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10 Free Sales Plan Templates for an Effective Sales Strategy

ClickUp Contributor

February 15, 2024

Every sales team wants to win more leads and close more deals. But how do you make that happen? With a solid sales plan, of course! 

A sales plan gives your team a way to focus on your goals while taking only the necessary steps to get there. It has everything you need to win, which means it’s often a comprehensive guide—and that takes time.

And we’re guessing you’re already pressed for time. ⏲️

Fortunately, creating a plan doesn’t have to be complicated—with the right template, you can simplify the process.

That’s why we’re sharing this list of the best sales plan templates. Not only are these sales strategy templates absolutely free but they’ll also save you time so you can start closing those deals faster. ⚡

What Is a Sales Plan and Why Create One?

1. clickup sales plan template, 2. clickup sales and marketing plan template, 3. clickup sales strategy guide template, 4. clickup sales pipeline template, 5. clickup sales kpi template, 6. clickup b2b sales strategy template, 7. clickup sales calls template, 8. word sales plan template by business news daily, 9. word sales plan template by templatelab, 10. excel sales plan template by spreadsheet.com.

A sales plan is your roadmap for how to make sales effectively. Think of it in the same way that a business plan guides the strategy for your company or a marketing plan sets out how you’ll find, reach, and serve your ideal customers. 

clickup goals feature

A good sales plan sets out your sales goals , objectives, and sales activities. It considers your target audience, brand, products, services, and needs—and covers which sales tactics and strategies you’ll use to close deals, as well as which metrics you’ll use to measure success. 

Your sales plan is a practical plan that outlines who’s responsible for what, the resources you’ll need, and the overall goals you’re working toward. Without one, your sales team will feel lost and struggle to connect with your customer base.

With a strategic sales plan, though, the sales manager and the entire team will know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and the steps needed to get there. 📚

How to choose the best sales plan template

There are so many different sales plan templates out there. Some are designed for specific niche audiences, while others are more generic and easier to customize. How do you know which is the right template for you?

When you’re thinking about using a sales plan template, consider the following: 

  • Ease of use: Is the template easy to use? Will everyone in the team structure and sales planning process be able to understand it fully?
  • Customization: Can I personalize the template to match my sales goals?

targets in clickup goals

  • Collaboration: Can my sales team work on this template together?
  • Integrations: When I create a sales plan, can I integrate this template with other aspects of my sales pipeline or workflow, like task management?
  • Artificial intelligence: Can I use a built-in AI writing tool or copywriting tool to help me complete the template? Are there automation features that speed up the process?
  • Platform: Which sales app is this template for? Do I have it already, or should I invest in it? What’s the pricing like?

Asking yourself these questions will help you figure out what your needs are, so you can then choose a template to match. 

10 Sales Plan Templates to Help You Close Your Next Deal

Now that you have a better idea of what you’re looking for, let’s explore what’s out there. Take a look at our hand-picked selection of the best sales plan templates available today for Microsoft Word and sales enablement tools like ClickUp.

Create and organize tasks by team, deliverable type, priority, due dates, and approval state with the ClickUp Sales Plan Template

Smart sales teams use a sales plan to map out their route to success. The best sales teams use the Sales Plan Template by ClickUp to simplify the process and ensure they don’t leave anything out.

This template is designed with all the structure you need to create a comprehensive sales plan that can drive results. Use this template to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) business goals; plan strategies and tactics; and organize all your sales ideas in one place.

The list-style template is split into sections that cover the executive summary all the way through to specific tactics and strategies. Beneath this, you can arrange tasks and subtasks, and see the progress at a glance. View task titles, deadlines, who’s responsible, approval status, and a visual progress bar.

Use this template if you want to consolidate all your sales tasks and initiatives in one area. Add your sales tasks and tactics, then tag team members so you can see what’s happening and hold everyone accountable. ✅

Use the Sales and Marketing Template by ClickUp to set goals and collaborate on campaigns

While sales and marketing teams often work independently, sometimes it’s useful to collaborate on shared goals. With the Sales and Marketing Plan Template by ClickUp , you can organize and run your sales and marketing operations from one location.

Our collaborative template makes it easy to set sales and marketing goals and objectives, visualize your tasks, work together on sales and marketing campaigns, and track your results in real-time. View the status of your sales and marketing projects, adjust your plans, and monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs)—all from one view.

This sales and marketing plan template allows you to split your tasks into sections. The examples in the template include revenue goals, competitive analysis, and action items, but you can customize these to match your needs exactly.

View tasks beneath these categories to see at a glance whether there are any roadblocks when a task is due, and who is responsible for it.

Add this template to your collection if you want to work more collaboratively with your marketing team—especially on preparing assets for sales calls or outreach programs. 📞

The ClickUp Sales Strategy Guide Template can help you determine the right way to promote your product by answering predefined questions

Before you can plan your sales tactics, you first need to decide what your overall goals are. The Sales Strategy Guide Template by ClickUp is your go-to resource for determining your approach.

This sales process template explains the benefits of having a well-defined approach and gives you a central place to create, review, and store your own. Everyone on your team can then access your sales strategy guide to help them understand what to do when prospecting and closing deals.

Our sales goals and strategy guide template is presented in a document format. Some sections and headings allow you to split your guide into different areas, making it easier to read and understand.

Use the prompts to fill out your own strategy guide details like your target market, sales strategies, and how you’ll monitor progress.

Use this sales strategy guide template to create a resource for your team. Make it the only destination for everything your sales reps need to know to execute an effective sales plan. 📝

Track your leads and deals, applying a consistent deal qualification framework and deal process to increase sales.

Sales strategies are a must-have for any great sales team, but beyond that, you need a way to record and monitor specific tasks or initiatives. That’s where the Sales Pipeline Template by ClickUp comes in handy whether you need a visual into sales forecasting or your specific sales goals.

This sales pipeline template gives you one place to store all your daily sales-related tasks. With this template, it’s easy to work toward your sales goals, track leads, map out each step of the sales process, and organize all your tasks in one place.

You can view a task’s title, assignee, status, due date, complexity level, start date, and department—or customize the experience with your own custom fields. 

Sales KPIs are essential to measuring the success of your sales strategy.

With ClickUp’s Sales KPI Template , you and your team can create and manage goals surrounding your sales initiatives. See instantly what’s in progress and when it’s due, alongside the task’s impact level.

This allows you to identify high-priority tasks to focus on and to react quickly if it looks like there’s a roadblock.

This sales KPI template includes:

  • Custom Statuses: Create tasks with custom statuses such as Open and Complete to keep track of the progress of each KPI
  • Custom Fields: Utilize 15 different custom attributes such as Upsell Attempts, Value of Quotes, Product Cost, No of Quotes by Unit, Repeat Sales Revenue, to save vital KPI information and easily visualize performance data
  • Custom Views: Open 4 different views in different ClickUp configurations, such as the Weekly Report, Monthly Report, Revenue Board per Month, and Getting Started Guide so that all the information is easy to access and organized
  • Project Management: Improve KPI tracking with tagging, dependency warnings, emails, and more

This template gives you a simple way to see which tasks are complete or in progress, so you can monitor the progress of your project and crush your sales KPIs. 📈

The ClickUp B2B Sales Strategy Template guides you through the process of creating an effective plan and list of objectives for your sales team

While there’s not a huge difference in the way we market to business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) customers these days, it’s still useful to have specific templates for niche needs. If you’re driving sales in the B2B space, you need the B2B Sales Strategy Template by ClickUp .

Like our first sales plan template, this one gives you space to communicate your sales objectives and revenue targets, but it also introduces other areas—like market research, stakeholder analysis, customer relationships, buyer persona, and customer pain points. 

This document-style template is highly customizable so you can make it match your brand style and sales approach. Fill in each section and use the supplied prompts to complete your B2B sales strategy document even faster. 

Add this template to your collection if you’re working in B2B sales and want to approach your process in a more organized way. Use the template to build a strong sales strategy, then share it with the rest of your sales team so they know how to execute against your sales and company goals. 🎯

Sales Calls Template offers you a sales calls pipeline that helps you convert prospecting leads to your clients.

ClickUp’s Sales Calls Template is designed to streamline the sales process, from tracking contacts and calls to managing sales opportunities.

The template includes custom statuses for creating unique workflows, ensuring that every call and client interaction is accounted for. It also provides an easy-to-use Sales CRM to manage and track leads, visualize sales opportunities in the sales funnel, and keep all contacts organized.

With additional features like the Sales Phone Calls SOP Template, sales professionals can empower their teams to make every call count and close more deals. ClickUp’s Sales Calls Template is a versatile solution for sales teams, aiding in everything from daily calls to long-term sales forecasting.

An example of Word Sales Plan Template by Business News Daily

We’re big advocates of using ClickUp as the go-to place to store everything about your sales workflow, but if you’re limited to using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, then this template is a great option.

This sales business plan template has sections for your executive summary, mission statement, target customers, sales targets, benchmarks, and more. Each section has useful prompts to guide you on completing your new sales plan.

Use this template if you’re tied to using Microsoft Word and want a comprehensive guide on how to create your own sales plan or sales strategy. 📄

An example of Word Sales Plan Templates by TemplateLab

If you want a free sales plan template or want to choose from a variety of options, this collection of Word templates by TemplateLab is a good place to do that.

There’s a wide range of options available including sales process plans, lead generation plans, sales action plans, and sales report templates . Each template works with Microsoft Word, and you can customize the look and feel to match your brand or your sales goals.

Use this resource if you prefer to see a range of templates on one page, or if you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for until you see it. You can easily set your sales goals and the action steps needed to achieve them. 📃

Successful sales strategies need to be integrated with other teams—like your marketing department—to ensure your sales objectives are clear and possibly align with the overall marketing strategy too. Choose your specific sales goals, set revenue targets, and describe everything in detail with these Word sales planning and sales process templates.

sample sales business plans

The Excel Sales Plan Template by Spreadsheet.com is a comprehensive and user-friendly tool designed to assist businesses in developing effective sales strategies and managing their sales activities.

T his template is crafted with the aim of providing a structured framework for sales planning, enabling organizations to set clear objectives, track performance, and optimize their sales processes.

Reach Sales Goals With Free Sales Plan Templates

A strategic sales plan makes it easier to achieve your goals. Give your team the guidance and support they need with the help of a well-crafted free sales plan template.

If you’re considering making even more improvements in how you work, try ClickUp for free . We don’t just have incredible sales process templates: Our range of features and AI tools for sales make it easy for you to optimize and run your entire sales funnel and CRM system from one place. ✨

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Sales | How To

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

Published March 9, 2023

Published Mar 9, 2023

Jess Pingrey

REVIEWED BY: Jess Pingrey

Jillian Ilao

WRITTEN BY: Jillian Ilao

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sample sales business plans

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

Manage Sales With CRM

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  • 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

Sales Plan template cover

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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.

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

Freshsales sales goal tracking filter options.

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 sample lead profile.

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 plan template

HubSpot sales strategy template (Source: HubSpot )

HubSpot’s sales plan template with the mission, vision, and story of the company

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

Visit HubSpot

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 template

Asana sales plan example (Source: Asana )

Visit Asana

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

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: 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.

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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 .

How to Develop a Sales Team Structure (in Your Sales Plan) Group Session Image

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.

The Different Types of Sales Plans (and Examples of Each in Practice with a Template)

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.

set milestones in sales plan

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% YOY, you might set the milestone of increasing your customer base by 20%, 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, weakness, 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.

Sales Team Building an Ideal Customer Profile for a Sales Plan

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 were you solving 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.

Create Value Propositions to Create a Successful Sales Plan (Image of Planning)

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.

Track and Analyze the Data in Your Sales Plan Template (to Improve Results)

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.

Set Individual Milestones for Your Sales Team to Succeed (Planning Image)

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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How To Build a Strategic Sales Plan + 10 Examples

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  • May 28, 2023

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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

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 Write a Sales Plan

Table of contents.

Elizabeth Veras

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?

When examining your strengths and opportunities, conduct a SWOT analysis to get a clearer picture of where your business stands.

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.

Set milestones that give you the opportunity to regularly determine whether you are on track to achieve your sales goals or need to make adjustments.

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.”

A solid sales plan helps you deal with unexpected events and acts as a benchmark for where your company is and where you want it to go.

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. 

Create your own sales plan by downloading our free template .

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

Max Altschuler

  • 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:

sales strategy template

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:

sales plan template

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.

sample sales business plans

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.

sales plan example

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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What Is A Sales Plan? | How To Create Your Own + Sample Sales Plan Template

Find out what a sales plan is and learn how to create your own sales plan template with this guide.

RELATED: Marketing and Sales: Why They Need Each Other

In this article:

What Is a Sales Plan?

  • Who Creates and Benefits from the Sales Plan?
  • Why Do You Need a Sales Plan?
  • Where Does the Sales Plan Fit Within Your Business?
  • When Should You Create and Update Your Sales Plan Template?
  • Mission, Vision, and Background
  • Goals and Timeline
  • Team Members
  • Target Market
  • Market Position
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Prospecting
  • Action Plan

Sample Sales Plan Template

Other sales plan templates, how to write a sales plan template.

A sales plan is a strategy wherein you lay out your objectives, tactics, potential challenges, and target market . Here, you also identify what steps you’ll execute to meet your objectives.

Typically, a sales plan template has the following parts:

  • Target market
  • Revenue and/or volume targets
  • Deadlines and Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs)
  • Team structure
  • Strategies and tactics
  • Pricing and promotions
  • Market conditions

What Is The Difference Between A Sales Plan And Business Plan?

A business plan describes the financial and operational objectives of a business. A sales plan is similar to a business plan, but it zeros in on the sales strategy. 

In other words, a business plan outlines the goals and a sales plan specifies how to reach those goals.

Who Creates a Sales Plan ?

Sales professionals are in charge of creating sales plans. Whatever position you hold, as long as you’re working within sales, it’s essential to be familiar with how to create a sales plan.

Ideally, sales reps should have the task of creating an individual sales plan as part of their training. This will give them an idea of how to write and work with a sales plan template.

Sales executives, sales managers, and entrepreneurs all benefit from having a sales plan. This is a very useful guide for your business, department, or sales team.

Why Do I Need a Sales Plan Template?

Having a sales plan template will help you:

  • Identify your business’ sales targets
  • Choose sales strategies that fit your target market
  • Come up with tactics that will enable your sales team to execute your strategies
  • Determine the budget you need for your sales efforts
  • Activate and motivate your sales team
  • Evaluate your goals regularly so you can improve your approach

Your strategic sales plan will keep your business and your sales team in check. This will also serve as your benchmark to assess your goals and accomplishments.

Perhaps the most important role of a sales plan is to act as your compass in terms of meeting your prospect and customers’ needs.

Where Does the Sales Plan Fit Within a Business?

Your sales plan template can be a part of your marketing plan, or it can also supplement it. As mentioned earlier, a sales plan is similar to a business plan, but it focuses more on strategy.

These three — the business, marketing, and sales plans — all serve the purpose of directing your sales team’s efforts. You map these out during the start of the fiscal year, for instance, and then build on them throughout the year.

When Should I Create and Update My Sales Plan Template?

A lot of businesses develop and improve their sales plan template when necessary. Some do it every 6 or 12 months. Generally, you’ll update your sales plan as new information becomes available. For example, your sales team has expanded or a competitor has left the market. You and your team should treat your sales plan as a live document that you can build and adapt when needed.

RELATED: 7 Ways to Boost Sales Effectiveness

How Do I Create My Own Sales Plan?

All good sales plans have one thing in common, it’s based on real data. Before you create a sales plan do research and collect updated information to base your plan on.

Do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to assess your current position and incorporate your findings into your sales plan.

Once you have done your research complete your sales plan with these basic elements:

1. Executive Summary and Scope

Not everyone will read every page of the sales plan. In this section, give an overview of the document.

The aim here is to provide context for your plan. Include the most important goals and strategies as well as the time frame specified in your plan.

2. Goals and Timeline

Next, it’s time to set your sales goals, which could be revenue or volume-based. Make sure you set realistic goals so that in turn, your sales plan is doable.

When goal-setting, you need to factor in the following:

  • Product price
  • Total addressable market (TAM)
  • Market penetration

Most likely, you’ll have more than one goal. The key is to identify which ones are high-level, and which ones will enable you to achieve those high-level goals.

As you prioritize each goal, set a timeline to achieve them. This will let you know if you’re ahead, on track, or behind in meeting targets.

If applicable, identify who the directly responsible individuals (DRIs) are. For instance, set quotas for your individual sales reps so they can all contribute to a common objective.

In some cases, identifying the DRIs will let you avoid replicating work and shifting blame, as each person has a specific task relevant to the goal.

3. Team Members

Enumerate who your team members are and what roles they have. If you’re anticipating to add to that headcount, include the following as well:

  • The number of employees you want to add
  • Each employee’s job title
  • When you plan to onboard them in the team

4. Target Market

target audience | What Is A Sales Plan? | How To Create Your Own + Sample Sales Plan Template | plan b sales

Knowing who your target market is for every product or service is crucial. When working on this, imagine what your ideal customer would be like.

While it’s important to have a single buyer persona, be open as well to the possibility of having different buyer personas for each product or service you offer.

Your target market can change over time as your sales strategy and business solutions evolve. As you go along, you’ll eventually learn which market fits a product or service better.

This is why it’s important to be consistent in evaluating and updating your buyer personas.

5. Resources

Your sales plan template should also include the list of resources, tools, and software your sales team will utilize to achieve your goals.

This also means including what your salespeople will use to accomplish their jobs. Some examples of these are training, sales enablement tools, and sales reports , among others.

6. Market Position

In this section, you will list down who your competitors are. Explain here how your offers compare to theirs — both the pros and cons.

You should include the pricing comparison between you and your competitors as well. Also, don’t forget to discuss the current trends in the market, and try to predict what kind of impact they will have on your business.

7. Marketing Strategy

Here you will dive further on two marketing mix elements — price and promotion. Describe your pricing strategy and go into detail on the promotions you’re planning to run.

What tactics will you implement to increase awareness for your brand and to generate leads? While you digest on this, don’t forget to figure out how this will impact your sales.

8. Prospecting

sales meeting | What Is A Sales Plan? | How To Create Your Own + Sample Sales Plan Template | sales plan

What will be your strategy when it comes to prospecting ? List down the criteria that your sales reps need to look for in leads and prospects before they reach out.

Along with this, you should also identify the sales methods your sales team will employ to close more deals.

9. Action Plan

You now have your goals, so it’s time to come up with action plans that will help you reach them. This is basically your game plan to hit the revenue targets you set.

To create an action plan, follow this simple process:

  • Set an objective
  • List down the tasks that will help you accomplish the objective

Lay out the costs that will come with hitting your sales goals. To make sure that your sales plan budget is accurate, compare it with your sales forecast.

Tips To Keep In Mind When Writing Your Sales Plan 

  • Set practical and reasonable goals.
  • Look at historical performance data to help set achievable targets.
  • Do in-depth research and use this to identify problems and opportunities.
  • Get input from your sales team.
  • Be specific and concise.
  • Don’t forget to monitor the progress of your sales plan. Your plan should adapt and evolve to fit the current situation (Unexpected changes in the market, new sales members etc.)

Here’s a handy sales plan template based on the elements mentioned above. Fill in each part as a starting point in creating your own template.

Name of Company:

Prepared by: 

I. Executive Summary and Scope

Write 3-4 lines to summarize the rest of the document.

II. Goals and Timeline

Sample Sales Goals and Timeline

  • April 2020: $10,000
  • May 2020 $10,000
  • June 2020: $12,000

III. Team Members

  • Name — job title

Describe the role, including tasks and expectations. Also, include information about onboarding. 

IV. Target Market 

Buyer Persona 

Thoroughly describe who this person is — basic demographics, what their lifestyle is like, interests, etc. 

V. Resources 

Make a list of resources, tools, and software employees need to perform their tasks and for the team to achieve the sales goals

VI. Market Position 

Competitors

Similarities and Differences Between Products/Services

Pricing Comparison 

Current Market Situation

Include information about any market or industry trends that may impact you or your competitors. 

VII. Marketing Strategy 

Sample Pricing and Promotional Strategy:

  • Pricing Strategy: Lower price from $500 to $450 on June 1.
  • Sales Impact: Increase monthly sales by 10%
  • Promotional Strategy: Run a customer referral incentive from June 15-30.
  • Sales Impact: Increase monthly sales by 15%.

VIII. Prospecting 

Prospecting Strategy

Identify sales methods reps will use to close deals. 

Criteria to Qualify Leads:

IX. Action Plan

Objective #1: 

Sample Costs:

  • Salary/Commission
  • Sales Tools and Resources
  • Travel Expenses

If you’re stuck with your own sales plan template, try going by any of these templates:

  • One-Page Sales Plan by The Balance
  • Free Sales Plan Template by Fit Small Business

There is no one-size-fits-all sales plan. Take your time to identify opportunities and ways to overcome challenges.

Lastly, remember to monitor your progress and to update your strategic sales plan to optimize performance.

What challenges do you experience when creating a sales plan? Tell us in the comments section below!

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8 Examples of Strategic Sales Plans

8 Examples of Strategic Sales Plans

Casey O'Connor

What Is a Strategic Sales Plan?

When you should implement a strategic sales plan, what to include in your sales plan, 8 examples of plans to implement your sales strategy, how yesware can help your team put your sales plan into action.

A strategic sales plan is a must-have for any business that’s looking to increase their sales, amp up their revenue, bring a new product to market, or branch into a new territory.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about strategic sales plans: what they are, when to create one, and exactly what it needs to include. We’ll also show you a handful of real-life, tangible examples of really effective sales plan components.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

A strategic sales plan is designed to guide a sales organization through their overarching sales strategy. It provides them with access to the resources needed to prospect, pitch to, and close new accounts.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: action plan

Strategic sales plans can include any combination of the following:

  • Ideas: If you utilize a certain sales methodology — consultative selling or target account selling , for example — you might outline its key principles and a few tactical examples of it in action in your strategic sales plan. Your strategic sales plan should also include an overview of your target customer.
  • Processes: In order for your sales team to reach maximum productivity, it’s important that your sales processes are clearly defined and standardized. Your sales team — both new hires and seasoned vets alike — should be able to refer to your sales plan for a repeatable, scalable process that’s backed by solid metrics. The processes should provide direction to sales reps that allow them to contribute to the company’s goals.
  • Tools & Tactics: The best strategic sales plans are more than just high-level strategy and goals. They also include specific, step-by-step strategies that sales reps can implement in sales conversations, as well as the specific tools and content that reps need to close more deals.

Sales plans also typically spell out the organization’s revenue and overall business goals, as well as the KPIs and benchmarks that sales managers and other stakeholders will monitor to determine whether or not those goals are being met.

They should also outline management’s strategic territory design and quota expectations, with specific indicators and data to back those decisions. 

Finally, these sales plans should take into account your current team’s sales capacity, and should specifically address the acquisition plan for any resources that are not yet available but that may be necessary for future growth.

If your sales team doesn’t already have a strategic sales plan in place — that is, one that’s referenced and updated regularly, and is the product of careful data analysis and inter-team collaboration — you may want to consider creating one. 

Research shows that the majority of the highest-performing sales teams operate under a formalized, closely monitored sales structure. 

On the other hand, most underperforming sales teams lack this structure. 

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: sales structure

It’s clear that a well-defined sales plan is one of the prerequisites to optimized sales productivity and success; every salesforce should strive to create and adopt one if they want to meet their sales goals more efficiently.

That being said, there are a few key indicators that signal a need for more urgency in putting a strategic sales plan in place. 

You’re Trying to Increase Sales

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: sales pipeline

A strategic sales plan will help your sales and marketing teams align their processes so that your outreach efforts are tailored to your target audience.

You’re Looking to Amp up Your Revenue

For startups and small businesses, attaining as many new customers as possible is usually the name of the game.

For larger or more established businesses, however, the business plan may instead emphasize revenue goals. In other words, the deal size starts to matter much more than deal volume. 

A sales strategy plan can help salespeople target and nurture higher-value accounts. Sales planning can also boost your revenue by illuminating untapped potentials for revenue growth within your existing customer base through cross-selling, upselling , and referrals.

You’re Gearing Up to Launch a New Product

A sales strategy plan is crucial for businesses that are preparing to bring a new product to market.

Thoughtful sales planning will ensure your go-to-market strategy is optimized and designed for short-term and long-term success by clearly defining and speaking to the pain points of your ideal customer profile.

Strategic Sales Plan Example: Go-To-Market Strategy

One last note: for businesses that already use strategic business planning (or for those on their way after reading this article), be sure to update your plan at least yearly. Many businesses at least review their plan, if not update it more formally, on a quarterly basis.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: The Buyer's Journey

Consider including the following components in your strategic business plan.

Mission Statement

A company’s mission statement speaks to its purpose and values, as well as the strategy, scope, and standards of its business doings.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: mission statement

Consider a company’s mission statement like its North Star; it can act as a guiding force for decision-making that’s consistently aligned with the ethics and values of the company.

Industry & Market Conditions

Great sales planning cannot be performed in isolation. It’s important that your plan also takes into account the current market conditions, including any challenges, recent disruptions, or upcoming notable events.

Organization Chart

A sales org chart can range in scope from very simple, like the one above, to more complicated. Some go as far as naming individual employees and outlining their specific responsibilities. 

A detailed org chart is especially helpful for efficiently onboarding new hires.

Product Info & Pricing

No sales plan would be complete without a one-sheet that outlines the features, benefits, and value proposition of your product or service.

It’s also helpful to include information about pricing tiers, as well as any discounts or promotions available for leverage at a sales rep’s discretion.

Compensation Plan

While we have no doubt that you’ve hired only the most intrinsically motivated salespeople, remember the bottom line: cash is king.

Money is the primary motivator for most salespeople, regardless of how truly loyal and hard-working they may be.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: golden rules of sales compensation

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to include your company’s compensation plan and commission structure in your sales plan. This is a surefire way to motivate your team to continuously improve their sales performance. 

Target Market & Customer

One of the single most important components of your strategic sales plan will be your ideal customer profile and/or your buyer persona .

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Personas

Sales Enablement

With the tremendous rise in content marketing, it can be challenging for salespeople to keep track of the various materials available for generating new business.

Your strategic sales plan should direct your sales team to the many resources available to them to leverage throughout the sales cycle. It should also highlight the tools, software, CRM, and training — collectively known as sales enablement tools — available to and expected of them.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: sales enablement

Branding & Positioning

The strategic sales plan should offer at least a high-level overview of your brand and messaging specifics, including social media presence. Take the time to optimize your company’s LinkedIn presence — it’s a goldmine of new business opportunities.

Marketing Strategy

In today’s day and age, it’s unlikely that your sales and marketing team are working in isolation from one another. At a certain point, sales and marketing strategies start to flow together until they (ideally) perform in harmony.

Still, it’s important to outline the perspective of the marketing team within your strategic sales plan. This will help your salespeople fine-tune their sales pitch and speak more meaningfully to the needs of the customer. 

Prospecting Strategy

Most salespeople report that their number one challenge in lead generation is attracting qualified leads. 

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: B2B lead generation challenges

Prospecting can certainly be daunting, but it’s worth the effort to get it right. Tweak and fine-tune the process until you’re sure it’s as efficient as possible. Make sure it’s repeatable and scalable, and map it out within your sales plan.

Action Plan

Any good strategic sales plan will also include a step-by-step section, much like a playbook. Here, you’ll outline the specific tactics and processes — including scripts, demos, and email templates — that have been proven to move prospects through the sales funnel . 

Be as specific as possible here. This will act as a blueprint for the day-to-day sales activities for your team.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: SMART Goals

It can be tempting to leave the numbers with the finance department, but financial transparency can go a long way in creating a culture of trust among your sales team.

You don’t need to go through every line item in the spreadsheet, but it’s not a bad idea to include a high-level look at where the dollars are flowing. 

KPIs, Metrics, and Benchmarks

Be sure to give your team a snapshot of how they’re currently performing, with real numbers to back it up. This will help them self-initiate regular SWOT analysis of their own sales actions and processes. This will give them an opportunity to right the course if things aren’t going according to plan. 

Remember that your company’s strategic sales plan will be highly unique. It may take some time and tweaking to find the components and format that best meet the needs of your business.

Below are a few components that you might consider including in your sales plan.

Buyer’s Guide

A buyer’s guide is a short, simple information sheet that describes your product or service, its features and benefits, and its use. Below is an example of a buyer’s guide from Wayfair .

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: buyers guide

In many cases, this document is as useful internally as it is for the customer. 

Customer Profile

One way to avoid wasting time on unproductive leads is to include an ideal customer profile (ICP) in your sales plan.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: ideal customer profile

30-60-90 Day Plan

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: 30-60-90 day sales plan

Microsoft Word Sales Plan Template

Here’s a great example of a sales plan goals template , easily accessible through Microsoft Word.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: sales plan template

Battle Cards

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: Battle Cards

Territory Design

Well-designed sales territories see a 10% – 20% increase in sales productivity. Pictured below is a basic example of a territory design map.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: territory map

When designing your territories, keep in mind the following best practices .

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: territory plan

Your compensation plan (including a specific commission structure) is one way to motivate your sales reps.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: compensation plan

While it may seem controversial or sensitive, the compensation plan is an important component of a strategic sale plan.

Marketing Plan

Your salespeople should be extremely familiar with the marketing strategies your company is using to attract new leads. Here’s a great example of a template you can use in your sales plan that outlines the different campaigns at work.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: marketing plan

This kind of resource will help your reps know who to contact, when, and with what kind of content throughout the sales cycle .

Yesware is the all-in-one sales toolkit that helps you win more business. It can be an invaluable resource for putting your sales plan into action in a way that’s streamlined, productive, and intuitive.

Communication

Yesware’s meeting scheduler tool helps you skip the back-and-forth when scheduling meetings.

Meeting Scheduler integrates with your Outlook or Gmail calendar and helps your clients automatically schedule meetings with you during times of availability. New events are automatically synced to your calendar. 

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: meeting scheduler

​ It can also create meeting types for common calls, like a 30-minute intro call or a 60-minute demo call. These templates can be automatically saved and generated with custom descriptions and agendas, so everyone can come prepared. 

Prospecting

One of Yesware’s most popular features is its prospecting campaigns.

These features enable salespeople to create automated, personalized campaigns with multi-channel touches. The tool tracks communication and engagement throughout the process and helps move prospects through the pipeline with little administrative effort from the sales team.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: prospecting campaigns

Yesware’s attachment tracking feature helps you find your winning content by tracking which attachments are most often opened and read by your prospects. You can use these insights to sharpen your content and increase your engagement.

Strategic Sales Plans Examples: presentation report

The reporting and analytics tools are also extremely valuable in optimizing your sales plan.  These reports enable salespeople to use data to win more business. The feature generates daily activity, engagement data, and outcomes to show you what is/isn’t working across the board.

Try Yesware for free for 14 days to see how it can help your sales team carry out your sales plan today.

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550+ Business Plan Examples to Launch Your Business

550+ Free Sample Business Plans

Need help writing your business plan? Explore over 550 industry-specific business plan examples for inspiration. Go even further with LivePlan , which harnesses AI-assisted writing features and SBA-approved plan examples to get you funded.

Find your business plan example

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Example business plan format

Before you start exploring our library of business plan examples, it's worth taking the time to understand the traditional business plan format . You'll find that the plans in this library and most investor-approved business plans will include the following sections:

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally only one to two pages. You should also plan to write this section last after you've written your full business plan.

Your executive summary should include a summary of the problem you are solving, a description of your product or service, an overview of your target market, a brief description of your team, a summary of your financials, and your funding requirements (if you are raising money).

Products & services

The products & services chapter of your business plan is where the real meat of your plan lives. It includes information about the problem that you're solving, your solution, and any traction that proves that it truly meets the need you identified.

This is your chance to explain why you're in business and that people care about what you offer. It needs to go beyond a simple product or service description and get to the heart of why your business works and benefits your customers.

Market analysis

Conducting a market analysis ensures that you fully understand the market that you're entering and who you'll be selling to. This section is where you will showcase all of the information about your potential customers. You'll cover your target market as well as information about the growth of your market and your industry. Focus on outlining why the market you're entering is viable and creating a realistic persona for your ideal customer base.

Competition

Part of defining your opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage may be. To do this effectively you need to get to know your competitors just as well as your target customers. Every business will have competition, if you don't then you're either in a very young industry or there's a good reason no one is pursuing this specific venture.

To succeed, you want to be sure you know who your competitors are, how they operate, necessary financial benchmarks, and how you're business will be positioned. Start by identifying who your competitors are or will be during your market research. Then leverage competitive analysis tools like the competitive matrix and positioning map to solidify where your business stands in relation to the competition.

Marketing & sales

The marketing and sales plan section of your business plan details how you plan to reach your target market segments. You'll address how you plan on selling to those target markets, what your pricing plan is, and what types of activities and partnerships you need to make your business a success.

The operations section covers the day-to-day workflows for your business to deliver your product or service. What's included here fully depends on the type of business. Typically you can expect to add details on your business location, sourcing and fulfillment, use of technology, and any partnerships or agreements that are in place.

Milestones & metrics

The milestones section is where you lay out strategic milestones to reach your business goals.

A good milestone clearly lays out the parameters of the task at hand and sets expectations for its execution. You'll want to include a description of the task, a proposed due date, who is responsible, and eventually a budget that's attached. You don't need extensive project planning in this section, just key milestones that you want to hit and when you plan to hit them.

You should also discuss key metrics, which are the numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common data points worth tracking include conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, profit, etc.

Company & team

Use this section to describe your current team and who you need to hire. If you intend to pursue funding, you'll need to highlight the relevant experience of your team members. Basically, this is where you prove that this is the right team to successfully start and grow the business. You will also need to provide a quick overview of your legal structure and history if you're already up and running.

Financial projections

Your financial plan should include a sales and revenue forecast, profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. You may not have established financials of any kind at this stage. Not to worry, rather than getting all of the details ironed out, focus on making projections and strategic forecasts for your business. You can always update your financial statements as you begin operations and start bringing in actual accounting data.

Now, if you intend to pitch to investors or submit a loan application, you'll also need a "use of funds" report in this section. This outlines how you intend to leverage any funding for your business and how much you're looking to acquire. Like the rest of your financials, this can always be updated later on.

The appendix isn't a required element of your business plan. However, it is a useful place to add any charts, tables, definitions, legal notes, or other critical information that supports your plan. These are often lengthier or out-of-place information that simply didn't work naturally into the structure of your plan. You'll notice that in these business plan examples, the appendix mainly includes extended financial statements.

Types of business plans explained

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. To get the most out of your plan, it's best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan

The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you'll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or in any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual.

Business model canvas

The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

The structure ditches a linear format in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It's faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations.

One-page business plan

The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan . This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business.

By starting with a one-page plan , you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You'll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan.

Growth planning

Growth planning is more than a specific type of business plan. It's a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, forecast, review, and refine based on your performance.

It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27 minutes . However, it's even easier to convert into a more detailed plan thanks to how heavily it's tied to your financials. The overall goal of growth planning isn't to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the growth planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and remain stable through times of crisis.

It's faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

Download a free sample business plan template

Ready to start writing your own plan but aren't sure where to start? Download our free business plan template that's been updated for 2024.

This simple, modern, investor-approved business plan template is designed to make planning easy. It's a proven format that has helped over 1 million businesses write business plans for bank loans, funding pitches, business expansion, and even business sales. It includes additional instructions for how to write each section and is formatted to be SBA-lender approved. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.

How to use an example business plan to help you write your own

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How do you know what elements need to be included in your business plan, especially if you've never written one before? Looking at examples can help you visualize what a full, traditional plan looks like, so you know what you're aiming for before you get started. Here's how to get the most out of a sample business plan.

Choose a business plan example from a similar type of company

You don't need to find an example business plan that's an exact fit for your business. Your business location, target market, and even your particular product or service may not match up exactly with the plans in our gallery. But, you don't need an exact match for it to be helpful. Instead, look for a plan that's related to the type of business you're starting.

For example, if you want to start a vegetarian restaurant, a plan for a steakhouse can be a great match. While the specifics of your actual startup will differ, the elements you'd want to include in your restaurant's business plan are likely to be very similar.

Use a business plan example as a guide

Every startup and small business is unique, so you'll want to avoid copying an example business plan word for word. It just won't be as helpful, since each business is unique. You want your plan to be a useful tool for starting a business —and getting funding if you need it.

One of the key benefits of writing a business plan is simply going through the process. When you sit down to write, you'll naturally think through important pieces, like your startup costs, your target market , and any market analysis or research you'll need to do to be successful.

You'll also look at where you stand among your competition (and everyone has competition), and lay out your goals and the milestones you'll need to meet. Looking at an example business plan's financials section can be helpful because you can see what should be included, but take them with a grain of salt. Don't assume that financial projections for a sample company will fit your own small business.

If you're looking for more resources to help you get started, our business planning guide is a good place to start. You can also download our free business plan template , or get started right away with LivePlan .

Think of business planning as a process, instead of a document

Think about business planning as something you do often , rather than a document you create once and never look at again. If you take the time to write a plan that really fits your own company, it will be a better, more useful tool to grow your business. It should also make it easier to share your vision and strategy so everyone on your team is on the same page.

Adjust your plan regularly to use it as a business management tool

Keep in mind that businesses that use their plan as a management tool to help run their business grow 30 percent faster than those businesses that don't. For that to be true for your company, you'll think of a part of your business planning process as tracking your actual results against your financial forecast on a regular basis.

If things are going well, your plan will help you think about how you can re-invest in your business. If you find that you're not meeting goals, you might need to adjust your budgets or your sales forecast. Either way, tracking your progress compared to your plan can help you adjust quickly when you identify challenges and opportunities—it's one of the most powerful things you can do to grow your business.

Prepare to pitch your business

If you're planning to pitch your business to investors or seek out any funding, you'll need a pitch deck to accompany your business plan. A pitch deck is designed to inform people about your business. You want your pitch deck to be short and easy to follow, so it's best to keep your presentation under 20 slides.

Your pitch deck and pitch presentation are likely some of the first things that an investor will see to learn more about your company. So, you need to be informative and pique their interest. Luckily, just like you can leverage an example business plan template to write your plan, we also have a gallery of over 50 pitch decks for you to reference.

With this gallery, you have the option to view specific industry pitches or get inspired by real-world pitch deck examples. Or for a modern pitch solution that helps you create a business plan and pitch deck side-by-side, you may want to check out LivePlan . It will help you build everything needed for outside investment and to better manage your business.

Get LivePlan in your classroom

Are you an educator looking for real-world business plan examples for your students? With LivePlan, you give your students access to industry-best business plans and help them set goals and track metrics with spreadsheet-free financial forecasts. All of this within a single tool that includes additional instructional resources that work seamlessly alongside your current classroom setup.

With LivePlan, it's not just a classroom project. It's your students planning for their futures. Click here to learn more about business planning for students .

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sample sales business plans

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Close more deals with the latest sales trends and tips from Salesblazers.

What Are Sales Goals? S.M.A.R.T. Strategies + Examples

Illustration of a person hitting their sales goals target with a bow and arrow

Help your team succeed with sales goals that build confidence while increasing revenue.

sample sales business plans

Donald Kelly

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If you’re only thinking about how your reps can hit quota, you’re missing out. As a leader, you have to set broader sales goals, track your team’s progress, and keep your team accountable if you want to see real payoff. But setting goals that are both challenging and achievable is easier said than done. Start small with weekly or monthly goals, and build up your confidence to work towards bigger and more lucrative goals down the road. We’ll show you how to get started.

What you’ll learn:

What are sales goals, why sales goals are important, s.m.a.r.t. goals explained.

  • 14 common sales goals with examples

How to track your goals

The biggest challenge when setting and tracking sales goals, attain quota faster and speed up sales ops .

Learn how Sales Performance Management helps you connect customer data to sales planning and execution. 

sample sales business plans

At their core, sales goals are objectives that a company wants to achieve over a set period of time. But sales goals aren’t just dry, impersonal measurements. If you don’t have any benchmarks for success, you’re going to encourage mediocrity and accept the status quo, losing team engagement. When your team sets concrete goals, it helps them hit their sales targets and gives them ownership over their success: They know what it takes to win.

As the CEO of sales training firm The Sales Evangelist , my role does not always allow me to do outbound sales. Most of my leads come directly from the podcast, website, referrals, and my deep network. However, I understand the power of outbound selling so I set a goal for myself to bring in $250,000 each quarter — driven in part by outbound efforts. During Q3 of last year, I beat this goal, clocking in at $300,000. Not only that, I was able to validate to my team that setting goals really works. If I can do it while running my business, they certainly can do it.

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Setting sales goals gives your team a north star — something to aim for. But that’s not the only reason why they’re important. Here are a few other things sales goal-setting does:

  • Helps create forecasts: From a business perspective, sales goals give you a picture of potential sales revenue .
  • Creates learning opportunities: If it turns out a particular sales strategy fails to accomplish a goal, this is valuable data. Failing to meet a sales goal offers a chance for reps to innovate and try different approaches. And if a goal is particularly challenging, it can improve focus and prompt creative problem-solving.
  • Encourages teamwork: Group goals increase the stakes because they affect everyone. They can also spark competition, which can be motivating to reps.
  • Sparks process development: A roadmap helps you get where you need to go, but only works. if you know where you’re going. Once you have your sales goals lined up, you can create a path to get there.

One proven way to set yourself up for success is to set S.M.A.R.T. goals. Let’s dive into that methodology.

S.M.A.R.T. is an easy-to-remember acronym for the five steps of effective goal-setting. If you want your goals to fuel success, makes sure they are:

  • Specific: It’s easy to say to your team, “Let’s increase sales!” But after the cheers and high-fives die down, this vague statement doesn’t help anyone. Why? It lacks detail. Get specific. Deliver concrete numbers and explain how you plan to raise revenue with actionable guidance. For example, you might want to increase your monthly revenue by 5% over the next quarter using a consultative sales approach .
  • Measurable: Numeric benchmarks can be helpful because they record progress while removing subjectivity. Remember those fundraising events that used a poster of a giant, old-fashioned thermometer? For each donation received, the thermometer would be filled with red ink to show that the organization was inching closer to its goal. You can do the same with your team by tracking progress to help them reach goals and motivate at the same time.
  • Achievable: Ambitious goals are great, but you want to set your team up for success. You need to make sure that your goals are sensible and not totally out of reach. Review your team’s past performance data and be honest about what you can accomplish during a set period of time. Instead of setting a goal to double sales by the end of the month for example, a more achievable goal would be to make 10 more cold calls per week, which you could break down further into two per day.
  • Relevant: When setting goals for your team, whether individual or team goals, you should keep three things in mind: Do they align with your reps’ existing goals, personal and professional? Do they align with your organization’s goals? How will the results matter? If goals resonate personally with reps, that could drive motivation. As an illustration, if a rep meets their goal of 100% subscription renewals for their existing accounts, they might receive a bonus or promotion, helping them meet a personal goal of earning a higher salary.
  • Time-bound: When goals have a clear starting time and end date, it makes it easier for your team to plan how they’ll get to the finish line. Setting small weekly or monthly sales goals can help your team get focused, build confidence, and enjoy smaller wins. For example, you might set a goal for yourself to provide at least one week of one-to-one coaching per quarter to your sales reps.

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14 common goals with examples.

Setting clear goals for your sales team can go a long way in improving the bottom line of your business. To illustrate these examples, we’ll look at the goals of a fictional roller skate company in Florida, SpinzFlip:

1. Grow revenue

Every company needs to grow their revenue to remain profitable. To do this, you’ll need to set a specific target for how much gross or net profit you want to see increase over a set period of time. Revenue targets are typically set monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Example: The sales team at SpinzFlip has ambitious goals for the new year. They want to increase year-over-year revenue by 100%.

2. Increase quota attainment

To understand how close your sales reps are to meeting their targets, you need to track their quota attainment , measured as a percentage of total quota achieved out of quota targets.

Example: The SpinzFlip sales team set an annual team quota goal of $3 million for last year. By the end of the year, they hit $2.5 million in sales for a quota attainment of about 83%, which shows them there’s room for improvement.

3. Acquire new customers

Another important sales goal is to increase the number of new customers purchasing your products or services. Gaining new customers over time will lead to a healthy and profitable business, ensuring that profits don’t slide backwards when you lose longstanding customers.

Example: SpinzFlip set a goal of increasing its customer acquisition rate by 8.5% monthly. This is to offset the customer attrition rate of 7% while still ensuring growth.

4. Increase market share

A company’s market share is the total percentage of the sales they control in the market for their products or services. Increasing market share is a clear indicator of a company’s competitiveness. As a matter of fact, when a business improves its market share, it often improves profitability.

Example: The global roller skate industry is worth about $600 million . SpinzFlip has $3 million in annual sales or about 0.5% of the market. If they want to double their market share, they need to set a goal to increase their annual sales to $6 million.

5. Increase unit sales

If you want to get a specific product into market faster, you might set a goal for the number of units sold. Increasing the number of units each rep needs to sell pushes them to pursue more leads.

Example: SpinzFlip currently sells 60,000 pairs of skates annually. They want to double their unit sales, so their goal this year is to sell 120,000 pairs.

6. Minimize customer churn

Reducing customer churn (aka customer attrition), or the number of customers who leave your business during a specific period of time, is a worthwhile sales goal as it ensures you don’t have to constantly replace your customer base with new leads. If your business has a low churn rate, you are more likely to experience growth. For example, a subscription-based company likely needs more new subscriptions than lost subscriptions in a given period to be profitable.

Example: In addition to selling roller skates, SpinzFlip also sells a podcast subscription. Its podcast currently has a churn rate of 20%. This year, SpinzFlip’s goal is to use listener insights to produce a more engaging podcast and lower its churn rate to 10%.

7. Increase customer upsells

Upselling is when a company offers a premium or upgrade for products or services. At the end of the day, setting a sales goal for upselling is a great way to increase the profitability of each sale.

Example: SpinzFlip offers a premium podcast with exclusive celebrity interviews for an additional monthly fee. Last year, SpinzFlip managed to convert 1% of its regular podcast audience to the premium service. The sales team wants to double that number this year by upselling 2% of SpinzFlip’s regular podcast audience.

8. Boost customer cross-sells

Cross-selling is when a company offers complimentary products or services in addition to its primary product or service. If you improve your cross-selling rate, you could see increased revenue and higher customer satisfaction rates.

Example: Roller skates are SpinzFlip primary product, but it also sells rollerblades. Last year, cross-sales of rollerblades were non-existent. According to an internal survey, 99% of SpinzFlip customers weren’t even aware that the company sold rollerblades. This year, SpinzFlip set a modest cross-sales goal of 0.25% to increase brand and product awareness.

9. Improve lead generation

Above all, lead generation attracts customers to your business. You can generate leads by collecting customer information like phone numbers and email addresses. If you want your business to grow, a meaningful goal would be to improve your lead gen process so you can identify more qualified leads who are ready to buy.

Example: Before this year, SpinzFlip was not capturing email addresses when customers purchased its skates at retail stores. Now, SpinzFlip offers a free, three-month subscription to its premium podcast to retail store customers. Consequently, they can capture the email addresses of customers interested in the podcast subscription. With this new offer in place, SpinzFlip hopes to improve its lead generation by 10% this year.

10. Improve sales forecast accuracy goals

Accurate sales forecasts are kind of like a crystal ball. They help you identify where you’re going — and where sales pitfalls might scuttle your target attainment. Businesses that can forecast their sales witt a +/- 5% accuracy enjoy the confidence that comes with being able to plan for the future.

Example: SpinzFlip needs to work on the accuracy of its sales forecast. Last year, it hovered around -15% (that is, they were 15% shy of their targets), but this year, they want to reach -10% accuracy. If SpinzFlip meets or exceeds that goal, they’ll join an elite group of sales organizations — just 21% manage to forecast sales within 10% accuracy, according to SiriusDecisions research .

11. Increase customer lifetime value (CLV)

This metric reveals the total revenue a company can expect to gain from a single customer over the course of their relationship with the brand. This is a keen interest for ROI-focus leaders: It is much easier to increase the value of a current customer than hoping to get the same value from a new customer.

Example: This year, SpinzFlip aims to increase customer CLV by 15% year-over-year by extending customer tenure and introducing add-ons and cross-sells.

12. Improve Net Promoter Score® (NPS)

NPS is an important metric used to gauge customer loyalty. NPS scores are measured with a single question:

“On a scale from 1-10, how likely is it that you would recommend [company, product, service] to a friend or colleague?”

After surveying some customers with that question, an NPS score is calculated from -100 to +100, with the higher number being a better score.

Example: SpinzFlip sells an awesome pair of roller skates. When customers were surveyed about the buying experience, they averaged a score in the high 70s. But when customers were asked about SpinzFlip’s podcast, it scored closer to 40. SpinzFlip clearly needs to set a goal to improve the NPS score for its podcast.

13. Reduce the length of the sales cycle

A sales cycle is the average length of time that it takes for a rep to convert a lead into a closed sale. Shortening the sales cycle can help sales reps close more and grow revenue.

Example: It takes a SpinzFlip rep three months, on average, to go through an entire sales cycle. This includes a discovery call with a prospect, a roller skate demo, proposal drafting, negotiation, and finally closing the deal. This year, SpinzFlip set a goal of shortening its average sales cycle from three months to two. This will give SpinzFlip’s reps an extra month to get more prospects in the pipeline.

14. Reduce the average number of touches

Touches are contacts with prospects — over the phone, online, or face-to-face. In my experience, it takes the average sales rep nine or 10 touches to close a deal. Ideally, you want to reduce this to five, six, or seven touches, and that takes finessing. You get there by doing more research and coming prepared with solutions and value prospects understand.

Example: SpinzFlips has never kept track of the number of touches required for a rep to close a deal. Once they started tracking, they were surprised the average was 12. They set a goal to get the average under 10 by the end of the year. To help facilitate this, managers told reps to tailor sales pitches to each prospect.

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If you want your sales team to see success, tracking their progress toward a goal is essential. Technology is an effective way of doing just that: Sales Cloud offers sales management dashboards that provide team performance insights. These tools interpret raw data and transform them into insights that can help sales leaders identify top prospects and leads, evaluate marketing campaigns, and track the success of their team.

Here are the sales dashboards that every team needs :

  • State of sales Designed for sales managers and executives, a state-of-sales dashboard provides a snapshot of all key metrics that affect team-wide sales targets.
  • Forecasting Also designed for sales managers and executives, a forecasting dashboard provides a “weather report” for your sales team, forecasting whether or not you’re likely to hit your goals.
  • Sales rep performance Useful for sales managers, a sales rep performance dashboard typically measures three key metrics: conversion rate, total revenue generated, and quota attainment percentage.
  • Sales leaderboard This dashboard lets sales reps and managers see the entire team’s performance, encouraging healthy competition.
  • Win/loss Helpful to sales managers and executives, this dashboard tracks win/loss trends over time.
  • Sales lead Provides a closer look at sales reps and lead generation teams, whether or not leads are converting, and the effectiveness of prospecting and marketing efforts.
  • Pipeline generation Offers managers, reps, and marketing teams insights into a pipeline value-to-sales ratio, which is critical for hitting sales targets.

A huge roadblock salespeople have when setting sales goals for themselves is a lack of accountability. You might set goals at the beginning of the year and not look back on them until the end of the year when your team is not performing well. Clearly, you need more checks. However, that doesn’t mean you need to be on top of salespeople, reminding them of their goals every single day.

Think back to the S.M.A.R.T. method. This is where the T, time-bound, becomes extremely important. If you set a goal that wraps at the end of Q2, you have to follow up with your team, individually or as a group, to see if it was completed. In other words, match the check-in to the time period set for the goal. Of course, you need to check in with them a few times before the goal’s deadline to gauge their progress and support them if they need help, but the big review should happen at the end. Did they hit the goal? If not, why? How can you help them next time?

Use S.M.A.R.T. goals to fuel success

By setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound, you give your sales team an outline for success. Make sure that the goals you set not only align with the goals of your business but also with your individual reps’ goals. When the benefits of a goal aren’t clear or the path to achieve it is too complicated or unrealistic, motivation suffers. Set your team up for success with a clear roadmap that puts them in the driver’s seat.

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Spot and address pipeline gaps that threaten your forecast. Discover how with Sales Analytics from Sales Cloud.

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Donald’s mission is to evangelize the effective selling method and motivate sellers of all levels to do big things. As a former top-performing technology sales professional who has successfully sold in public and private sectors, Donald cracked the code of helping teams thrive in B2B sales. He is the author of several books and is a LinkedIn Top Voice in sales.

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MOBI Business Plan Template

The primary value of your business plan is to create a written resource that evaluates most aspects of your new business including a description of your target customers and markets, profitability, organization, operations and more. The very process of writing your business plan helps you put your ideas on paper so you can evaluate what resources you have and what you need to be successful.

Your business plan is your blueprint for starting your business, your script to tell the story of your business to others, and your comprehensive analysis of the opportunity for your business. Business plans help you plan your roadmap, state your goals, share your vision, and analyze your strategy. A business plan is an important and valuable tool for new as well as existing businesses.

This MOBI Business Plan Template consists of sections that relate to the content included in the MOBI Starting a Business course . You can also use this template as a guide independently. We have created this template with the input of key stakeholders such as economic development agencies, lenders, mentors and successful entrepreneurs. You can complete sections of the business plan as you go through the course, to apply what you are learning along the way, or you can wait until you have completed the course. This business plan template is a universal model suitable for most types of business, which you can customize to fit your circumstances. MOBI provides leading topics, questions, and suggestions in each section to guide you. Here are some instructions to help you get started:

  • On the cover page replace the MOBI spark with your own logo and provide your business name, personal name, contact information, and date.
  • Complete each section leaving the main title, such as “Executive Summary,” and using the subtitles and questions as a guideline. Replace those subtitles and questions with the needed and relevant information. If some of the subtitles work with your format, you can keep them. You can type directly over the provided content or delete it as you complete it.
  • You might want to start each section on a new page, which can also be helpful if you decide to include a Table of Contents.

Once you complete your business plan, be sure that key stakeholders review it. Business plans are not static; they will change as your business and the business environment change around you. It’s important to continually review and update your business plan to adjust for these changes.

BUSINESS PLAN

Enter Your Business Name

Enter Your Name

 Enter Date

Contact Information

Executive Summary Provide a summary of your business by addressing these key areas.

Name and Description of Business State the name of your business and describe your product or service.

Targeted Market and Customers Describe your target markets and customers and why they want or need your product or service.    

Trends in this Industry What are the current trends in the industry that make this a good time for your product or service? For example, is the market for your product growing, and why? Have others failed to address a particular need that your product or service will address?  

Value Proposition Provide a brief statement of the unique benefits and value your business will deliver to your customers. Describe the unique qualities of your product or service that will enable you to be profitable.

The Vision  Describe the vision of your business and why you are committed to pursuing this vision and making it successful. 

Founder Background: Work/life experience related to the intended business Describe your work/life experience, educational credentials, and how they are related to the business you plan to start. Include a list of your skills and knowledge, which will be required in your business. 

Your Team If you plan to hire full- or part-time employees or seek business partners, describe your plan for engaging with these other members of your team. If you already have employees or partners, describe key personnel and their roles here. 

Goals for business: Outline your key goals for your business. (Explain your plans for growing the business and what you can realistically accomplish in a defined period of time.)

Financing and Financial Projections ( Many business owners require the assistance of a bookkeeper or accountant when completing this section.)

Startup Capital Provide a table or spreadsheet showing the sources of your startup capital including what you or other investors will contribute and what you intend to borrow.  Create a list of what the startup capital will be used for and how much will be left over for working capital ( SCORE Startup Expenses Template ).

Accounting Statements Prepare your starting balance sheet and projected profit and loss (income) statements for the first three years. (By month for the first year and then by year for years two and three.) Forecast your month-to-month cash flow requirements for the first year.  

Analysis of Costs List and explain the key costs and profit margins that are important for your business.  Classify your costs as fixed, variable, product, delivery, etc. 

Break-Even Analysis Based on your costs and pricing strategy, prepare a break-even analysis.

Internal Controls Explain your internal and cash controls. For instance, check signing policy, strategy for controlling shrinkage, and control of incoming merchandise or supplies.

Business Organization

Business Organization Explain the form of business organization you intend to use and why it is best for your business (sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, etc.).

Professional Consultants List the names of your key advisors: bookkeeper/accountant, consultants, lawyer, insurance agent, and any other professionals.   

Business Location

If you need a physical location other than your home to operate your business, identify your business space needs considering all phases of your workflow (production, storage, shipping, potential employees, customer meetings, and future requirements). Explain why the location you picked meets your workflow needs.

Marketing and Sales

Market Research: Your Customers and Competition Describe your ideal customer (who will be purchasing your product/service, key characteristics).

  • Include any research that has helped you identify and characterize your target customer.

Describe your position in the market, your strongest competitors, and how you intend to compete. 

  

Marketing Strategy and Tools Describe your overall marketing strategy, how you will find, engage, and build customers, including:

  • Traditional marketing tools (signage, storefront, collateral, advertising, promotion, uniforms,  mail, etc.).
  • Online marketing (website, social media, email marketing, text marketing, others).
  • Ecommerce (if applicable).
  • Describe in detail how you plan to sell your products or services online.
  • Describe how your best competitors utilize ecommerce and your strategy to improve on their practices.
  • Research and identify the different channels where you will sell your product or services. What is your expectation of sales?
  • Detail how will you take orders, process payments, and fulfill requests? 
  • Provide a detailed breakdown of the costs involved in creating, operating, and maintaining your ecommerce activities.

Sales Strategy Describe your sales process, activities you will conduct, obstacles you expect, how you will overcome them, and any customer service strategies to retain and expand your customer base.

Include k ey details about how you will operate your business.

  • Outline the workflow of your business and the processes and procedures you will put into place.
  • If applicable, provide details about how you will procure supplies, manufacture your product, and deliver your product or service to your customer. Include any equipment and facilities that you need.
  • Describe how you will measure the success of your operations for quality, efficiency, cost control, or other measures of performance. Include any testing.
  • Order fulfillment: describe your order fulfillment process, software to be used, and quality control methods.
  • Supply chain: describe products/materials you need to purchase in order to make your product, include primary and secondary sources for these. products/materials, lead times, purchasing methods, and tools.
  • Staffing: skill requirements, training program, supervision, outsourced functions, and hiring timeline.

Addendum: Licenses and Permits   *Addendums can include but are not limited to License and Permits*

Make a comprehensive list of all licenses and permits you will need to do business in your area.   

Your list should include the following: (For US-based businesses; requirements differ by country and region.)

  • Name under which you intend to do business
  • Permissions and/or limitations on the use of your property or facilities
  • Federal, state, and local licenses (city/county), permits, and certifications needed to do business in your area (e.g. business tax license, seller's permit, safety certifications, employer identification number, etc.)
  • Industry licenses needed for your particular area of business (contractor, electrician, daycare, beauty, etc.)
  • International and national intellectual property protection through trademarks, copyright, and patents.

Download:  MOBI Business Plan Template

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Free business plan template (with examples)

Alan Bradley

Sierra Campbell

Sierra Campbell

“Verified by an expert” means that this article has been thoroughly reviewed and evaluated for accuracy.

Updated 3:37 a.m. UTC Feb. 12, 2024

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AzmanL, Getty Images

Starting a business can be a daunting undertaking. As with so many large projects, one of the most difficult challenges is just getting started, and one of the best ways to start is by putting together a plan. A plan is also a powerful tool for communication and can serve as a cornerstone for onboarding new partners and employees or for demonstrating your philosophy and priorities to potential collaborators. 

A solid business plan will not only provide a framework for your business going forward but will also give you an early opportunity to organize and refine your thoughts and define your mission statement, providing a guidepost that can serve as a beacon for your business for years to come. We’ve provided a business plan template below to help guide you in the creation of your new enterprise.

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Business plan template

What should a business plan include?

Regardless of the type of business you own or the products and services you provide, every business plan should include some core elements:

  • Mission statement. The definition and executive summary of your business.
  • Market analysis. A breakdown of the market segment and customers you hope to reach, built through primary (gathered by you) and secondary (gathered from outside sources) research.
  • Organization and logistics. The nuts and bolts of how your business is operated
  • Products or services. What your company provides its customers.
  • Advertising and marketing. How you intend to get your products in front of your customers.
  • Forecasting. Revenue forecasting for partners or potential investors.

Why do you need a business plan?

A business plan is a framework for success. It provides a number of key benefits:

  • Structure. The outline around which to design your business.
  • Operational guidance. A signpost for how to run your business from day to day.
  • Expansion. A vision for the future growth of your enterprise.
  • Definition. A platform to consider every element of your business and how best to execute your plans for them.
  • Collaboration. A synopsis of what’s exceptional about your business and a way to attract funding, investment or partnerships.
  • Onboarding. An efficient summary of your business for new or potential employees.

Business plan examples

We’ve created two fictional companies to illustrate how a business might use a business plan to sketch out goals and opportunities as well as forecast revenue.

Bling, Incorporated

Our first hypothetical example is a jewelry and accessory creator called Bling, Incorporated. A hybrid business that manufactures its products for sale both online and through physical retail channels, Bling’s mission statement is focused on transforming simple, inexpensive ingredients into wearable statement pieces of art. 

Market analysis includes gathering data around sourcing sustainable, inexpensive components, aesthetic trends in fashion and on which platforms competitors have had success in advertising jewelry to prospective customers. Logistics include shipping products, negotiating with retailers, establishing an e-commerce presence and material and manufacturing costs. 

Bling, Incorporated advertises initially through social platforms like TikTok and Facebook, as well as with Google AdSense, with plans to eventually expand to television advertising. Revenue forecasting is structured around a low overhead on the basis of inexpensive materials, no dedicated storefront and broad reach through digital platforms.

Phaeton Custom Cars

Phaeton is a custom car builder and classic car restoration business with a regional focus and reach. Its mission statement defines it as a local, family-owned business serving a community of auto enthusiasts and a broader regional niche of collectors. 

Market analysis breaks down the location and facilities of other competitor shops in the region as well as online communities of regional car enthusiasts likely to spend money on custom modifications or restoration projects. It also examines trends in valuations for custom parts and vintage cars. Logistics include pricing out parts and labor, finding skilled or apprentice laborers and mortgaging a garage and equipment. 

Phaeton advertises in regional publications, at local events and regional car shows and online through Facebook and Instagram, with an emphasis on a social presence highlighting their flashiest builds. Revenue forecasting is built around a growing reputation and high-value commissions.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

A business plan may not be a prerequisite for every type of business, but there are few businesses that wouldn’t benefit from one. It can serve as an important strategic tool and help crystalize a vision of your business and its future.

Business plans do just that: they help you plan the future of your business, serve as a platform to brainstorm ideas and think through your vision and are a great tool for showcasing why your business works to potential investors or partners.

Blueprint is an independent publisher and comparison service, not an investment advisor. The information provided is for educational purposes only and we encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding specific financial decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Blueprint has an advertiser disclosure policy . The opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Blueprint editorial staff alone. Blueprint adheres to strict editorial integrity standards. The information is accurate as of the publish date, but always check the provider’s website for the most current information.

Alan Bradley

Alan is an experienced culture and tech writer with a background in newspaper reporting. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, The Escapist, PC Mag, PC Gamer, and a multitude of other outlets. He has over twenty years of experience as a journalist and editor and is the author of the urban fantasy novel The Sixth Borough.

Sierra Campbell is a small business editor for USA Today Blueprint. She specializes in writing, editing and fact-checking content centered around helping businesses. She has worked as a digital content and show producer for several local TV stations, an editor for U.S. News & World Report and a freelance writer and editor for many companies. Sierra prides herself in delivering accurate and up-to-date information to readers. Her expertise includes credit card processing companies, e-commerce platforms, payroll software, accounting software and virtual private networks (VPNs). She also owns Editing by Sierra, where she offers editing services to writers of all backgrounds, including self-published and traditionally published authors.

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

Business Eric Rosenberg

22 Best Sales Strategies, Plans, & Initiatives for Success [Templates]

Discover sales strategy examples, templates, and plans used by top sales teams worldwide.

Editable-Sales-Plan-Template-Cover

FREE SALES PLAN TEMPLATE

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

sales strategies initiatives and templates to plan your quarter

Updated: 10/17/23

Published: 10/17/23

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.

Free Download: Sales Plan Template

In this guide, we'll dig into some sales strategies and initiatives that can help you generate more leads and close more deals. But first, let’s define what a sales strategy is.

What's a Sales Strategy?

Types of Sales Strategies

Building a Sales Strategy Plan

Inbound vs. Outbound Sales

Sales Initiatives

Sales Strategy Examples

What is a sales strategy?

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.

Sales Strategy: Cranney sales process graphic

Image Source

Most strategies involve a detailed plan of best practices and processes set by management.

Why is a sales strategy important?

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 priorities and resources. In turn, this can help your sales team use their time, effort, and resources efficiently. This efficiency can boost your team's ability to focus on high-potential deals.

Let's cover some popular sales strategies — including inbound sales.

Sales Strategies

  • Increase online sales through social media.
  • Become a thought leader.
  • Prioritize inbound sales calls as hot leads.
  • Properly research and qualify prospects.
  • Implement a free trial.
  • Don't shy away from cold calling.
  • Offer a demonstration of the product.
  • Provide a personalized, clear end result.
  • Be willing to adapt your offering.
  • Close deals with confidence.
  • Nurture existing accounts for future selling opportunities.

1. Increase online sales through social media.

Social media is one of the most popular ways that people consume information these days. That’s why nine out of ten retail businesses are active on at least two social platforms. With the data on your side, increasing online sales through social media is attainable with some creative thinking and strategic planning.

Although it may be tempting to jump on the hottest social media trend or go where your competitors are, that probably won’t be your best choice. Time is precious and you’ll want to build your pipeline as efficiently as you can. So, be diligent about figuring out where your target customers are spending their time and meet them where they're most active.

Keep in mind that your tone and voice may need to adjust to the platform so that you can connect with your audience. You’ll want your content to blend in naturally with the platform and not seem out of place.

Featured Guide: 37 Social Selling Tips for LinkedIn

Download the Guide

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. I’m sure we all can agree that nobody wants to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, it’s better to help people by offering solutions to their problems.

Thought leaders do exactly this, and it’s even been backed up by Edleman data . In its 2022 Thought Leadership Impact Report , Edelman 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 said thought leadership could be moderately or very effective at demonstrating the value of a company’s products compared to traditional product marketing. Additionally thought leadership becomes even more important during economic downturns with 51% of C-suite executives stating it has more of an impact on purchases.

So what’s the catch?

Not all thought leadership content is created equal. While it can positively affect a company, poor thought leadership can be devastating to a company’s sales goals. A quarter of decision-makers who answered Edleman’s previous survey reported that thought leadership content contributed to their reasons for not doing business with an organization . Ouch!

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. And, 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!)

sample sales business plans

Free Sales Plan Template

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent sales plan.

  • Target Market
  • Prospecting Strategy

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

3. Prioritize inbound sales calls as hot leads.

There’s the age-old question: "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 front and back and if you’ve seen success with pitching with pricing first, last, or somewhere in between, stick with what’s working for you.

Besides that, your team should always prioritize those prospects who call into sales first. These hot leads are definitely interested in what you have to sell and want to know enough information about how it’ll benefit them before they make a decision.

By prioritizing talking to these prospects as soon as they call 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. If it means closing the deal on the first call , there’s no harm in it so long as the customer has the information they need to make an informed decision.

4. Properly research and qualify prospects.

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 them to research and qualify prospects before attempting to discuss your product. They'll find that more work on the front end can lead to smoother closing conversations later on.

Outline the criteria a prospect should meet to qualify them as a high-probability potential customer. This should be based on a prospect’s engagement history and demographics.

Featured Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions

Hubspot Sales qualification questions offer

5. Implement a free trial.

Offering a free trial or freemium version of your product is a highly effective way to convert prospects. HubSpot’s sales strategy report found that free trials were 76% effective followed by a freemium option with 69% effective in turning prospects into paying customers.

sales strategy example: graph showing popularity of free trial offerings

Free trials give potential customers the opportunity to test your product out before committing. You can place restrictions on your free version like limited features or usage caps. Besides offering prospects a risk-free chance to try your product, free trials also help build brand loyalty and expand your customer base. Prospects that have a positive experience using the free version will be more likely to convert to the paid version.

6. Don't shy away from cold calling.

In sales, cold calling is unavoidable. But it doesn't have to be miserable. There are a number of cold-calling techniques that really work, including our bulletproof cold-calling template . Have your sales team practice cold calls with one another before making actual calls; it'll boost their confidence and get them comfortable with the script.

7. Offer a demonstration of the product.

Pitching can be the make-or-break moment in a sales strategy. The sales pitch has to be a powerful, compelling presentation, but it also can't come on too strong lest you scare away the prospect.

Study the elements of a successful sales pitch and prove to prospects how they’ll benefit from making the purchase. Have your team practice amongst themselves, too. Better yet, test your presentations on a few loyal customers and gather their feedback.

8. Provide a personalized, clear end result.

When customers come to your business, they aren’t necessarily looking for a product or service, they’re looking for their desired end result. These customers want to purchase a means to improve their own operation, or simply improve their strategies with the help of your offering.

After you explain your product or service offering, you have to personalize the benefits to each client in a way that’s valuable to them.

If you’re selling customer service software to a small business that has no experience with one, it’s your job to educate them on its use in the setting of a small business, not to manage hundreds of employees in larger ones. By doing so they will have an easier time seeing how they can use it and spend less time debating what they’ll use it for.

By painting a clear picture of the end result, your customer will be able to see the value of the purchase and feel more inclined to accept the offer.

9. Be willing to adapt your offering.

In sales conversations, you should expect to come across clients with unique demands. It’s only natural when working with companies that have different structures and needs.

Instead of saying "you won’t" or "you can’t" — make sure your sales strategy is adaptable to accommodate the customer’s desire.

10. Close deals with confidence.

How you close a sale is just as important as how you start the conversation. Encourage clear, concise, and firm closing techniques to make sure your sales team sets the right expectations and delivers on their promises.

Keeping a list of proven, go-to closing techniques will help salespeople routinely win deals. Such techniques can include the now or never close, "If you commit now, I can get you a 20% discount," or the question close, "In your opinion, does what I am offering to solve your problem?"

Sales strategies offer, sales closing guide

Available for free is our downloadable Sales Closing Guide to improve your closing techniques and to close deals with confidence.

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, encouraging loyal, happy customers, and leveraging cross-selling and upselling opportunities .

After your sales team sees success with the sales strategy, form a partnership between your sales team and customer service/success teams. Ensuring customers’ continued satisfaction with your product or service will make them more likely to do business with your company again and even advocate for it.

Sales Strategy Types

Who is your sales strategy for.

The most important element when choosing the best type of sales strategy for your business is your customer .

Once you consider your customer needs, it's time to think about your sales team — the professionals who are responsible for closing deals.

Your sales strategy needs to offer a framework that attracts and engages prospects. At the same time, it needs to enable your team to build relationships that help them achieve sales targets.

For these reasons, a sales strategy shouldn't be one-size-fits-all. Every customer and team is different; so, each organization should draw up the type of sales strategy that works best for their needs.

Outbound Sales Strategy

In outbound sales strategies — the legacy system of most sales teams — companies base their sales strategy on the seller, not the customer.

Outbound sales processes often include cold calling, purchasing email lists, and other cold prospecting techniques. And daily success is often based on the quantity of connections, not the quality.

Outbound sales teams often rely on manually-entered data to monitor the sales pipeline and coach their salespeople. They may also run sales and marketing independently, which can create a disjointed experience for buyers.

Inbound Sales Strategy

In inbound sales strategies — the modern methodology for sales teams — companies base their sales process on buyer actions.

They automatically capture seller and buyer data to monitor the pipeline and coach salespeople. Inbound sales strategies connect to the three stages of the buyer journey — awareness, consideration, and decision. Then, sales reps will map their tactics to the right step in the customer journey.

Many popular types of sales strategies have a customer-centric approach, including:

  • Account-based selling
  • SPIN selling
  • Value-based selling
  • Consultative selling

Learn about these approaches and more in this post about customer-centric selling systems .

Another important point — the inbound methodology 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.

Inbound vs. Outbound Sales Methodology

In the past, buyers suffered through evaluating a product and deciding whether to buy it using only the information offered to them by the seller. Today, all of the information needed to evaluate a product is available online and buyers are no longer dependent on the seller.

If today’s sales teams don’t align with the modern buyer’s process and fail to add value beyond the information already available to them, then they’ll have no reason to engage with a sales team.

As mentioned above, inbound sales benefits buyers at each stage of the buyer process:

  • Consideration

inbound sales methodology sales strategy hubspot

Inbound sales teams help the buyer become aware of potential problems or opportunities and discover strategies to solve problems. Then, they evaluate whether the salesperson can help with a problem, which leads to that buyer purchasing 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.

Keep reading to learn how to create a sales strategy plan for your team.

Sales Planning: Building a Sales Strategy Plan

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, you’ll find the following activities helpful along the way:

1. Develop organizational goals.

Setting goals is a no-brainer for most sales teams. Otherwise, how else will you know you're executing the right activities for the best results? To develop clear organizational goals for your sales strategy:

Involve cross-departmental stakeholders.

When developing sales goals, avoid doing it in a silo. 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 helps your team simplify and track complex or 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 will create this goal and can decide whether this goal is relevant and attainable.

SMART goals help reduce confusion when it’s time to review your strategy to see what worked and what didn’t. Attainability is also important, because unrealistic sales goals can impact team motivation.

Connect individual goals to organizational goals.

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. 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 the target customer — a buyer persona — is essential to an effective sales strategy. There are many ways you can create a useful buyer persona.

Find target markets and segments.

First, look at your industry as a whole. Get to know 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.

Your product offering should outline the product benefits. It should also 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 aligns with current customer trends and expectations.

3. Hire, onboard, and compensate sales team members adequately.

To develop your sales strategy, you must have a powerful sales team in place.

According to HubSpot research, the churn rate for sales teams was about 35% in 2021 and 2022. But the ideal churn rate for most businesses is around 10%, a significant difference.

To create a supportive and successful sales team that can both support and enhance your sales strategy:

Create great processes for hiring new members of your sales team.

To begin this process, 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 with recruiting and retaining 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, think about combining organization-specific training with online sales training programs .

Create a motivational compensation and rewards plan.

Many organizations connect sales compensation to organizational sales goals. Regardless of what 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.

This section should include a detailed plan for how to target potential customers to increase awareness of your offering. For example, using paid social acquisition channels, creating e-books, hosting webinars, and other strategies in this post.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

Hubspot sales plan template offer

Download the Template for Free

As you create your sales plan, be sure to consider these tips:

Create targeted messaging and positioning for your target audience.

This positioning will help your team create a foundation for targeting your top audience. It will also help you choose the best channels and tactics for each campaign. This boosts your chances of increasing demand and qualified leads with each sales strategy.

Add clear goals and KPIs to your sales plan.

This step will help you stay motivated and track the effectiveness of your sales strategies. This approach can also help you change or update your strategies for effectiveness over time.

Create processes for lead nurturing and follow-up.

Once you've generated demand, it's time to convert. But not every lead generation opportunity translates to qualified leads or sales opportunities.

As you track your newly generated demand, find ways to align your processes with your buyer's journey. Then, use sales automation tools to manage leads and create personalized follow-ups. This can help every rep on your team send the right message at the right time.

Optimize your sales plan and process.

Build in time to review your metrics. Then, use A/B testing, customer feedback, and sales team insights to refine your sales strategy plan.

5. Measure individual and team performance.

Time to track! Once the infrastructure is set up, create a procedure for tracking performance on the individual, team, and company levels.

Tracking your efforts is imperative if you plan to optimize your processes and practices for growth in the future. Even if you’re just getting started setting benchmarks for the team, write those down and track your progress toward them.

Build useful metrics to track sales performance.

This measurement can take the form of quarterly KPIs, weekly dashboards, monthly reviews, or some combination of all three. It should also highlight the specific metrics that the team should focus on.

If you're not sure where to start, these KPIs can help you align performance expectations with sales goals :

  • Revenue targets
  • Sales quotas
  • Conversion rates
  • Lead-to-opportunity ratios
  • Average deal size
  • Pipeline velocity

Think about real-time performance tracking.

While business KPIs are useful for the long-term, fast-moving industries may need real-time tracking. To get an at-a-glance look at sales team performance, choose tools that can give you instant visibility, like Sales Hub .

Real-time insights can help you find and address issues more quickly. They also create opportunities for proactive sales performance management.

Create a process for sharing performance data.

With performance metrics, you have data that can help you offer constructive feedback and coaching to each member of your team.

Whether you offer one-on-one meetings, performance reviews, or team huddles, be sure to make space for these conversations. They’re a great way to understand performance gaps, offer guidance, and share best practices. This process also supports individual and team development.

It can also help you understand whether it’s your team or your strategy that needs extra attention.

6. Track sales activities.

Data is key to an effective sales strategy plan and sales activity metrics can help you go beyond individual team performance.

Collect a range of sales activity data.

Sales activity metrics can help you understand how the team approaches day-to-day sales as a whole. You should track everything from the sales presentation to closing techniques.

Collect data to see how your sales team performs beyond call or deal numbers, in individual activities such as:

  • Meetings scheduled
  • Presentations delivered
  • Proposals submitted
  • Sales presentation success rates
  • Closing techniques

Comparing this data to other goal metrics can show you patterns, best practices, and areas for improvement.

Track lead and prospect sources.

If you’ll be publishing thought leadership content or sourcing leads from social media, make sure that any link you share is trackable with a UTM parameter.

Trackable links aren't just valuable for learning which channels are generating the most leads. They can also help you focus your resources on the channels that generate the most relevant qualified leads for driving sales.

Focus on continuous improvement.

Once you have a complete set of analytics to track your strategy, use it to refine your sales strategies, team knowledge, and plans. A clear data-driven process will make it easier to use customer feedback to grow your sales. It will also give your sales team the ability to flex with industry and market changes that could impact your business.

  • Refresh your buyer personas regularly.
  • Actively align sales and marketing.
  • Listen to your prospects.
  • Invest in sales development and team-building.

Businesses should always be looking for ways to innovate their approach to sales . Here are some creative things sales reps and teams can do on their own to jumpstart their performance, stand out from the competition, and boost team productivity.

1. Refresh your buyer personas regularly.

Buyer personas inform all kinds of activity at your business, including (and most importantly) who your marketing and sales teams pursue as customers. But as your market and company shift, your buyer personas can become out-of-date — which can cause your sales team's work to become stagnant and ineffective. Work with your marketing team to refresh your buyer personas to best equip your sales team for prospecting and outreach.

2. Actively align sales and marketing.

Speaking of marketing, create and honor a service-level agreement (SLA) between your sales and marketing teams. This agreement will detail how each team can support each other, contribute to the other's goals, and honor boundaries in a way that still moves prospects toward conversion.

Download our free SLA Template for Sales & Marketing to align Sales & Marketing goals and activities.

3. Use a CRM.

Successful sales teams and strategies require the right tools. HubSpot all-in-one CRM eliminates manual work and streamlines your sales activity and data. It also keeps your sales team up-to-date about all relevant activity with your prospects — an important transparency factor that helps motivate and align your team.

4. Listen to your prospects.

Just because prospects aren't customers doesn't mean they can't give valuable feedback. As you move prospects through their sales funnel and (especially) when they drop off, ask for candid feedback about their experience with your team and products. You may learn something that can help convert them or your next prospect.

5. Invest in sales development and team-building.

The best sales teams not only align with customers but also with their coworkers. Sales is a difficult career and can lead to burnout without proper encouragement and camaraderie. Invest in sales development and team-building activities to keep your sales team feeling satisfied and supported.

Sales Strategy Examples from Successful Sales Teams

In this section, we’ve analyzed two incredibly high-performing sales teams and how they achieved success using their unique sales strategies.

Founded in 2006, HubSpot has since grown to over 184,000 customers in over 120 countries and over $1.7 billion in annual revenue. With an IPO in 2014, HubSpot is now valued at over $24.63 billion.

That said, we want to share a few pages from our own sales strategy playbook.

Hire the right people according to repeatable evaluation criteria.

We first started by determining a list of attributes that made a successful sales rep: Work ethic, coachability, intelligence, passion, preparation and knowledge of HubSpot, adaptability to change, prior success, organizational skills, competitiveness, and brevity.

From there, we established a repeatable process to evaluate candidates during interviews based on these weighted criteria.

Train the sales team by making them wear customers’ shoes.

Again, the first step we took was to define the sales process that we thought would be most successful. We outlined our unique value proposition, target customer, competition, most common objections, product features and benefits, and so forth.

Then we created a hands-on training program that would not only imitate the sales process for reps before they actually began selling but also allow them to experience our target customers’ pain points.

Today, a large part of our training program involves making reps create their own website and blog, and then drive traffic to it. This exercise allows reps to better consult potential customers in the future. We also use exams, certification programs, and presentations to measure each rep’s performance.

After employees are onboarded, we continue tracking their progress throughout the various stages of our sales process. The primary criteria we look at includes: leads created, leads worked, demos delivered, and leads won. Then we measure these criteria against each other to create ratios such as leads created to leads won.

We track each stage in the process so that if a rep is struggling with any particular metric, we can dig deeper to understand why that’s the case.

Align sales and marketing.

The sales and marketing teams work closely together in a process we call " Smarketing " to generate consistent leads each month.

In this process, marketing understands which qualities a sales lead needs to meet before it’s handed over to sales as well as how many of those qualified leads it must create each month to meet our sales projections.

Meanwhile, the sales team understands how long they should wait before contacting a lead and how many attempts they should make to contact that lead. All of these decisions are led by data and science, not by gut.

Shopify is known for consistent momentum and customer satisfaction.

Loren Padelford, VP at Shopify and General Manager of Shopify Plus, shared his secret sauce for increasing sales .

Hire great people, not necessarily great salespeople.

Hiring is arguably one of the most essential components of a great sales strategy. Many sales managers , though, are misled into believing that they must hire sales superstars. Padelford looks for six key personality traits when hiring salespeople: intelligence, work ethic, history of success, creativity, entrepreneurship, and competitiveness.

The truth of the matter is that sales teams first must look for great people and then train them so they become great salespeople.

Treat sales as a science, not an art.

According to Padelford, we can now measure sales down to the second. We can explain success according to cold, hard data points rather than mystical qualitative assessments. Every sales team should be tracking their average deal size, average sales cycle length, lead-to-deal conversion rate, calls per day per rep, and the number of deals in the pipeline.

Each of these metrics, tracked over longer periods of time, will inform companies about the health of their sales process and pinpoint areas they need to improve upon.

Build a smart, technological foundation.

Before Padelford took over the sales process at Shopify, sales reps would manually log phone calls and emails into the CRM, consuming five precious hours each week. With a sales force of 26, that added up to 130 wasted hours per week.

Realizing this misuse of time and capital, Padelford led Shopify to adopt the HubSpot CRM . With the CRM, sales reps were able to receive notifications when prospects opened their emails, clicked links, and viewed document attachments.

With the prospecting tool , they also have access to over 19 million prospects as well as detailed information about said prospects like estimated revenue, the number of employees, suggested email addresses, and so forth.

Maintain a high-quality pipeline by eliminating unqualified leads.

Shopify uses the 4/5 Threshold to filter out unqualified leads, thereby allowing its sales reps to focus on selling to leads who have a higher probability of becoming customers.

When evaluating whether a lead is qualified, a rep must have a concrete answer to four of the following five variables:

  • Pain : Is the prospective customer experiencing a prominent business issue or challenge that requires them to make a change?
  • Power : Is the prospective customer directly involved with the decision-making process? If not, who is?
  • Money : Does our offering fall within their budget constraints?
  • Process : What's their buying process?
  • Timeline : What stage are they in the buyer’s journey? Will they purchase within a reasonable time frame?

Grow Better with Sales Strategies, Initiatives, and Templates

Every company can benefit from crafting a sales strategy plan. The free template below includes everything you’ll need to customize your strategy for your business and sales team. Regardless of what strategy you choose, always implement a buyer-first approach. Learn from these winning sales team examples, too, to grow your sales team and performance.

Editor's note: This post was originally written in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Beer Cooler at a grocery store

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  1. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

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  2. Simple Sales Plan

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  3. Sales Business Plan Template

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  4. 8 Examples of Strategic Sales Plans

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  5. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

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  6. 24+ Sample Sales Plan Templates

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  1. Sample Business Plan

    Create a Customized Business Plan yourself in a few minutes. Easy-To-Use Templates. Get Started Nowon Any Device! !

  2. Free Sample Business Plans

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  3. Sales Plan

    Marketplace apps Knowledge Base Academy Community How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps Pipeline 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.

  4. What is Sales Planning? How to Create a Sales Plan

    Sales Plan Examples Strategic Sales Plan Examples What is a sales plan? A sales plan lays out your objectives, high-level tactics, target audience, and potential obstacles. It's like a traditional business plan but focuses specifically on your sales strategy.

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

    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."

  7. How to Create a Sales Plan: Tips, Examples & Free Templates

    Guides ...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

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    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.

  10. How to Write a Winning Sales Business Plan

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  11. How to Write a Sales Plan

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  12. How to Create a Sales Plan: A Complete Guide (Tips + Examples)

    Here's how to take it one step at a time. 1. Connect sales plan data with your CRM. It's important to build your sales plan in customer relationship management (CRM) software. When you have all your sales data in one central place, updated in real-time, real world changes show up as misalignments in the data.

  13. The Best Free Business Plan Template For Individual Sales Reps

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  14. How to Create a Sales Plan (Plus a Template)

    1. Determine your target market. The first step is to determine which market you are trying to break into. Identify your target customer's demographics and build a customer profile. Understand ...

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

    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.

  16. How To Create Your Own + Sample Sales Plan Template

    A business plan describes the financial and operational objectives of a business. A sales plan is similar to a business plan, but it zeros in on the sales strategy. ... Sample Sales Plan Template. Here's a handy sales plan template based on the elements mentioned above. Fill in each part as a starting point in creating your own template.

  17. 8 Examples of Strategic Sales Plans

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  18. 24 of My Favorite Sample Business Plans & Examples For Your Inspiration

    8. Panda Doc's Free Business Plan Template. PandaDoc's free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed-out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each section, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

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  24. 22 Best Sales Strategies, Plans, & Initiatives for Success [Templates]

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  25. Beverage Sales and Distribution : How to sell your new beverage to

    Boosting your beverage sales requires a unique sales and marketing game plan that involves selling to retailers, distributors and ultimately the end consumer. Hundreds of new beverages are introduced into the market every year but only a handful are successful at gaining distribution and getting consumers to actually purchase their product.

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