is involved in reaching your sales goals.

Prioritize Time and Resources

Without a specific action plan in place , your team won’t be able to prioritize their time with the right sales tactics and strategies to hit their targets.

With a clear outline of the tactics that bring the most significant ROI for your team, each rep can get the best results for the time they spend selling.

Clear Action Plan to Reach Your Goals

With an action plan in place, each team member knows what they’re supposed to be doing, and why they’re doing it. This keeps them motivated and helps them see how their individual efforts make a difference.

4 Types of Sales Plans (How to Choose Which Planning Style is Right for Your Sales Team)

It’s difficult to templatize a good sales plan since every plan is unique to the business and team it applies to. So, what are some examples of the types of sales plans you might create, and how can you choose between them?

• Revenue-based sales plan: If you’re aiming for a specific revenue goal, this type of sales plan will be focused on in-depth sales forecasting and specific actions to improve conversion rates and close more deals.
• Sales plan based on the target market: If you’re selling to vastly different markets, you may want to create a different sales plan based on the market you’re targeting. For example, your sales plan for enterprise companies would differ from your sales plan for selling to SMBs.
• Sales goals plan: A plan that’s focused on goals (other than revenue) may include hiring and onboarding, sales training plans, or plans to implement a new type of sales activity into your process.
• New product sales plan: When launching a new product, it’s a good idea to develop a specific business plan around its launch and continued promotion. This plan may include finding and contacting strategic partners, building a unique value prop in the market, and creating new sales enablement content for the team to use when selling this product. This type of sales plan can also apply to launching new features in your SaaS product.

How to Choose the Right Sales Planning Style

Ultimately, this will depend on factors such as:

• Your revenue goals
• The resources at your disposal
• Your sales team’s abilities and bandwidth
• Your personal commitment to seeing this plan through

When you’ve determined who is involved in sales planning, how committed they are, and the resources you can use to make this plan happen, you can start building your own sales plan.

9 Steps to Create a Sales Plan to 10x Your Sales Team’s Results

It may seem like a lot of work to develop a sales plan at this point. But once you do, you’ll be in a place to take your sales (and brand) to the next level.

Let’s break down this process, step-by-step, so you can start achieving greater results.

1. Define Your Sales Goals and Milestones

With a sales plan, we begin at the end: an end goal.

Start by choosing the sales metrics that matter most to your overall business. This could be:

• Annual or monthly recurring revenue (ARR or MRR)
• Retention or churn rates
• Average conversion time
• Average conversion rate
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)

It doesn’t matter so much which metric you choose —the important point is that it can tell you whether your work has succeeded.

Next, look at last year’s forecast and results . Were you being realistic? How did sales revenue increase annually? How does that compare your company to the industry standards? Use this information to determine what realistically you can bring in based on the size of the market, your company goals, and the experience and resources available to your sales team .

After setting clear sales goals, it’s time to set milestones . This involves breaking that big number down into smaller expectations with strict deadlines. These should challenge and motivate your sales team , without being so difficult they kill morale.

Lean on your sales team during this process. After all, they’re in the trenches with you and probably have the best knowledge about your customers. Learn about what they do during the workweek to close deals. Ask how much they’re currently doing, and how much bandwidth they have to do more. This will give you a real, frontline take on what goals and milestones to set in your sales plan template.

Finally, create specific targets with clear deadlines . For example, to achieve a sales goal of increasing revenue by 15 percent YOY, you might set the milestone of increasing your customer base by 20 percent, or increasing sales by 50% for a specific product.

Brought together, these milestones inform and support your overall sales plan, giving you a clear, actionable workflow to hit your overall goals for the year.

2. Clearly Define Your Target Market or Niche

You need to know the market you’re in and the niche you’re going to occupy so you can properly position your business for growth.

What’s a business niche? It’s more than just what your business specializes in—a niche is the space your business occupies with your products, content, company culture, branding, and message. It’s how people identify with you and search you out over the competition.

As serial entrepreneur Jason Zook explains: “ When you try to create something for everyone, you end up creating something for no one. ”

Don’t do that.

Instead, start by looking at a niche and asking yourself these questions:

• How big is the market?
• Is there a built-in demand for what you're selling?
• What’s your current market position?
• Who are your competitors? What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?

If you’re stuck, start by going back to your own strengths . List out your strongest interests and passions. Pick a field where the odds are already in your favor—where you have a proven track record, more expertise to offer, an extensive contact base, and people who can provide you with intros.

These kinds of strategic advantages will help you clarify your buyer persona and amplify the results of your planning.

Start with one product in one niche—you can always branch out to a complementary niche later. Sell beautiful, handcrafted tea cups? How about a booming doily business? Or customizable teaspoons?

A niche doesn’t limit you. It focuses you.

3. Understand Your Target Customers

Chasing the wrong customers will only waste your time and money, so don't allow them to sneak into your sales plan.

Your best customers are the ones that are successful with your product and see the ROI of it. Talk to them, and find out what they have in common.

While defining ideal customers depends on your company and market, here are some basic characteristics you’ll want to identify:

• Company size (number of employees, number of customers, yearly revenue)
• Size of the relevant department
• Geographical information
• Job title of your POC
• Buying process
• The goal they’re trying to achieve with your product or service

Also, don’t forget to think about whether they will be a good ‘fit’. If this is a long-term relationship you’re developing rather than a one-night stand, you want to ensure you speak the same language and share a similar culture and vision.

Use this information to build out an ideal customer profile . This fictitious organization gets significant value from using your product/service and provides significant value to your company. A customer profile helps you qualify leads and disqualify bad-fit customers before you waste time trying to sell to them.

Once you know the type of company you want to target with your sales team, it’s time to get inside their head. Start by hanging out where they hang out:

• Are they on social media? What’s their network of choice?
• Are they members of any Facebook or LinkedIn groups?
• Can you answer industry questions for them on Quora or Reddit?
• What podcasts do they listen to, or what resources do they read?

Get in your customers’ heads, and you’ll be in a much better position to sell to them.

GET THE IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE KIT →

4. Map Out Your Customer’s Journey

The next part of an effective sales plan must address how that ideal customer becomes your customer. Do this by mapping out their journey, including actions and events during the different stages of the sales funnel :

• Consideration

Conduct a customer survey or chat directly with your current, happy customers to gather valuable sales planning insights. Ask them:

• When you became a customer, what did you want our product to do for you?
• What features were important to you? Why?
• What was your budget?
• How did you solve this problem before using our product?

To fully understand their journey as a customer, you can also ask about past buying experiences:

• When was the last time you bought something similar?
• Was that a good or bad experience? Why?
• What was the decision-making process like?
• How did you evaluate different offers?
• Which factors made you choose that particular solution?

Once you’ve identified the awareness, interest, and consideration stages, let your prospects and new customers build the rest of their roadmap by asking them: "What’s next?"

"What needs to happen to make you a customer?"

If, for example, they say they’ll have to get approval from the VP of Finance. Ask:

"Ok, and let's say he agrees that we're the right fit; what's next?"

We call this the virtual close , a way to put your prospect in a future-thinking state of mind that makes them imagine buying from you. Asking this question to several high-quality prospects will tell you those final few steps in the customer journey until they’ve signed on the dotted line.

Finally, piece together the post-sale journey. Once a prospect becomes a customer, what’s next? How do you enable them to use your product and be successful with it? What happened to create your most loyal customers? Understanding this piece of the sales process is essential to managing and increasing customer retention .

5. Define Your Value Propositions

You know your customers. You know their journey. Now, define where you fit in by looking at your competitive advantage . Fully articulating what sets you apart from the competition is a crucial element of your sales plan template.

Start by asking a few simple questions:

• Why do customers buy from us?
• Why do customers buy from our competitors and not us?
• Why do some potential customers not buy at all?
• What do we need to do to be successful in the future?

Remember that customers buy benefits, not features. When describing your value proposition , it’s easy to get caught up in talking about you. What you’ve made. What you do. Instead, flip the script and talk about what your product will do for your customers . A strong competitive advantage:

• Reflects the competitive strength of your business
• Is preferably, but not necessarily, unique
• Is clear and simple
• May change over time as competitors try to steal your idea
• Must be supported by ongoing market research

For example, the competitive advantage of help desk software has nothing to do with its social media integrations and real-time ticket tracking. It’s the fact that it allows its customers to focus on creating a great customer experience.

Here’s the point: Focus on value, not features, in your sales plan template.

Your competitive advantage will inform everything your company does moving forward, from marketing to product development. It’s a great example of where sales can influence the development of a product and the direction of a business.

6. Organize Your Sales Team

The way your sales team is organized can enable them to better serve their customers and bring new revenue into your business faster.

Here are three basic structures for your sales team :

• The island: Individual reps work alone.
• Assembly line: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role such as lead generation, SDR (qualifier), Account Executive (closer), or Customer Success (farmer).
• Pods: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role in a pod, or group, that’s responsible for the entire journey of specific customers.

Think about the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team members, and how they will truly thrive as part of the team.

7. Outline the Use of Sales Tools

Now it’s time to think about the tools you’re using. Building out your sales stack takes time and effort, but listing out that stack in your sales plan will help you avoid getting caught up with new tech that may or may not help your sales team.

Basically, you’ll need tools for these areas to cover all aspects of the sales process:

• CRM software (like Close )
• Lead generation and prospecting tools
• Internal communication software
• Engagement and outreach tools
• Documentation software
• Sales enablement stack

Think about how all of your sales tools work together through integrations and where automation comes into play to save your team time, and how you'll drive CRM adoption across your team members.

8. Build a Prospecting List

A prospect list is where we take all the theory and research of the last few sections of our sales plan template and put them into action.

At its core, a prospect list is a directory of real people you can contact who would benefit from your product or service. This can be time-consuming, but it's essential for driving your sales plan and company growth.

First, use your ideal customer profile to start finding target companies:

• Search LinkedIn
• Check out relevant local business networks
• Attend networking events and meetups
• Do simple Google searches
• Check out the member list of relevant online groups

Target up to 5 people at each organization. Targeting more than one individual will give you better odds of connecting by cold email outreach as well as a better chance that someone in your network can connect you personally.

Remember, this isn’t just a massive list of people you could sell to. This is a targeted list based on the research you’ve done previously in your sales plan.

Once you have your list, keep track of your leads and how you found them using a sales CRM. This will keep historical context intact and make sure you don’t overlap on outreach if you’re working with teammates.

9. Track, Measure, and Adjust As Needed

Just because you’ve made a solid sales plan template to follow, doesn’t mean you get to sit back and watch the cash roll in.

Remember what Basecamp founder Jason Fried said about plans:

“A plan is simply a guess you wrote down.”

You’re using everything you know about the market, your unique value, target customers, and partners to define the ideal situation for your company. But yes, try as we might, very few of us actually see anything when we gaze deep into the crystal ball.

Instead, remember that your sales plan is a living, breathing document that needs to account for and adapt to new features, marketing campaigns, or even new team members who join.

Set regular meetings (at least monthly) to review progress on your sales plan, identify and solve issues, and align your activities across teams to optimize your plan around real-world events and feedback. Learn from your mistakes and victories, and evolve your sales plan as needed.

Create a Strategic Sales Plan to Grow Your Business

You’ve just discovered the basics—but I’ll bet you’re ready to go beyond that. Here are some final ideas to take your sales plan from a simple foundation to a strategic, actionable one.

Avoid Moving the Goalpost

Avoid making adjustments to the goals outlined in your sales plan—even if you discover you’ve been overly optimistic or pessimistic in your sales planning. When you're developing your very first sales plan template, it's natural to be wrong in some of your assumptions—especially around goals and forecasting .

Instead of letting it get you down, remember your plan serves as a benchmark to judge your success or failure. As you see places where your assumptions were wrong, carefully document what needs updating when it's time to revise your sales plan.

Invite Your Others to Challenge Your Sales Plan

Never finalize a plan without another set of eyes (or a few sets.) Get an experienced colleague—an accountant, senior salesperson, or qualified friend—to review the document before solidifying your sales plan.

Your sales team is another strong resource for reviewing your sales plan. Ask their opinions, give them time to think about how it relates to their daily work, and agree on the key points that go into your sales plan.

Set Individual Goals and Milestones for Your Sales Team

We talked about creating milestones for your business, but you can take your sales plan to the next level by setting individual milestones for your sales team as well.

These individual goals need to consider the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and skills among your salespeople.

For example, if someone on your team is making a ton of calls but not closing, give them a milestone of upping their close rate . If someone’s great at closing but doesn’t do much outreach, give them a milestone of contacting 10 new prospects a month.

Doing this will help your individual reps build their skills and contribute to their company and career growth.

Ready to Hit Your Sales Goals?

In most sales situations, the biggest challenge is inertia. But with a solid, detailed sales plan and a dedicated team with clear milestones, you’ll have everything you need to push through any friction and keep on track to hit your goals!

All jazzed up and ready to put together your own sales plan? Download our free Sales Success Kit and access 11 templates, checklists, worksheets, and guides.

They're action-focused and easy to use, so you can have your best sales year yet.

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Create a Sales Plan That Actually Works (Tips + Template)

• January 21, 2021

True success always starts with a plan. And for sales success, nothing beats a strategic sales plan.

Designed specifically to help your sales team drive more sales, a sales plan can show you where you’re at, where you want to be, and even more important, how to get there.

The question, of course, is how to create a sales plan that actually impacts sales. Keep reading for tips and a template to quickly and confidently create a strategic sales plan for your business.

Table of Contents

What is a sales plan, what is included in a sales plan, sales plan examples: there’s no one right way, the benefits of a sales plan, how to write a sales plan, 7 tips to help you create a sales plan, sales strategy template, selling your sales plan, final remarks.

A sales plan is a strategy document that lays out a company’s plan for improving sales results in a specified time period. A sales plan makes it possible for everyone on the sales team to see the big picture, share the same overall objectives, and work the same plan to achieve them.

It usually includes:

• Specific revenue and performance goals for a given period
• The strategies for achieving them
• The resources and activities required to carry out those strategies

A sales plan covers a lot of important aspects of business growth: revenue goals, selling methods and metrics, target customers, current sales force capabilities, and more.

Specifically, it covers 9 pieces of strategic information.

1. Executive Summary and Scope of The Sales Plan

This section gives a short summary of the document, focusing on goals and the strategies to achieve them. It also states the specific period and other parameters covered by the plan.

2. Business Goals and Revenue Targets

This section clearly establishes revenue targets and may include associated business goals (e.g., optimize lifecycle value through customer success programs, etc). Classifying revenue figures based on different categories (such as line and territory) helps clarify the document.

3. Review of Prior Period Performance

This section presents a recap of the prior period’s performance, identifying mistakes as well as decisive actions that led to a positive outcome. The overarching goal is to optimize the sales plan by adopting inputs and techniques that work.

4. Market and Industry Conditions

This section provides a summary of the market trends that have a high likelihood of influencing sales performance.

5. Strategies, Methodologies, and Tactics

This section recommends the best selling techniques, communication sequences, and playbooks for the specific company.

6. Customer Segments

This section cites all the potential revenue-generating, omnichannel opportunities available for the brand, such as the following:

• Cross-sells
• New Prospects
• New Segments

The document should describe new segments of the addressable market when they arise.

7. Team Capabilities, Resources, and Upgrades

This section provides a summary and describes the current state of all production inputs (human resources, tech software, specialized sales team, etc.,) required to process and close sales details.

8. Action Plan For Teams and Individuals

This section assigns tasks, activities, and responsibilities to different teams and individuals. Tasks include prospecting activities, meeting appointments, and product demos/presentations.

9. Performance Benchmarks & Monitoring

This section lays out performance metrics to track the systems and processes that help monitor these metrics.

What usually comes to mind when you think about sales plans?

If you’re like most people, it’s the annual sales plan or weekly sales plan — broad strategic and tactical documents mapping out the plan for everything sales-related.

But there are as many different types of sales plans as there are needs for a sales plan.

We’ll go over a few sales plan examples to get you started in the right direction.

30-60-90-day Sales Plan

There’s the 30-60-90-day sales plan. This is designed to help a new salesperson or sales manager get up to speed quickly in their first quarter on the job. The plan includes milestones they’d need to achieve at the 30th, 60th, and 90th day of their ramp-up.

Generally, the  30-60-90-day sales plan  can be broken down into 3 sections:

Day 1 to 30: 

Learn and understand everything you can about a company from their processes, customers, products, the competition to procedures.

Day 31 to 60:

Evaluate and put your plan into action. Analyze their current processes and assess changes.

Day 61 to 90:

Optimize and make the plan better. It is time to take action. Initiate an action plan. Implement any new strategies and procedures you’ve come up with.

Sales Plan For Specific Sales

A sales process involves using different tactics to approach and convert a prospect into a paying customer.

Another type of sales plan you’ll see a lot is an individual sales plan for specific sales tactics, such as prescribed call sequences,  email follow-up  frequency, and meeting appointments. This type of plan is similar to an annual/weekly sales plan, but it focuses on measuring and improving results for just one goal or task.

Territory Sales Plan

Meanwhile, sales managers who oversee a geo-location or region often use territory sales plans to give sales directors and VPs more visibility into their sales efforts.

This is a workable plan used to target the right customers and implement goals to increase the income generated and sales over time.

A good territory sales plan will:

• Make your team more productive
• Reduce operational costs
• Increase the number of generated sales
• Improve your customer coverage
• Improve working relationships between clients and managers

Note: It is essential to work on your territory sales plan and avoid making constant changes. Unnecessary changes can tamper with your productivity and your ‘territory’ in general.

Sales Training Plan

And there are sales plans for every area of sales. Sales Enablement might have a sales training plan, for example, and  Revenue Ops  might have a sales compensation plan.

A sales training plan can be used as a roadmap for different sales training programs. It can be grouped according to positions held in an organization, assets, sales record etc.

A sales compensation plan is an umbrella for base salary, incentives and commission that make up a sales representative earnings.

Therefore, you can schedule a sales training plan to talk to your sales team about the importance of a sales compensation plan and how they can use it to increase revenue and drive performance.

Sales Budget Plan

Lastly, a sales budget plan gives you a  sales forecast  for a given period based on factors that could impact revenue — like industry trends and entry to a new market segment. Similar to a traditional sales plan, they cover the staff, tools, marketing campaigns, and other resources needed to generate the target revenue.

A good sales budget plan  should include the following:

Sales forecasting: 

The process of estimating future sales by predicting the number of units a salesperson or team can sell over a certain period, i.e. week, month, year, etc.

Anticipated expenses: 

Include the number of costs your team is likely going to incur. Remember to have even the smallest expenses to estimate the average sales.

Expect the unexpected: 

Always leave room for unforeseen circumstances in your sales budget. For example, new packaging expenses, new competitive market strategies etc.

A sales plan does deliver side benefits (such as promoting discipline and diligence), but it’s really about making sure your sales don’t dry up over time. Which means it’s not optional.

The reality is this: Most of us aren’t planners. We talk a good game, but nothing happens until we’re accountable.

Without a written plan, it’s just talk.

So the first benefit of a sales plan is that it helps you execute on all your best ideas. But that’s not all. A good sales plan will also help you:

• Keep your sales team on the same page, aiming for the same target and focusing on the same priorities.
• Clarify your goals and revenue objectives for a given period.
• Give your team direction, focus, and purpose.
• Adopt a unified set of strategies and playbooks to reach your business and revenue goals.
• Know what your team capabilities are and be able to isolate your needs, from tools to talent and other resources.
• Inspire and  motivate  stakeholders.
• Track your progress and optimize performance over time.

A sales plan is a pretty straightforward document. It doesn’t need to be written in a formal language or pass your compliance review. It just needs to outline your plans for the coming period, whether that’s a year, a quarter, or a month.

While there are 9 sections in the sales plan template, much of the document simply validates your ideas. The most important pieces of information are:

1. Your goals

Setting smart goals for you and your team  is an essential part of creating a sales plan. I believe the biggest mistake you can make when setting goals is solely focusing on numbers.

Smart sales goals should be actively focused on. If it helps, use goal-setting and planning frameworks such as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). Create goals that stretch your capabilities, but that seems doable based on your new strategy.

2. Your SWOT analysis

SWOT — short for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats — is one of the best frameworks for analyzing your sales team’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and strengths. It helps you to build a bulletproof wall around your plan.

You’ll be able to address what you’re lacking, the areas that need improvement, identify your USP (Unique Selling Point),  come up with Value-Based Selling , and your most vital points and how you can exploit them to your advantage.

3. Your strategy

Your sales strategy should be documented to help position your products and services to differentiate your solution from competitors.

A good strategy will help you address your customers’ needs in every stage of your sales plan. For better sales, you can balance  inbound and outbound sales strategies  for even higher sales.

4. Your tactics

Be aware, though, it’s not just a wish list or a collection of ideas. Your sales plan should be based on actual field data and only use benchmarks and quantities that are measurable. Be clear. Be specific. Be actionable.

Which brings me to another point: A good sales plan is realistic.

It’s fine to have a 5-year goal of hitting $10B. But what about now? Figure out exactly what your current numbers are, and set your targets based on those numbers.

I already mentioned that your sales plan doesn’t have to be a formal document. But it does need to be clearly written, so all team members and stakeholders understand the plan.

Tip #1: Base it on in-depth and up-to-date research

You need relevant  statistics  and trends in your niche, industry, and ideal customers. Remember, markets and customers are in a constant state of flux. There’s nothing worse than stubbornly chasing prospects who aren’t a good fit anymore while ignoring entire market segments that show a rising demand for your solutions.

Tip #2: Use data and statistics

Use the data from your in-depth research to identify problem areas, find points of opportunity in your sales process, and validate your assumptions and ideas.

You can also use the data to come up with accurate metrics and figures to help predict your sales plan’s outcome.

Tip #3: Verify your facts

Accuracy matters!

Don’t rush! Facts and figures are essential, especially to stakeholders. One simple mistake and your entire plan come tumbling down.

Ensure you take time to review your facts, figures, and forecasts before finalizing the document.

Tip #4: Get tactical

Break the overall sales action plan into tactical plans for individual areas of sales:

• SDRs and account executives
• Sales operations
• Sales enablement
• Customer success

This may require collaboration with  cross-functional teams  such as marketing, customer support, and product teams.

Tip #5: Use Historical Performance Data

In sales, you can use the past to dictate the future. Historical data will help you set targets for the current period. For example, what were your previous revenue targets? Did you hit them? Why or why not? This information can help you set achievable goals for your current sales plan and know the mistakes to avoid.

Tip #6: List The Tracking Methods You’ll Use

Highlight the tracking methods you’ll use to keep your plan moving forward. That includes performance metrics, monitoring techniques, software, tools, and  selling strategies  for your business model.

Tip #7: Build a Strong Case For Your Proposed Budget

Stakeholders and superiors are impressed with cold-hard facts. Therefore, having a strong detailed case for your budget will help your sales plan smoothly sail through.

Not only will you outline your plans for the coming period for your budget, but you’ll also need to detail the costs. Be sure to include an ROI analysis for any new tools or talent you think you’ll need.

Are you ready to write your own sales strategy? Here is a sales plan template to help you get started. Here’s how to use the sales plan template to make it useful to you:

Start by using the Sales Plan Template we’ll give you in the next section. Just follow the prompts in the template, so you know what information is needed in each section. Don’t try to be fancy. Use simple language. Focus on being specific and clear.

Then share information in whatever format works best. That may be text paragraphs, tables, lists, charts, graphics, or screenshots. You can also adapt it as needed to suit your business, your sales team, and your needs.

A sales plan should contain the following sections:

1. Executive Summary

This is your opening ‘statement’. It is a formal summary that sum ups the contents of your strategy.

When writing your executive summary , keep it short, and precise. It should be one page or two. Ensure it gives an overview of what is included in your plan. It should talk about:

• The strategies you’ll implement to achieve your goals
• The time-frame you expect to achieve your plan
• The scope of your plans

2. Business Goals With Revenue Targets

This section talks about the revenue target and associated business goals. You can  classify revenue figures  according to different categories to clarify the sales strategy.

For example, for each goal, you can enter the current outcome and targeted outcome as illustrated in the table below:

3. Review of Past Performance

Take a trip down prior period performance . Note the mistakes that negatively affected the outcome and their strengths which positively impacted the general outcome.

Your goal is to identify the strategies and tactics that work.

4. Specific Strategies, Methods, and Playbooks

List the  specific sales strategies,  methods, and playbooks you’ll use to achieve the goals listed above.

5. Customer Segments/ Buyers Persona

This section talks about potential  revenue-generating streams  and different opportunities available for the company and new markets. Remember to include upsells, referrals, and renewals.

6. Team Capabilities and Resources

Here, provide a summary and describe the current  production inputs required in the sales process , i.e., human resources, specialized software, sales team, etc.

7. Action Plan

The action plan requires you to set  specific strategies and supporting tactics  that will be used to achieve a particular goal, i.e. new acquisition. Assign different activities and responsibilities to teams who will run that particular action.

Below is an example of an action plan table:

8. Sales Tools

Go ahead and list the  tools you’ll use to ensure the sales plan runs smoothly  and all sales processes will be managed using these tools.

9. Performance Benchmarks

This is the last section of your sales plan. It  lays out the performance metrics  to track the process systems to help and monitor these metrics.

Also, list and provide links to used sources. Explain how the report will be generated and stored. Finally, talk about how the report will be used to review the progress made.

Okay, your sales plan is written. Great! But you’re not done yet.

Your next step is to present it to the sales team, management, and stakeholders. That’s because you need buy-in to make it happen.

When your sales team is on board, they’ll be pumped about doing their assigned tasks. When management is on board, they’ll be excited about giving you the budget you need to turn your plan into a reality. With buy-in as your top priority, it’s important to be prepared to give a solid presentation. In other words, sell it.

One final note: There are lots of reasons you may not get everything you ask for. There may be plans in the works you don’t know anything about yet. Or the budget may need to favor another initiative.

If you don’t get the budget you asked for, be sure to update your sales plan accordingly. The goal is to stretch your team’s capabilities, not do the impossible.

Sales don’t happen without a good sales plan. Fortunately, they’re not as hard as they might seem.

Take your time identifying your biggest challenges and problem-solving to overcoming them. Once that’s done, your sales plan is simply the document that organizes your ideas.

What’s your biggest hang-up when it comes to creating a sales plan? Have you found any tricks that help? Let me know in the comments below.

Max Altschuler

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Sales Managers: How To Build A Sales Plan

Nov 13, 2023 | Business Growth , Sales Strategy , Sales Training

A well-crafted sales plan highlights the importance of defining key goals, selecting target verticals, and identifying strategic accounts. This article shares insights to guide sales managers and sales professionals in leveraging intelligence, creating decision-maker personas, and building partnerships, while also emphasizing the significance of a personalized marketing plan to enhance their brand and drive long-term success.

When I think of a day in the life of a top sales manager , there’s a common theme. They invest their time in the right sales activities for their team. This focus becomes even more important, because many times they are balancing business development and sales management along with client delivery.

How can you know what steps will move you forward faster, help you build strategic relationships , and accelerate sales results? Having the right sales plan will help you get there.

Key Goals and Milestones to Include in a Sales Plan

The first step I always advise during sales consulting on sales plans is to start by developing a list of your key business goals and milestones. Some specific categories can help keep you focused on what you want to accomplish this year and beyond, including:

• New Client Growth
• Current Client Growth
• Game Changer Goal

Think about what you want your team to accomplish for the year and write it down in three or four sentences. What does your book of business or territory look like at the end of the year? What are a few of the things that you want to accomplish? What are your revenue goals in these key verticals, service lines, and product categories?

Lastly, what’s your game changer goal that stretches you, one that can make a huge difference in your sales team’s success this year? Putting all this on paper will provide the strategic snapshot of what you want your book of business or territory to look like at year end.

Select Verticals to Target

Selecting focus verticals can help accelerate revenue growth. Think of it as selecting a major and then some minors. Verticalization offers significant benefits, even if you have a predefined territory, a predefined book of business, or a predefined service line.

The requirements of business development and client service can be better balanced, especially for those of us that are selling or developing business as we’re doing delivery, if we can hone in on a major and a minor vertical. Just getting traction in one vertical could be your runway to spin off into other verticals if you choose.

Some questions sales managers need to ask themselves when targeting verticals:

• (Example: healthcare may be your major; home health or nursing facilities may be your minors.)
• In which verticals have you already established expertise?
• What verticals do you have a passion for or an interest in going deeper into?
• What verticals will have the greatest opportunities over the next 1 – 3 years?

Identify Target Accounts

What are the top 20 accounts or clients per vertical that you want to build relationships in? Ideally, this is also tracked in your CRM.

Target accounts per major and minor.

Using myself as an example, professional services is my major, and I have three minors– public accounting, insurance, and technology.

Intelligence Verticals

Intelligence is the deep information that we gather through research on our top prospects and clients, and also within our verticals.

• Leadership Vision
• Key Initiatives
• Fiscal Year Goals

What are the trends that will be affecting your majors and minors over the next year or the next three years that you need to pay attention to? What are some of the challenges that this vertical is going to come up against? How can you help your clients and prospects solve those problems with the services and solutions that you provide?

This list is something you can adapt at the account level to help you gather intelligence in a single place. It helps you think strategically as a sales manager and understand how you can help your sales reps move prospects business forward.

A modern seller or a modern sales manager is someone who’s recognized as a differentiator in their prospects’ or clients’ business, and the value of what they sell isn’t recognized without them as part of the equation.

You and your team’s expertise are a significant part of the sales and business development. Investing time in these questions at the vertical level and then at the account level is going to help elevate you in the eyes of your prospects or clients.

Create Decision Maker Personas

For each major and minor, you may have unique decision-maker personas. The next step in your planning process is to compile and analyze them.

• What is the decision maker measured on?
• What are the key challenges facing this decision maker?
• What is happening inside his/her firm / company?
• What will make change difficult?
• What motivates this decision maker?

Do you have captured in a single place the personas of all of your decision makers? I like to think of it as creative writing, but it is truth telling about what is on the mind of your key decision makers. It helps you envision them, empathize with them and ultimately align your expertise to the challenges they’re trying to solve.

Form Partnerships/Alliances

What are your key partnerships and key alliances that you need to build to accelerate growth in each major or minor?

These may be through industry associations, business partners, centers of influence, research organizations, and more. The key is to determine the partnerships and alliances that are the best fit for your plan. Then ascertain where you can commit to an investment, whether that investment is financial or time or a combination of both.

Personal High-level Marketing Plan

Your firm or company may have a marketing strategy, but do you have a sales manager strategy that goes along with it? In my book, The Modern Seller , I talk quite a bit about ambassadors . One of the things that make ambassadors stand out is building longer term loyalty and lifetime value.

To be able to rise above and have a personal brand that’s unique. Having your own personal leadership brand can tie to your verticals and help elevate how well known you are in the marketplace.

What I have here are key areas for you to consider in your personal marketing plan. Choose the ones that align best with your natural skills.

• Social Media
• Events/Forums
• Thought Leadership Content
• Website Blogging & Guest Blogging
• Guest Podcasting

For a deeper dive on how to build your sales manager plan, watch my webinar with The Sales Experts Channel . It’s available on demand.

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Don’t let your competition get an advantage. My sales consulting and sales advisory programs can help. If you want to know how to create a sales plan that truly ignites sales, let’s talk.  Contact me to schedule time for a discovery conversation.

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Blog » Sales Management » 20 Key Sales Management Strategies to Lead Your Sales Team to Success

20 Key Sales Management Strategies to Lead Your Sales Team to Success

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Is your sales team underperforming?

Are they lacking the motivation to improve their performance?

If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then know your team is not alone. According to a survey done by Hubspot, 66% of salespeople are not reaching their quotas .

There are a number of reasons why your team is not performing at its peak level . Here are some of the top ones:

• They do not like their job and should not be in sales
• They do not feel like they have a mentor or coach to guide them
• They have not been properly trained
• They lack prospecting skills
• They do not have Drive
• They do not properly understand your company’s service or product

The list goes on and on.

There are a seemingly infinite number of reasons why your sales team is struggling to reach the success that both you and they want. Not only is this frustrating to Sales Managers because they need their team to reach sales goals, but it can result in high employee turnover. Further, this has the potential to cost your company a great deal of money.

In fact, some estimate that losing an employee and hiring someone else to fill the position can cost your company 200% of the employee’s annual pay .

One of the key reasons salespeople leave their jobs is a lack of proper training and development. By investing in effective sales training programs, you can equip your team with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed, which can lead to increased motivation, job satisfaction, and ultimately, lower turnover rates.

We are guessing your company would like to do without those costs. And that is where you come in. Ensuring that you are a good Sales Manager will help you avoid the problems associated with an underperforming sales team.

However, there is more to leading your team to success than you may think. While you need to meet your quotas and always adhere to company policies, there is a great deal more that happens behind the scenes. This includes inspiring your team, sales team motivation strategies, leading them to better sales performance and guiding them to success in their careers.

So how do you help your sales team find success?

Read on to find out the effective sales management strategies you need to adopt today to get your team on the right track and avoid sales management mistakes .

Key Takeaways

• Provide regular one-on-one coaching and feedback to develop salespeople’s skills. This boosts productivity, confidence, and abilities.
• Encourage continued learning through ongoing training to keep information fresh. Create a strategic training plan for the year.
• Leverage sales technology and tools like CRM to increase efficiency and collaboration. Ensure new tech integrates well.
• Streamline the sales process using playbooks based on top performers’ tactics. This brings consistency across the team.
• Build a positive culture with flexibility, development opportunities, social responsibility, etc. This increases engagement and retention.
• Understand each salesperson’s unique personality, learning style and preferences. Adjust management strategies accordingly.
• Inspire your team by being energetic, appreciative, caring, accountable and honest. This motivates excellence.
• Use competitions focused on clear goals to boost performance. Keep it simple, fun and rewarding.
• Invest time getting to know each rep’s selling style, motivators etc. Strong connections drive productivity.
• Hire driven salespeople and nurture the team for continued success. Provide support tools to maximize potential.

Top Sales Management Strategies for Sales Teams

1. one-on-one coaching.

We understand: Sales Managers are busy.

This makes it tough to stay on top of everything on your to-do list, and most often, one-on-one coaching for salespeople falls through the cracks.

But, in order to help your sales team reach peak performance, that needs to change. Regular coaching is integral to your team becoming more productive, more confident and more skilled at sales.

In fact, companies who provide solid coaching to their team see a 16.7% growth in their annual revenue.

If your sales team is properly coached through a variety of customer interactions, they will be better prepared to handle difficult situations. And this means they will be able to close more deals.

In addition, one-on-one coaching allows your reps to feeling more confident in their approach to sales since they will have input from an expert (you).

Your best salespeople will appreciate any help you can offer, as long as you are still allowing them certain freedoms and flexibility.

And, if worse comes to worst and you are hard-pressed to find time to work one-on-one with each of your salespeople, at the very least provide regular input.

2. Encourage Continued Learning

Starting your salespeople off on the right foot with comprehensive sales training ensures you avoid many common problems that plague the sales industry.

However, a study by Harvard Business Review found that 87% of what people learn in a live training is forgotten in a mere 30 days.

So get your effective training in place, and watch your middle performers become top performers that can generate more revenue for your company.

It is important to train your team regularly to keep the information fresh in their minds.

A great sales management strategy to help you do this is to create a strategic training plan for the next year and make sure your team sticks to it. This training should reinforce previously taught lessons, while also adding in new strategies for them to continue building their skillset.

Further, you also encourage your team to pursue continued education on their own to perform at their best and stay ahead of the competition.

3. Use Technology

Thanks to constantly improving technology, many parts of the sales process are becoming automated, thus quicker and easier for your salespeople to complete.

There are lots of sales enablement tools available today, one example is cloud-based CRM.

A good CRM makes collaboration much easier, as well as eases the difficulty of keeping track of calls and clients.

Further, equipment such as tablets and headsets allow your salespeople to effortlessly multi-task, allowing client meetings and calls to be well-documented without taking your salespeople’s focus away from their clients.

The key to bringing technology into your sales team’s efforts is to ensure it works seamlessly with the sales enablement tools and systems your team already has set in place.

Also key is to always be on the lookout for the latest developments to ensure your team continues to be as productive and efficient as possible.

You can even take this one step further by asking your team their input — find out if there are any tools they think would help them better execute their job.

4. Streamline the Sales Process

Though the sales process will not always be one-size-fits-all, you want to have a general sales process in place that provides your team with the tools and information it needs to reach its sales goals.

One of the best ways to develop an effective sales process for your team is to create playbooks.

Playbooks take the processes of your best salespeople and share those tactics with your underperforming sales reps.

This results in a more efficient, productive and consistent sales process across your entire team.

It is crucial to keep in mind when using playbooks, however, that they will not fit every situation. Instead, they act as a flexible guide that will take your sales reps through the journey of the buyer .

5. Establish a Good Company Culture

Though having a strong company culture has always been important, its importance has become increasingly important to employee satisfaction lately.

Why is that? Millennials.

Millennials, according to the Pew Research Center, rule the U.S. workforce. In fact, there are nearly 54 million of this generation’s people working , and they place a lot of importance on a company’s culture.

Thus, it is in your best interest to find ways to improve your company culture and provide your employees with some key things , including:

• Flexibility.  This can be flexibility in scheduling, in the location they work from or the way their office is set up.
• Professional development. Millennials are looking at how to advance in their careers, and want positions at companies that will help them develop and grow.
• Reputation.  Reputation is important not only within your industry, but also when it comes to being a socially responsible company. Make sure your company is donating, volunteering and practicing sustainability.

Other powerful sales management strategies to improve company culture include:

• Creating a positive physical and social environment
• Celebrating employee achievements
• Showing appreciation for salespeople on a regular basis
• Organizing events and sales team competitions to keep salespeople engaged and excited about coming to work

6. Understand Your Sales Team’s Differences

Though many successful salespeople have similar personality traits, including Drive , recognize that does make everyone a carbon copy of each other.

Your salespeople will have different personalities, learning styles and coaching preferences. So, be sure you do not treat and coach everyone the same way.

Instead, take each individual’s unique personalities into account and adjust your management strategy accordingly. This will increase the chances of each of your salespeople performing to their full potential.

If you are looking for assistance in better understanding your salespeople’s personalities or preferences, consider using a sales assessment test , like The Production Builder™ , which is designed to give you coaching and mentoring guidance, based on each salesperson’s unique personality profile.

7. Inspire Your Team

Successful Sales Managers understand the importance of inspiring their team.

In fact, they use inspiration as one of their top sales team management strategies. They do so by helping each salesperson see how successful they can become, and motivating them to maximize their potential

Inspiring Sales Managers are often described as:

• Energetic.  Having a positive, uplifting attitude that is contagious
• Appreciative.  Truly showing gratitude for the hard work of the sales team and recognizing/rewarding them accordingly
• Servant-hearted. Caring about the success of the sales team more than personal gain
• Accountable.  Taking personal responsibility for what happens, even when the consequences are unpleasant
• Honest.  Always telling the truth to both co-workers and customers

Creating an environment in which your team feels inspired will motivate them to excel at work.

And you know what that means — better sales results and greater revenues.

8. Drive Competition

If you are looking for a powerful sales management strategy to boost your team, creating a competition is a great option.

Here are few tips on how to create a successful sales competition :

• Define a clear goal. Whether you want to improve customer service, increase sales volume or simply survive a seasonal slump, you must first clearly communicate the objective of your contest to your sales team.
• Keep it simple. Try to focus on one goal during your competition. Also, make sure the rules are easy-to-understand so your salespeople can easily participate.
• Have fun. Chances are most of your salespeople have a natural Competitiveness. Encourage friendly banter around the competition to make it more fun and interesting.

Keep hype up about the competition by posting news and sending out updates via email.

Whoever ends up winning the competition, be sure to recognize and reward them for their accomplishment.

9. Get to Know Your Team

How can you expect to be successful in your sales management strategies if you do not know your team?

Knowing the team you are working with is an absolute necessity in the world of sales. Not only do you need to know the obvious things — your salespeople’s names and faces — you also need to take the time to get to know sales-specific things about them, including their:

• Selling style
• Learning style

Gaining this level of understanding will allow you to form meaningful connections with your sales team. This close rapport confers many advantages, including better collaboration, increased trust, and the ability to motivate your team more effectively.

When salespeople feel connected to their Sales Manager, they are more productive. In fact, according to a Gallup poll, companies whose employees are more engaged have 21% higher productivity rates than those who are disengaged and disconnected.

So take the time to get to know your team and you will see your sales soar.

10. Build a Winning Sales Team

As a Sales Manager, you are no longer able to ensure sales by going into the field yourself. Instead, you need to place your trust in your sales team to do the job.

So, what sales management strategy do you use to reach that level of trust?

Trusting your team begins with building a winning team. If you want to have a strong team, you must hire strong salespeople, people who have Drive.

You can determine whether your candidate has Drive by implementing a sales aptitude test such as The DriveTest® into your hiring process. This test will filter out those who are not built to be strong salespeople.

Using The DriveTest® will save you both time and money — a lot of money. In fact, DePaul University reported that you can count on waiting six months and spending an average of $110,000 to replace a lost sales rep.

No company wants to waste that kind of money. Instead, work to build a great team from the start. The extra money you spend up-front will be well worth it in the long run. Invest time in hiring the right people, training them thoroughly, and developing a positive team culture.

This will pay dividends through increased sales, higher retention, and reduced turnover expenses.

11. Cultivate a Winning Sales Team

Beyond building a winning sales team — you also have to nurture it for continued success.

Here are some of the top ways to lead your sales team to success:

I. Invest time and resources to help your team hit their quotas.

Even highly Driven salespeople still need supportive tools to help them maximize their full potential. Provide your team with the resources they need to do the best job they can, whether that is a certain software program, presentation material or even administrative assistance.

Check out Sales Psyched! as a resource to help your salespeople take their selling to the next level with psychological selling tips.

If a small investment can help your salespeople close valuable leads more efficiently, then the investment will be well worth it.

II. Ensure your approach is best for your team.

The way you approach sales and quotas may not actually work for all of your salespeople. It is important that you work with each individual rep to provide them with the approach and support they need to be successful.

III. Create your own goals and track your progress.

Though it is your job to keep track of your sales team’s progress, you need to keep track of your own goals and progress as well.

12. Identify Sales Team’s Barriers to Success

Your team may be struggling with some barriers that are keeping them from reaching their goals. And, it is your job to identify those barriers and help your team overcome them.

Here are the top three sales barriers holding many sales teams back, and how you can break through them:

I. Fear of being rejected

Work with your sales reps to change their perspective on rejection. Do not let them assume that a cold call will result in a rejection. Rather, help them be hopeful that a cold call will result in a sale.

Another way to help salespeople overcome their fear of rejection is by ensuring your salesperson thoroughly understands how your company’s product or service can help the customer and is able to communicate that.

Further, providing your salespeople with scripts addressing common customer concerns will help them better anticipate objections and prepare solid responses.

II. Poor communication

Did you know that 92% of all customer interaction happens over the phone?

This statistic shows the importance of communication in sales.

The key to your salesperson having a successful sales call lies not in them doing all the talking, but rather in them doing a lot of listening. Listening connects salespeople with customers and makes the phone calls more of a conversation rather than a pitch, which helps build a longer lasting relationship.

III. Lack of content and/or social media marketing

With 90% of marketers stating that social media has increased exposure for their business , there is no denying its importance.

And why is that exposure so important to your sales team?

First of all, it establishes credibility. It is easier for your salespeople to sell when the potential customer has seen your product or service advertised on social media. It provides a level of knowledge and comfort for the prospect.

Secondly, it allows your team to see where they are positioned in comparison to your competition. Social media marketing typically warrants feedback , and that feedback helps your team understand their place in the industry, and what they can do to improve their sales tactics.

Thus, you are missing out on a number of potential leads if you do not have a strong social media strategy in place.

In fact, sales teams have been shown to improve their closings by 67% when working together with the marketing team.

13. Help Your Sales Team Create Effective Sales Plans

Successful salespeople do not get to where they are simply because of luck.

Instead, they used sales plans. And, because each of your salespeople is different from the next, you need to work with them to create sales plans that work well for each person on an individual level.

Make sure each member of your sales team includes the following in their sales plans:

• Define their own goals
• Create easy-to-follow plans to ensure consistency and progress
• Improve time management
• Improve prioritization strategies

When developing prioritization strategies, your salespeople should base their decisions on the following considerations:

• Which activities will close the most leads
• Which activities will generate the most prospects
• How and when to nurture their leads

14. Start Early to Stay Ahead of the Curve

This is one of the most effective sales management strategies for you to implement into your company.

Similarly to how your salespeople should anticipate customer objections, you should anticipate potential issues that could arise within your sales team and have a plan to address them before they become a problem.

Hiring a strong sales team is the best way to get your team off to a promising start, and minimizes the chances of bad hires slowing down the team’s progress.

From there, you will want to provide your new salespeople with the proper coaching and skill teaching they need to do well right out of the gate.

Do not wait until they show obvious signs of a struggle to bring them in for additional training or coaching. Be proactive about identifying opportunities for further development.

Schedule regular one-on-one meetings to discuss progress, provide feedback, and work through any issues early on. It is much easier to keep sales reps on track than try to course correct once problems arise.

15. Pay Attention to Seemingly Small Issues

After your sales team is trained, regularly check in with them and pay attention to their numbers to see if you start to notice any negative trends with specific individuals or within the team overall, however small.

This could be an indication that part of the sales process needs to be improved.

Say one of your salespeople has a few bad calls in a week. They could be having a rough week, or they could not be using their skills in the right way to close deals. Though a week of struggle may not seem like a big deal, it could become a bigger issue if they do not tackle these issues early on.

Doing so is important for not only the company goals, but also for the individual salesperson. They could be having more trouble with sales calls then you realized, so you want to address this problem before it becomes something larger.

Providing additional training and coaching early on shows you care about their professional development. It will boost their confidence, skills, and job satisfaction. Catching issues early prevents setbacks that could be discouraging. Being proactive helps ensure each rep reaches their full potential.

16. Give Your Team Detailed Feedback

In order to create a culture that promotes growth and success, you need to give feedback to your sales reps.

Research has shown that when a manager places focus on employee strengths, workers are 30 times more likely to remain engaged in their work.

Further, 65% of employees have admitted they wish they got more feedback from their managers .

However, it is important that you not only provide feedback about what your employees are doing right, but also the areas in which they could improve. In fact, many high-Drive salespeople look forward to constructive criticism, because it helps them get one step closer to closing more deals.

So, make sure you are giving your sales reps the feedback they want and need.

The best way to do this is to be specific. Avoid micromanaging your employees and, instead, provide them with new things to implement that they can track and report back to you on, rather than you checking up on them.

Give clear, actionable feedback focused on behaviors they can change. For example, suggest trying a new script for overcoming objections or starting each call with an icebreaker question.

Have them practice the new techniques and keep a log of results. Set a timeline for follow-up and collaboration. This approach empowers sales reps to take ownership of their development while keeping you informed.

17. Identify and Communicate Both Team and Individual Goals

Numbers are a crucial piece of sales.

And, to increase your chances of meeting the numbers the company has set, you need to clearly communicate the goals you expect your team as a whole to reach, as well as the goals of each individual person.

Not only do your goals need to be clear to your team and each salesperson, they also need to be realistic.

If you have a new sales rep on his first week of work, do not give him the same goals you give your veteran superstar salesperson . Instead, adjust his goals to fit his individual skill set, and give him a chance to succeed. Also, keep in mind that while numbers in sales are certainly important, they are not everything.

It is important that you also set developmental goals with your salespeople. These goals are the key to building a strong sales team across the board. Schedule one-on-one meetings to discuss each rep’s strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations.

Collaborate to define specific skills they want to improve. Make the goals measurable and time-bound. Check in regularly on progress and provide support needed to reach targets.

Setting clear objectives tied to growth makes development a priority, not an afterthought. Your team will be motivated knowing their advancement is a shared focus.

18. Make Sure Your Sales Team Knows Competitors’ Offers

A good salesperson does not only know their company’s product and service inside out, but they are also aware of what the competition is offering.

One of the best ways to do this is to have your salespeople complete a SWOT analysis for your company.   By learning your company’s S trengths, W eaknesses, O pportunities and T hreats, your rep will be well-equipped to handle nearly any situation that may come their way in a call.

Customers want to know what makes you different from the competition, and your sales team needs to be able to answer with a solid response.

By knowing the competition well, your salespeople will be able to anticipate any objections that the customer may have to the product or service, and will also know how to sell your company’s product better.

Make sure your team understands competing products’ features, pricing, and positioning inside out.

Roleplay scenarios where they must counter a customer’s concerns about choosing your offer over another. Have them highlight specific areas where your solution outperforms rivals. This enables reps to pivot objections into selling points. An in-depth knowledge of the competition equips them to win more deals.

19. Celebrate Individual and Team Wins

It is a sad fact, but many Sales Managers do not celebrate their sales team’s wins, and probably do not realize the negative effect this has.

Taking the time to recognize and celebrate wins in your sales team can yield major benefits, including increased job satisfaction, productivity and motivation.

In fact, 78% of employees say that recognition makes them more motivated in their work.

Sales can be quite stressful, so you want to keep things positive and happy whenever possible.

Plus, seeing the recognition of other salespeople’s success will continue to motivate your team to strive for more.

Part of that recognition and celebration is also taking the time to sit down with the sales reps and asking them what they feel went well in the sale and how they can implement their successful strategies into future calls.

Schedule debrief sessions after big wins to capture insights while fresh. Ask open-ended questions to uncover tactics that secured the deal. Identify best practices that could work for other reps. Brainstorm ways to incorporate these proven approaches going forward.

This review process maximizes learning and growth from each accomplishment. It also shows salespeople their achievements are valued and builds confidence.

20. Set High Goals that Are Realistic

Stretch goals are a great tactic to use with your sales team, as long as you are giving them the guidance they need to get there.

By setting stretch goals that are high, yet realistic, you are giving your team a chance to seriously boost their confidence.

However, you have to be careful not to set stretch goals too high, to the point of where it is impossible to reach.

The best way to keep your stretch goals realistic is to set ones that around 60-70% of your team can, without a doubt, reach. Any lower than that, and you risk the goal being too hard to reach, and the team’s confidence plummeting. Any higher than that, and your team will not feel the same level of achievement when the goal is reached

Though it may feel at times that leading your sales team to success is impossible, as you can see, it is not.

By simply taking the time to plan and implement the sales management strategies outlined above, you should start to see a noticeable improvement in your sales team.

Have you tried all of the above strategies, but still are not seeing an improvement in your team’s performance?

It is important to keep in mind that a strong sales team begins with hiring the right salespeople. If your sales team is comprised of a number of low-Drive salespeople, you will likely see your team continue to struggle to find consistent success over time.

When recruiting, assess candidates not just for sales experience but for core attributes like motivation, work ethic, competitiveness, and persistence. Use behavioral interview questions and role playing to evaluate sales aptitude.

Check references thoroughly. Test for skills through activities like mock calls. Build a team of hungry, high-energy reps from the start. If your existing team lacks Drive, consider restructuring roles or bringing on new hires. The foundation of sales success is talent.

Transforming an underperforming sales team into a high-achieving one takes time and consistent effort. Do not get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results from implementing these strategies. True change happens gradually.

Keep analyzing what’s working and what’s not on a regular basis. Adjust your approach based on data and feedback. Celebrate small wins to keep motivation high.

Most importantly, lead by example. Model the behaviors you want your team to demonstrate. Be the type of leader they can respect and want to work hard for. Build a culture of accountability, transparency, and mutual support.

With persistence and commitment to continuous improvement, you can build an empowered, thriving sales team. The reward will be growing revenue and satisfied customers. Keep your vision fixed on the potential and stay focused on making progress every single day.

Sign up for a FREE trial of The DriveTest® today to discover whether your sales team has the Drive necessary for true sustained success.

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Why Do You Need A Sales Plan And How Can You Create One?

What Is A Sales Plan?

Many professionals confuse a company's business plan with its sales plan. The former details an organization's higher objectives, while the latter identifies ways to achieve those goals. A sales growth plan should include certain components that aim to get people to buy your product . Starting with ideas, your sales professionals outline methodologies and tactics to generate leads and increase revenue. For instance, they may indicate a few successful sales pitches that close deals quickly. Remember that your processes should be detailed so team members can turn to them whenever they need direction. This way, you streamline your activities and ensure smooth operations. How about tools and tactics? A strategic marketing plan should include them to help sales reps convince potential buyers. The bottom line is that sales plans help sales teams understand a company's goals, how they can achieve them, and how they will be evaluated for their efforts.

Does this sound a bit intricate? Keep reading to get a better understanding of how companies start with a sales business plan template to craft a strategy and tactics that accelerate growth.

Sales Process Vs. Sales Strategy

When it comes to sales, even professionals in the field confuse processes with strategies. They may sound similar, but their core differences are crucial. A sales planning strategy answers who, what, and why and aligns with a company's overall business objectives. Who is your ideal customer that should be targeted? What sets you apart from your competition, and why should they choose you? Your strategy should include the metrics that measure your success and failure. Also, it must forecast some difficulties and hurdles you might face within the next 12–36 months and the actions you'll take to overcome them. When you fill out your marketing plan template with clarity and actionable tips, you equip your team with tools that lead to high sales and exceptional customer service.

On the other hand, a sales process answers the how and when of your strategy, meaning what the best timing and methods are to facilitate your plan. Your processes should be centered around your customers and their needs and not appear salesy. Your entire team of sales professionals must be dedicated to fostering loyal and trusting relationships with clients on a regular basis, not only when your sales drop. Every employee needs to know when they can begin the sales cycle and which tactic to use during each stage to accelerate growth . Yet, you should not apply a one-size-fits-all approach, as each client has unique needs. Lastly, you should measure and test your sales processes regularly and make alterations based on market changes and customer behaviors.

Key Differences Between Transactional Sales And Strategic Sales

Transactional sales are focused on generating purchases from as many customers as possible without having to worry about fostering long-term relationships. Businesses want to achieve quick, high-volume sales, while buyers look for short-term solutions that don't require investment. Businesses in retail, automotive, and eCommerce belong to this sales model. On the contrary, strategic sales concentrate on building detailed strategies and demand generation campaigns that align with trends and customer behaviors. They train their sales forces on how to handle each client and their queries, and they use analytics and data to improve their tactics. Additionally, they track their competition's methods and evaluate why past processes failed.

Essentially, then, the first difference between the two sales models is purpose. Strategic sales wish to craft loyal, long-term relationships with returning customers. Transactional sales don't care about longevity, but quick sales with one-time customers. That's why their sales cycle is very short, as people buy something whenever they need it. Strategic sales, though, need to nurture leads, prove credibility, and close deals, a process that may take weeks or even months to conclude. While both models' goal is to get more customers , transactional sales care more about keeping prices low and not so much about high value. However, strategic sales care about offering unique products of high value at competitive prices. That's why customers may be slower to come but easier to retain, while in transactional sales, customers may disappear after one purchase. Thus, sales reps in the strategic sales model are well-trained so they can build trusting relationships with long-term clients, but transactional sales reps move on to the next client once they close a deal.

6 Elements Every Sales Plan Should Include

1. revenue and customer targets.

Let's start with your ideal customer. Do you know who they are and what their pain points and needs are? Chances are you have more than one customer profile you need to cater to with your content marketing ideas . You can conduct customer profiling to identify demographics, locations, and behaviors. Then, you can create content that resonates with their requirements and appeals to decision-makers and stakeholders. Furthermore, you should account for your revenue targets during the sales planning process. Based on the previous year, you can anticipate how much monetary growth you'll have. This percentage helps your sales reps strive for particular results. You may also include the special offers and discounts you plan on enforcing within a year so employees can focus on the right customers to have the best revenue possible.

2. Deadlines

Your sales development plan is tied to certain goals. Each one of these SMART goals should also be tied to deadlines. Knowing when it's time to measure your efforts allows you to keep track of your sales strategy and make appropriate alterations. While you must try to stick to your deadlines, don't be too strict with them. If you feel like you need to allocate extra time for more accurate results, do so. However, if the results of your small business content marketing are inefficient, you should be flexible enough to make changes and fix areas that don't produce. That's why most sales plans are segmented into four quarters, so you can manage your efforts more easily.

3. Strategies And Tactics

A sales strategy refers to the master plan you'll follow to achieve your revenue goals. Your strategy includes various tactics and techniques you'll enforce to materialize it. Content marketing for B2B typically relies on various promotional channels, including content creation, referrals, lead magnet ideas , and social media promotions. You may also implement paid advertising to appeal to larger audiences that may or may not know about your brand. A tactic some companies utilize is retaining customer information from their POS systems. In addition, email marketing, cold calling, and direct mail are still quite popular, depending on your niche. If you are interested in starting exclusive email blasts , you can partner up with eLearning Industry to promote your messaging to our thousands of dedicated subscribers.

4. Budgeting And Pricing

Adding your budget to your sales strategy template is necessary so you can keep track of your spending. No matter how limited or extended your resources are, you should account for marketing spending, employee wages, tools, tech, and travel expenses. Also, you must forecast unexpected spending and set priorities in case you exceed your budget. Where are you going to cut back? Or maybe you can reserve additional resources in case that happens. Furthermore, you should include your product's pricing and promotions. This way, you can predict your earnings along with your spending. Make sure not to overdo it with special discounts, as you may seem appealing to customers but have disappointing ROI. And keep in mind that your budget should be tied to your business action plan.

5. Team Structure

Don't forget about adding your team members to your sales plan. Start by mentioning each employee and their job position. What are their strengths, and what are their roles in your project? Each professional should understand clearly what they are expected to do and what results they should strive for. Clarity is necessary so no confusion or responsibility overlap arises. This is particularly crucial since managers can't oversee every little detail of everyone's work. Perhaps this is feasible with smaller sales teams, but larger corporations employing dozens of people must rely on them to perform their duties independently. Additionally, while building a sales plan, you should highlight any skill gaps. It's possible you need to hire new people that will bridge those gaps and bring extra revenue.

6. Market Analysis

The future of digital marketing keeps changing simply because your niche market's needs and preferences don't stay the same. With new technologies arriving daily and trends changing the landscape, you need to research your market frequently. If you are breaking into a new market, you should understand who the ideal customer is and what their needs are. You also have to investigate what your competitors do to stay successful. If, on the other hand, you are loyal to the same niche, you should regularly track your audience to see what trends they follow and where they're losing interest. Maybe your current sales plan tactics are ineffective and you need to incorporate new techniques that resonate with current needs.

How To Create A Revenue-Generating Sales Plan

Define your objectives.

To begin creating your sales plan, you should actually start at the end: your goals. To track and measure your content marketing performance, you should set your KPIs and metrics. Some of the most crucial ones are churn rate, average conversion time and rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), and annual or monthly recurring revenue (ARR and MRR). You can set your goals based on the previous year's results. After you've highlighted your end goal, you can set smaller milestones with strict deadlines for your sales reps. As a result, they are motivated to work hard and reach attainable goals on their way to completing the full puzzle. To create these milestones, you can ask your team of trained professionals what a typical work day or week looks like for them and how much workload they can take. Therefore, you can adjust your expectations and set realistic goals.

Craft A Mission Statement

A mission statement is what helps your team members understand what you want to achieve. It's not so much about offering direction about how they should work to achieve your objectives but about providing them with motivation and reasoning behind your goals. It's your idealistic perspective that creates a powerful company culture and camaraderie. Many companies include their mission statement on their About Us page, though we think it's better to add it to your sales plan template to instill trust and inspiration in your team.

Pinpoint Your Target Market And Buyers

B2B content marketing and sales initiatives are doomed to fail if you don't know who you're targeting. When doing your sales plan presentation, you should be able to answer a few questions. Who are your target buyers, and what common pain points do they face? If they have varying needs, how can you cater to all of them? Do they belong to the same industry and business size? You may need to craft various buyer personas that describe the needs and challenges of all potential customers. If your clients are spread across a few industries, it's wise to pick the one where you already have leverage. You should also account for your strengths and preferences. It's important to feel confident and comfortable promoting your services in an industry you know well. Don't be afraid to pick a specific niche. It does not limit you; it gives you focus.

Create A Buyer Map

Whatever lead generation techniques you enforce, aim to push potential clients down your sales funnel and convert them into paying customers. Your content marketing efforts start by building brand awareness and showing clients that you have a viable solution for their needs. As you nurture them, they start appreciating your abilities and credibility. The next stage of their journey is conversion, meaning that they decide to purchase your product. However, this is not the last stage of strategic sales. You should maintain a friendly post-sale relationship to help clients navigate your services and upsell and cross-sell. In addition, you can send them feedback requests and surveys so they can highlight any weaknesses. Keeping customers happy after purchase helps you create advocates who not only refer others to you but also gift you with valuable case studies and testimonials. eLearning Industry can help you publish and promote your case study articles and increase your brand visibility.

Craft Your USP

Your unique selling point (USP) or value proposition is what sets you apart from your competition and makes you stand out. What do most people buy from your company, and why do they choose your competitors? What can you do to improve your services and be successful? Many companies make the mistake of talking about their businesses in their USP instead of their products. Remember that customers buy services, not features. Highlight why your product is unique and beneficial and what makes it better than other similar solutions on the market. Adding this part to your marketing and sales plan template helps you stay focused on your goal. It also allows the sales team to conduct research regarding market changes and needs and even influence the direction of a product or your entire business.

Organize Your Sales Team

Each member of your sales team should have a clearly defined role with specific responsibilities. There are three main structures for sales teams. Starting with the "island," this is the least organized structure, as reps are given basic training and selling tips and are expected to close deals on their own with little manager supervision. They work mostly independently and are tasked with guiding clients from awareness to the conversion stage. The assembly line structure is more specialized, as every sales rep has a specific role. We have qualifiers, who are usually sales development reps; closers, who are account executives; and farmers, who are account managers. Once each member performs their responsibilities, they pass a client on to their colleagues. Lastly, we have the pod structure, which is quite similar to assembly lines. The only difference is that smaller pods or groups of professionals form as they handle the journey of specific customers.

Create A Prospect List

Your marketing leader is in charge of enforcing various content marketing techniques to generate leads and attract new clients. They may use gated content to lure customers and get them to hand you their contact details. This is a great way to start building your prospect list, including people and companies that look like they could use your products. Other ways you can do prospecting are by joining industry networks and forums and communicating with your peers. You may also attend conferences and relevant events and greet important figures in your niche. Try to target up to five people at each company to have better odds of converting them. You can then invest time in cold emailing or calling.

Define Your Tools And Software

Your sales plan is the ideal place to mention sales tools, software, and other resources your team can use for sales enablement . For example, you can add CRM software that stores all customer data and sales tools that streamline lead generation through automated email sequences and lead scoring. You may also include the internal communication software that helps your sales reps handle calls and delegate tasks to more experienced colleagues. Many companies use sales enablement tools that accelerate ramp-up time and maintain consistent messaging. Last but not least, don't forget to add any engagement tools you might have at your disposal so your team can foster better client relationships.

Why Content Creation Is Pivotal For Sales Success

Whether you are in strategic or transactional sales, setting up a powerful content marketing strategy is essential in attracting, engaging, and converting leads. Based on your target audience's needs and preferences, you should craft compelling content that resonates with them. Depending on the platforms you use the most, you can create a variety of content forms, including blog posts, infographics, webinars, eBooks, podcasts, video tutorials, how-to guides, and case studies. Use your SEO skills to elevate the performance of your content and boost its ranking. Content is significant during all buyer journey stages as people watch and read your material to educate themselves and decide whether they'll buy your products. Promoting your content on social media plays a massive role in boosting visibility, credibility, and popularity. eLearning Industry can help you in many ways. We can republish your blog posts , eBooks, webinars , and podcasts and promote you to our extended network. Not to mention, our team of marketing experts can guide you in crafting complete content plans with SEO optimization.

How And When Should You Develop A Sales Plan?

We have already mentioned what a strategic sales plan should include and how you should craft it. Let's talk a bit more about what you should and shouldn't do. While filling out your annual sales plan template, you may be overly optimistic or pessimistic and miscalculate your projected revenue and marketing results . Don't alter your goals, though. You may have been wrong in your projections and forecasting, but you should still use the results to improve your performance—based on the data, you can update and optimize your tactics. Additionally, before you finalize your sales plan, ask experienced colleagues to review it. It can be a senior accountant or one of your sales reps, who might notice errors that you missed. Let's not forget about setting individual goals, too. It's not only your company that should reach its targets, but also your salespeople. Based on their performance and weaknesses, assign them goals that push them to improve.

So, when should you utilize a sales strategy plan? Whether you're launching a new product or service or you want to boost sales, sales planning can help you tremendously. It's not only a comprehensive compass for sales reps to generate more purchases but also a guide for setting up your promotional campaigns . The same applies if you are launching a new product in a few months and want to have a powerful strategy in place. Just make sure to take your time and prepare your marketing strategy thoroughly, setting all necessary key metrics and data. Finally, you should oversee and update your sales plan quarterly to align with industry trends.

The Tremendous Benefits Of Creating A Sales Plan

How can a sales team achieve their goals if they don't know what the sales action plan is? Sticking to specific timeframes, goals, and metrics helps them facilitate your company's objectives and improve audience engagement . Strict deadlines also allow professionals to organize their time and resources accordingly and utilize the best tactics possible to close deals. For instance, when a deadline is approaching and they need to act quickly, they may use a more aggressive and time-sensitive tactic. Therefore, their individual and company ROI improves. Moreover, team members aren't always aware of your business's reasoning behind every goal. A sales strategy plan helps them understand not only what they need to do but also why they do it. As a result, they are motivated to act swiftly and in the right direction. Lastly, a good plan accounts for possible hiccups and hurdles sales reps may encounter and tricks to overcome them. So, your employees can stay in control of situations no matter how hard they get.

Inbound Vs. Outbound Sales Strategies

How do you make sales even after you've completed your marketing and sales plan template? Inbound and outbound marketing help you connect with your target audience and existing clients. With inbound marketing, it's customers who initiate contact with you because they are interested in what you offer. There are many ways you can generate leads and kickstart the sales cycle. Educational SEO-optimized blog posts and eBooks, industry-relevant webinars, podcasts, YouTube videos, and social media posts are a few of the top choices. You may also enforce paid search ads on Google and specific social media platforms that appeal to your core audience. eLearning Industry and its team of seasoned professionals can offer you a multitude of inbound marketing options , including hosting webinars and podcasts and promoting your expert blog posts to its readers.

On the other hand, outbound marketing targets people who may not know your brand or the services you offer. Companies without in-house marketing teams employ agencies offering content marketing services that help them craft and promote engaging material. Apart from cold calling, which is a traditional outbound method, high-performing marketing teams can create banners and pop-up ads to appeal to new customers. They may also enforce email marketing to reach potential buyers, provide them with informative content, and instill credibility. They can even connect with prospects on social media platforms and start fostering positive relationships. If you are interested in outbound marketing activities, eLearning Industry can help you create eye-catching ads and feature you in our email sequences.

Key Takeaway

Sales planning isn't just a solid tool for increasing your revenue; it's a necessity for all team members to get a sense of direction. Whether you are in strategic or transactional sales, professionals must understand what their roles are and how they fit into your vision. The goal isn't to get local customers but to research and use persona keywords so you can appeal to your ideal customer profiles. You also need to define your end goal and set deadlines for every smaller project. As a result, employees can keep track of their performance and adjust their efforts and overall marketing plan to drive improvement. And don't forget that you need to position yourself in your niche and differentiate your offerings from those of your competition.

If you don't have an in-house marketing team to take care of your promotional needs, you can delegate the task to an external collaborator, like eLearning Industry. They can give your content the boost it needs to be seen by thousands of people and create ads that generate traffic. Iterative testing helps them try out different options before choosing the one that has the largest potential for success.

Know How To Achieve Big Goals: Get 15 Examples To Set Objective For Sales Teams

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Want to hit those big sales numbers? Then setting the right goals is the key. But how do you make sure your goals are both achievable and impactful?

In this article you’ll get 15 sales goals to streamline your sales process and get big results. From reducing sales cycle time to increasing customer retention rates, these goals will align your team with your business objectives.

We’ll also cover common pitfalls that derail sales teams and how to avoid them. Whether it’s preventing burnout or making sure your goals are data driven we’ve got ways to keep your sales on track.

What is Sales Objective?

A sales objective is a specific goal that your sales team works to achieve. It’s like a target they aim for in their day-to-day tasks. These objectives help guide the team and keep everyone focused.

Without clear sales objectives, it’s easy for a sales team to lose direction. They might not know what they should be working toward, which can lead to confusion and poor performance.

In fact, according to a study by Salesforce, 63% of sales teams that have a clear and measurable objective are more likely to achieve their targets than those without one.

Why is it Important to have Sales Objectives in your Sales Process?

Sales objectives are critical to the sales process. Here’s why they matter:

1. Keeps the Sales Team Focused

• Sales objectives keep your sales team focused on what matters most.
• Instead of spreading their efforts too thin, they can concentrate on achieving specific goals, like increasing the number of qualified leads or closing more deals. This focus leads to better results.

Research from HubSpot indicates that companies with well-defined sales objectives saw a 15% increase in lead conversion rates .

‍ 2. Improves Performance

• When sales reps have clear objectives, they know what’s expected of them.
• This clarity improves their performance because they can prioritize their tasks based on what will help them meet their goals.

Example: If the objective is to increase profit margins by 10%, they can focus on selling higher-margin products.

3. Helps Track Progress

• Objectives provide a way to track progress. For instance, if your goal is to reduce the sales cycle by 20%, you can measure the time it takes to close deals and see if you're on track.
• This tracking helps sales managers identify problems early and make adjustments.

4. Aligns with the Sales Process

• Sales objectives should align with your sales process. If your process includes stages like prospecting, qualifying leads, and closing deals, your objectives should reflect these steps.
• This alignment ensures that your sales reps are following a structured process that leads to success.

According to research by McKinsey, aligning sales objectives with the sales process improves overall sales performance by up to 25%.

5. Encourages Teamwork

• Clear sales objectives encourage teamwork.
• When everyone knows the goals, they can work together more effectively.

Example: If the objective is to reduce customer churn by 5%, the entire sales team can collaborate on strategies to improve customer retention.

6. Supports Customer Retention and Acquisition

• Sales objectives can also focus on customer retention and acquisition . For instance, an objective might be to acquire 50 new customers in the next quarter.
• This goal keeps the sales team focused on bringing in new business while also maintaining relationships with existing customers.

According to Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%.

15 Sales Objective Examples To Achieve Sales Goals

Here are some real-world sales objectives examples to inspire your team and provide actionable goals:

1. Reduce Sales Cycle Time

Reducing the time it takes to close a deal is an essential objective for sales teams. The sales cycle is the process your team goes through from first contact with a potential customer to closing the deal.

Why It’s Important:

A shorter sales cycle means your team can close more deals in less time. This increases overall sales revenue and improves efficiency.

How to Implement:

• Analyze Your Current Sales Cycle: Look at each stage of your sales process and identify where delays happen. It could be in the prospecting stage or during negotiations.
• Set Clear Time Frames: Assign time limits to each stage of the sales cycle to keep things moving.
• Use Sales Tools: Implement CRM tools to track progress and automate follow-ups. This ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.

2. Automate Email Prospecting for Faster Results

Email prospecting is the process of reaching out to potential customers through email. Automating this process can save your sales reps a lot of time and effort.

Automation increases efficiency and ensures that your team is consistently engaging with leads. Companies that use email automation see a 14.5% increase in sales productivity according to Salesforce.

• Use email automation tools: Platforms like Mailchimp or HubSpot can send personalized emails to prospects automatically.
• Segment your email list: Group your prospects based on their interests or behavior. This allows you to send targeted emails that are more likely to convert.
• Personalize Emails: Even though it’s automated, make sure your emails feel personal by using the recipient’s name and referring to their specific needs.

3. Increase Win Rates in the Next Quarter

Win rates refer to the percentage of deals your team successfully closes out of the total opportunities they pursue.

Increasing your win rate directly improves your sales. If your team improves its win rate by just 5%, this can lead to a significant rise in revenue.

• Improve sales training: Equip your sales reps with the skills they need to close deals. This could involve role-playing exercises or bringing in expert trainers.
• Qualify leads better: Ensure your team is focusing on prospects who are more likely to buy. This improves efficiency and increases the chances of closing deals.
• Analyze past wins and losses: Look at what worked and what didn’t in previous deals. Use this information to refine your approach and avoid past mistakes.

4. Grow Monthly Sales Revenue

This objective focuses on increasing the total sales revenue your team generates each month. It's about selling more products or services to increase overall income.

Growing monthly sales revenue is a key indicator of your business's health. When revenue increases, it means your team is making more sales, which contributes directly to the company’s success.

• Set Specific Revenue Targets: For example, aim to increase monthly revenue by 10%.
• Identify High-Potential Products: Focus on promoting products or services that generate higher profits.
• Offer Incentives: Encourage your sales reps to reach their revenue targets by offering bonuses or commissions.

5. Limit Discounts to Maximize Profit Margins

Limiting discounts means offering fewer price reductions to customers, which helps maintain higher profit margins.

While discounts can attract customers, too many discounts can reduce your profit margins. By limiting discounts, you ensure that your sales team is generating more profit with each sale.

• Set Discount Guidelines: Establish clear rules for when discounts can be offered. For example, only offer discounts on bulk purchases.
• Train Your Sales Team: Ensure that your sales reps understand the importance of maintaining profit margins and how to sell without relying on discounts.
• Monitor Discount Impact: Regularly review how discounts affect your profit margins and make adjustments to your strategy if needed.

6. Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs

This objective focuses on lowering the cost of acquiring new customers. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the amount of money spent on getting a new customer.

Lowering customer acquisition costs means you’re getting more customers for less money. This improves your overall profitability.

• Use Cost-Effective Marketing Channels : Focus on channels like social media or email marketing that offer lower costs compared to paid ads.
• Refine Targeting: Make sure your marketing efforts are aimed at the right audience to avoid wasting money on unqualified leads.
• Encourage Referrals: Word-of-mouth and referral programs can bring in new customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

7. Improve Customer Retention Rates

Customer retention rate is the percentage of customers who continue to do business with your company over time. Improving this rate means keeping more of your existing customers.

Retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. This objective helps ensure that your business maintains strong, ongoing relationships with customers, which leads to more sales over time.

• Provide Excellent Customer Service: Make sure your sales team is responsive to customer needs and solves problems quickly.
• Stay in Touch: Regularly check in with customers through email or phone calls to show that you value their business.
• Offer Loyalty Programs: Reward repeat customers with discounts or special offers to encourage them to keep coming back.

8. Lower Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with your company during a specific period. Lowering this rate means fewer customers are leaving.

A high churn rate can be a sign that something is wrong with your product, service, or customer experience.

By reducing churn, you can maintain a steady revenue stream and improve customer satisfaction. HubSpot reports that companies focusing on reducing churn see a 30% increase in customer lifetime value.

• Identify At-Risk Customers: Use data to find customers who haven’t purchased recently or have had complaints.
• Address Issues Quickly: Resolve any problems that might cause customers to leave, such as product defects or poor service.
• Offer Retention Deals: Provide incentives like discounts or special offers to encourage at-risk customers to stay.

9. Identify Cross-Sell and Upsell Opportunities

Cross-selling is offering related products to customers, while upselling is encouraging them to buy a higher-end product or service.

Cross-selling and upselling can significantly increase your sales revenue without the need to find new customers. Understanding where your prospects are in the sales funnel can help you tailor your approach and close deals more efficiently.

• Use Customer Data: Analyze purchase history to identify products or services that customers might be interested in.
• Train Your Sales Team: Teach your sales reps how to suggest additional products or upgrades during the sales process.
• Offer Bundles or Packages: Create special deals that combine related products, making it easy for customers to buy more.

10. Drive Product Launch Success with Focused Sales Goals

Setting focused sales goals during a product launch ensures that your sales team knows what they need to achieve to make the launch successful. This could be a specific number of units sold or reaching a particular revenue target within the first month.

A successful product launch can enhance your company’s sales revenue and market presence. By having clear sales goals, your team stays on track and knows exactly what is expected of them.

• Set Specific Targets: For example, aim to sell 500 units within the first month.
• Track Progress Daily: Use sales metrics to monitor progress and adjust strategies as needed.
• Motivate Your Team: Offer incentives such as bonuses for reaching the sales goals.

11. Align Sales Goals with Revenue Targets

Aligning your sales goals with revenue targets ensures that your sales efforts contribute directly to the company’s overall financial objectives.

When sales goals align with revenue targets, it helps ensure that your sales team is focused on the right activities. This alignment grows efficiency and profitability. According to McKinsey, companies that align their sales goals with revenue targets can increase their profits by 15%.

• Break Down Revenue Targets: Divide the annual revenue target into monthly or quarterly sales goals.
• Communicate Goals Clearly: Make sure your sales team understands how their efforts contribute to the company’s overall financial success.
• Regularly Review Progress: Hold monthly meetings to review progress toward revenue targets and make adjustments as needed.

12. Set Sales Call Objectives for Better Engagement

Setting specific objectives for each sales call can improve the quality of interactions between sales reps and potential customers. This could include objectives such as understanding the customer's needs, presenting the product effectively, and closing the deal.

Having clear objectives for sales calls leads to more productive conversations and higher chances of closing deals.

• Define Clear Call Objectives: For example, aim to gather key information about the customer's needs during the first call.
• Prepare in Advance: Train your sales reps to prepare for calls by researching the prospect and planning their approach.
• Review Call Performance: After each call, review what went well and what could be improved to refine future sales calls.

13. Develop Sales Reps' Skills with Personalized Growth Goals

Personalized growth goals focus on helping each sales rep improve their skills. These goals are tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses, helping them grow in their roles.

By developing your sales reps’ skills, you increase their effectiveness and confidence.

• Assess Individual Strengths and Weaknesses: Identify areas where each sales rep can improve.
• Set Specific Goals: For example, a sales rep might aim to improve their closing rate by 10%.
• Provide Training and Support: Offer resources like workshops, mentoring, or online courses to help them reach their goals.

14. Use SMART Sales Goals

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Using SMART goals ensures that your sales objectives are clear and attainable.

SMART goals give your sales team a clear roadmap. This clarity helps them focus on what matters most, leading to better results.

• Define Specific Goals: For example, “Increase sales revenue by 15% in the next quarter.”
• Ensure Goals Are Measurable: Track progress with metrics like sales numbers or customer acquisition rates.
• Set Realistic Time Frames: Give your team a reasonable deadline to achieve their goals.

15. Increase Repeat Purchases with Specific Client Objectives

Focus on encouraging existing customers to make repeat purchases by setting specific objectives related to client retention and satisfaction.

Repeat customers are more profitable than new ones.

• Target Existing Customers: Create strategies to keep your current clients coming back, such as loyalty programs or personalized offers.
• Monitor Customer Satisfaction: Use surveys or feedback forms to ensure customers are happy with your products or services.
• Offer Special Deals: Provide discounts or loyalty programs to encourage repeat purchases.

10 Common Pitfalls in Sales Objectives

1. Avoid Setting Unrealistic Sales Targets

Setting sales targets too high can backfire. If your team feels the goal is unreachable, they might not put in their best effort.

Key challenges and solutions:

• Challenge: Unrealistic expectations can lead to frustration and low morale.
• Solution: Analyze past performance and set goals that challenge but don't overwhelm your team. For example, setting a target for a 10% increase in sales next quarter based on historical data is more practical.

2. Prevent Goal Overload by Prioritizing Key Targets

When you set too many objectives at once, your sales team can become overwhelmed. It's like trying to juggle too many tasks at the same time—something is bound to fall through the cracks. Instead, prioritize key sales targets that have the most significant impact on your sales process.

• Challenge: Too many goals can dilute focus and hinder progress.
• Solution: Focus on high-priority sales objectives, such as reducing customer acquisition costs or increasing qualified leads. For example, prioritizing a 5% reduction in customer acquisition costs can have a substantial impact on your profit margins.

3. Avoid Short-Term Focus—Think Long-Term Success

Focusing solely on short-term gains can be tempting but risky. If you push your team to meet immediate sales goals without considering the long-term effects, you might see a temporary growth in sales but lose customers later.

To avoid this, balance short-term objectives with long-term strategies that ensure ongoing success.

• Challenge: Short-term thinking can undermine long-term growth and customer retention.
• Solution: Align sales objectives with long-term company goals. For instance, setting a goal to improve customer retention rates by 5% over the next year can lead to steady revenue growth and lower customer churn rates.

4. Don’t Forget to Align Objectives with Company Goals

It’s easy to focus on specific sales targets, but are they aligned with your company’s overall goals?

For example, if your company aims to increase customer lifetime value, your sales objectives should reflect that. Misalignment can lead to wasted efforts. Make sure your sales team understands how their objectives fit into the bigger picture.

• Challenge: Sales objectives that don’t support company goals can create confusion and reduce effectiveness.
• Solution: Regularly communicate company goals to your sales team. Ensure that sales objectives, such as increasing sales revenue, directly contribute to larger company targets like overall business growth.

5. Avoid One-Size-Fits-All

Every sales rep is different. Setting the same objective for everyone might not work. There might be some sales reps that excel in closing deals, while others are better at customer relationship management.

A one-size-fits-all approach can limit your team’s potential. Tailor objectives to individual strengths and areas for growth.

• Challenge: Setting identical objectives for all sales reps can overlook individual strengths and weaknesses.
• Solution: Personalize objectives based on each sales rep’s skills. For instance, assign higher targets for qualified leads to reps who are strong in prospecting, while others focus on improving customer retention rates.

6. Prevent Burnout with Balanced Sales Objectives

Pushing your sales team too hard can lead to burnout. While it’s important to set challenging goals, they need to be realistic. If your objectives are too demanding, your sales reps may feel overwhelmed. Balance is key.

• Challenge: Overly ambitious sales objectives can cause stress and decrease productivity.
• Solution: Balance challenging objectives with achievable ones. Encourage your sales team to focus on both personal growth and sales performance. For instance, set a goal to reduce the sales cycle time while also setting a cap on the number of hours worked per week.

7. Avoid Setting Objectives Without Clear Metrics

If you set an objective without clear metrics, how will you know if you’ve succeeded? Suppose, if your goal is to “increase sales,” that’s too vague. How much of an increase are you aiming for?

Metrics give you something concrete to measure. They help you track progress and see where improvements are needed.

• Challenge: Vague objectives lead to confusion and lack of direction.
• Solution: Use specific metrics to define your sales objectives. For instance, instead of saying “increase sales,” set a target like “increase sales revenue by 15% in the next quarter.” This way, your sales team knows exactly what they’re aiming for and how to measure their progress.

8. Prevent Stagnation by Regularly Updating Sales Goals

Sales environments change rapidly. What worked last year might not work today. If you set sales goals and never revisit them, you risk stagnation. Regularly updating sales goals keeps your team engaged and pushes them to achieve more.

• Challenge: Outdated objectives can lead to complacency and missed opportunities.
• Solution: Review and adjust your sales goals regularly. For instance, if your objective was to reduce the sales cycle to 30 days and your team has achieved this, consider setting a new goal to shorten it further or focus on a different area, like increasing customer retention rates.

9. Don’t Overlook the Importance of Training for Objective Success

Setting ambitious objectives is great, but does your sales team have the skills to achieve them? Training is crucial. Without the right training, even the best objectives can fall flat.

• Challenge: Lack of training can prevent your sales team from achieving their goals.
• Solution: Provide ongoing training that aligns with your sales objectives. If your goal is to improve customer acquisition, offer training on lead generation strategies or customer relationship management. This ensures your team has the skills they need to succeed.

10. Avoid Ignoring Market Trends When Setting Goals

Market trends can have a big impact on your sales objectives. If you ignore these trends, you might set goals that are out of touch with reality. Staying informed about market trends ensures your objectives are relevant and achievable.

• Challenge: Ignoring market trends can lead to unrealistic or irrelevant sales objectives.
• Solution: Stay updated on industry trends and adjust your sales objectives accordingly. For instance, if data shows an increase in online buying, set a goal to expand your online sales presence or enhance your digital marketing efforts.

Setting the right objective for sales is key to your team's success. By avoiding common pitfalls and aligning your sales objectives with clear metrics, company goals, and market trends, you can drive better results. Remember to update your goals regularly and provide your sales reps with the training they need. With the right objectives, your sales team will thrive and meet every challenge.

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What is Sales Planning? How to Create a Sales Plan

Write a sales plan that can adjust to change, and zero in on the actions that will hit your goals.

By: Scott Leese CEO & Founder, Scott Leese Consulting May 1, 2024 | 14 min read

There is a world where sales planning happens once a year. You draw it up in January — “Whew, I’m glad that’s done!” — and everything goes as you planned. You hit your goals.

Meanwhile, on Earth, you create a plan, start to act on it, and everything hits the fan. A competitor launches a new product, an analyst switches up their report, and your best sales rep quits.

Below we share tips for how to create a sales plan that can bend, not break. You’ll learn why a plan is so important, see examples of the different types, and discover how to create one that brings you closer to your big, hairy revenue goals while also driving down costs.

What you’ll learn:

• What is a sales plan?
• Why is a sales plan important?
• Sales plan process
• Sales plan types and examples

How to create a sales plan

5 tips for optimising your sales plan.

Sales planning can be delightful. No, really.

Our Sales Planning solution keeps sellers on track with easy-to-build and easy-to-optimise sales plans.

What is a Sales Plan?

A sales plan articulates your objectives, strategic approaches, target demographic, and potential challenges. It serves as a specialised counterpart to a traditional business plan, honing in specifically on your sales strategy. While a business plan outlines your objectives, a sales plan details the precise methods through which you will achieve them.

Why is a Sales Plan Important?

Sales planning provides clear goals and a way to achieve them. Without it, a business likely doesn’t what their revenue targets are or how they’re going to grow. But these are only some of the advantages of an effective sales plan. Here are a few other key ones:

Determines actions required to achieve goals

Sales planning lets you test and measure how different actions will affect your numbers, so you can choose the right path forward to hit your goal. You begin by adding up the numbers you know — how much your team will likely sell (based on past performance) and how much it will cost (based on your current resources). You’ll arrive at a prediction of the numbers you’ll hit.

If the prediction falls short of your targets, a plan helps you test different scenarios, so you can find the action that allows you to hit your target number in the most cost-effective way.

What if you hire more people? Increase your quotas? Level up your enablement program to increase win rates (the number of deals that close)? Sales planning gives you the framework to crunch the numbers until you find the reality that matches your dream.

Increases engagement

With a plan, your sales team has the support needed to meet both their personal goals and the company’s goals. When a new representative joins the team, for example, the plan tells them the daily activities they need to complete to help meet their sales goals. If an established sales representative begins struggling to hit their goals, the plan provides the resources to grow their customer base.

This level of support creates a more engaged sales team, which often means a higher-performing team. When the sales team has the support they need, the company has a better retention rate because the sales team is successful. The business also earns a reputation for having clear goals that help lead to success, making it easier to hire new sales representatives.

Increases revenue and reduces expenses

Simply put, a plan helps the business allocate resources correctly, which saves money. For example, leaders aren’t hiring too many sales representatives for one territory while hiring too few reps in others, which means money burned and opportunities wasted.

What are the benefits of creating a sales plan?

Let’s take a closer look.

Emphasising the importance of marketing and sales alignment is crucial for improving revenue generation, customer experience, productivity, and post-sale growth. This alignment ensures consistent messaging, a better customer journey, and the development of data-driven plans using marketing and sales automation software.

Finding the actions to achieve your goals

A free sales plan template lets you test and measure how different actions will affect your numbers, allowing you to choose the right path forward to achieve your goal.

You begin by adding up the numbers you know — how much your team will likely sell (based on past performance) and how much it will cost (based on your current resources). You’ll arrive at a prediction of the numbers you’ll hit.

If the prediction falls short of your targets, a sales plan helps you test different scenarios to find the action that forces the equation to spit out your next sales target or number in the most cost-effective way.

What if you hire more people? Increase your quotas? Level up your enablement program to increase win rates (the number of close deals). A sales plan gives you the framework to crunch the numbers until you find the reality that matches your dream.

Your business is more resilient to change

The traditional sales plan template is something you create once a year. You revisit, test, and adjust an agile sales plan continually. The benefit is that even as market conditions change or surprises happen within your company, you can study the impacts of those changes and adapt to stay on track.

The path to agility is to eliminate your disconnected tools and bring all of your sales plan data into the same system—your customer relationship management (CRM) system—where you sell. With this in place, changes in the real world show up as threats to your target within your sales plan templates, too. You can react in real-time by studying the data, testing different scenarios, and adjusting your sales plan to get back on track.

Sales Plan Process

Many organisations think of sales planning as happening in the fall in preparation for the upcoming calendar year. While this may work for an established company, it’s not a realistic or sound approach for most companies.

Businesses should conduct a formal sales planning process annually, and then regularly review that plan throughout the year to make sure it still makes sense. Otherwise, the organisation may miss out on new opportunities to grow revenue and make changes that can reduce losses.

The frequency with which companies should review their plan depends on the stability of the business, market changes, and the complexity of the plans. Startups and new companies should review their plan at least every quarter. Established companies launching new products should review the plans for the new product lines at least every quarter, and perhaps monthly in the early days after launch.

Sales Plan Types

The different types of plans are meant to bring together your company’s long-term vision, short-term tactics, and everything in between. Leaders set a five-year vision for where the company is heading. Then, sales managers step into a new time frame — the year ahead — and build sales forecasts and territory plans that help sellers hit their numbers. They come up with capacity plans to make sure teams are running lean and mean. Finally, sellers create account plans for every deal.

Let’s take a closer look at these different types of plans with the examples below.

Long-range plan

This is where leadership — the CEO, chief revenue officer, CFO, and VP of sales — comes together and sets the long-term path for the company. They’re thinking about where the opportunities are and how to seize them. For example, they might decide to grow annual contract value (ACV) by $30 million in the next five years while also slowing the rate of hiring — because they want to make existing sellers more productive instead.

Annual plan

The sales manager creates an annual plan to set more immediate targets that will help the company get closer to the goals established in the long-range plan. This plan begins with an understanding of the team’s capacity, or how much revenue they’re likely to produce. From there, territories, quotas, and compensation plans are set to ensure that sellers hit their numbers.

Let’s say the long-range plan is to achieve $30 million in ACV over the next five years while also making sellers more productive. In that case, a sales manager might set targets of $4 million in ACV in the first year and increase the quotas that sellers carry to achieve that goal rather than hire more people.

Territory plan

Account plan.

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To create your annual plan for the year and make sure it can adapt to change, gather all your sales data into one place. Then, study how much your people can sell (based on historical data) and set targets (and incentives) that will make your goal a reality. Use technology that can update all your plan data in real-time, so you can measure the impact of change and adjust to stay on track.

Ready to create your plan? Here’s how to take it one step at a time.

1. Connect plan data with your CRM

It’s important to build your plan in customer relationship management (CRM) software. When you have all your sales data in one place, updated in real-time, you have visibility into changes that put your targets at risk.

It’s also a time-saver. Without this single source of truth, you’d be spending weeks manually pulling in data from different systems to understand what went wrong. With every passing day, the gap between your plan and your reality would widen.

Imagine that you begin an enterprise sales push with 50 sellers in January, but two quit in March. A CRM can send you an alert that you’re under target. That real-time data is critical if you want to adjust your plan quickly to stay on track.

If your organisation does not currently have a CRM, look for one that uses AI , pulls in data from any source, integrates with your other systems, and helps automate repeatable business functions. If you already use a CRM, take a comprehensive look at your sales efforts by ensuring all sales and customer data is connected.

2. Understand your team’s capacity (how much they can sell)

Using the example above, you might determine that based on the previous year’s performance, each seller, on average, can bring in $120,000 worth of revenue. However, now that you’re down two sellers, you’re short $240,000 in your capacity.

3. Work with stakeholders across the organisation

A sales plan drives the direction of the entire organisation, so it should represent the goals and input of all stakeholders. In addition to sales and finance, customer success, product teams, finance, and marketing should also be included in the process. If only the sales department is included in crafting the draft, then you run the risk of the CFO showing up with a half-billion-dollar plan, the CEO a billion-dollar plan, and the head of sales with a quarter-billion-dollar plan.

4. Measure the gap between your reality and your dream

Now that you understand the reality of who’s under your roof — and how much you think your team can sell — determine the gap between your revenue predictions and your revenue targets.

For example, imagine your target from the long-range plan is to hit $6 million in ACV this year. With a $240,000 drop in your capacity, as we showed above, you’ll need to figure out how you can still meet the goal.

5. Find the actions to fill the gap and reach your goal

It’s time to write your plan to achieve your targets. Begin with the backbone — your team — and outline what’s expected (quotas), what the rewards are (compensation), how to organise customers (segments), and how to assign the reps (territories).

Then, to close the gap and hit your targets, create “what if” scenarios to test the impact of different possible actions. The guideposts here should be cost savings and efficiency — how to hit your target by making the most of what you have. What if you hire two more people? (Straightforward, sure, but hardly cost-effective.) What if you assign your highest performers to more lucrative territories? What if you create an enablement program that trains your sellers in a strategic industry?

In the example above, you’re trying to find a way to add $240,000 to your capacity without adding cost. One of the scenarios you tested shows that a new enablement program might do the trick because training your sellers to sell more effectively can help you close more and bigger deals. This can be your Plan A. But since it will require investing in a new enablement program, you might want to come up with a Plan B as well that doesn’t require additional budget. For example, you might propose increasing each seller’s quota.

6. Present your proposed actions to leadership and execute

Make your case to leadership to gain approval on your proposed best action. Show them the data in your plan to demonstrate why your proposed solution will hit your targets and be cost-effective at the same time.

You might make the case for Plan A: investing in a new enablement program. If leadership balks because of cost, then it’s time to roll out Plan B: increase each seller’s quota instead. Sales reps might protest at first, but you can reframe it as an opportunity to make more money.

You’re in sales, remember? Finding the positive spin is what you do.

7. Keep adjusting and stay on target even as market conditions change

Change will come — whether from outside forces (a disruption in your customer base) or inside forces (a pivot in your product roadmap). The mindset shift is to take your plan down from the shelf, dust it off, and reimagine it as a living, breathing thing. It’s something you adjust continually throughout the year — with your sights pinned to your goal.

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Sales plan examples

While plans can be exceptionally detailed, the following examples show the basic structure of two types of plans.

Basic annual plan

Goal: Increase sales by 15% to reach 10.5 million in 2025

Sales cycle: January 2025 to December 2025 Target average contract value: $100,000 Target close rate: 20%

Metrics to track:

• Conversations

Resources required to implement plan:

• 1 new entry-level sales representative
• 1 part-time admin support role
• Training for all representatives on new product launching in late 2024

Territory plan:

Territory: In 2025, The Widget Co is adding a healthcare vertical. While they currently have some healthcare customers, this new territory will be an area of growth.

Goal: Healthcare clients accounted for $100,000 in sales in 2024 Q1. Goal is 300K in sales in 2025 Q2.

Resources required:

• Shift 1 sales representative from government vertical (phasing out) to healthcare
• Dedicate part-time admin support to healthcare
• Allocate $50,000 in marketing budget for healthcare sponsorship

Sales planning only delivers the desired success if companies come up with the right plan for their specific business and goals. Without a plan that works for your specific organisation, you are not likely to see the expected results. Organisations that take the time to optimise their plan are more likely to enjoy better results.

Here are five tips for optimising your plan:

1. Collaborate early and often across the organisation

The most accurate plans are created when all departments work together. To ensure a cohesive plan, the needs of the entire organisation should be included in the very first draft — and as revisions are made. This ensures that the sales team has the right products to sell, and all leaders have skin in the game.

2. Include relevant details to help achieve the goals

While it’s tempting to include only the desired results, the most useful and accurate plans provide a roadmap for how to get to the destination.

The specific metrics you monitor should relate to goals that align with your specific sales plan. For example, if headcount is a current issue in your sales department, then tracking employee retention rates is important.

At the minimum, it’s recommended you track the following metrics to ensure sales efficiency:

• Average contract value
• Sales cycle

As noted above, consider adding other metrics that align with top-level goals. Think first about what the linchpin of the goal is (e.g. employees for retention goals) then identify all metrics related to it you should keep an eye on.

3. Consider the seasonality of your business

For example, December has 15 to 17 effective selling days compared to 23 in other months due to the holidays and many customers taking time off the last week of the year. For that reason, most sales representatives are not going to close as many deals in December as they would in May.

4. Make goals based on the experience level of the team

While looking at the historical performance of the sales team is a good starting point, be sure to consider your current team, too. It takes a new sales representative time to build up their customer base and hit sales goals . Even with significant experience at other organisations, a new sales representative will not perform like a veteran in their first month. Create lower quotas for newer representatives as they ramp up, and your plan will be easier to execute.

5. Use AI insights to build your plan

Historical data gives you a starting point for understanding your team is capabilities. AI tools can, however, factor in additional variables, such as new sales representatives, new products, and even new competitors. By using technology such as sales planning software, you can keep sellers on track, configure plans easily, optimise in real-time, and improve operational flexibility.

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I Asked ChatGPT for a Marketing Plan and Was Shocked at the Result Generative AI can give us mountains of information on any topic under the sun in seconds — but is it any good at marketing? I had to find out.

By Joy Gendusa Edited by Chelsea Brown Aug 16, 2024

Key Takeaways

• I asked ChatGPT to recommend marketing strategies that could help generate new leads and sales for small businesses.
• The advice that ChatGPT's offered was a good start, but it missed three crucial recommendations that can significantly improve the trajectory of your business.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Many of us expected robots to be a part of our future, but perhaps not in the way we imagined. Instead of doing our chores and serving us hors d'oeuvres (like Rosey the Robot from The Jetsons ), AI wants to think for us.

ChatGPT and other virtual assistants can give us mountains of information on any topic under the sun in seconds — but how useful are they?

I wanted to see what ChatGPT had to say about marketing. My business, PostcardMania , has helped 118,342 small business owners all over the country with effective marketing strategies for over 26 years. How did ChatGPT's advice compare to what we've learned?

Related: ChatGPT Is Powerful — and Can Wreak Havoc If You Don't Know Its 5 Fatal Flaws

I put this prompt in ChatGPT and was surprised by what I found.

Prompt: Recommend marketing strategies that will generate new leads and sales for a small business in 100 words or less.

This is what ChatGPT advised:

Content marketing : Create valuable content (blogs, videos) that address customer pain points.

Social media advertising : Targeted campaigns on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Email marketing : Engage potential customers with personalized newsletters and offers.

Referral programs : Incentivize current customers to refer others.

SEO optimization : Improve search engine rankings with targeted keywords.

Partnerships : Collaborate with complementary businesses for mutual promotion.

Local events : Host or participate in community events to build local awareness.

It's a good start. However, ChatGPT missed these three recommendations that can improve the trajectory of your business (I know because they were key to my journey to $100 million in annual revenue).

They neglected reputation management and social proof, which 93% of consumers check before buying

An overwhelming amount of people check Google reviews. One report found a whopping 93% of buyers look to them before making a purchase. This means that you could be losing 93% of prospects if generating good reviews isn't a priority.

The good news is it's not as complicated as you might think. People most often go out of their way to leave a negative review — 95% — while only 47% take the time to post a positive review.

The key is simply asking! And this isn't even a challenge when you can automate requests through email or text message. According to research , 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked.

The online platform Podium was a game-changer for us because you can send review requests for several different platforms from one central dashboard.

After we started using Podium in 2020, the number of our reviews increased 250% from 2020 to 2022. As of July 2024, PostcardMania has over 2,795 five-star reviews on Google, the BBB and Trust Pilot.

Related: 6 Proactive Ways to Promote Good Reviews and Supercharge Your Online Reputation

They didn't recommend direct mail marketing, which generates 6x more revenue per lead than digital sources

Since 1998, I've mailed postcards every single week to generate leads and connect with customers. Since then, I've only increased my mailings, and we're now up to 232,000 postcards a week. The only time I cut my direct mail marketing was in 2008 during the recession, and that mistake crippled our revenue until we corrected our mailings.

I've also tracked the growth that mailing postcards has created. From 2019 to 2023, I increased our own mailing volume by 16%. Simultaneously, our revenue has grown an average of 15% each year. This is a perfect example of how the amount of marketing you put out guides your return.

I've also found that direct mail leads generate six times more revenue than digital leads. We analyzed 114,373 leads that converted to sales in 2023 and found that postcard leads generated 600% more revenue per lead ($229.41) than leads from digital sources ($37.09).

There is a science behind direct mail's effectiveness, though. One study that tracked each participant's eye movement and heart rate while engaging with mail found that people experienced more excitement and desire while interacting with printed advertisements as opposed to digital.

Due to the tangible nature of mail, people also recall printed ads better than digital ads. One study found that when asked to cite the brand of an advertisement they had just seen, 75% of participants could recall the brand behind the direct mail piece. Only 44% of recipients could recall the brand behind the digital ad — a 70% difference.

With so much data backing direct mail, leaving it out of your annual budget would be a huge mistake.

They failed to mention the biggest factor of success: how much you should be marketing — a massive amount

ChatGPT neglected to inform readers exactly how much time, money and effort they should allocate to marketing.

In my decades of experience running a business with over 380 staff, I understand marketing plans might end up on the back burner. So much goes into running a business that all too often entrepreneurs think a simple marketing plan is sufficient. This is the farthest thing from the truth.

In fact, most of my clients hate when I tell them this...

Marketing is the biggest differentiator between businesses that survive and those that thrive.

Related: The Growth Hack My Clients Hate the Most is the One that Promises the Biggest Financial Rewards — Here's What You Should Know

You need to market like you are an athlete training for your last chance at the Olympic gold medal. The survival and ultimate longevity of your business are on the line; why would you market like you were playing T-ball?

Even if you have a limited budget, put as much money into your marketing as possible. I even suggest you find areas where you could cut back and reallocate the funds to your marketing (as long as it doesn't put jobs at risk).

Whatever you decide to do — whether it's social media ads, SEO, direct mail — just give it all you've got. You won't regret it, and you'll likely not only beat out your competition but win the gold … that is, the gold of increased revenue.

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Founder/CEO of PostcardMania

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22 Best Sales Strategies, Plans, & Initiatives for Success [Templates]

Discover sales strategy examples, templates, and plans used by top sales teams worldwide.

FREE SALES PLAN TEMPLATE

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

Published: 03/07/24

A strong sales strategy plan creates the foundation for a cohesive and successful sales organization.

Sales strategies and initiatives also align salespeople on shared goals and empower them to do their best work — keeping them happy and successful, too.

In this guide, I’ll dig into some sales strategies and initiatives that I’ve found can help you generate more leads and close more deals. But first, let’s define what a sales strategy is.

Table of Contents

What is a sales strategy?

Why is a sales strategy important, the most effective sales strategies, sales strategy types, sales planning: how to build a sales strategy plan, sales initiatives, sales strategy examples from successful sales teams.

A sales strategy is a set of decisions, actions, and goals that inform how your sales team positions the organization and its products to close new customers. It acts as a guide for sales reps to follow, with clear goals for sales processes, product positioning, and competitive analysis.

A clear sales strategy serves as a map for the growth of your business. Your sales strategy is key to future planning, problem-solving, goal-setting, and management.

An effective sales strategy can help you:

• Give your team direction and focus. Strategic clarity can help your sales reps and managers understand which goals and activities to prioritize. This can lead to improved productivity and outcomes.
• Ensure consistent messaging. Your sales strategy can help your team deliver a consistent message to prospects, partners, and customers. This can increase both trust and effectiveness.
• Optimize opportunities. Strong sales strategies will help you target the right prospects and customize your approach. This can help your team make the most of every sales opportunity.
• Improve resource allocation. Your sales strategy outlines your priorities and resources. In turn, this can help your sales team use their time, effort, and other resources more efficiently, boosting your team’s ability to focus on high-potential deals.

Next, let’s cover some of the sales strategies that I’ve found can be most effective.

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2. Become a thought leader.

Sharing your advice, tried-and-true best practices, and niche expertise are some of the most long-lasting ways to build your personal brand and lend more credibility to your organization. After all, nobody wants to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, it’s better to help people by offering solutions to their problems.

That’s what thought leaders do. Indeed, a recent report found that “Thought leadership is one of the most effective tools an organization can use to demonstrate its value to customers during a tough economy — even more so than traditional advertising or product marketing, according to B2B buyers.”

According to the study, 61% of decision-makers believed that thought leadership could be moderately or very effective in demonstrating the value of a company’s products. Moreover, more than half of C-suite executives in the study believed that thought leadership has a greater impact on purchases during an economic downturn, making this an even more important element of a sales strategy in today’s uncertain economic times.

So what’s the catch?

Not all thought leadership content is created equal.

When done right, thought leadership can have a huge positive impact, but poor thought leadership can be devastating to a company’s sales goals. So, before you plan a spree of LinkedIn posts to drive leads, consider who your audience is, what they need to know, and how your organization can help.

Also, it may not hurt to have a second set of eyes from your marketing, communication, and PR departments review your plan first to make sure everything is on-brand (and trackable!).

3. Prioritize inbound sales calls as hot leads.

There’s an age-old question in sales: “Should I discuss product pricing with a prospect on the first sales call?” The honest answer is: It depends.

You and your sales team know your process better than anyone. So take it from me — if you’ve seen success with pitching with pricing first, last, or somewhere in between, stick with what’s working for you.

But beyond that, your team should always prioritize the prospects who come to you. These hot leads are definitely interested in what you have to sell, and before they make a decision, they want to get the information they need about how it will benefit them.

By prioritizing talking to these prospects as soon as they call in or send an email, you’re putting your best foot forward and showing them that you’re helpful, solutions-oriented, and considerate of their time. And if that means closing a deal on the first call, there’s nothing wrong with that — as long as the customer has the information they need to make an informed decision.

4. Properly research and qualify prospects.

I’ve personally discovered that even the strongest sales strategy can’t compensate for targeting the wrong customers. To ensure your team is selling to the right type of customer, encourage reps to research and qualify prospects before attempting to discuss your product. Indeed, throughout my career, I’ve found that more work on the front end can lead to smoother closing conversations later on.

Outline the criteria a prospect needs to meet to be qualified as a high-probability potential customer. These criteria will depend on your unique business and target audience, but they should generally be based on a prospect’s engagement history and demographics.

Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions

101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.

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5. Implement a free trial.

Offering a free trial or freemium version of your product can be a highly effective way to convert prospects. In fact, HubSpot’s sales strategy report found that 76% of sales professionals feel that free trials are effective in converting prospects into paying customers, while 69% of professionals believe that freemium offerings are effective.

Keeping a list of proven, go-to closing techniques will help salespeople routinely win deals. Some of my favorite techniques include the ‘now or never close’ — i.e., “If you commit now, I can get you a 20% discount” — or the ‘question close,’ i.e., “In your opinion, does what I am offering solve your problem?”

Free Sales Closing Guide

An easy-to-use sales closing guide with three tactics you can use right away.

• Using an ROI calculator for your prospects
• How to ask confirmation questions
• Sales question templates you can use today

To further improve your closing techniques and learn to close deals with confidence, check out this free, downloadable Sales Closing Guide .

11. Nurture existing accounts for future selling opportunities.

Once a deal is done, there’s no need for a sales strategy, right? Wrong.

Account management is an incredibly important part of the sales process, as this is how you foster loyal, happy customers and identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

So, after your sales team sees success with its sales strategy, it’s vital to form a partnership between the sales team and customer service/success teams.

Remember: Ensuring customers’ continued satisfaction with your product or service will make them more likely to do business with your company again. You may even inspire them to advocate for it proactively.

Free Sales Plan Template

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent sales plan.

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• Prospecting Strategy

Inbound Sales Strategy

In contrast, inbound sales strategies are the modern methodology for sales teams. Companies following an inbound approach base their sales processes on buyer actions.

These organizations automatically capture seller and buyer data to monitor their pipelines and coach their salespeople. Inbound sales strategies connect reps’ activities to the three stages of the buyer journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — encouraging sales teams to map their tactics to the right step in the customer journey.

The inbound methodology also aligns sales and marketing, creating a seamless experience for buyers. Check out this post to learn more about inbound sales and how to develop an inbound sales process.

In addition, many popular sales strategies take a customer-centric approach, including:

• Account-based selling .
• SPIN selling .
• Value-based selling .
• Consultative selling .

You can learn more about these approaches in this post about customer-centric selling systems .

Inbound vs. Outbound Sales Methodology

In the past, buyers were often forced to suffer through evaluating a product and deciding whether to buy it using only the information offered to them by the seller. But today, much of the information needed to evaluate a product is available online — meaning that buyers are no longer nearly as dependent on the seller.

That means that if sales teams don’t align with the modern buyer’s process. If they fail to add value beyond the information already available online, then buyers will have no reason to engage with a sales team.

As mentioned above, inbound sales benefits buyers at each stage of the buyer process, including:

• Consideration.

Inbound sales teams help buyers become aware of potential problems or opportunities and discover strategies to solve those problems.

Then, buyers evaluate whether the salesperson can help with their problem, and if the buyer thinks they can, they’ll purchase a solution to their problem. Inbound sales reps are helpful and trustworthy, creating partnerships rather than power struggles.

Not sure how to get started with inbound selling? Every sales team should have a sales strategy plan outlining its goals, best practices, and processes designed to align the team and create consistency.

Below, I’ll walk through how to create a sales strategy plan for your team.

Now that you have the template you need, let’s go over how you can build a sales strategy.

How to Build a Sales Strategy

• Develop organizational goals.
• Create a customer profile that is tailored to a specific product offering.
• Hire, onboard, and compensate sales team members adequately.
• Create a plan to generate demand.
• Measure individual and team performance.
• Track sales activities.

To build a comprehensive sales plan, I’d recommend starting with the following activities:

1. Develop organizational goals.

Setting goals is a no-brainer for most sales teams. Otherwise, how will you know whether you’re executing the right activities or achieving the best results? There are three strategies that I’ve found can be particularly helpful in developing clear organizational goals for a sales strategy.

Involve cross-departmental stakeholders.

Avoid developing sales goals in a silo. Instead, be sure to get input from stakeholders across the organization, since every department is held accountable to the company’s bottom line.

Create SMART goals.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Setting SMART goals can help your team simplify and track complex, long-term sales goals .

For example, a specific, measurable, and time-bound goal could be to sell 150% of the projected sales quota in Q2. Your internal team can propose this goal and then decide whether it is both relevant and attainable (attainability is particularly important because setting unrealistic goals can harm team motivation).

At the end of the day, SMART goals help reduce confusion when it’s time to review your strategy, helping to ensure you know what worked and what didn’t.

Connect individual goals to organizational goals.

Finally, if you’re creating a team-specific strategy, you may also want to set goals for individual team members. Building ownership and accountability into sales goals can help keep your team aligned, and it also makes your sales strategy more cohesive.

2. Create a customer profile that is tailored to a specific product offering.

A detailed profile of your target customer — a buyer persona — is an essential component of an effective sales strategy. Below, I’ve outlined the key steps to take when creating a buyer persona to ensure you come up with a useful profile:

Find target markets and segments.

First, look at your industry as a whole. Get a sense of your ideal customer’s company size, psychographics, and buying process. You may want to look at industry trends, too.

Conduct market research to understand customer needs and preferences.

Next, do some market research. This template can help you streamline the process and understand which types of research will be best for your business.

You may also want to do some competitor analysis at this stage. Once you know the strengths and weaknesses of competing brands, you can more easily find gaps that you can fill for specific customers.

Create a clear value proposition to attract your ideal customer to your product or service.

Finally, make sure your product offering outlines the benefits of your product for your target customer. It’s important to use insights from your customer profile to emphasize features that solve your target customer’s pain points.

Your business may already have a clear value proposition — but if not, you can use these free value proposition templates to draft one.

Quick tip : Be sure to schedule time to update and refine your buyer persona to make sure it stays aligned with current customer trends and expectations.

3. Hire, onboard, and compensate sales team members adequately.

To develop an effective sales strategy, you need to have a powerful sales team in place. That means investing in hiring, onboarding, and retaining top talent. Specifically, I have learned that there are three key components of building (and keeping) a supportive, successful sales team:

Create great processes for hiring new members of your sales team.

First and foremost, create a list of criteria for sales managers to screen for when interviewing candidates. A well-defined job description and competency framework are also useful. These tools can help your team recruit and retain top talent.

Develop sales onboarding, training, and development programs.

Your training and onboarding program should prepare your sales team to sell effectively and efficiently. It should also help sales reps build advanced skills and industry knowledge.

But what if you don’t have the resources to develop comprehensive training in-house? In these situations, it may be worth considering combining organization-specific training with online sales training programs .

Create a motivational compensation and rewards plan.

Finally, once you’ve built a strong team, it’s vital to ensure your compensation plan is set up to motivate and retain them.

Many organizations connect sales compensation to organizational sales goals, but regardless of the specific compensation plan you choose, make sure that it meets or exceeds industry expectations. It should also inspire your team to celebrate individual and team achievements.

4. Create a plan to generate demand.

Now, it’s time to put together a detailed plan for how to target potential customers and increase their awareness of your offering. This may include using paid social acquisition channels, creating e-books, hosting webinars, and the many other strategies laid out in this article.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

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4. Listen to your prospects.

Just because prospects aren’t customers yet doesn’t mean they don’t have valuable feedback to offer.

As you move prospects through the sales funnel (and especially when they drop off), ask for candid feedback about their experience with your team and products. Even if they’ve lost interest, you may learn something that can help you convert your next prospect.

5. Invest in sales development and team-building.

The best sales teams align not only with their customers but also with their coworkers.

Sales is a difficult career, and without proper encouragement and camaraderie, people can easily become burned out. So, to keep your sales team feeling satisfied and supported, don’t forget to invest in sales development and team-building activities.

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Risk Management and Mitigation Through S&OP

Understanding S&OP in Risk Management

Risk management and mitigation play a crucial role in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). In this blog post, we will delve into how S&OP can effectively identify and address risks.

Let’s explore the S&OP and the risk management strategies to mitigate potential disruptions and maximize operational efficiency.

What is Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)?

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a strategic and structured process for companies to align business goals with forecasted demand through an effective allocation of operational resources. This involves cross-functional collaboration to come up with an accurate demand forecast and, thus, balance the appropriate supply to meet customer needs. 

Implementing S&OP for Effective Risk Management

As noted in the article “ Key Capabilities of S&OP for your Supply Chain ”, an efficient S&OP process helps to increase corporate profitability through the strategic use of the company’s resources.

The S&OP process helps teams mitigate risks by:

• Aligning sales and operations teams
• Provides structure for data-driven decision making
• Preparing with scenario planning and simulation
• Applying continuous monitoring and adjustment

Thus, putting in place a holistic and structured S&OP plan ensures transparency across the organization and alignment with the overall business goals. This way, it grants the ability to manage risk in a timely manner to stay ahead of the competition and overcome uncertainties.

Risk management not only is a key capability of S&OP, but it is also a key benefit , granting companies the ability to identify and approach possible risks in time to secure their business.

Risk Identification and Mitigation Through S&OP

First things first: There’s no risk to manage if it hasn’t been identified. You need to be able to “name” the risks in your supply chain as these can impact the overall performance of your business.

Risks may appear differently in supply chain planning versus financial planning . In supply chain planning, risks frequently come from the accuracy of underlying assumptions – like whether the forecasted demand is accurate or whether production will hit the expected levels with the plant running without unscheduled downtime.

On the other hand, in financial planning risks are from a different nature. They may result from currency fluctuations, cash flow shortages, or challenging customer payment terms, among others.

Let’s be more specific and define the different types of risk you can identify and tackle through S&OP. 

Key Risks Addressed by S&OP

Supply chain risks.

These might range from disruptions in suppliers or transportation failures to geopolitical circumstances that impact your business. Having a robust and well-established S&OP process helps you to identify and resolve these risks.

The same happens with inventory capacity. S&OP balances the supply and the demand accurately and in real time to prevent excess inventory or stockouts. This results in the reduction of the risk of lost sales or holding costs.

Demand risks

These come with changes in the market – customer preferences and market trends –  that could impact demand. Many products are seasonal which can impact the demand for finished goods and the supply of raw materials.

S&OP and specifically “scenario planning” play a crucial role in anticipating these changes and adjusting production plans accordingly.

Operational risks

These kinds of risks can arise from capacity utilization or process efficiency. By aligning production capacity with the forecasted demand and synching operations across departments, S&OP helps to reduce the risk of overburdening resources or underutilizing capacity. It also minimizes bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the production.

Financial risks

As part of the S&OP process, budgeting and financial planning ensure the right allocation of resources to minimize cost overruns. It also aligns sales and operations to meet sales targets and maintain steady revenue streams. Manufacturers always want to take on new business, but many times the process of determining if the new business will be profitable is not performed.

S&OP Best Practices for Effective Risk Management 

Assessing risk severity and impact.

A key step in risk management is assessing the possible resulting “harm”. Missed orders provide a good example of the possible severe impact of failing to meet the expectations of the S&OP plan. When the organization and stakeholders involved in the process don’t follow the supply chain plan and implement it efficiently, orders for critical customers can be late or incomplete.

The impact can be huge: It could result in both a loss of business and a harm to the corporation’s reputation. Also, your company’s competition can get a chance to “get their foot in the door” by having their product qualified as a suitable replacement to your product given the risks associated with yours. Missed orders can squander years of sales and technical development work.

Revenue streams are also a target. If the finance department was counting on the revenue stream from the lost business, they will then not be able to meet their revenue forecasts.

Other consequences of a breakdown in the planning process include, among others, elevated labor costs coming from unscheduled overtime and increased shipping costs for expedited shipments.

Leveraging Likelihood of Events

An essential part of any risk management process is to leverage the likelihood of events. All team members involved in the planning process should distinguish between events that we can control versus events that are not under our control.

• Controllable events: These include planning for manufacturing shutdowns, accurately capturing customer demand and launching a sale or promotional event to drive up customer demand.
• Uncontrollable events: We can find, among others, natural disasters –such as the wildfires in Canada this year putting at risk the production of petroleum; component shortages – like the one the Electronics industry has faced since COVID and that is just starting to see the light; and labor strikes.

Your team needs to put in place a process that facilitates discussion among all key stakeholders. By following this process, you should come up with a list of the likelihood of controlled and uncontrolled events that can impact your supply chain.

Using Scenario and Contingency Planning to develop a Risk Mitigation Plan

A great tool that S&OP uses to evaluate the impact of unanticipated disruptions to your plan is “What if” scenario planning . By leveraging different scenarios, your team can draft different strategies to approach each situation. They can then use the results of this contingency planning to develop the appropriate mitigation plan for each possible scenario.

A mitigation plan is nothing more than a set of actionable strategies designed to solve unlikely events to mitigate the negative impact in your business. For example: If one supplier is based in a place where a natural disaster or an industrial accident that curtails their normal production rates occurs, qualifying multiple raw material suppliers provides companies with alternatives to avoid losing business. 

Driving Business Resilience Through S&OP and Effective Risk Management

Implementing a robust S&OP process in your company will not only streamline operations but it will provide you with the right framework for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks in your supply chain and, in the end, your business.

QAD S&OP software supports and enhances your S&OP process to help you align sales and operations, anticipate changes in customer demand, manage risk effectively and boost growth.

As Pierre Monchal, ADM‘s (NEOVIA) Corporate Supply Chain Director explains : “Properly anticipating our customers’ requirements has become strategic so that our entire supply chain — from purchasing through to distribution via the production plants — could be ready to meet those needs.” 

“We have, therefore, gradually moved to a genuine culture of anticipating and adapting to the market, calling for improved demand forecasts and better fine-tuned preparation of operations,” he says.

Want to Know More About Sales and Operations Planning?

Check out other valuable resources:

• S&OP: A 7-Step Business Process
• Embracing Risk-based Thinking: A Practical Guide to Risk Management  
• QAD Announces the Next Release of Digital Supply Chain Planning (DSCP)
• Extending Sales and Operations Planning Throughout the Supply Chain

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THE GUARDIAN

Erik ten Hag says Manchester United's ambition is to win the Premier League, claiming they have only been second best to rivals Manchester City since his arrival in 2022.

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Everton plan to test Dele's readiness for a Premier League return with several matches behind closed doors before deciding whether to offer the former England international a new contract.

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Manchester United icon Jaap Stam insists Erik ten Hag needs to leave the club before delivering a damning verdict of the Dutchman's style of football as Red Devils boss.

Liverpool have been brutally mocked by the Spanish press after Martin Zubimendi became the latest player to snub the Premier League side.

Crystal Palace have rejected Newcastle's third bid for Marc Guehi of £55m plus £5m in add-ons.

The body in charge of Premier League referees will make their referees appointment policy public for the first time in a move to protect football's integrity.

West Ham have enquired about a move for Spain and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Carlos Soler.

Saudi Arabia have reportedly targeted a move for Real Madrid star Eder Militao.

FIFA has signed a major sponsorship deal with a USA firm for the first time since the Department of Justice gave world football's governing body a clean bill of health.

Erik ten Hag says his team is not ready for the start of the new campaign after a busy pre-season.

Manchester City are expected to pull off a surprise move for club-less England U20 striker Divin Mubama, who recently left West Ham.

Jack Grealish's image rights company has scored big - banking a £7m bonanza from sponsorship deals.

Nine Chelsea stars are set to be axed in order to balance the books at Stamford Bridge.

Sean Dyche revealed that every one of his players is still for sale at the right price with Everton stuck in takeover limbo.

Referees and VARs will be prohibited from officiating in matches involving clubs they support, have a personal connection with or are in the same city in which they live, the policy of the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL) on conflicts of interest states.

INEOS is exploring the possibility of releasing a behind-the-scenes film on Manchester United as it documents its journey following the partial takeover.

THE INDEPENDENT

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters says they "don't want to normalise asterisks on the league table" as the competition faces up to a potentially critical season over its regulatory future.

Premier League ticket prices have risen by an average of 6.7 per cent, according to figures supplied to the Independent by the Football Supporters' Association [FSA] and supplementary analysis, with Crystal Palace the only one of last season's 17 surviving clubs to not raise their prices. Nottingham Forest have been responsible for the biggest increase.

DAILY MIRROR

Julen Lopetegui has vowed to ensure the West Ham captain's armband does not weigh heavy upon Jarrod Bowen.

Joe Cole believes Mauricio Pochettino's Chelsea frustrations were clear in the weeks before the manager left Stamford Bridge, despite overcoming a tough start to finish sixth in his one Premier League season.

Roberto De Zerbi has claimed he left Brighton because he clashed with owner Tony Bloom and he could not accept "unfair things".

Tony Pulis has praised Wrexham's coaching staff and players for remaining focused on football amidst the 'circus' the Hollywood owners have created.

THE ATHLETIC

Southampton are working on a deal to sign Cameron Archer from Aston Villa.

Everton defender Jarrad Branthwaite is set to miss the start of the season through injury.

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag says new signing Joshua Zirkzee is "close" to being ready to start for the Premier League season opener against Fulham on Friday.

Chelsea goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic is surplus to Enzo Maresca's stylistic requirements only a year after joining from New England Revolution of MLS.

American businessman John Textor has entered a period of exclusivity to pursue the purchase of Farhad Moshiri's majority stake in Everton.

Chelsea have made midfielder Cesare Casadei available for transfer.

Southampton are in advanced talks with Chelsea to sign Lesley Ugochukwu on a season-long loan.

Manchester United sponsor Qualcomm has triggered its two-year extension option on its front-of-shirt deal with the Premier League club.

Chelsea hope to sell striker David Datro Fofana this summer.

Vitor Roque, 19, is close to leaving Barcelona, despite only joining in January.

DAILY EXPRESS

Manchester United will make a renewed attempt to prise Frenkie de Jong away from Barcelona this summer, according to reports in Spain.

Crystal Palace have informed Jean-Philippe Mateta's suitors that the in-form striker is not for sale this summer.

DAILY RECORD

Fears are growing that Rangers full-back Ridvan Yilmaz is set to be out of action for months after being carried off on a stretcher during a bruising Champions League defeat to Dynamo Kyiv.

Former Rangers star John Lundstram has been given pelters by Trabzonspor fans on social media after the Turkish Super Lig side were knocked out of qualifying for the Europa League.

Connor Barron will block out the noise from any Rangers fan protests on Saturday and insists the players are hurting just as badly after their Champions League exit.

SCOTTISH SUN

Rangers have sacked a new Celtic-supporting marketing guru after an offensive social media post was dug up by fans.

Leeds United are reportedly eyeing a swoop for Rangers star Rabbi Matondo.

Adam Idah insists he is not returning to Celtic to be Kyogo Furuhashi's back-up.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle's new owners have stumped up £70,000 to have their kit released by suppliers Puma - after the old regime failed to pay the bill for last season's strips.

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