What is Sales Planning? How to Create a Sales Plan

Jay Fuchs

Published: December 06, 2023

Sales planning is a fundamental component of sound selling. After all, you can‘t structure an effective sales effort if you don’t have, well, structure . Everyone — from the top to the bottom of a sales org — benefits from having solid, actionable, thoughtfully organized sales plans in place.

how to create a sales plan; Sales team creating a sales plan for the upcoming quarter

This kind of planning offers clarity and direction for your sales team — covering everything from the prospects you‘re trying to reach to the goals you’re trying to hit to the insight you're trying to deliver on.

But putting together one of these plans isn‘t always straightforward, so to help you out, I’ve compiled this detailed guide to sales planning — including expert-backed insight and examples — that will ensure your next sales plan is fundamentally sound and effective.

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In this post, we'll cover:

What is a sales plan?

Sales planning process.

  • What goes in a sales plan template?

How to Write a Sales Plan

Tips for creating an effective sales plan, sales plan examples, strategic sales plan examples.

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. A business plan lays out your goals — a sales plan describes exactly how you'll make those happen.

Sales plans often include information about the business's target customers, revenue goals, team structure, and the strategies and resources necessary for achieving its targets.

sales business plans templates

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.

What are the goals of an effective sales plan?

sales business plans templates

And if (or more likely when ) those goals change over time, you need to regularly communicate those shifts and the strategic adjustments that come with them to your team.

Your sales strategy keeps your sales process productive — it offers the actionable steps your reps can take to deliver on your vision and realize the goals you set. So naturally, you need to communicate it effectively. A sales plan offers a solid resource for that.

For instance, your sales org might notice that your SDRs are posting lackluster cold call conversion rates. In turn, you might want to have them focus primarily on email outreach, or you could experiment with new sales messaging on calls.

Regardless of how you want to approach the situation, a thoughtfully structured sales plan will give both you and your reps a high-level perspective that would inform more cohesive, effective efforts across the team.

An effective sales org is a machine — one where each part has a specific function that serves a specific purpose that needs to be executed in a specific fashion. That's why everyone who comprises that org needs to have a clear understanding of how they specifically play into the company's broader sales strategy.

Outlining roles and responsibilities while sales planning lends itself to more efficient task delegation, improved collaboration, overlap reduction, and increased accountability. All of which amount to more streamlined, smooth, successful sales efforts.

Sales planning can set the framework for gauging how well your team is delivering on your sales strategy. It can inform the benchmarks and milestones reps can use to see how their performance stacks up against your goals and expectations.

It also gives sales leadership a holistic view of how well a sales org is functioning as a whole — giving them the necessary perspective to understand whether they have the right people and tools in place to be as successful as possible.

Sales planning isn‘t (and shouldn’t) be limited to the actual sales plan document it produces. If that document is going to have any substance or practical value, it needs to be the byproduct of a thorough, well-informed, high-level strategy.

When sales planning, you have some key steps you need to cover — including:

  • Gather sales data and search for trends.
  • Define your objectives.
  • Determine metrics for success.
  • Assess the current situation.
  • Start sales forecasting.
  • Identify gaps.
  • Ideate new initiatives.
  • Involve stakeholders.
  • Outline action items.

When putting this list together, I consulted  Zach Drollinger — Senior Director of Sales at edtech provider Coursedog — to ensure the examples detailed below are sound and accurate.

Step 1: Gather sales data and search for trends.

To plan for the present and future, your company needs to look to the past. What did sales look like during the previous year? What about the last five years? Using this information can help you identify trends in your industry. While it's not foolproof, it helps establish a foundation for your sales planning process.

For the sake of example, let‘s say that I’m a new sales director for an edtech company that sells curriculum planning software to higher education institutions. My vertical is community colleges, and my territory is the East Coast.

Once I assume this new role, I‘m going to want to gather as much context as possible about my vertical and how my company has approached it historically. I would pull information about how we’ve sold to this vertical.

How much new business have we closed within it in the past five years? How does that compare to how we perform with other kinds of institutions? Are we seeing significant churn from these customers?

I would also want to get context about the general needs, interests, and pain points of the kinds of institutions I‘m selling to. I’d look for insight into figures like degree velocity, staff retention, and enrollment.

Ultimately, I would get a comprehensive perspective on my sales process — a thorough understanding of where I stand and what my prospects are dealing with. That will ensure that I can deliver on the next step as effectively as possible.

Step 2: Define your objectives.

How do you know your business is doing well if you have no goals? As you can tell from its placement on this list, defining your goals and objectives is one of the first steps you should take in your sales planning process. Once you have them defined, you can move forward with executing them.

To extend the example from the previous step, I would leverage the context I gathered through the research I conducted about both my and my prospect's circumstances. I would start setting both broader goals and more granular operational objectives .

For instance, I might want to set a goal of increasing sales revenue from my vertical. From there, I would start putting together the kind of specific objectives that will facilitate that process — like connecting with administrators from at least 30 community colleges, booking demos with at least 10 schools, and successfully closing at least five institutions.

Obviously, those steps represent a streamlined (and unrealistically straightforward) sales process, but you get the idea — I would set a concrete goal, supplemented by SMART objectives , that will serve as a solid reference point for my org's efforts as the sales process progresses.

Step 3: Determine metrics for success.

Every business is different. One thing we can all agree on is that you need metrics for success. These metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs). What are you going to use to determine if your business is successful? KPIs differ based on your medium, but standard metrics are gross profit margins, return on investment (ROI), daily web traffic users, conversion rate, and more.

I kind of covered this step in the previous example, but it still warrants a bit more elaboration. The “M” in SMART goals (“measurable”) is there for a reason. You can‘t tell if your efforts were successful if you don’t know what “successful” actually means.

The edtech sales example I‘ve been running with revolves mostly around me assuming ownership of an existing vertical and getting more out of it. So it’s fair to assume that sales growth rate — the increase or decrease of sales revenue in a given period, typically expressed as a percentage — would be an effective way to gauge success.

I might want to structure my goals and objectives around a sales growth rate of 20% Y/Y within my vertical. I would make sure my org was familiar with that figure and offer some context about what it would take to reach it — namely, how many institutions we would need to close and retain.

Step 4: Assess the current situation.

How is your business fairing right now? This information is relevant to determining how your current situation holds up to the goals and objectives you set during step two. What are your roadblocks? What are your strengths? Create a list of the obstacles hindering your success. Identify the assets you can use as an advantage. These factors will guide you as you build your sales plan.

Continuing the edtech example, I would use the historical context I gathered and the objectives I set to frame how I look at my current circumstances. I might start by considering my goal of increasing revenue by 20% Y/Y. In that case, I would look at the company's retention figures — ideally, that would give me a sense of whether that needs to be a major area of focus.

I would also try to pin down trends in the colleges that we've already closed — are there any pain points we consistently sell on? I might take a closer look at how we demo to see if we might be glossing over key elements of our value proposition. Maybe, I would use conversation intelligence to get a better sense of how reps are handling their calls.

Ultimately, I would try to identify why we're performing the way we are, the inefficiencies that might be resulting from our current strategy, and how we can best set ourselves up to sell as effectively as possible.

Step 5: Start sales forecasting.

Sales forecasting is an in-depth report that predicts what a salesperson, team, or company will sell weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. While it is finicky, it can help your company make better decisions when hiring, budgeting, prospecting, and setting goals.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, economics has become less predictable. Claire Fenton , the owner of StrActGro — a professional training and coaching company — states, “Many economic forecasters won't predict beyond three months at a time.” This makes sales forecasting difficult. However, there are tools at your disposal to create accurate sales forecasts .

In our edtech example, I would approach this step by trying to estimate how my sales org is going to fare with the specific vertical we‘re pursuing in the time window we’ve allotted.

The method I decide to go with will depend on factors like how many concrete opportunities we have lined up — in addition to elements like the kind of historical data we have handy, how the reps working these deals tend to perform, and the degree of insight we have about our potential customers.

Let's say I consider those factors and decide to run something called a multivariable analysis. In that case, I could start by taking stock of the opportunities my reps have lined up. Then, I could look at the reps working those deals, their typical win rates, and the time they have to close — among other factors.

For instance, I might calculate that a rep working with a particularly large institution has a 50% chance of closing within the window we‘ve allotted. Using that insight, we could attribute 50% of the potential deal size to our forecast — we’d repeat that process with all of the opportunities in question and ideally get a solid sense of the revenue we can expect to generate in this window.

Step 6: Identify gaps.

When identifying gaps in your business, consider what your company needs now and what you might need in the future. First, identify the skills you feel your employees need to reach your goal. Second, evaluate the skills of your current employees. Once you have this information, you can train employees or hire new ones to fill the gaps.

Continuing the edtech example, let‘s say my forecast turned up results that weren’t in keeping with what we need to reach our goals. If that were the case, I would take a holistic look at our process, operations, and resources to pin down inefficiencies or areas for improvement.

In my search, I find that our sales content and marketing collateral are dated — with case studies that don‘t cover our product’s newest and most relevant features. I also might see that our reps don‘t seem to have too much trouble booking demos, but the demos themselves aren’t converting due to a lack of training and inconsistent messaging.

And finally, I find that a lack of alignment with marketing has prospects focusing on unrealistic outcomes our sales team can‘t deliver on. Once I’ve identified those gaps, I would start to hone in on ways to remedy those issues and improve those elements.

Step 7: Ideate new initiatives.

Many industry trends are cyclical. They phase in and out of “style.” As you build your sales plan, ideate new initiatives based on opportunities you may have passed on in previous years.

If your business exclusively focused on word-of-mouth and social media marketing in the past, consider adding webinars or special promotions to your plan.

In the edtech example we've been running with, I would likely ideate initiatives based on the gaps I identified in the previous step. I would start a push to ensure that our sales content and marketing collateral are up-to-date and impressive.

I would also consider new training programs to ensure that our coaching infrastructure is prioritizing how to conduct effective demos. Finally, I would start to work on a plan with marketing to ensure our messaging is aligned with theirs — so we can make sure prospects' expectations are realistic and effective.

One way or another, I would take the gaps I found and find concrete, actionable ways to fill them. I would make sure that these initiatives aren't abstract. Just saying, " We're going to be better at demos," isn‘t a plan — it’s a sentiment, and sentiments don't translate to hard sales.

Step 8: Involve stakeholders.

Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations with a vested interest in your company. They are typically investors, employees, or customers and often have deciding power in your business. Towards the end of your sales planning process, involve stakeholders from departments that affect your outcomes, such as marketing and product. It leads to an efficient and actionable sales planning process.

This step is sort of an extension of the previous two — once I‘ve identified the key issues and roadblocks obstructing my edtech startup’s sales org, I would start identifying the right people to fulfill the necessary initiatives I've put together.

In this example, I would tap some stakeholders in charge of our sales content and marketing collateral to produce newer, more relevant case studies and whitepapers we can pass along to the institutions we're working with.

I would also go to middle management and either offer more direction for coaching on demos or bring in a third-party training service to offer more focused, professional insight on the issue.

Finally, I would connect with marketing leadership to align on the benefits and outcomes we generally stress when pitching the schools we sell to. That way, we can ensure that the institutions we're connecting with have realistic expectations of our product or service that we can speak to more clearly and effectively.

Step 9: Outline action items.

Once you have implemented this strategy to create your sales planning process, the final step is outlining your action items. Using your company's capacity and quota numbers, build a list of steps that take you through the sales process. Examples of action items are writing a sales call script, identifying industry competitors, or strategizing new incentives or perks.

In our edtech example, some key action items might be:

  • Revamp our prospecting strategy via more involved coaching and re-tooled sales messaging.
  • Revamp administrator and college dean buyer personas.
  • Conduct new trainings on demoing our software.
  • See our new prospecting strategy from ideation to execution.
  • Align with our sales enablement stakeholders for new, more relevant case studies and whitepapers.

Obviously, that list isn‘t exhaustive — but those are still the kinds of steps we would need to clarify and take to structure a more effective high-level strategy to produce different (ideally much better) results than we’ve been seeing.

One thing to keep in mind is that sales planning shouldn't end with creating the document.

You‘ll want to reiterate this process every year to maintain your organization's sales excellence.

Now that you‘re committed to the sales planning process, let's dive into the written execution component of sales planning.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

HubSpot's Sales Plan Template: 10 Section Prompts for Outlining Your Sales Plan

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

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

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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.

sales business plans templates

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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All about Sales Plans: Definitions, Tips, and Free Templates

By Kate Eby | July 27, 2018

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In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about sales plans: how they relate to sales forecasting and sales pipelines, as well as benefits, challenges, and tips for getting the most out of your sales plans.

Included on this page, you’ll find over 8 free sales plan templates , learn the difference between sales forecasting and sales planning , and find best practices for writing a sales plan .

Free Sales Plan Templates

In this section, you’ll find over 15 free sales planning templates in Microsoft Excel and Word formats.

Sales Plan Template

sales business plans templates

‌   Download Excel Template

Try Smartsheet Template

This template allows you to plan your sales goals with the flexibility and functionality of an Excel spreadsheet. This sales plan template is divided into 12 months and separate product lines. The template includes columns for the previous year’s performance, current sales goals, and outcome. Create a yearly sales plan, and compare data over time and across products.

Keep deals moving forward with sales pipeline management in Smartsheet

sales business plans templates

Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform that allows sales teams to effectively manage pipelines by creating one location to track and manage efforts, surface open and at-risk opportunities, and provide real-time visibility to improve forecasting. See Smartsheet in action.  

Watch a free demo

Sales Leads Template

Sales Leads Template

Try Smartsheet Template  

If you want to keep track of sales leads, but don’t need the full functionality of customer relationship management (CRM) software, this spreadsheet may be adequate for your business. The template has columns for detailed information about each sales lead, including contact dates and status — this allows you to keep track of communications with each customer, plan future contacts and follow-ups, and evaluate potential sales. You can also indicate lead sources on the spreadsheet to monitor your marketing efforts and track how customers are referred to your business.

Sales Tracker Template

sales business plans templates

This sales tracker template makes it easy to keep track of items sold, along with profit per item and total earned income. You can also track costs, including shipping charges and returns. This template is especially useful for a new business, online retail sales, or any small business that wants to track sales and profits.

Sales Pipeline Template

sales business plans templates

Try Smartsheet Template   ‌

This sales pipeline template is an alternative to CRM software and is designed with small businesses in mind, use it to keep track of contacts and estimated sales. It also provides a quarterly sales forecast, along with space to record deal status, projected closing date, and further actions. This simple template is easy to edit and serves as a management tool for your sales pipeline.

Sales and Marketing Plan Template

sales business plans templates

‌  Download Template in Word

Try Smartsheet Template  ‌

Creating an effective sales and marketing plan may involve market research and analysis, evaluating your competition, looking at your sales history, examining future sales projections, and more. Once you have adequate information to develop a sales plan, a template can help you organize the plan into steps that will drive sales. This sales and marketing plan template provides space for identifying your sales goal, target customers, strategies for attracting those customers, marketing tactics and messages, scheduled action steps, and results.

Sales Funnel Template

Sales Funnel Template

‌ ‌ Download Sales Funnel Template - Excel

This sales funnel template provides a visual representation of the sales process, along with whatever sales data you choose to include. The template can be used as a scorecard to evaluate sales progress, and the funnel makes it easy to visualize the steps in your sales process. This free template is a simple but effective tool for reaching sales and business goals.

Sales Report Template

Sales Report Template

‌ ‌ Download Sales Report Template

Track monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales activity with this free sales report template. Customize the template or use the existing columns to keep track of sales and pertinent data. This sales report template also includes a monthly forecast showing sales history and projections. Use this template to track progress, plan future goals, and create a sales report with pleasing visual design.

Sales Action Plan Template

sales business plans templates

Download Sales Action Plan Template

Create a sales plan with actionable steps and a scheduled timeline. This template features sections for listing clearly defined goals, methods for measuring success, action steps, ownership for each step, and deadlines. These are all important components of a sales action plan for reducing risk and increasing the probability that you will reach your sales goals.

Using a Sales Plan Template

Finding the right sales template provides easy organization and efficiency, which frees up resources and time that can go toward reaching business goals. A template can also be a powerful communication tool for sales and marketing teams to develop and track their progress against sales targets. Depending on the nature and scope of your company, some templates can be a component of an effective business plan.

The Basics of a Sales Plan

A sales plan outlines sale goals for a cycle, as well as the steps you will take to hit those targets. The sales plan document also defines tools, high-level tactics, target customers, competitors, obstacles, among other details. A strong plan will communicate company goals to the sales team, keep everyone focused on strategy, and delineate priorities.

What Is the Difference Between Sales Forecasting and Sales Planning?

While many people confuse the two terms, sales forecasting and sales planning are distinct concepts. A sales forecast is a future projection of sales based on business and environmental conditions, while a sales plan defines the concrete steps needed to achieve the sales forecast. You can create a sales forecast for your entire business or for a particular initiative over any period of time (examples include an economic forecast; an industry forecast; a company forecast; and a short-, medium-, or long-term forecast).

Sales plans are helpful tools when budgeting for advertising or travel costs, identifying new sales markets, planning for staffing needs, and creating a timeline to reach milestones. But a sales plan is just one piece of the business planning and management — and it relies on accurate sales forecasting. You can get free sales forecasting templates here .

Large organizations, small businesses, and startups can all equally benefit from sales planning. Sales forecasts and plans are most often used by the sales team, although marketers, executives, and even customers may interact with the documents as well.

What Is a Sales Pipeline?

A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospective buyers are in the sales process. A sales pipeline can quickly identify a prospect’s position in the buying journey; use that information to support them and respond to their needs appropriately.

While a specific buyer’s journey will vary based on the industry and type of products or services sold, there are three general phases of any sales pipeline:

A prospect initiates contact with a company and explains its needs.

A salesperson provides the prospect with a quote (including the product or service and price).

The prospect purchases a product or service (and thereby becomes a customer).

Use the targeted sales pipeline templates above to track potential customers’ journeys through the process.

What Is the Sales Funnel? 

The sales funnel is a visual representation of the average conversion rate of potential customers and qualified leads move through the sales process. Sales teams can use the sales funnel to help understand the volume of sales, as well as the percentage of each sale that has passed through each sales process stage.

The sales pipeline represents what the seller is doing during the sales process; the sales funnel shows the sales process conversion rates. The sales funnel feeds the sales pipeline; once a lead is converted into a prospect, they move into the sales pipeline.

Benefits of Using a Sales Plan

A high-quality sales plan is one of the key parts of the sales forecasting process as well as the operational plan and the marketing strategy. When done right, a sales plan can provide the following benefits:

  • Guide and contribute to business growth.
  • Communicate company sales goals, objectives, and strategic direction for the sales team and leadership.
  • Expose new angles based on the research performed to fill out the items on the template. 
  • Define needed actions during the sales cycle.
  • Provide easy monitoring of sales team progress as linked to goals.
  • Provide a high-level view of expenses, finances, and risks, as well as the competition and target customers. 
  • Improve and track performance by keeping the team focused on the strategy, priorities and achieving shared milestones.
  • Inspire and motivate stakeholders.
  • Help keep customers and potential customers as the focus.
  • Clarify team capabilities.
  • Aid in comparison of targets and results.

Best Practices for Writing a Sales Plan

While creating the sales plan, take the following steps in order to create a quality and realistic plan:

  • Perform a SWOT analysis.
  • Review prior periods’ performance to gather data.
  • Base the targets and goals on market research and historical data.
  • Verify facts and data being used.
  • Break down data by different sales groups (inside sales, outside sales, etc.).
  • Make sure the sales team buys in to the plan.
  • Identify patterns that can help reach target customers.
  • Pick a time period that makes sense for your industry.
  • Ensure that the budget is supported by the research.
  • Ensure that sales objectives are linked to sales goals, and that sales goals are linked to business goals.
  • Break down estimated expenses to meet sales goals into groups (commissions, sales training, sales tools and resources, contest prizes, team building, travel costs, food, etc.). 
  • Use the SMART goals model (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). 
  • Measure what you want to manage.
  • Keep the plan updated throughout the sales cycle — it’s a living document.
  • Keep the plan as simple as possible.
  • Look for untapped market segments to target.
  • Define the value proposition for potential customers.
  • Map out the ideal customer journey.

Sales Plans Challenges

While a sales plan is a valuable tool, creating one does pose some challenges: 

  • Creating a sales plan can be very time consuming.
  • Inaccurate data will skew forecasts — verify your numbers before you finalize the plan. 
  • It’s difficult to predict changing tastes, so forecasts may not be met.
  • Rapid growth may increase the workload of the sales team, and throw off forecasts.
  • Be careful not to move goalposts mid-cycle.
  • Wishful thinking is easy to do, so be realistic and don’t ignore your own assumptions.
  • Neglecting to consult with the sales team may prevent them from buying into the plan.
  • Neglecting to get feedback from other groups can have a negative impact on the plan.

What Is Included in a Sales Plan?

The sales plan contains numerous sections that provide information to readers, and help guide decisions that will contribute to meeting sales goals.

  • Mission and Executive Summary: Include a short history of the business for background.
  • Team Structure: Provide a breakdown of the team by sales team, including each person’s role and capabilities. Also include plans for any future hiring.
  • Target Customers: Break down the customer list into segments by products or product lines. Build a prospect list that includes referrals, renewals, upsells, and any new segments, and make sure to leverage existing customer relationships.
  • Tools, Software, and Other Resources: Include a list of CRM packages or other sales tools (including training tools), and provide any relevant documentation.
  • Positioning: Include competitor data, including a comparison of your products with theirs. Anticipate how market trends may impact your business.
  • Marketing Strategy: Include pricing information, promotions, and any actions you have planned to increase brand awareness.
  • Prospecting Strategy: List criteria for qualifying leads generated by marketing strategy. 
  • Action Plan: Include a list of steps needed to hit revenue and sales goals.
  • Revenue and Sales Goals: Include measurable, realistic goals that support the overall business. Additionally, supply information on how performance will be measured and monitored, and be sure to base projections off historical data.
  • Budget: Include estimated costs (including training, sales tools and resources, team building activities, travel, food, contest prizes, etc.). Make a case for the budget you present.
  • Schedule: Provide a timeline that addresses the length of the sales cycle covered by the plan (annual, quarterly, month, etc.).
  • Other Items: Consider including a performance review of the prior sales cycle, as well as market and industry conditions that may impact sales.

Improve Sales Planning with Smartsheet for Sales

Sales planning is an activitiy to gain and retain customers, meet changing market demands, and ultimately, ensure business success. While premade templates can help you get started developing your plan, you need a tool to manage all of your sales processes and operations that is accessible to your team in real time and allows you to collaborate and track sales activity across multiple reps.

Smartsheet is a work execution platform that enables enterprises and teams to get from idea to impact - fast. Top performing sales organizations rely on Smartsheet to stay on top of leads, accelerate productivity, and exceed every quota.

Use Smartsheet to build a strong opportunity pipeline, reduce risks and identify blockers, and refine your sales forecast. Improve transparency to process and procedure, optimize operations with cross-department collaboration, and accelerate team output.

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Discover how Smartsheet can help maximize your sales efforts, today. 

Try Smartsheet for Sales

Additional Resources

Operations management

Sales Operations 101: Roles, Duties, Headaches, and Pro Tips

Learn the basics of sales operations and how roles are evolving. Hear from the pros and find tips to remedy sales ops headaches.

Nov 18, 2021

Get the most out of your sales planning efforts with Smartsheet for Sales.

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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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

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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 )

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Sales Planning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is sales planning.

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

What is included in a sales plan?

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

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

What are the different types of strategic sales planning?

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

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

Bottom Line

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

About the Author

Jillian Ilao

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 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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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:

GET THE SALES SUCCESS KIT →

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

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

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

Sound exciting? Let’s jump right in.

Download Your Free Sales Plan Templates Today

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

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

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

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

In basic terms, a sales plan template includes:

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

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

Here are the key elements to include in your plan:

1. Mission Statement

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

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

2. Sales Goals and Revenue Targets

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

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

3. Analysis of the Target Market

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

4. Sales Strategy Overview and Methods to Reach Target Customers

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

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

5. Use of Resources and Sales Tools

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

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

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

6. Sales Team Structure

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

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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  • Sales Templates

How to Create a Sales Plan: 11 Templates to Use Now

Jul 27, 2022

Graphic of a sales plan template

As a business leader, salesperson, or executive in a sales company, it’s important to recognize the importance of planning for success. A sales plan is arguably the most crucial tool that will enable you to prepare for the future of your business and how you can hit your business targets and goals. 

In this article, you’ll learn what a sales plan is, how to write one, and tips for creating an effective sales plan. This post also highlights the best sale plan templates for your company or business.

  • What are the best sales plan templates?
  • 1. Sales Plan Template by Hubspot
  • 2. Sample Sales Plan by BestTemplates
  • 3. Asana Sales Plan
  • 4. 1 Page Sales Plan by BestTemplates
  • 5. Online Sales Plan Marker Map by Venngage
  • 6. Small Business Sales Plan by FitSmallBusiness
  • 7. Sales Strategy Diagram from Creately
  • 8. Sales Action Plan by BestTemplates
  • 9. 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan by Template.Net
  • 10. Microsoft Word Sales Plan from TemplateLab
  • 11. 90-Day Sales Play by Template.Net
  • What is a Sales Plan?
  • What is included in a sales plan?
  • How to Write a Sales Plan
  • What Goes in a Sales Plan Template?
  • Tips for Creating an Effective Sales Plan
  • Key Takeaways

Creating your sales plan from scratch can be an intensive and time-consuming process, which is why you should consider using sales plan templates. The following are the best sales plan templates to get you started!

This free sales plan template by Hubspot is a detailed plan with multiple sections that allow you to outline your sales strategy in a simple, coherent manner. The template includes sections for your team structure, target market, company history, goals, budget, action plan, and many more. This simple template simplifies your sales plan for your team and execs. 

Best Templates provides a 9-page sales plan that you can download and edit to customize to your specific needs. The template is designed to do all the work for you since all sections are already highlighted, and your job is to fill them in. 

Asana’s sales plan promises to help you build a solid sales foundation and empower your team to achieve company goals. With Asana, you can create various sales plans, including a territory plan, a 30, 60, or 90-day sales plan, or a simple sales action plan. Moreover, you can use Asana and Salesforce together to improve your sales process.

Finally, a sales process that gives you the freedom to sell.

Build a repeatable, winning sales process with Dooly's powerful note templates.

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Another sales plan by Best Templates can help you work out effective strategies to boost sales. It’s also customizable, so all you need to do is open and edit it using your preferred software app or program, provided it is compatible with MS Word or Pages file formats. 

The Sales Plan Maker by Venngage enables you to create and organize your sales plan. To get started, you need to create a Venngage account and pick the sales plan template that suits you best. Venngage allows you to add images, edit text, or develop pictographs and custom charts. 

This compact and easy-to-use sales plan template contains all the information you’ll need to set clear sales goals and objectives and the tactics and strategies to employ. Simply download the template, and customize it for your business. 

Creately offers multiple customizable professional templates designed to ensure synchronicity across your entire team. You can create a dashboard to monitor the progress of your strategies. The Creately viewer also allows you to embed multiple diagrams in your blogs or business website. 

This affordable action plan template by Best Templates has a minimalistic and professional layout for unmatched structure and organization. It’s a fully customizable template that supports MS word and iPages, so editing shouldn’t be a hassle. Download the template from their official website, and get started with your action plan. 

This is a comprehensive sales plan that can help you boost your company sales within 90 days. It’s an effective sales plan template outlining all the strategies and tactics you should employ during the 90 days. The template is fully customizable and can be downloaded using your preferred software. 

Microsoft Word provides multiple free sales plan template options from TemplateLab . The templates are designed to help organizations plan their sales activities in a structured manner. The plans have sections including an executive summary, goals and objectives, analysis details, organization mission, key performance indicators, marketing strategy, and many more. 

This easily editable template is designed to help you plot the activities that should be done over a 90-day period to enable you to meet your organization’s set goals and objectives. The 90-Day Sales Action Plan template is perfect for companies trying to achieve specific goals within a specified timeframe. 

A sales plan is a document that features your company’s sales activities, including tactics and strategies to achieve set objectives within a given time frame. One major challenge stunting the growth of companies is a lack of a formal action plan. The executives come up with goals and objectives and leave it at that. Now you know what you’re aiming for, but HOW do you get there? 

A sales plan outlines the strategies and tactics that will get you there. It highlights specific step-by-step actions your team will take to achieve business targets. Since it is a dynamic document, it is continually updated to reflect market changes, so you’re always one step ahead of the competition. 

A good sales plan is exhaustive in that it establishes the goals, priorities, necessary resources, and timetables. The sales plan should set measurable, precise, and motivating goals. There needs to be a logical order to the steps highlighted in the plan. Additionally, an effective sales plan is a formal document. If you don’t write down your plan, then it is a dream you simply hope to achieve someday. A formally documented sales plan is a firm commitment to reaching your goals and targets. 

Sales plans typically differ from company to company. However, specific segments must be included in a sales plan. These are key to your strategic business development, and they include the following: 

Executive summary

A good sales plan starts with an executive summary, laying the foundation for the information. This is where you state your company’s vision and mission. The executive summary tells the story of how your company got there and what the company hopes to achieve in the coming years. 

Business goals

This is arguably the most crucial segment in a sales plan. The set goals should be measurable and time-specific. Include revenue targets, which can either be revenue-based or volume-based and the sales effectiveness metrics that will be used to measure them. It’s also vital to ensure the revenue target is achievable by the set time to motivate the sales staff. 

Description of strategies and tactics

If you aim to increase your customer base, what specific steps should be taken to achieve it? This segment of the sales plan will include touching base with your marketing team because they’re familiar with the marketing strategy that works best. Working with your sales team to develop the strategies and tactics also helps boost employee productivity and engagement. 

Customer segments

Your sales team should have a clear picture of who they’re selling to. Build an ideal customer profile that will be used for your sales pipeline . A good sales plan includes the target audience and the target industries serviced by your company.  

Your budget for the year is another key element of the sales plan. How much will be spent on achieving the goals? Clarifying salaries, commissions, bonuses, resource spending, and even miscellaneous costs is important. 

The sales plan is not a solitary document. For your sales plan to be effective, it must be an integral part of your sales planning process. You’re not just typing up a document and sending it to your team. You want it to be a guide for your sales staff, which is why you need a strategy. 

So what steps should you follow when writing your sales plan? 

Start by gathering sales data

Your sales planning needs a foundation, and sales data for the previous couple of years can help you get started. What tactic or strategy has worked for you in the past? What wasn’t so effective? Do you need to improve your cold outreach ? You’ve probably heard the phrase, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Collect as much data as possible and use the information to identify some of the trends in your industry.  

Determine your objectives

The reason you have a sales plan is to help you achieve your business goals. As such, it is one of the top priorities in the sales planning process. Clearly defining your objectives will enable you to develop strategies to reach them. You have to know the what before the how . 

Outline your metrics for success

How will you know whether your strategies are working? Success metrics differ based on the industry and the business, but common key performance indicators (KPIs) include ROI, conversion rate, gross profit margins, and more. 

Begin sales forecasting

Sales forecasting , loosely speaking, is predicting the future. It is the preparation of an in-depth report that uses historical data, sales activity data, and predictive analysis technology to predict what your sales team will sell over a given period.

Sales forecasting is crucial for the growth of your business. The information from sales forecasting helps answer essential questions that will guide your business approaches.

Develop sales tactics and strategies

Your sales plan also needs to highlight the tactics and strategies you plan to employ to accomplish the set objectives. This section of the plan should be highly detailed, outlining the specific campaigns, such as cold calls and email marketing campaigns, to generate leads for your sales funnel. 

The tactics and strategies outlined should be customizable to different customers based on their consumer behavior, interests, and specific needs. You could also implement cross-selling as a way to generate more revenue. 

Outline actionable steps

The final step in creating your sales plan is to outline action items. Consider your company’s quota numbers and its capacity when building the specific steps to be followed in the sales process. This can include organizing a daily sales schedule for your sales team to maximize efficiency.                            

A good sales plan is not too long or too short. It contains detailed information without being unnecessarily lengthy and complicated.

As mentioned earlier, sales plans differ from company to company, but they should generally include the following segments:

  • Revenue and sales goals
  • Target customers
  • Marketing strategy
  • Market conditions
  • Resources (sales tools and software)
  • Action Plan

Creating a sales plan is one thing. Getting your sales team to implement it is another. The following tips will help you create an effective sales plan that will engage all the stakeholders and team members. 

Utilize data and statistics

Using relevant data from in-depth research, you can identify key problem areas and opportunities in your sales process that you should tap into. Statistics validate the key assumptions you make in the process. This way, your plan is meticulously thought out and not a spray and pray effort. 

Verify all your facts

There are several facts and figures in a sales plan, and you should take the time to verify them all. They need to make sense to the stakeholders and all the team members. Misquoting or using an unverified fact could render your entire plan unusable. 

Specify tools and resources

Your plan should also highlight the technology you plan to use at different stages of the sales process. This includes CRM or dashboard software that you can use to track success. It is helpful for both your internal team and the stakeholders. 

Align your teams

The success of your sales plan will depend on the alignment of your sales and marketing teams. Getting input from marketing dramatically improves the accuracy of your strategies and tactics. Steps in the sales process, including lead generation, prospecting, and nurturing, should work together harmoniously. 

Get your team’s input

It is essential to work with your team in the process. Talk with all your reps to understand any challenges they might be facing. At the top, it’s easy to focus on the numbers and forecasting without considering the rep’s day-to-day activities and whether or not the plans you have are feasible. Working with your team enables you to determine problems that need fixing before the sales plan can be affected. 

Failing to plan is planning to fail is a common saying. It’s undeniable that implementing a sales plan will significantly benefit your business, based on the goals you set out to achieve.

The sales plan is not a static document. To improve its effectiveness, it is vital to keep upgrading based on industry shifts and trends or changes within your organization. This will fast-track the growth of your business and set you ahead of your competition.

Join the thousands of top-performing AEs who use Dooly every day to stay more organized, instantly update their pipeline, and spend more time selling instead of mindless admin work. Try Dooly free, no credit card required. Or, Request a demo to speak with a Dooly product expert right now.

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Diego Pineda

Diego Pineda is the author of two novels, 9 non-fiction books, and hundreds of articles and blogs as a science writer, a business writer, and a sales and marketing writer. He's passionate about thought leadership and his latest book is "The Solo Author: How Solopreneurs Earn Money and Authority with a Book Ecosystem."

Table of Contents

sales business plans templates

Move deals forward faster with these 15 Sales Templates

9 effective end of month sales motivation techniques.

Sales pipeline management

Sales Pipeline Management: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Leaders and Reps

Sales data insights

How to Manage Sales Deal Data to Transform Your Team Performance

Sales Cycle Management

Post Sales Customer Management

Deal Reviews

Process Adoption

Team Handoffs

Account Executive

Sales Leader

Sales Enablement

Customer Success

Product Overview

Deal & Account Vitals

Chrome Extension

Integrations

Subprocessors

Customer Stories

Help Centre

Customer Love

9 X-Factors

Sales Happiness Index

State of Sales Productivity

Sales Process Report

State of Sales Leadership

Finish the Quarter Strong

Salesforce Notes

Sales Pipeline

Sales Management Software

Sales Forecast

Log a Call in Salesforce

Find Hot Opportunities

Close the Quota Gap

Sales Time Wasters

Why Reps Quit

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  • Project planning |

Sales plan template

A sales plan template gives your sales team an organized framework for everything they need to accomplish each quarter. Learn how you can use a sales plan template to help expedite the sales planning process.

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INTEGRATED FEATURES

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How often do you create a new sales strategy? For many sales teams, this is something that happens on a quarterly basis. However, developing your strategy from scratch every quarter can take up precious planning time that could be used for selling your product.

Instead of creating your sales plan from scratch every quarter, try using our free sales plan template.

What is a sales plan template?

A sales plan template is a reusable framework that helps develop your sales team’s strategy, success metrics, and end goals. These templates may also include your sales team’s objectives, target audience, and revenue goals. 

Why is this important? Instead of starting from scratch, your team can use our free sales plan template as a starting point during quarterly sales planning. This helps expedite the process by providing your team with a basic strategy to work from. Then, all your team has to do is to fill in their specific success metrics, goals, and responsibilities for that specific time period.

What goes into a sales plan template?

There are a few different components that go into a sales plan template. These components may vary depending on the type of sales you work in—software sales are very different from retail sales teams, after all—but the most common components include:

Revenue targets: This is the revenue goal you want your sales team to achieve before your team’s chosen deadline.

Team structure: Who on the team is responsible for what. This means identifying managers, dedicated team members, and who reports to who. 

Directly responsible individuals (DRIs) : Anybody on the team who’s responsible for a specific task or part of a project.

Depending on how your team functions and your sales strategy, you can add additional information like:

Current market conditions: This could be information regarding the economic climate, to understand how potential customers are feeling about purchasing at a certain time of year. For example, you can add information like a PEST analysis in this section.

The target market or an ideal customer profile: Information about the ideal customer you’re selling to. This helps your sales team better understand who their target audience is and how to best sell to them.

Competitive data: Any information on your competitors. Competitive analysis information helps give sales people the upper hand by illustrating how your product or service compares to the competition.

How to use our free sales plan template

Creating a sales plan with our free template is simple. Here are a few steps to help you get started. 

Analyze your current sales process. If your team has repeatable tasks in your current sales process, your template should capture all of these steps. This will save your sales managers from manually repeating tasks when they create a new sales strategy.

Establish a main sales objective. No matter the quarter, you should always clearly state the main objective you want your team to achieve. This helps your team focus on work that will make the most impact on your sales objective. 

Determine success metrics. Connecting your sales goals to your business goals is an important part of developing a sales plan template. Your sales plan template should have a dedicated section for success metrics , so your team knows exactly how certain tasks connect with larger goals. These success metrics should connect directly with the sales objective you established in step two.

Document actionable steps. Our free sales plan template makes it easy to capture the actionable steps your team is taking to achieve the objectives you outlined in step 2. This section ensures you can accurately measure if the work you’re doing is helping to achieve your goals.

Provide important contextual information for your team. Your sales plan template should include information like competitive research, market conditions, and an individual customer profile. This information can be updated and duplicated for future sales plans. 

Integrated features

Goals . Goals in Asana directly connect to the work you’re doing to hit them, making it easy for team members to see what they’re working towards. More often than not, our goals live separate from the work that goes into achieving them. By connecting your team and company goals to the work that supports them, team members have real-time insight and clarity into how their work directly contributes to your team—and company—success. As a result, team members can make better decisions. If necessary, they can identify the projects that support the company’s strategy and prioritize work that delivers measurable results. 

Reporting . Reporting in Asana translates project data into visual charts and digestible graphs. By reporting on work where work lives, you can reduce duplicative work and cut down on unnecessary app switching. And, because all of your team’s work is already in Asana, you can pull data from any project or team to get an accurate picture of what’s happening in one place.

Automation . Automate manual work so your team spends less time on the busy work and more time on the tasks you hired them for. Rules in Asana function on a basis of triggers and actions—essentially “when X happens, do Y.” Use Rules to automatically assign work, adjust due dates, set custom fields, notify stakeholders, and more. From ad hoc automations to entire workflows, Rules gives your team time back for skilled and strategic work.

Milestones . Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal. 

Salesforce . Remove bottlenecks by enabling sales, customer success, and service teams to communicate directly with their support teams in Asana. Share attachments and create actionable, trackable tasks for pre-sales needs. With Service Cloud, connect your implementation and service teams with supporting teams in Asana to deliver amazing customer experiences.

Zoom . Asana and Zoom are partnering up to help teams have more purposeful and focused meetings. The Zoom + Asana integration makes it easy to prepare for meetings, hold actionable conversations, and access information once the call is over. Meetings begin in Asana, where shared meeting agendas provide visibility and context about what will be discussed. During the meeting, team members can quickly create tasks within Zoom, so details and action items don’t get lost. And once the meeting is over, the Zoom + Asana integration pulls meeting transcripts and recordings into Asana, so all collaborators and stakeholders can review the meeting as needed.

Gmail . With the Asana for Gmail integration, you can create Asana tasks directly from your Gmail inbox. Any tasks you create from Gmail will automatically include the context from your email, so you never miss a beat. Need to refer to an Asana task while composing an email? Instead of opening Asana, use the Asana for Gmail add-on to simply search for that task directly from your Gmail inbox. 

Slack . Turn ideas, work requests, and action items from Slack into trackable tasks and comments in Asana. Go from quick questions and action items to tasks with assignees and due dates. Easily capture work so requests and to-dos don’t get lost in Slack. 

What are the steps to creating a sales plan template?

Instead of creating a sales plan template from scratch, use our free template to kickstart your planning process. By using a template within a project management tool , you also ensure all team members can easily view and access your sales plan in real-time.

A sales plan template is a duplicatable framework your sales team can use to establish a sales strategy over a certain amount of time. For example, you can use the framework to establish your strategy for a specific quarter. This framework can be used as the foundation for your sales team’s quarterly sales plan.

What are the key elements of a sales plan template?

A sales plan template should include a place to track your team’s revenue targets, your team’s structure, key deadlines and milestones, and directly responsible individuals (DRIs). Some additional information you can provide includes the current market conditions, the target audience or an ideal customer profile, and any competitive data that you may have.

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Published: April 13, 2023

We're all guilty of subscribing to a myriad of newsletters and blogs by sales gurus who will guarantee that their practices will bring you success – whether it's personalizing your newsletter format, cold emails, or changing the 'Buy Now' button.

News flash – these aren't actual sales business plans or even sales strategies.

Building and developing a solid sales business plan is the foundation of your business. A sales plan outlines your future goals–be it revenue targets, sales targets, or even a marketing strategy–a sales business plan will propel you to always be two steps ahead of the game.

Whether you're focused on eCommerce, B2C, inbound, outbound, or even enterprise companies–a business plan is essential to survive.

So, what's a sales business plan? How do you build it (and stick to it)?

By the end of this guide, you'll be armed with the right plan to win the fight for your business and stay ahead of the curve at all times.

Let's dive in.

What is a Sales Business Plan?

A sales business plan is a strategic document that outlines the goals, objectives, and strategies of a company's sales team to achieve its revenue targets. The plan serves as a roadmap to guide the sales team in achieving their targets by outlining the steps they need to take in order to achieve success.

Here are a few sales business plan statistics -

  • Only 22% of companies feel that their salespeople have the necessary resources to be successful. (CSO Insights)
  • Companies with a documented sales process generate 18% more revenue than those without one. (HubSpot)
  • Salespeople who use social selling techniques are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quotas. (LinkedIn)
  • 73% of sales teams say that the ability to collaborate is critical to their success. (Salesforce)
  • Companies with a formal sales methodology in place have a win rate that is 28% higher than those without one. (HubSpot)

A sales business plan typically includes a SWOT analysis, which helps to identify the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market. It also includes a target market analysis, which helps to identify the customers the company wants to target and how to reach them.

In addition, a sales plan outlines the sales team's objectives, which include the revenue targets they need to achieve, the products or services they need to sell, and the metrics they need to track to measure their success.

The plan also details the strategies and tactics that the sales team will use to reach their goals, including lead generation, prospecting, nurturing, and closing sales.

Overall, a sales business plan is a critical tool for any sales team, as it helps to focus their efforts, track their progress, and identify areas for improvement.

What is the Structure of a Sales Plan Template?

Sales plans vary from business to business, depending on their niche, the industry they are in, and more, but typically, they include the following sections -

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary is a critical part of a sales business plan that provides a high-level overview of the plan's key elements to stakeholders.

The executive summary should be brief, clear, and compelling, with a maximum of two pages. To create an effective summary, highlight the key points of the plan, including sales goals, target market, sales strategy, and revenue projections. Use simple language and include a call-to-action to encourage stakeholders to take the next steps, such as investing or partnering.

The executive summary is like an elevator pitch, and it needs to grab the reader's attention, communicate the plan's essence, and encourage action.

2. Company Overview

The company overview is a section in the sales business plan that provides an introduction to the company, its history, and the products or services it offers. This section aims to give the reader an understanding of the company's background, goals, and vision for the future.

Here are some pointers to help create an effective company overview -

  • Briefly describe the company's history, including how and when it was founded and any significant milestones achieved to date.
  • Explain the company's mission and values, highlighting what sets it apart from competitors.
  • Provide a brief overview of the products or services the company offers, outlining their unique features and benefits.
  • Highlight any key partnerships or collaborations that the company has established to help achieve its goals.
  • If the company has any notable achievements or recognition, mention these briefly to help build credibility.

3. Market Trends and Analysis

The market analysis is a crucial section of the sales business plan that provides a comprehensive understanding of the industry and the company's place within it.

This section should cover the following -

  • Define the target market by describing the ideal customer, including their demographics, psychographics, and behavior patterns.
  • Analyze the industry by identifying its size, growth potential, and key trends. This analysis should also include an overview of the competitive landscape, including the company's main competitors and their strengths and weaknesses.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis should help the company understand its position in the market and determine potential strategies for growth.
  • Determine the market share and sales potential by analyzing the company's current and potential customers, the competition, and the overall market size.
  • Identify any regulatory or environmental factors that could impact the industry, including government policies or changes in consumer behavior.

4. Sales Strategy

By developing a clear and effective sales strategy, the company can ensure that its sales efforts are aligned with its overall goals and objectives. A well-crafted sales strategy can help the company achieve its sales targets, expand its customer base, and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

  • Define the sales goals by setting specific, measurable targets for revenue, market share, and other key performance indicators.
  • Identify the target customers and their needs, including their pain points and motivations for purchasing the company's products or services.
  • Determine the sales channels the company will use to reach its target customers, including direct sales, online sales, and third-party sales channels.
  • Outline the sales tactics that the company will use to reach its target customers, including advertising, promotions, and pricing strategies.
  • Detail the sales team structure, including roles and responsibilities, hiring plans, and training programs.
  • Provide a sales forecast that outlines expected revenue and sales growth based on the sales strategy.

5. Sales Forecasting

The sales forecast predicts future sales performance and is a critical component of the sales business plan. This section should provide a detailed analysis of the company's sales projections, including historical sales data, market demand, sales channels, sales team, pricing strategy, and external factors.

By creating a detailed sales forecast, the company can set realistic sales targets, monitor performance, allocate resources effectively, and adjust its sales strategy as needed.

The budget section of the sales business plan outlines the financial resources needed to achieve the sales goals.

This section should cover the following:

  • Estimate the costs associated with the sales strategy, including marketing expenses, sales team salaries, and travel costs.
  • Identify any capital investments required to support the sales strategy, such as new equipment, technology, or facilities.
  • Outline the expected revenue and profits based on the sales forecast and sales strategy.
  • Develop a cash flow projection that details the timing and amount of cash inflows and outflows associated with the sales strategy.

By creating a detailed budget, the company can ensure that it has the financial resources needed to execute its sales strategy effectively. The budget can also help the company prioritize its spending, identify potential areas of cost savings, and monitor its financial performance against its sales goals.

7. Implementation Plan

The implementation plan outlines how the company will execute its sales strategy and achieve its sales goals. This section should cover the following:

  • Identify the specific actions required to implement the sales strategy, such as developing new sales materials, hiring additional sales staff, or launching a new product.
  • Assign responsibility for each action item and establish timelines for completion.
  • Establish a system for monitoring progress and evaluating the effectiveness of the sales strategy.
  • Develop contingency plans to address any potential obstacles or challenges that may arise.

The implementation plan can also help the company track progress, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments to the sales strategy as needed.

8. Metrics and KPIs

Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to measure the success of the sales strategy and provide insight into the performance of the sales team. This section should cover the following:

  • Identify the metrics and KPIs that will be used to evaluate the success of the sales strategy, such as sales revenue, sales growth, customer acquisition cost, or customer lifetime value.
  • Establish a system for tracking and analyzing these metrics and KPIs regularly.
  • Develop a process for using this data to make informed decisions about the sales strategy and identify opportunities for improvement.
  • Assign responsibility for monitoring and analyzing these metrics and KPIs to specific individuals or teams within the company.

With the right metrics and KPIs, the company can track the success of the sales strategy and make data-driven decisions to improve performance.

9. Risks and Challenges

The risks and challenges section of the sales business plan identifies potential obstacles that could impact the success of the sales strategy.

It assesses the likelihood and potential impact of each risk or challenge, develops contingency plans to address them, and assigns responsibility for monitoring and addressing these risks or challenges to specific individuals or teams within the company.

By doing so, the company can develop contingency plans to minimize its impact, adapt to changes in the market, remain competitive, and achieve its sales goals despite potential obstacles.

10. Conclusion

The conclusion section of the sales business plan summarizes the key points and highlights the overall value of the sales strategy. This section should cover the following:

  • Recap the key points of the sales business plan, including the company overview, market analysis, sales strategy, sales forecast, budget, implementation plan, metrics and KPIs, and risks and challenges.
  • Emphasize the value of the sales strategy, including the potential impact on sales revenue, market share, and customer acquisition.
  • Provide a call-to-action that encourages stakeholders to support and implement the sales strategy.
  • Thank stakeholders for their time and commitment to the sales business plan.

The conclusion section provides a final opportunity to reinforce the key points of the sales business plan and inspire stakeholders to take action.

How to Write a Winning Sales Business Plan Template: A Step-By-Step Blueprint

Writing a sales business plan template may seem like a lot of work, but once you do, you've already skipped leaps and bounds to take your business to the next level.

Let's break down this process, step-by-step, to help you write a winning sales business plan template -

1. State your Company's Mission

Your company's mission statement should explain what your business does, why it exists, and how it aims to achieve its goals.

Here are some tips for creating a compelling mission statement -

  • Keep it short and simple.
  • Use strong and clear language.
  • Make sure it aligns with your company's overall vision and goals.
  • Communicate how your business is unique.
  • Focus on the benefits you provide to customers.

Your mission statement should inspire and motivate your team while also communicating your values to potential customers. It sets the foundation for the rest of your sales business plan, so take the time to craft a mission statement that accurately reflects your company's goals and values.

2. Set Objectives and Timeframes

In this section, you should identify specific, measurable goals for your sales team, and establish a timeline for achieving them.

Here are some tips for setting objectives and timeframe -

  • Identify both short-term and long-term goals.
  • Make sure your goals are specific and measurable, such as "increase sales by 10% in the next quarter."
  • Set realistic and achievable goals.
  • Assign each goal to a specific team member or department.
  • Establish a timeline for achieving each goal.

By setting objectives and a timeframe for achieving them, you can motivate your sales team and provide a clear roadmap for success. Make sure to regularly track your progress toward these goals and adjust your strategy as needed to ensure you're on track to meet them.

3. Identify your Team Structure

The third step in creating a sales business plan is to identify your team structure.

This involves identifying the key players in your sales team, outlining their roles and responsibilities, and providing a brief overview of their experience and qualifications.

Here are some tips for describing your team -

  • Identify the key players in your sales team, such as sales representatives, account managers, and sales managers.
  • Outline each team member's role and responsibilities in the sales process.
  • Provide a brief overview of each team member's experience and qualifications.
  • Consider including a chart or diagram that illustrates the structure of your sales team.

By clearly defining your sales team and their roles, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page and working together toward your sales goals. Additionally, highlighting your team's experience and qualifications can help build confidence in your ability to deliver results.

4. Define your Target Market

The fourth step in creating a sales business plan is to define your target market.

This involves identifying the specific group or groups of people that your products or services are intended for and understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviors.

Here are some tips for defining your target market -

  • Start by analyzing your existing customer base to identify common characteristics such as age, gender, location, income level, etc.
  • Conduct market research to gain a deeper understanding of your target market's needs, preferences, and behaviors.
  • Develop buyer personas that represent your ideal customers, including their goals, challenges, and pain points.
  • Consider the size and growth potential of your target market, as well as any trends or changes that may affect their behavior.
  • Identify any gaps or unmet needs in the market that your products or services could address.

By defining your target market, you can create more targeted and effective sales strategies that are tailored to the needs and preferences of your ideal customers. This can help you build stronger relationships with your target audience, increase customer loyalty, and ultimately drive sales growth.

5. Evaluate Resources

This step involves taking stock of the resources you have at your disposal and assessing how you can leverage them to achieve your objectives. Here are some key aspects to consider:

  • Human Resources : Consider the size and skill set of your team. Determine if you have enough people with the right skills to achieve your sales goals, and if not, consider hiring or outsourcing.
  • Financial Resources : Assess the financial resources you have available, including cash on hand, lines of credit, and investments. Determine if you have enough funds to achieve your sales objectives or if you need to secure additional financing.
  • Technology Resources : Evaluate the technology resources available to your team, including hardware, software, and other tools. Determine if you have the right technology to support your sales efforts and if any upgrades or investments are necessary.
  • Intellectual Property : Consider any patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property that can support your sales efforts. Determine if you have any competitive advantages that can be leveraged to increase sales.
  • Facilities and Equipment : Evaluate your physical resources, including office space, production facilities, and equipment. Determine if you have enough space and equipment to support your sales efforts, or if any upgrades or investments are necessary.

By evaluating your available resources, you can determine what you have at your disposal to support your sales strategy and identify any areas where you may need to invest or make changes to achieve your objectives.

6. Carry Out Competitive Analysis with Competitors

This involves taking stock of the resources you have available to support your sales efforts, as well as identifying any additional resources you may need to acquire.

Here are some key things to consider when evaluating your resources:

  • Sales Team: Evaluate the skills and experience of your sales team to ensure that they are capable of executing your sales strategy effectively.
  • Marketing Materials: Assess the quality and effectiveness of your existing marketing materials, including brochures, websites, social media channels, and other promotional materials.
  • Customer Data : Analyze your customer data to identify trends and patterns that can inform your sales and marketing strategies.
  • Sales Tools and Technologies: Determine whether your team has the right tools and technologies to support their sales efforts. This could include customer relationship management (CRM) software, sales automation tools, or other sales technologies.
  • Training and Development: Identify any gaps in your team's skills or knowledge, and develop a plan to address them through training and development initiatives.

By evaluating your resources in this way, you can identify any gaps or weaknesses in your sales process and develop strategies to address them. This will help you ensure that you have the resources you need to achieve your sales objectives and drive growth for your business.

7. Set the Budget

The seventh point is to set a budget for your sales business plan.

This step is essential to ensure that you have the necessary resources to implement your sales strategy effectively. Here are some tips on how to set a budget for your sales plan:

  • Determine your Revenue Goals: Your revenue goals will guide you in setting a realistic budget. Consider the size of your market, the competition, and your pricing strategy.
  • Calculate your Expenses: You need to estimate your expenses to set a budget. Make a list of all your expenses, including salaries, marketing, technology, and travel expenses.
  • Prioritize Expenses: Once you have calculated your expenses, prioritize them. Identify the essential expenses that you must incur to implement your sales strategy.
  • Allocate Resources: Allocate resources based on your priorities. Make sure that you have enough funds to cover your critical expenses and have some funds set aside for unexpected expenses.
  • Review and Adjust: Regularly review your budget and adjust it as needed. Make sure that you are on track to meet your revenue goals, and adjust your expenses accordingly.

Setting a budget is crucial for the success of your sales business plan. It will help you allocate resources effectively, prioritize expenses, and track your progress toward your revenue goals.

8. Define your Organization's Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is an essential component of a sales business plan as it outlines the approach a company will take to promote and sell its products or services to its target customers. The following are some key elements to consider when defining the marketing strategy for your sales business plan:

  • Value Proposition: Define the unique value proposition of your product or service, and identify the key benefits and features that set it apart from competitors.
  • Target Audience: Determine the specific demographics, needs, and behaviors of your target audience, and how your product or service can address their needs.
  • Positioning : Define the position of your product or service in the marketplace, based on factors such as pricing, quality, and features.
  • Channels : Identify the channels through which you will reach your target audiences, such as social media, email marketing, or direct mail.
  • Budget : Determine how much you will allocate to marketing activities, and how you will measure the return on investment.
  • Marketing Tactics : Define the specific tactics you will use to promote your product or service, such as advertising, content marketing, or event sponsorships.
  • Metrics : Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to measure the success of your marketing efforts, such as website traffic, lead generation, or sales conversion rates.

By clearly defining your marketing strategy in your sales business plan, you can ensure that your efforts are focused, efficient, and aligned with your overall business objectives.

9. Figure Out the Sales Strategy

This step involves developing a detailed plan for selling your product or service to your target market.

Here are some things to consider when developing your sales strategy -

  • Sales Channels: Consider the best channels for selling your product or service, such as online marketplaces, social media, direct sales, or distribution partnerships.
  • Sales Process: Outline the sales process, including how you will generate leads, how you will qualify leads, how you will make your sales pitch, and how you will close deals.
  • Sales Team: Determine who will be responsible for sales, their job descriptions, and how they will be trained and compensated.
  • Sales Goals: Establish specific, measurable sales goals and objectives, such as revenue targets, sales volume, or customer acquisition.
  • Sales Forecast: Develop a sales forecast based on your target market, pricing strategy, and sales goals. This should include projections for monthly, quarterly, and annual sales.
  • Sales Metrics: Determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) you will use to track your sales success, such as conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and customer acquisition cost.

By developing a clear and comprehensive sales strategy, you will be better equipped to execute your sales plan and achieve your business goals.

10. Define an Action Plan

The final step to writing a sales business plan is to define an action plan.

This step involves determining how the objectives will be achieved and what actions need to be taken to implement the sales strategies outlined in the previous steps. Some key elements of this step include:

  • Assigning Tasks and Responsibilities: Determine who will be responsible for implementing each aspect of the sales plan and assign tasks accordingly.
  • Setting Timelines: Establish specific timelines for each action item to ensure that the sales plan stays on track and progresses toward achieving its objectives.
  • Monitoring Progress: Regularly monitor progress towards the objectives and make adjustments to the action plan as necessary.
  • Identifying Potential Roadblocks: Anticipate any challenges or roadblocks that may arise during implementation and develop contingency plans to address them.
  • Identifying Metrics: Establish metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the sales plan and adjust the action plan accordingly.

By defining a clear action plan, a sales business plan can be effectively implemented, and the sales team can work towards achieving the objectives and targets set out in the plan.

Why Do Organizations Need a Sales Plan?

Organizations need a sales business plan for several reasons -

1. Clarity of Goals and Objectives

A sales business plan provides a clear roadmap for an organization to achieve its sales goals and objectives. Defining the steps that need to be taken helps ensure that everyone in the organization is working towards the same goals.

2. Resource allocation

A sales business plan helps organizations allocate resources effectively. By knowing where the company is headed, it can identify the resources required to achieve those goals and allocate them accordingly.

3. Improved decision-making

With a sales business plan, organizations can make informed decisions about their sales strategy. They can assess the viability of different sales channels, sales techniques, and sales campaigns based on the data they have collected.

4. Better risk management

A sales business plan can help organizations identify and manage risks more effectively. By forecasting sales revenue and expenses, companies can develop contingency plans to address potential risks.

5. Improved Communication

A sales business plan provides a clear and concise way to communicate the organization's sales strategy to stakeholders. This ensures that everyone in the organization is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

4 Examples of Sales Business Plan Templates

Here are a few examples of sales business plan templates that you could take inspiration from -

30-60-90 Day Sales Plan

A 30-60-90 day sales plan is a detailed outline of the tasks and goals a salesperson hopes to accomplish within the first 30, 60, and 90 days of starting a new job or taking on a new sales territory. The plan is designed to help the salesperson quickly ramp up their productivity and start making meaningful contributions to the team.

Here is a template for a 30-60-90 day sales plan -

First 30 Days

  • Meet with my manager and team members to gain an understanding of the company's products, services, and sales processes.
  • Study the company's existing customer base and their needs.
  • Begin establishing relationships with key customers.
  • Attend sales training sessions to further develop my skills and learn more about the company's offerings.
  • Develop a list of potential prospects in my assigned territory.
  • Schedule meetings with the manager and team members.
  • Analyze the company's existing customer data.
  • Make a list of key customers to reach out to.
  • Attend scheduled sales training sessions.
  • Create a list of potential prospects.

Second 30 Days

  • Start making sales calls to prospects and schedule appointments.
  • Follow up with previous prospects and leads.
  • Conduct thorough research on potential prospects to understand their needs and pain points.
  • Develop a clear understanding of the competitive landscape.
  • Refine my sales pitch and value proposition.
  • Make at least [X] several sales calls per day.
  • Schedule appointments with interested prospects.
  • Follow up with previous leads.
  • Research potential prospects.
  • Analyze the competition and develop strategies to differentiate from them.
  • Work with my manager to refine my sales pitch and value proposition.

Third 30 Days

  • Close deals with interested prospects and achieve sales targets.
  • Continue building relationships with key customers.
  • Develop a pipeline of potential future sales.
  • Develop strategies to retain existing customers.
  • Identify areas for improvement and provide feedback to the team.
  • Create a customer retention plan.

2. Monthly Sales Plan Template

A monthly sales plan is a document that outlines the sales activities, goals, and strategies for a specific month. It is a crucial part of a company's sales strategy and helps the sales team to stay focused and accountable for their performance.

Here is a template for a monthly sales plan -

I. Overview

  • Month: [insert month]
  • Sales team: [list the sales team members]

II. Monthly Sales Goals

  • Revenue goal: [insert revenue goal for the month]
  • Sales target: [insert sales target for the month]
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs): [list the KPIs that will be tracked for the month]

III. Sales Strategies

  • Marketing activities: [list the marketing activities planned for the month]
  • Sales activities: [list the sales activities planned for the month]
  • Promotions and discounts: [list the promotions and discounts planned for the month]

IV. Sales Forecast

  • Projected revenue: [insert projected revenue for the month]
  • Sales pipeline: [list the sales opportunities in the pipeline for the month]
  • Sales conversion rate: [insert the sales conversion rate for the month]

V. Resources

  • Sales tools and technology: [list the sales tools and technology that will be used during the month]
  • Sales team training: [list the training sessions planned for the month]

VI. Risks and Challenges

  • Potential obstacles: [list the potential obstacles that may hinder sales performance]
  • Mitigation strategies: [list the strategies to mitigate the potential risks and challenges]

VII. Action Plan

  • Weekly sales goals: [list the weekly sales goals for the month]
  • Assigned tasks and responsibilities: [list the tasks and responsibilities assigned to each sales team member]
  • Deadlines: [list the deadlines for each task]

VIII. Conclusion

  • Recap of monthly goals and strategies
  • Next steps and follow-up actions.

3. Territory Sales Plan Template

A territory sales plan is a comprehensive strategy designed to outline the sales objectives, goals, and tactics that will be implemented in a specific geographic area or "territory."

This plan should provide a clear roadmap for how a sales team will approach and engage with potential customers in their assigned area, and outline the resources needed to achieve the desired outcomes.

A template for a territory sales plan might include the following sections -

  • Executive Summary: This section provides a brief overview of the territory sales plan, including the purpose, objectives, and key strategies.
  • Territory Analysis : This section should provide a detailed analysis of the assigned territory, including information about the market, competition, target customers, and other relevant data.
  • Sales Goals: This section should outline the sales goals and objectives for the territory, including revenue targets, customer acquisition goals, and other key performance indicators.
  • Sales Strategies: This section should provide a detailed overview of the strategies and tactics that will be used to achieve the sales goals outlined in the previous section. This may include details about lead generation, customer engagement, sales presentations, and other sales-related activities.
  • Resource Allocation: This section should outline the resources required to implement the sales strategies outlined in the previous section. This may include budgetary requirements, staffing needs, and other resources necessary to support the sales team.
  • Implementation Plan: This section should provide a detailed timeline and action plan for implementing the sales strategies and achieving the sales goals outlined in the previous sections.
  • Performance Metrics: This section should outline the key performance metrics that will be used to measure the success of the territory sales plan, including sales revenue, customer acquisition rates, and other relevant data.
  • Conclusion : This section should summarize the key points of the territory sales plan and highlight the expected outcomes and benefits of implementing the plan.

By using a template such as the one outlined above, sales teams can create a plan that is tailored to their unique needs and objectives, and that can be easily communicated to stakeholders and team members.

Wrapping Up,

Effective planning is crucial for the success of any business, and this is especially true when it comes to achieving sales targets. Before promoting your product or service, it's essential to establish clear goals and determine the strategies that will help you achieve them.

With a well-defined plan in place, you'll have the clarity and direction necessary to make informed decisions and stay on track toward achieving your objectives.

Don't leave the success of your sales plan to chance - schedule a demo with one of Salesken's experts today and discover how our innovative solutions can help you achieve your sales targets.

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Build a Successful Sales Business with Our Template

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Define your target market, and develop a winning sales strategy with our sales business template. Know how to create personalized buying experiences that improve trust and loyalty with your organization.

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A Step-By-Step Blueprint to Write a Winning Sales Business Plan

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How to Create an Effective Sales and Marketing Plan

sales business plans templates

A comprehensive sales and marketing plan sets up organizations for long-term growth and success. In this guide, we’ll dig into the differences between sales and marketing plans, how to create your plan, and templates to get the ball rolling.

What is a Sales and Marketing Plan?

Sales plan vs. marketing plan, marketing plan template: the essential components, sales plan template: the essential components, steps to create a sales and marketing plan.

A well-crafted sales and marketing plan is indispensable for the success and growth of any company, whether it’s a startup, small business, or enterprise. This plan serves as a roadmap, outlining clear objectives, targeted customer segments, and actionable tactics to drive sales and promote brand awareness.

It enables companies to understand their market position, competitive landscape, and customer needs. On top of that, it provides a structured approach to buyer engagement , ensuring consistent and effective communication across various touchpoints.

By defining specific goals and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), a sales and marketing plan provides a structured framework for marketing and sales to align their go-to-market efforts. And when teams are aligned, companies can generate up to 208% more revenue from their marketing efforts.

While sales and marketing are integral to an overall business plan, they serve distinct purposes and focus on different aspects of the customer journey. Here are the key differences between a sales plan and a marketing plan:

Focus and Objectives

Sales Plan: Primarily focuses on the activities and strategies to drive direct revenue generation. It outlines the specific actions the sales team will take to achieve targets and goals.

Marketing Plan: Concentrates on creating awareness, generating interest, and positioning new products or services in the market. It aims to build and maintain the brand, nurture leads, and create favorable conditions for sales.

Sales Plan: Typically more tactical and operational, it details the sales team’s day-to-day activities. It addresses how sales representatives engage with prospects, close deals, and meet revenue targets.

Marketing Plan: Has a broader scope, encompassing the overall market strategy, brand positioning, promotional activities, and communication efforts. It sets the stage for sales by creating a favorable market environment.

Sales Plan: Often focuses on short-term goals and immediate revenue generation. It may have a more immediate and tactical orientation focusing on quarterly or annual targets.

Marketing Plan: Can have a longer-term perspective, building brand equity and customer relationships over time. It may include short-term and long-term initiatives aligned with the overall business strategy.

Sales Plan: Includes sales tactics, prospecting strategies, target setting, and customer relationship management (CRM) activities.

Marketing Plan: Encompasses market research, target audience identification, advertising, content creation, social media strategy, and overall brand positioning.

Sales Plan: Metrics focus on sales performance , revenue targets, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and individual sales representative performance.

Marketing Plan: Metrics include brand awareness, lead generation, website traffic, social media engagement, customer acquisition costs, and marketing ROI.

Collaboration

Sales Plan: Primarily involves collaboration within the sales team, setting individual and team goals, and coordinating efforts to meet targets.

Marketing Plan: Requires collaboration between marketing and other departments to ensure a consistent brand message and a seamless customer experience. This collaboration extends to content creation, advertising, and customer relationship strategies.

Here, you can see that a sales plan is more tactical and concentrates on direct revenue generation. In contrast, the marketing plan is strategic, focusing on creating a favorable market environment and building brand equity.

An effective marketing plan outlines a business’s strategies and tactics to achieve its marketing objectives. Here are the key components that typically go into creating a new marketing plan:

Executive Summary

  • Brief overview of the marketing plan, including goals, strategies, and key components.

Market Analysis

  • Analysis of the target market, including demographics, trends, and opportunities.
  • Competitor analysis, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis).

Target Audience and Buyer Personas

  • Detailed profiles of the target customers, specifying their needs, pain points, preferences, and behaviors.
  • Development of buyer personas to guide marketing strategies, messaging, and sales outreach.

Marketing Goals and Objectives

  • Clearly defined SMART goals for the marketing efforts.
  • Specific objectives, such as brand awareness, lead generation, customer acquisition, or market share.

Positioning and Messaging

  • Clear articulation of the brand positioning and competitive advantages.
  • Development of consistent messaging that resonates with the target audience.

Marketing Strategies

  • Overview of the overarching marketing strategies, including product positioning, pricing, distribution, and promotion.
  • Differentiation strategies and competitive positioning.

Marketing Mix (4Ps)

  • Product: Details about the products or services being marketed.
  • Price: Pricing strategy, discounts, and payment terms.
  • Place: Distribution channels and logistics.
  • Promotion: Advertising, public relations, digital marketing, content marketing, and other promotional activities.

Marketing Budget

  • Allocation of budget for each marketing activity and channel.
  • Cost projections and expected return on investment (ROI).

Marketing Calendar

  • Timeline for planned marketing activities, campaigns, and promotions.
  • Seasonal considerations and industry-specific events.

Marketing Channels

  • Identification and description of the marketing channels to be utilized (online and offline).
  • Social media strategy, content marketing plan, email marketing, advertising channels, etc.

Content Strategy

  • Development of a content plan, including types of content (i.e. case studies, one-pagers), frequency, and distribution channels.
  • Content creation and distribution strategy.
  • Regular content audit to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Measurement and Analytics

  • KPIs to benchmark the success of marketing activities.
  • Tools and methods for data collection and analysis.

A sales plan is a strategic document that outlines the tactics and activities a business will undertake to achieve its sales objectives. Here are the key components that typically go into a sales plan:

  • Brief overview of the entire sales plan, summarizing the goals, strategies, and key components.

Sales Objectives

  • Clearly defined and measurable sales goals, such as revenue targets, market share, or customer acquisition metrics.
  • Specific and realistic objectives for the sales team.

Target Market and Customer Segmentation

  • Identification of the target market and specific customer segments.
  • Create ideal customer profiles and characteristics to guide sales efforts.

Product or Service Offering

  • Detailed information about the products or services being sold.
  • Value propositions and key differentiators.

Sales Strategies

  • Overview of the overarching sales strategies , including prospecting, lead generation, and conversion tactics.
  • Strategies for acquiring new customers, upselling, cross-selling, and customer retention.

Sales Team Structure

  • Organization of the sales team, including roles, responsibilities, and reporting structure.

Sales Tactics and Techniques

  • Detailed description of the tactics and techniques the sales team will use to engage with potential customers and increase the bottom line.
  • Sales methodologies employed by the team.

Sales Forecast

  • Prediction of sales performance over a specific period.
  • Revenue projections, taking into account market conditions and other relevant factors.

Sales Territories and Distribution Channels

  • Definition of sales territories and distribution channels.
  • Strategies for reaching and serving customers in different geographic areas.

Sales Metrics and KPIs

  • Identification of key metrics to measure sales performance.
  • KPIs such as conversion rates, average deal size, and customer acquisition costs.

Sales Training and Development

  • Plans for training and developing the sales team.
  • Continuous improvement strategies.

Now that you have templates in place, let’s put them together to create an overall plan and what it could look like.

Look for trends in the data

Before you start digging into the meat of your plan, you need to gather data, drawing from internal company insights and external market trends. Internally, you can look at historical sales data, customer behaviors, and product performance, providing a foundation for understanding the company’s strengths and areas for improvement.

On the other hand, keeping a keen eye on external market trends, consumer preferences, and industry developments allows for a proactive approach to shifts in the market. This data-driven strategy enables businesses to effectively tailor their sales and marketing initiatives , aligning them with evolving customer needs. By combining internal insights with external trends, organizations can craft a dynamic plan that is not only grounded in historical performance but is also adaptable to the changing landscape of the business environment.

Know your customer

One of the most important steps when creating a sales and marketing plan is to know who you’re selling to. You should develop in-depth buyer personas based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes. By understanding your target audience’s characteristics, preferences, and pain points, you can tailor your sales and marketing strategies to resonate more effectively.

This key step not only enhances the efficiency of marketing campaigns but also streamlines the sales process by aligning efforts with the expectations and behaviors of your customers.

Set achievable goals

Now that you have a clear image of who you’re selling to, where you stand, and where the market is, you and various stakeholders can begin to set realistic goals and targets for your team.

Setting goals is crucial for your success. They allow you to track if you’re making a real impact on your business. They create alignment between teams so they know what they must do to achieve those goals. A recent study by HubSpot found that 25% of companies say their sales and marketing teams are either “misaligned” or “rarely aligned” on goals, leading to confusion and poor performance.

To get your teams on the same page, you should consider setting SMART goals. Here is a great example of how to think about goal setting:

Specific: Make sure your goals are clear. What will be accomplished? What actions will you take? Don’t just say you want to increase revenue — explain how you plan to achieve it. For example, you can say: We will increase revenue by 15% by using a guided selling approach.

Measurable: What metrics will you use to determine if you met your goal? This makes a goal more tangible because it provides a way to measure progress.

Achievable: Consider how to accomplish the goal, if you have the tools and skills needed, and what it would take to attain it. Don’t set objectives that are impossible to reach. The goals are meant to inspire motivation, not discouragement.

Relevant: Goals need to fit your current situation and sales strategy. They should align with the overall business goals and department objectives.

Time-Bound: Realistic timing for when you can achieve your goals is crucial. Provide deadlines and target dates to hold teams accountable.

Determine how you will measure success

Now that you’ve set goals, it’s time to start measuring them.

KPIs are crucial metrics that help measure the effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts. Here’s a list of KPIs for a sales and marketing plan:

Sales KPIs:

  • Revenue: Total income generated from sales.
  • Sales Growth Rate: Percentage increase in sales over a specific period.
  • Conversion Rate: Percentage of leads that convert into customers.
  • Average Deal Size: Average value of a sales transaction.
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Cost incurred to acquire a new customer.
  • Sales Cycle Length: Average time it takes to close a sale.
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Predicted revenue generated throughout a customer’s lifecycle.
  • Win Rate: Percentage of opportunities that result in a sale.
  • Churn Rate: Percentage of customers lost over a given period.
  • Upsell and Cross-sell Rate: Percentage of existing customers who purchase additional products or services.

Marketing KPIs:

  • Lead Generation: Number of new leads acquired.
  • Website Traffic: Number of visitors to the website.
  • Conversion Rate (Marketing): Percentage of website visitors who take a desired action.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of people who click on a specific link.
  • Cost per Lead (CPL): Cost associated with acquiring a new lead.
  • Social Media Engagement: Likes, shares, comments, and other interactions on social media.
  • Email Open and Click-through Rates: Percentage of opened emails and clicked links.
  • Content Engagement: Interaction with blog posts, videos, or other content.
  • Brand Awareness: Measured through surveys, social media mentions, or search volume.
  • Return on Investment (ROI): Ratio of the net profit from marketing campaigns to the cost of those campaigns.

Overall Business KPIs:

  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Measurement of customer satisfaction.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): Indicator of customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend.
  • Market Share: Company’s portion of the total market.
  • Brand Equity: Perceived value and strength of a brand in the market.
  • Customer Retention Rate: Percentage of customers retained over a period.

Regularly monitoring these metrics provides insights into performance, helping businesses make informed decisions and optimize their sales and marketing strategies.

Define your sales and marketing strategies

How are you going to generate demand for your product or service? At this stage in your plan, you can start to define how you will reach your ideal customers and move them through the buyer’s journey. Integrated marketing campaigns that use various channels, such as social media and paid ads, are a great way to get started. Additionally, you should include lead generation strategies such as content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and targeted promotions to nurture prospects and guide them through the sales funnel.

It’s important here that you work with your sales enablement team to create relevant content for the sales team .

Formulate a sales team structure and training program

A well-defined sales team structure and comprehensive training program are vital to a successful sales and marketing plan. The structure of the sales team should outline roles, responsibilities, and reporting hierarchies to ensure efficient workflow and clear lines of communication.

Along with getting the structure right, you must ensure that your sales reps have the right training and coaching to improve their skills, ramp up product knowledge, and stay aligned with the right messaging and communication techniques.

Teams should work closely with sales enablement to schedule regular training sessions that not only focus on enhancing existing skills but also address emerging market trends and customer expectations. Continuous improvement is key, and fostering a culture of learning within the sales team contributes to adaptability and responsiveness. This dual emphasis on structure and training ensures the sales team is well-organized and equipped to navigate challenges.

Download resource: What Good Onboarding, Training, and Coaching Look Like

Create a sales forecasting model

Creating a sound forecasting model provides a structured framework for predicting future sales performance. This model involves analysis of historical sales data, market trends, and external factors that might impact sales.

The sales forecasting model should incorporate variables such as product demand, pricing strategies, and market conditions to provide a comprehensive and accurate estimation.

A well-crafted model not only aids in resource allocation, inventory management, and budgeting but also serves as a proactive tool for anticipating challenges and capitalizing on emerging opportunities, contributing to the overall success of the sales and marketing plan.

Continuously Optimize

Recognizing that markets, consumer behaviors, and competitive landscapes evolve, an effective plan should be agile and responsive. This involves regularly reviewing KPIs, analyzing data, and soliciting feedback to identify areas for improvement.

Whether refining marketing strategies, adjusting sales tactics, or fine-tuning messaging, the goal is to stay attuned to shifts in customer preferences and market trends. By fostering a culture of continuous optimization, businesses can adapt swiftly, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and mitigate potential challenges.

Execute Your Sales and Marketing Plan with Highspot’s Sales Enablement Platform

Aligning your sales and marketing plans is no easy task. Highspot’s sales enablement platform aligns marketing initiatives with sales goals to maximize collaboration. By tracking key metrics across the buyer’s journey, you’ll know how to drive measurable revenue growth that improves lead acquisition and retention. Book a demo today !

The Highspot Team works to create and promote the Highspot sales enablement platform, which gives businesses a powerful sales advantage to engage in more relevant buyer conversations and achieve their revenue goals. Through AI-powered search, analytics, in-context training, guided selling, and 50+ integrations, the Highspot platform delivers enterprise-ready sales enablement in a modern design that sales reps and marketers love.

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Plan Templates

Sales business plan template – 16+ free word, excel, pdf format download.

If you are a part of the retail industry, medical, hospitality or the sales service, a sales business plan template will provide a suitable platform to articulate issues relating to business and derive effective results. Every organization has certain objectives that it has to achieve in its sales department. So, it is always better to have a sales business plan ready for such situations.

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Sales Business Plan Template

sales business plan template

  • Google Docs

Simple Sales Business Plan Template

simple sales business plan template

Business Sales Plan Template

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Car Sales Business Plan Template

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Car Sale Marketing Plan Template

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Hotel Sales Business Plan Template

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Business Plan Template

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5 Steps to Create a Sales Business Plan:

Step 1: objectives, step 2: strategies and tactics, step 3: budget, step 4: overcoming setbacks, step 5: action plan and review, simple business plan template.

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Sales Plan Template

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Strategic Sales Plan Template

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Financial Plan Template

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Sales Business Plan Template Format

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Sales Business Plan Example

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Sample Sales Business Plan

sample sales business plan

Sales Marketing Plan Template

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Marketing and Sales Business Plan Template

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How to Write a Sales Business Plan

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Final Thoughts:

More in plan templates, 60+ ultimate business plan template bundle, five-year sales business plan template, sales detailed plan for large contracts execution template, sales business plan for targeting large clients template, feedback policy after sales training template, sales case study for product presentation template, sales collateral metrics statement template, sales accepted proposal resolution template, sales monthly lead plan template.

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Sales plan template for top results

Prep your sales teams and organization to crush their long term revenue goals with our crm template. creating a sales plan with our curated layout gives you everything you need to get started fast, so you can make an impact..

Sales Plan Kanban

Integrate with your favorite tools

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Tips for building an effective sales plan

Master sales forecasting, optimize your sales process, sync team members, sales plan template key features that support your business goals.

  • Executive summary
  • Business goals and revenue targets
  • Performance analysis
  • Market and industry overview
  • Strategy and tactic refinement
  • Customer segmenting
  • Individual team member plans
  • Integrations Our template includes your favorite tools for sales impact — Mailchimp, Hubspot, Facebook Ads, Salesforce, Google Calendar, and Gmail.
  • Sales rep onboarding Create a consistent and comprehensive plan for your sales recruits. Our template helps you create workflows and workdocs for both training and for easy-to-understand hands-on learning, such as where to upload quotes and invoices.

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Frequently asked questions.

  • What is sales strategy? Sales strategies will differ, often in relation to the relationship with a lead. Four essential strategies include script-based selling, needs-satisfaction selling, consultative selling, and strategic partnering.
  • How do you write a sales plan or strategy? Writing a sales plan has several core steps including: 1. Write a mission statement 2. Detail team roles and responsibilities 3. Identify target market 4. Take stock of tools, software, and resources required 5. Understand your organization’s position in the industry via analysis 6. Align with marketing strategy 7. Define prospecting strategy 8. Create and execute action plan
  • What is a 30 60 90 day sales plan? Use the following steps to create a template on monday.com: 1. Head over to the monday.com template center and choose the template that best fits your needs 2. Fill in the fields and customize columns, groups, statuses, and more to create your desired workflow 3. Gather your resources such as budget plans, project scope, or other important materials and attach them to the board for easy access 4. Assign team members to items and fill in due dates from the date column 5. Tag or add stakeholders to the board 6. make this board your one source of truth and have all team members update their progress status 7. Set up automations to automatically notify stakeholders of important dates, when deliverables arrive, tasks that are suck, and so on 8. Save the board as a template and repeat for any project, changing columns, groups, and other information as needed

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  • B2B Sales and Marketing

How to Create a Winning B2B Sales Plan [+ Free Template]

  • Last updated December 20, 2022
  • By Jessica Huhn

b2b sales plan template

ON THIS PAGE

Are you ready to be the next rockstar of your company’s sales meeting? Whether you work for a new business or an established one, keep reading to learn everything about how to create a sales plan that brings you more clients. And after that, you can download our free sales plan template and get started making one of your own.

What is a B2B sales plan?

b2b sales plan example

Before diving too deep, it’s helpful to go over a quick sales plan definition. These plans are ways for companies to strategize and set goals for their sales departments.

There are several beneficial reasons to create this type of action plan. One reason is because these plans give your team clear objectives to carry out. Also, the research you perform while creating this type of business plan often uncovers new opportunities for your team. Lastly, these types of plans also allow for performance and goal tracking. This is a great way to find out if your team is growing stronger in their sales skills or if problems need addressing.

Now, let’s go over what you need to include in your company’s sales plan.

What should you include in your strategic sales plan?

SWOT table for b2b sales plan

There are many sections you’ll want to include in this type of action plan for your team. Considering that, it’s helpful to learn more about these important sections. Here is a quick overview of each section of a standard sales plan.

1. Introduction

Typically, the beginning of this plan is where you give a brief introduction of what this plan is going to cover. While it’s usually at the beginning, most people find it easier to create this 2–3 sentence introduction after formulating all other sections of this plan.

2. Sales team structure

This next section provides key information about the structure of your team. This includes roles and responsibilities, as well as how general reporting flows through the entire department. Sales team structures also often include information about new hires, recent promotions, location changes, sales process changes, and other updates to the structure of your team .

3. Market position/industry

market position

Another important part of this kind of plan involves listing information about your position within your industry. To do this, you’re going to need to find and report information about your competition. You might think that this sounds impossible, how can I find information about how well a competitor is doing? Fortunately, digital marketing tools make it easy to research your competition and find out more about traffic totals, brand reach, and other important metrics.

4. Target audience

It’s also a good idea to research your company’s ideal customers while creating this type of business plan. One reason to do this is because the audience a sales team is targeting can change due to lots of factors. By keeping this information updated, you’ll be able to let everyone reading your plan clearly know who your target customers are and why.

5. Challenges

Think of your company’s sales plan as a story. And no good story is complete without challenges for the characters to overcome. With that in mind, this section is where you’ll list the challenges your team faces and how you’ll overcome them. Think hard about this – you don’t want any unexpected surprises catching your team off guard.

6. Sales goals (short/long-term)

It’s also important to include a goals section in this plan. Challenges your team faces, listed in the section above, focus on things that are out of your team’s control . Goals, while still challenging, deal with things that your sales team can control.

Short-term plans measure goals that span from weeks to quarters, while longer-term plans can range from six months to years.

Also, use this section as a quick way to set any goals or key performance indicators for your sales team to achieve. This can include celebrating a certain number of new clients , a growth in total sales over the last period, expansion into new territories, and similar types of information.

7. Plan of action (sales strategy)

No sales plan is complete without a plan of action. Here, you’ll want to list the specific steps your team will use to achieve their individual and group goals. To make sure everyone is on the same page and has a clear direction of the end goal, include lots of data and actionable steps in this section of your sales plan.

8. Finances

Whether it’s a small business or large corporation, every company operates on some type of budget. Considering that, it’s essential to include financial information in your company’s sales plan. You’ll want to present accurate sales budget information including what’s available and how you plan on allocating this budget across your department. This is also a great opportunity to list sales totals and revenue targets compared to previous weeks/months/quarters/years. Also, make sure you use this section to list other types of financial goals your team is going after.

You don’t need to overthink your plan’s summary. Much like the introduction, use the summary as a way to frame a nice 2–3 sentence wrap-up that focuses on the future of your sales team.

5 steps to create a winning B2B sales action plan

Now, it’s time to learn a few tips on how to best write one of these plans. By using these tips, you’ll have plenty of information to include in your company’s sales plan.

1. Have realistic goals

It would be nice to impress your boss with a lofty goal that would make any sales manager raise their eyebrows. But struggling to meet nearly impossible goals isn’t going to end up pleasing anyone. Instead, make sure your goals are realistic, based on previous sales information and accurate forecasting.

For help with creating goals, use the SMART system , which stands for:

Smart Goals

Using this system can help ensure your sales team are creating goals that are challenging yet achievable. Also, by digging deeper into proposed goals with the SMART system, you can easily remove those that aren’t worth pursuing.

2. Back up what you’re saying with data

While creating this type of plan, it’s easy to make general statements about upcoming goals. However, without data, it’s hard to back up anything you’re saying. Essentially, this creates a plan that might look great and read well but has nothing concrete to back up the statements it makes.

3. Research your company’s target audience

Every company has its own type of target audience. You might even have multiple target audiences. To make it easier to reach this audience, take the time to find out more about their specific needs. Performing this type of research can also help you uncover lots of prospecting opportunities with possible new customers.

4. Involve all sales employees during the sales plan creation process

What group of people know the most about the challenges and opportunities your sales department faces? Your sales team. As you prepare this type of plan, make sure to get your sales team’s opinion and thoughts. Chances are, you’ll gain valuable insights and have a much stronger presentation with your whole sales team behind you.

5. Take a closer look at your competitors

If you’re like most people, you don’t want to dwell on your company’s competition. However, this is necessary if you want to create a strong plan that succeeds in the market. You can gain lots of valuable insight by looking at competitor data. Of course, no competitor is going to give you the keys to their kingdom. Instead, find the information you need by using digital marketing tools and programs to get the upper hand.

You’ll want to look for publicly available information about your competitors including:

  • Social media : Utilize social listening to take a close look at your competitors’ followers, shares, likes, and similar engagement metrics.
  • SEO results : With the help of a few marketing automation tools , you can learn more about the online presence of your company’s competition.
  • Competitor news: While looking over this type of information, look for anything else your brand’s sales team can capitalize on.

Download our exclusive, free sales plan template

If you don’t want to create a plan from scratch, we completely understand. Most salespeople find themselves dealing with lots of things to take care of and simply don’t have time to sit down to create a lengthy sales plan.

No need to worry, we’ve got you covered with our downloadable sales plan template, just click the image below to download it. This template includes everything we’ve covered above in a clean layout. Feel free to make it your own, and share this page with other colleagues you feel would benefit from this template.

sales plan template

To wrap things up, sales plans are great ways to take a closer look inside of your sales department. With these clear steps and the right relevant data, you’ll be able to create an effective sales plan that gives everyone on your team a clear picture of the road that lies ahead.

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Business Plan Template.

While your company’s goals might be crystal clear in your head, going in without a formal business plan could make things tricky. If the idea of creating one seems daunting, don’t worry. With a free business plan template, you can be up and running in no time. 

Discover more about how to create your ideal business plan and download free templates to get started here. 

Download Your Free Business Plan Template. 

Download your own free business plan template and jump right into planning your next venture. You can download a free business plan template with Adobe.  

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Edit templates using Acrobat.

Explore Adobe’s online PDF editor . Add text, sticky notes, highlights, drawings and more to your PDF with ease. Work smart with Adobe. 

What you'll learn:

•   What is a Business Plan?

•   Why is a Business Plan important?

•   How to Write a Business Plan.

•   Download Your Free Business Plan Template.

What is a Business Plan?

Business plans define core business objectives and the strategies to achieve them, in the form of a written document. They’re key for all types of businesses - whether they’re small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), start-ups or individual entrepreneurs.  

Generally, a straightforward and simple business plan template can be divided into the following five sections: 

  • Executive summary
  • Business description and structure
  • Market analysis and strategies
  • Organisation and management
  • Financial documents.

Why is a Business Plan important? 

A good business plan can be a vital tool, as it can act as a guide through each stage of starting your company. When you’re lost, it can be your compass to get back to the right track and help you and your team realign with the original vision. Think of it as a map pointing you from now to the future.  

It can also be a helpful document for the relevant external parties, such as investors or lenders.  

Here are some key benefits: 

  • Outline and Clarify Goals . Using a business plan template can help you to define and set goals, helping you to easily pitch them when required. It can serve as an excellent touchstone, too. 
  • Identify Issues . By clearly outlining plans ahead of time, you may be able to identify issues early - whether in the planning stage or based on the reality of deliverables versus the plan. 
  • Secure Financing . Being able to confidently lay out your goals, analysis, forecasted spending, personnel requirements and business structure is a great way to build confidence and potentially secure financing. 
  • Measure Progress . By comparing progress against your goals, you can get a sense of a project’s timescale and forecast for any potential disruptions or changes. This means you can stay on track and better adapt to any unknowns. It may help you plan for the future, too. 

How to Write a Business Plan.

Building upon a business plan template may seem daunting - but when you break it down, it’s no more intimidating than planning a trip. Just like a holiday, it requires preparation and organisation, but can be exciting. It’s a chance to see all your ideas come together into something coherent and actionable. 

Important Sections to Include in Your Business Plan Template.

  • Business, Products and Key Objectives . This lets you set an overall scope for your business plan and serves as a fundamental part of your company. 
  • Target Market and Competition . Analysing your target market and competition lets you make informed business decisions and can help to justify your plan. 
  • Sales and Marketing Plans . Detailing your sales and marketing plans can help you to arrange KPIs in the future and show how you’re utilising the data from your market research. 
  • Operational Plans . This section details the day-to-day running of your business, giving an in-depth outline of strategies for specific teams or supply chains. 
  • Personnel Structure . Writing a personnel structure gives you a sense of key responsibilities and requirements within the wider business. This can be an excellent place to take note of the skills that roles might require, what you already have and what you might need. 
  • Financials . Breaking down the operational costs and funding required for your business can help you to set future goals and secure backing if required. 

Having a PDF printable business plan template makes things easier when it comes time to format, print and share it with potential stakeholders. If you want to change the file format of your business plan, you can easily convert PDF to Word   and back again. 

Sharing your business plan as a PDF also allows for easy collaboration, with no subscription required and the ability to add comments, highlights and notes with our free online PDF editor tool .  

Top Tips for Your Business Plan.

Writing a business plan template is easier with these top tips, so you can get off to a smooth start - whatever your project. 

  • Be Realistic . Being realistic about your business plan means you can make informed decisions and will have minimal friction as the project progresses. 
  • Understand Your Market . By demonstrating an understanding of your market, you can better inform decisions and plan. It also makes your vision an easier sell. 
  • Keep it Concise . Don’t waffle on or obscure important facts in jargon. If you want to add additional detail, create an appendix to expand on areas. 
  • Stay Professional . This is key, as your business plan serves as a reference point both for internal operations and potential business. 
  • Review Your Business Plan . During the process of creating a business plan, certain details may change and mistakes can be made. Review your plan to ensure everything is correct and to double-check if anything needs to change with any new information during the process. You can easily edit business plans in PDF with Adobe Acrobat PDF editor online . 

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Business Terms Glossary

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68 min. read

Updated February 23, 2024

To start and run a business , you often need to understand business terms that may not be well-defined in a standard dictionary.

Our glossary of business terms provides definitions for common terminology and acronyms in business plans , accounting, finance, funding , and other aspects of small business.

Accounts Payable (AP)

Accounts payable (AP) are bills to be paid as part of the normal course of business.

This is a standard accounting term, one of the most common liabilities, which normally appears in the balance sheet listing of liabilities. Businesses receive goods or services from a vendor, receive an invoice, and until that invoice is paid the amount is recorded as part of “accounts payable.”

Accounts Receivable (AR)

Accounts receivables are debts owed to your company, usually from sales on credit. Accounts receivable is business asset, the sum of the money owed to you by customers who haven’t paid.

The standard procedure in business-to-business sales is that when goods or services are delivered the come with an invoice, which is to be paid later. Business customers expect to be invoiced and to pay later. The money involved goes onto the seller’s books as accounts receivable, and onto the buyer’s books as accounts payable.

Accrual-Based Accounting

Accrual-based accounting is standard business accounting, which assumes there will be accounts payable (Bills to be paid as part of the normal course of business) and/or sales on credit (sales made on account; shipments against invoices to be paid later), as opposed to cash basis only.

For example, most businesses have regular bills such as rent, utilities, and often inventory purchase which are not paid for at the exact moment of purchase, but are invoiced. Most businesses will also not be able to collect on all of their sales immediately in cash, but must bill the purchaser or wait for payment on at least some percentage of their sales (the exact percentage varies by industry).

Accumulated Depreciation

Total accumulated depreciation reduces the formal accounting value (called book value) of assets. Each month’s accumulated balance is the same as last month’s balance plus this month’s depreciation.

An acid test is a business’s short-term assets minus accounts receivable and inventory, divided by short-term liabilities.

This tests a company’s ability to meet its immediate cash requirements. It is one of the more common business ratios used by financial analysts.

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Acquisition Costs

Acquisition costs are the incremental costs involved in obtaining a new customer.

Adaptive Firm

An adaptive firm is an organization that can respond to and address changes in their market, their environment, and/or their industry to better position themselves for survival and profitability.

To be adaptive, it’s smart to look at your business critically—and a tool like a SWOT analysis can be helpful here.

Adventure Capital

Adventure capital is capital needed in the earliest stages of the venture’s creation before the product or service is available to be provided.

Advertising Opportunity

A product or service may generate additional revenue through advertising if there is benefit from creating additional awareness, communicating differentiating attributes, hidden qualities, or benefits. Optimizing the opportunity may involve leveraging strong emotional buying motives and potential benefits.

An agent is a business entity that negotiates, purchases, and/or sells, but does not take title to the goods.

Asset Turnover

Asset turnover is sales divided by total assets . Important for comparison over time and to other companies of the same industry. This is a standard business ratio.

Assets are property that a business owns, including cash and receivables, inventory, and so on.

Assets are any possessions that have value in an exchange. The more formal definition is the entire property of a person, association, corporation, or estate applicable or subject to the payment of debts. What most people understand as business assets are cash and investments, accounts receivable, inventory, office equipment, plant and equipment, and so on.

Assets can be long-term or short-term, and the distinction between these two categories might be whether they last three years, five years, 10 years, or whatever; normally the accountants decide for each company and what’s important is consistency. The government also has a say in defining assets, because it has to do with tax treatment; when you buy a piece of equipment, if you call that purchase an expense then you can deduct it from taxable income.

If you call it an asset you can’t deduct it, but you can list it on your financial statement among the assets. The tax code controls how businesses decide to categorize spendings into assets or expenses.

Back End (Websites)

Back end and front end describe website program interfaces relative to the user.

The front end of your website is how it looks and how a user interacts with it: the graphic design and HTML portion—some people call this the user interface or UI.

In contrast, the back end handles the dynamic parts of the site, that your website visitors generally don’t see or interact with such as a newsletter, an administration page, a registration database, a contact page or more complicated web applications.

Your back end interfaces with your UI and makes your website work.

Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is one of three essential parts that form the bedrock of a company’s financial statements: cash flow, balance sheet, and income statement.

The balance sheet is a snapshot of your company’s assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity at a specific point in time. It shows what a company owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities), and how much owners and shareholders have invested (equity).

A balance sheet always has to balance: Assets = Liabilities + Equity

For more, read our article here on Bplans that gives an overview of what a balance sheet is .

A benchmark is a standard or guideline used to compare some aspect of a business to some objective or external standard measure.

For example, when a banker compares a business’ profitability to standard financial ratios for that type of business, the process is sometimes referred to as “benchmarking.”

Industry benchmarks can tell you whether you are matching the profit margins of your peers, keeping too much inventory on hand, or getting paid faster or slower than others.

For more on small business financials, see The Key Elements of the Financial Plan .

Your company’s brand includes your business name, logo, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of all used to differentiate your goods or services from competitors.

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the added value a brand name identity brings to a product or service beyond the functional benefits provided. For example, Apple benefits from the fact that its brand name is a household name in smartphones and computers. Apple built a brand that seems fundamentally different from all other computers and smartphones.

Brand Extension Strategy

Brand extension strategy is the practice of using a current brand name to enter a new or different product class. An example of this is the ride-sharing company Uber’s foray into scooters and bike share.

Brand Recognition

Brand recognition refers to a customer’s ability to identify a brand based on its name, logo, colors, or other aspects of a marketing campaign.

Break-Even Analysis

A break-even analysis is used to assess the expected profitability of a company or a single product. It helps you determine at what point revenues and expenditures are equal.

Break-even is usually expressed in terms of the number of units you’ll need to sell or how much revenue you’ll need to generate.

The break-even analysis uses three assumptions to determine a break-even point: fixed costs, variable costs, and unit price. Fixed costs and variable costs are both included in this glossary, and unit price is the average revenue per unit of sales.

The formula for the break-even point in sales amount is: = fixed costs/(1-(Unit Variable Cost/Unit Price)).

The break-even analysis is often confused with the payback period (also in this glossary), because many people interpret breaking even as paying back the initial investment.

However, this is not what the break-even analysis actually does. Despite the common and more general use of the term “break even,” the financial analysis has an exact definition as explained above.

One important disadvantage of the break-even analysis is that it requires estimating a single per-unit variable cost, and a single per-unit price or revenue, for the entire business. That is a hard concept to estimate in a normal business that has a variety of products or services to sell.

Another problem that comes up with break-even is its preference for talking about sales and variable cost of sales in units. Many businesses, especially service businesses, don’t think of sales in units, but rather as sales in money. In those cases, the break-even analysis should think of the dollar as the unit, and state variable costs per unit as variable costs per dollar of sales.

Break-Even Point

The break-even point is the output of a standard break-even analysis. The unit sales volumes or actual sales amounts a company needs to equal its running expense rate and not lose or make money in a given month.

The formula for the break-even point in sales amount is: = Regular running costs/(1-(Unit Variable Cost/Unit Price)).

This should not be confused with the recovering initial investment through the regular operation of a business. That concept, often confused with break-even, is called the payback period.

For more detail on the subject, read: What Is Break Even Analysis?

A broker is an intermediary that serves as a go-between for the buyer or seller.

Check out our latest articles on law and taxes for more information on the legal side of setting up and managing your business.

Bundling is the practice of marketing two or more product or service items in a single package with one price.

Burden Rate

Burden rate refers to personnel burden, the sum of employer costs over and above salaries (including employer taxes, benefits, and so on).

Business Mission

A business mission is, also called a mission statement, is a brief description of an organization’s purpose with reference to its customers, products or services, markets, philosophy, and technology.

For more on your business mission, see How to Write a Mission Statement With 10 Examples

Business Plan

A business plan is a strategic roadmap for any new or growing business or startup venture. Formal business plans are generally required by bank lenders, angel investors, and venture capitalists if you’re seeking funding to grow your company. 

A business plan captures the opportunity see for your company: it describes your product or service and your business model, the target market you’ll serve. 

It also includes details on how you’ll execute your plan: how you’ll price and market your solution, and your financial projections.

Check out our full guide covering the basics of business plans .

Buy-Sell Agreement

A buy-sell agreement is an agreement designed to address situations in which one or more of the entrepreneurs want to sell their interest in the venture.

For more on exiting your business, check out our article on selling your business .

C Corporation (C Corp)

The C corporation is the classic legal entity of the vast majority of successful companies in the United States.

Most lawyers would agree that the C corporation is the structure that provides the best shielding from personal liability for owners, and provides the best non-tax benefits. This is a separate legal entity, different from its owners, which pays its own taxes.

Most lawyers would also probably agree that for a company that has ambitions of raising major investment capital and eventually going public, the C corporation is the standard legal entity.

Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR)

Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is the rate of return that would be required for an investment to grow from its beginning balance to its ending balance if you reinvest profits every year.

The standard formula for compound average growth rate is: (last number/first number)^(1/periods)-1

Cannibalization

Cannibalization is the undesirable tradeoff where sales of a new product or service decrease sales from existing products or services and minimize or detract from the total revenue.

Capital Assets

Capital assets are long-term assets, also known as fixed assets.

These terms are interchangeable. Assets are generally divided into short-term and long-term assets, the distinction depending on how long they last.

Usually, the difference between short-term and long term is a matter of accounting and financial policy. Five years is probably the most frequent division point, meaning that assets that depreciate over more than five years are long-term assets. Ten years and three years are also common.

Capital Expenditure

Spending on capital assets (also called plant and equipment, fixed assets, or long-term assets).

Capital Input

Capital input can also be called investment, or new investment. It is new money being invested in the business, not as loans or repayment of loans, but as money invested in ownership.

This is also money at risk. It will grow in value if the business prospers, and decline in value if the business declines. This is closely related to the concept of paid-in capital, on the balance sheet table. 

Paid-in capital is the amount of money actually invested in the business as money, checks written by investors. Paid-in capital increases only when there is new investment. It is different from retained earnings.

Cash normally means bills and coins, as in paying in cash.

However, the term is used in a business plan to represent the bank balance, or checking account balance.

For more on cash, check out our article on forecasting cash flow .

Cash basis means an accounting system that doesn’t use the standard accrual accounting. 

It records only cash receipts and cash spending, without assuming sales on credit (sales made on account; shipments against invoices to be paid later) or accounts payable (bills to be paid as part of the normal course of business).

ash flow measures how much money is moving into and out of your business during a specific period of time.

Businesses bring in money through sales, returns on investments, and from loans and investments—that’s cash flowing into the business.

And businesses spend money on supplies and services, as well as utilities, taxes, loan payments, and other bills—that’s cash flowing out.

Cash flow is measured by comparing how much money flows into a business during a certain period of time compared to how much money flows out of that business during that same period. Usually, cash flow is measured over the course of a month or a quarter.

Cash Flow Budget

A cash flow budget is a budget that provides an overview of cash inflows and outflows during a specified period of time.

This is often called the cash flow, or the cash budget. Just as cash flow is one of the most critical elements of business, the cash flow projection or table is one of the most critical elements of a business plan.

Cash Flow Statement

The cash flow statement is one of the three main financial statements (along with the income statement and balance sheet) that shows the financial position and health of a business.

The cash flow statement shows actual cash inflows and outflows of a business over a specified period of time, usually a month or a quarter. The statement then compares cash received to cash spending to determine if a business is cash flow negative or positive.

Cash sales are sales made in cash, with credit cards, or by check. The opposite of sales on credit (sales made on account; shipments against invoices to be paid later).

Cash Spending

Cash spending is money a business spends when it pays obligations immediately instead of letting them wait for a few days first.

Central Driving Forces Model

The central driving forces model is an entrepreneurial-based model that considers the positives and negatives of three areas of the venture; founder(s), opportunities, and resources. 

The model then evaluates these areas regarding the “fits and gaps” that indicate correlating strengths or weaknesses for the venture. The CDF model also considers industry and market information in the overall analysis.

Channel Conflicts

Channel conflicts refer to a situation where one or more channel members believe another channel member is engaged in behavior that is preventing it from achieving its goals. Channel conflict most often relates to pricing issues.

Channels of Distribution

Channels of distribution are the system where customers are provided access to an organization’s products or services.

Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign.

A click-through rate (CTR) is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a webpage by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions).

For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1%.

Co-Branding

Co-branding is the pairing of two manufacturer’s brand names on a single product or service.

Cost of Goods Sold

The cost of goods sold is traditionally the costs of materials and production of the goods a business sells.

For a manufacturing company this is materials, labor, and factory overhead. For a retail shop it would be what it pays to buy the goods that it sells to its customers.

For service businesses, that don’t sell goods, the same concept is normally called “cost of sales,” which shouldn’t be confused with “sales and marketing expenses.” The cost of sales in this case is directly analogous to cost of goods sold. 

For a consulting company, for example, the cost of sales would be the compensation paid to the consultants plus costs of research, photocopying, and production of reports and presentations.

In standard accounting, costs of sales or costs of goods sold are subtracted from sales to calculate gross margin. 

These costs are distinguished from operating expenses, because gross profit is gross margin less operating expenses. Costs are not expenses.

Collection Period (Days)

A collection period is the average number of days between delivering an invoice and receiving the money.

The formula is: =(Accounts_receivable_balance*360)/(Sales_on_credit*12)

In business, a commission is the compensation paid to the person or entity based on the sale of a product; commonly calculated on a percentage basis.

The most frequent commission formula is gross margin multiplied by the commission percentage.

Commission Percent

A commission percent is an assumed percentage used to calculate commission expense as the product of commission percent multiplied by sales, gross margin, or related sales items.

Community Interest Company (CIC)

A CIC is a new type of limited company in the United Kingdom, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good.

CICs will be easy to set up, with all the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with some special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. This is achieved by a “community interest test” and “asset lock”, which ensure that the CIC is established for community purposes and the assets and profits are dedicated to these purposes.

Registration of a company as a CIC has to be approved by the regulator who also has a continuing monitoring and enforcement role.

Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage is strategic development where customers will choose a firm’s product or service over its competitors based on significantly more favorable perceptions or offerings.

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis means assessing and analyzing the comparative strengths and weaknesses of competitors; may include their current and potential product and service development and marketing strategies.

Competitive Entry Wedges

Competitive entry wedges are strategic competitive advantages and justification for entering an established market or activity that provides recognizable and known value.

The four competitive entry wedges include:

  • New product or service
  • Parallel competition
  • Franchise entry

Completed Store Transactions

Completed store transactions refer to a conversion value measuring the number of purchases made on the website.

Concentrated Target Marketing

Concentrated target marketing is a process that occurs when a single target market segment is pursued.

Contribution

Contribution can have different meanings in different context.

When the contribution is applied to a product or product line, it means the difference between total sales revenue and total variable costs, or, on a per-unit basis, the difference between unit selling and the unit variable cost. It may be expressed in percentage terms (contribution margin) or dollar terms (contribution per unit).

Contribution Margin

Contribution is frequently expressed as contribution margin for a whole company or across a group or product line, in which case it can be taken as gross margin less sales and marketing expenses.

Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is the percentage of unique website visitors who take a desired action upon visiting the website.

The desired action may be submitting a sales lead, making a purchase, viewing a key page of the site, downloading a file, or some other measurable action.

Core Marketing Strategy

Core marketing strategy is a statement that communicates the predominant reason to buy to a specific target market.

Corporation

Corporations are either the standard C corporation, or the small business S corporation.

The C corporation is the classic legal entity of most successful companies in the United States. The S corporation is used for family companies and smaller ownership groups.

The clearest distinction from C is that the S corporation’s profits or losses go straight through to the S corporation’s owners, without being taxed separately first. 

In practical terms, this means that the corporation’s owners can take their profits home without first paying the corporation’s separate tax on profits. Profits are taxed once for the S owner, and twice for the C owner. The C corporation doesn’t send its profits home to its owners as much as the S corporation because it usually has different goals and objectives. It often wants to grow and go public, or it already is public.

In most states, an S corporation is owned by a limited number (25 is a common maximum) of private owners, and corporations can’t hold stock in S corporations, just individuals. Corporations can switch from C to S and back again, but not often. The IRS has strict rules for when and how those switches are made. 

You’ll almost always want to have your CPA and, in some cases, your attorney guide you through the legal requirements for switching.

Corridor Principal

The corridor principle is the principle where an entrepreneurial venture may find that it has significantly changed its focus from the initial concept of the venture as it has continually responded and adapted to its market and the desire to optimize profitability potential.

Cost of Sales

Cost of sales refers to the costs associated with producing the sales.

In a standard manufacturing or distribution company, this is the same as the cost of the goods sold. In a services company, this is more likely to be personnel costs for people delivering the service or subcontracting costs.

This term is commonly used interchangeably with “cost of goods sold,” particularly for a manufacturing, retail, distribution, or other product-based company. In these cases, it is traditionally the costs of materials and production of the goods a business sells.

For a manufacturing company, this is materials, labor, and factory overhead. 

For a retail shop, it would be what it pays to buy the goods that it sells to its customers. 

For service businesses that don’t sell goods, the concept is normally called “cost of sales,” which shouldn’t be confused with “sales and marketing expenses.” The cost of sales, in this case, is directly analogous to cost of goods sold.

In standard accounting, costs of sales or costs of goods sold are subtracted from sales to calculate gross margin. These costs are distinguished from operating expenses, because gross profit is gross margin less operating expenses. Costs are not expenses.

For more on costs of goods sold, see our article on the LivePlan blog: What Are Direct Costs?

Cross Elasticity of Demand

Cross elasticity of demand is the change in the quantity demanded of one product or service, impacting the change in demand for another product or service.

Current Assets

Current assets are the same as short-term assets.

Current Debt

Current debt refers to short-term debt and short-term liabilities.

Current Liabilities

Current liabilities refer to short-term debt and short-term liabilities.

Doing Business As (DBA)

DBA stands for “doing business as ,” which is a company name, also commonly called a “fictitious business name.”

When a sole proprietor operates a company using any name except his or her own given name, then the DBA or fictitious business name registration establishes the legal ownership to satisfy banks, local authorities, and customers.

So when you start the Acme Restaurant, unless you are named Acme, you need your DBA to open a bank account in that name, pay employees, and do business.

You can usually obtain this registration through the county government, and the cost is no more than a small registration fee plus a required newspaper ad, for a total of less than $100 in most states.

Debt and Equity

Debt and equity is the sum of liabilities and capital. This should always be equal to total assets.

Depreciation

Depreciation is an accounting and tax concept used to estimate the loss of value of assets over time. For example, cars depreciate with use.

Differentiated Target Marketing

Differentiated target marketing is a process that occurs when an organization simultaneously pursues several different market segments, usually with a different strategy for each.

Differentiation

Differentiation is an approach to create a competitive advantage based on obtaining a significant value difference that customers will appreciate and be willing to pay for, and which ideally will increase their loyalty as a result.

Direct Cost of Sales

Direct cost of sales is a shortcut for cost of goods sold: traditionally, the costs of materials and production of the goods a business sells, or the costs of fulfilling a service for a service business.

Direct Mail Marketing

Direct mail marketing is a form of direct marketing that involves sending information through a mail process, physical or electronic, to potential customers.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing refers to any method of distribution that gives the customer access to an organization’s products and services without intermediaries; also, any communication from the producer that communicates with a target market to generate a revenue producing response.

A directory is a computer term related to the operating system on IBM and compatible computers. Disk storage space is divided into directories.

Distinctive Competency

A distinctive competency is an organization’s strengths or qualities including skills, technologies, or resources that distinguish it from competitors to provide superior and unique customer value and, hopefully, is difficult to imitate.

Diversification

Diversification is a product-market strategy that involves the development or acquisition of offerings new to the organization and/or the introduction of those offerings to the target markets not previously served by the organization.

Dividends refers to money distributed to the owners of a business as profits.

Dual Distribution

Dual distribution is the practice of simultaneously distributing products or services through two or more marketing channels that may or may not compete for similar buyers.

Early Adopters

Early adopters are one type of adopter in Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework that describes buyers that follow “innovators” rather than be the first to purchase.

Early Majority

An early majority is one type of adopter in Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework that describes those interested in new technology that wait to purchase until these innovations are proven to perform to the expected standard.

Also called income or profits, earnings are the famous “bottom line”: sales less costs of sales and expenses.

Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT)

EBIT refers to earnings before interest and taxes.

Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA)

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (or EBITDA) is equal to the gross margin (the difference between total sales revenue and total direct cost of sales) minus total operating expenses (tax-deductible expenses incurred in conducting normal business operations, such as wages and salaries, rent, and so on), plus any depreciation (The loss of value of assets over time) and amortization.

This is similar to earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). The difference between the two is that EBIT subtracts all expenses, including depreciation, as an expense, and EBITDA subtracts all expenses except depreciation and amortization.

Economies of Scale

Economies of scale refers to the benefit that larger production volumes allow fixed costs to be spread over more units lowering the average unit costs and offering a competitive price and margin advantage.

Producing in large volume often generates economies of scale. The per-unit cost of something goes down with volume because vendors charge less per unit for larger orders, and often production techniques and facilities cost less per unit as volume increases. Fixed costs are spread over larger volume.

Effective Demand

Effective demand is when prospective buyers have the willingness and ability to purchase an organization’s offerings.

Effective Tax Rate

The effective tax rate is a comparison of final tax payments compared to actual profits. Usually the effective tax rate is somewhat less than the nominal tax rate because of deductions, credits, etc.

Entrepreneur in Heat (EIH)

The term “entrepreneur in heat” describes an entrepreneur that continues to develop new products and services beyond what the venture can support and inadvertently may diminish the focus and effectiveness of the activities supporting the venture’s primary revenue streams.

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business venture; someone who recognizes and pursues opportunities others may not see as clearly, and finds the resources necessary to accomplish his or her goals.

Equity is business ownership—capital. Equity can be calculated as the difference between assets and liabilities.

Equity Financing

Equity financing refers to the sales of some portion of ownership in a venture to gain additional capital for startup.

Evaluating Ideas and Opportunities

Evaluating ideas and opportunities is the process of considering ideas versus opportunities, and then screening those opportunities using objective criteria as well as personal criteria.

Everett Rogers

Everett Rogers is an author who studied and published work on the diffusion of innovation.

Exclusive Distribution

Exclusive distribution is a distribution strategy whereby a producer sells its products or services in only one retail outlet in a specific geographical area.

For the purposes of business accounting, expenses are deductible against taxable income. Common expenses are rent, salaries, advertising, travel, and so on.

Questions arise because some businesses have trouble distinguishing between expenses and purchase of assets, especially with development expenses. When your business purchases office equipment, if you call that an expense then you can deduct that amount from taxable income, so it reduces taxes.

Experience Curve

The experience curve is a visual representation, often based on a function of time, from exposure to a process that offers greater information and results in enhanced efficiency and operations advantage.

Features, Advantages, and Benefits (FAB)

A FAB analysis explores the features, advantages, and benefits of a product or service offering.

Marketing plans need to understand these concepts in order to develop effective marketing programs. People often confuse features and benefits; for example, in an automobile, air bags are a feature that produces the benefit of greater safety. 

Advantages fall in between, and features become advantages that offer benefits to the end user.

Failure Rule, Common Causes

Entrepreneurial ventures most often fail due to one or more of these four issues:

  • Inadequate sales (39%)
  • Competitive weaknesses (21%)
  • Excessive operating expenses (11%)
  • Uncollected receivables (9%)

Failure Rule, Exceptions to the Rule

Entrepreneurial ventures most often fail due to one (or more) of the following common issues: inadequate sales, competitive weaknesses, excessive operating expenses, and uncollected receivables.

Exceptions to the failure rule include:

  • High potential ventures
  • Threshold concept
  • Promise of growth
  • Venture capital backing

Fatal 2% Rule

The concept of the fatal 2% rule is that if a venture can just get “2%” of total market share it will be successful.

This percentage can be unattainable based on the approach, limited resources, and/or structure of the industry.

Fighting Brand Strategy

A fighting brand strategy is adding a new brand to confront competitive brands in an established product category.

First Mover

The first mover is a company that attempts to gain an unchallengeable, privileged market position by being the first to establish itself in a given market.

First Mover Advantage

Key first mover advantages include:

  • Reputation effect
  • Experience curve
  • Customer commitment and loyalty

First Mover Disadvantage

These factors can turn first-mover advantages into weaknesses. They include:

  • Resolution of technological uncertainty
  • Resolution of strategic uncertainty
  • Free-rider effect—others duplicate based on the leader’s success
  • Complementary assets to exploit core technological expertise

Fiscal Year

The fiscal year is a standard accounting practice allows the accounting year to begin in any month. Fiscal years are numbered according to the year in which they end. 

For example, a fiscal year ending in February of 2025 is Fiscal 2025, even though most of the year takes place in 2024.

Five Forces Model

Porter’s model considers these forces as they impact an industry and the overall competitive climate:

  • Risk of entry by potential competitors
  • Bargaining power of suppliers
  • Bargaining power of buyers
  • Threat of substitute products
  • Rivalry among established firms

Running costs that take time to wind down: usually rent, overhead, some salaries. Technically, fixed costs are those that the business would continue to pay even if it went bankrupt.

In practice, fixed costs are usually considered the running costs. These are static expenses that do not fluctuate with output volume and become progressively smaller per unit of output as volume increases.

Fixed costs are an important assumption for developing a break-even analysis. The standard break-even formula estimates a break-even point of sales based on per-unit price or revenue, per-unit variable costs, and fixed costs.

Fixed Liabilities

Fixed liabilities are debts—money that must be paid. Usually, debt on terms of longer than five years are fixed liabilities. Also called long-term liabilities.

Fixed liabilities, in contrast to floating liabilities, are secured by assets with a stable value, such as a building or a piece of equipment.

Floating Liabilities

Floating liabilities are debts—money that must be paid. Floating liabilities, in contrast to fixed liabilities, are secured by assets with a constantly changing value, such as a company’s accounts receivable (debtors). These are usually short-term loans.

Focus Group

A focus group refers to small groups of people, usually between nine and 12 in number, representing target audiences, that are brought together to discuss a topic that will offer insight for product development and/or marketing efforts.

Frequency Marketing

Frequency marketing refers to activities that encourage repeat purchasing through a formal program enrollment process to develop loyalty and commitment from the customer base. Frequency marketing is also referred to as loyalty programs.

Front End (Websites)

Front end and back end describe program interfaces relative to the user.

The front end, here, is the appearance of your website. It is the graphic design and HTML portion—some people call this the user interface or UI.

In contrast, the portion of the application you or your developers work with is the back end. The back end handles the dynamic parts of the site, such as a newsletter, an administration page, a registration database, a contact page, or more complicated web applications. Your back end interfaces with your UI and makes your website work.

Full-Cost Price Strategies

Full-cost price strategies are costs that consider variable cost and fixed cost (total cost) in the pricing of a product or service.

Future Value Projections

Future value projections refer to the process of projecting the future value of a venture and/or an investment in the venture. It typically considers an expected rate of return, inflation, and the period of time to assess future value.

Goodwill is when a company purchases another company for more than the value of its assets—which is quite common—the difference is recorded as an asset named “goodwill.”

This is not a general term for the value of a brand, for example, but a very specific accounting term.

For example, if one business buys another business for $1 million then it needs to show the $1 million spent as an asset. If there are only $500 thousand in real assets, the accounting result should be $500,000 in real assets purchased and another $500,000 in “goodwill.”

Gross Margin

Gross margin is the difference between total sales revenue and total cost of goods sold (also called total cost of sales). This can also be expressed on a per unit basis, as the difference between unit selling price and unit cost of goods sold. Gross margin can be expressed in dollar or percentage terms.

Gross Margin Percent

The gross margin percent is the gross margin divided by sales, displayed as a percentage. Acceptable levels depend on the nature of the business. There are providers who can deliver standard gross margins for different types of industries based on SIC (Standard Industry Classification) codes that categorize industries.

Guerrilla Marketing

The term guerrilla marketing comes from Conrad Levinson’s book Guerrilla Marketing, which refers to marketing via events and stimulated media coverage rather than paid advertisements.

Harvesting is most often referring to selling a business or product line, as when a company sells a product line or division or a family sells a business.

  • Impressions

An impression occurs each time an advertisement is seen by a potential customer. For example, in online marketing, an impression happens when an advertisement such as a banner ad loads on a user’s screen, whether for the first time, when returning to a page, or when the ad cycles through dynamically.

Income Statement

Also called profit and loss statement, an income statement is a financial statement that shows sales, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses, and profits or losses.

Gross margin is sales less cost of sales, and profit (or loss) is gross margin less operating expenses and taxes. The result is profit if it’s positive, loss if it’s negative.

Initial Public Offering (IPO)

An IPO is a corporation’s initial effort to raise capital through the sale of securities on the public stock market.

Innovation (Evolutionary or Revolutionary)

Innovation refers to the determination if an innovation is a “new and improved” concept taken to the next level (evolutionary), or the rare innovation that revolutionizes a technology or concept to the product or services.

Innovators refers to one type of adopter in Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework describing the first group to purchase a new product or service.

Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated marketing communications is the practice of blending different elements of the communication mix in mutually reinforcing ways.

Intensive Distribution

Intensive distribution is a distribution strategy whereby a producer attempts to sell its products or services in as many retail outlets as possible within a geographical area without exclusivity.

Interest Expense

Interest expense is interest paid on debts, and interest expense is deducted from profits as expenses. Interest expense is either long-term or short-term interest.

Intraprenuership

Intrapreneurship refers to entrepreneurial-based activities within a corporation that receive organizational support and resource commitments for an innovative new business experience within the organization itself.

Inventory refers to goods in stock, either finished goods or materials used to manufacture goods.

Inventory Turnover

Inventory turnover is the total cost of sales divided by inventory. Usually calculated using the average inventory over an accounting period, not an ending-inventory value.

Inventory Turns

Also known as inventory turnover, inventory turns are the total cost of sales divided by inventory. Usually calculated using the average inventory over an accounting period, not an ending-inventory value.

A jobber is an intermediary that buys from producers to sell to retailers and offers various services with that function.

Labor, in this context, refers to the labor costs associated with making goods to be sold. This labor is part of the cost of sales, part of the manufacturing and assembly. The row heading refers to fulfillment costs as well, for service companies.

Laggards are one type of adopter in Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework describing the risk-averse group that follows the late majority that is generally not interested in new technology and are the last customers to buy.

Leveraged Buy Out (LBO)

A leveraged buy-out is a type of purchase of a business that relies heavily on the venture’s cash receipts with expectations of positive cash flow continuing based on historical or other performance indicators.

Liabilities

Liabilities are debts or money that must be paid. Usually, debt on terms of less than five years is called short-term liabilities, and debt for longer than five years is called long-term liabilities.

A life cycle is a model depicting the sales volume cycle of a single product, brand, service, or a class of products or services over time described in terms of the four phases of introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

Limited (Public) Company (AUS)

A public limited company is one where the right to transfer shares and the number of members is not limited. In addition, the company may invite the public to subscribe for its shares and, to deposit money with the company.

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

The LLC form is different for different states, with some real advantages in some states that aren’t relevant in others.

An LLC is usually a lot like an S corporation, a combination of some limitation on legal liability and some favorable tax treatment for profits and transfer of assets. This is a newer form of legal entity, and often harder to establish than a corporation.

Why would you establish an LLC instead of a corporation? That’s a tough legal question, not one we can answer here. In general, the LLC has to be missing two of the four characteristics of a corporation (limited liability, centralized management, continuity of life, and free transferability of ownership interest). 

Still, with the advisability and advantages varying from state to state, here again, this is a question to take to a good local attorney with small business experience.

Limited Liability Partnership

A limited liability partnership is a form of business organization combining elements of partnerships and corporations, in which both managing and non-managing partners are protected from liability to some degree, and have a different tax liability than in a corporation. 

Although this form of business is available in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan, legal details of forming and operating such a company vary from one country to another, and by state within the U.S.

Long-Term Assets

Long-term assets are assets like plant and equipment that are depreciated over terms of more than five years, and are likely to last that long, too.

Long-Term Interest Rate

A long-term interest rate is the interest rate charged on long-term debt.

Long-Term Liabilities

Long-term liabilities are the same as long-term loans. Most companies call a debt long-term when it is on terms of five years or more.

Loss is an accounting concept, the exact opposite of profit, normally the bottom line of the income statement, which is also called profit or loss statement. 

Start with sales, subtract all costs of sales and all expenses, and that produces profit before tax. Subtract tax to get net profit. If the end result is negative, then instead of profit it is called loss.

Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are activities designed to encourage repeat purchasing through a formal program enrollment process and the distribution of benefits. Loyalty programs may also be referred to as frequency marketing.

Manufacturer’s Agent

A manufacturer’s agent is an agent who typically operates on an extended contractual basis, often sells in an exclusive territory, offers non-competing but related lines of goods, and has defined authority regarding prices and terms of sale.

A market refers to prospective buyers, individuals, or organizations, willing and able to purchase the organization’s potential offering.

Market Development Funds

Market development funds refer to the monetary resources a company invests to assist channel members increase volume sales of their products or services.

Market Development Strategy

A market development strategy is a product-market strategy whereby an organization introduces its offerings to markets other than those it is currently serving. In global marketing, this strategy can be implemented through exportation licensing, joint ventures, or direct investment.

Market Evolution

Market evolution refers to changes in primary demand for a product class and changes in technology.

Market Penetration Strategy

Market penetration is the amount that your business is able to sell a product or service to customers compared to the estimated total available market (TAM). 

This is a measurement that can help you define the serviceable available market (SAM), which is the portion you estimate that you can acquire. 

Additionally, it can serve as a baseline for developing a strategy to increase your service obtainable market (SOM), or the subset of customers that you can realistically acquire.

Market Plan

Often found within the business plan, the market plan provides details regarding the overall marketing strategy, pricing, sales tactics, service and warranty policies, advertising, promotion, and distribution plans for the venture.

Market Redefinition

Market redefinition refers to changes in the offering demanded by buyers or promoted by competitors to enhance its perception and associated sales.

Market Sales Potential

Market sales potential is the maximum level of sales that might be available to all organizations serving a defined market in a specific period.

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is the categorization of potential buyers into groups based on common characteristics such as age, gender, income, and geography or other attributes relating to purchase or consumption behavior.

Market Share

Market share is the total sales of an organization divided by the sales of the market they serve.

Marketing refers to the set of planned activities designed to positively influence the perceptions and purchase choices of individuals and organizations.

Check out our guide on the different ways to market your business .

Marketing Audit

A marketing audit is a comprehensive and systematic examination of a company’s marketing environment, objectives, strategies, and activities with a view of identifying and understanding problem areas and opportunities and recommending a plan of action.

Marketing Mix

Marketing mix refers to the activities controllable by the organization. It includes the product, service, or idea offered, the manner in which the offering will be communicated to customers, the method for distributing or delivering the offering, and the price to be charged.

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is a written document containing descriptions and guidelines for an organization’s or a product’s marketing strategies, tactics, and programs for offering their products and services over the defined planning period, often one year.

Marketing Cost Analysis

Marketing cost analysis refers to assigning or allocating costs to a specified marketing activity or entity in a manner that accurately captures the financial contribution of activities or entities to the organization.

Materials are included in the cost of sales. These are materials involved in the assembly or manufacture of goods for sale.

Materials Included in Cost of Sales

These are materials involved in the assembly or manufacture of goods for sale.

Mission Statement

A mission statement is a statement that captures an organization’s purpose, customer orientation, and business philosophy.

Moving Weighted Average

Moving weighted average is a statistical method to forecast the future based on past results. It is a subset of time series analysis.

Multiple Channel System

A multiple-channel system is a channel of distribution that uses a combination of direct and indirect channels where the channel members serve different segments.

Net Cash Flow

Net cash flow is the projected change in cash position, an increase or decrease in cash balance.

Net Present Value (NPV)

Net present value is a method of discounting future income streams using an expected rate of return to evaluate the current value of expected earnings. It calculates future value in today’s dollars. NPV may be used to determine the current value of a business being offered for sale or capitalized.

Net profit is the operating income less taxes and interest. The same as earnings, or net income.

Net Profit Margin Before Taxes

Net profit margin before taxes is the remainder after cost of goods sold, other variable costs revenue, or simply, total revenue minus total cost. Net profit margin can be expressed in actual monetary values or percentage terms.

Net worth is the same as assets minus liabilities, and the same as total equity; other short-term assets. These might be securities, business equipment, and so on.

New Visitors

In online marketing, a new visitor is a website visitor who has not made any previous visits to the site or page in question.

New Brand Strategy

New brand strategy is the development of a new brand and often a new offering for a product class that has not been previously served by the organization.

Newsletter Subscriptions

In online marketing, newsletter subscription is a conversion value measuring the number of users who voluntarily include themselves in your database and are willing to accept unsolicited emails from you.

Not Invented Here (NIH)

Not invented here is a negative response to innovations and inventions from sources outside the venture’s own research and development activities.

Obligations Incurred

Obligations incurred are business costs or expenses that need to be paid, but wait for a time as accounts payable (in other words, bills to be paid as part of the normal course of business) instead of being paid immediately.

An offering is the total benefits or satisfaction provided to target markets by an organization. An offering consists of a tangible product or service plus related services such as installation, repair, warranties or guarantees, packaging, technical support, field support, and other services.

Offering Mix or Portfolio

An offering mix is an organization’s offerings, including all products and services.

On-costs are labor costs in addition to salaries and wages; that is, payroll tax, workers’ compensation, and other liability insurance, subsidized services to employees, training costs, and so on.

Operating Expenses

Operating expenses are expenses incurred in conducting normal business operations. Operating expenses may include wages, salaries, administrative and research and development costs, but excludes interest, depreciation, and taxes.

Operating Leverage

Operating leverage is the extent to which fixed costs and variable costs are used in the production and marketing of products and services.

Operations Control

Operations control is assessing how well an organization performs marketing activities as it seeks to achieve planned outcomes.

Opportunity Analysis

Opportunity analysis identifies and explores revenue enhancement or expense reduction situations to better position the organization to realize increased profitability, efficiencies, market potential, or other desirable objectives.

Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost refers to the resource use options given up due to pursuing one activity among several possibilities. Potential benefits foregone as a result of choosing an alternative course of action.

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)

An original equipment manufacturer is the process that is facilitated through licensing or other financial arrangements where the initial producer of a product or service agrees to allow another entity to include, remanufacture, or label products or services under their name and sell through their distribution channels.

It typically results in a “higher volume, lower margin” relationship for the original producer. It offers access to a broader range of products and services the buyer can offer their consumers at more attractive costs.

Other Short-Term Liabilities

Other short-term liabilities are short-term debts that don’t cause interest expenses. For example, they might be loans from founders or accrued taxes (taxes owed, already incurred, but not yet paid).

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is purchasing an item or a service from an outside vendor to replace the performance of the task with an organization’s internal operations.

In online marketing, a request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. This is generally what people mean when they talk about webpage hits, but is a more accurate way of tracking this metric because of the way log analysis works.

A single pageview (one visitor looking at one page) may generate multiple hits in log analysis, as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js, and .css files) are also requested from the web server.

Paid-In Capital

Paid-in capital is real money paid into the company as investments. This is not to be confused with the par value of stock, or market value of stock. This is actual money to the company as equity investments by owners.

Partnership

Partnerships are hard to describe because they change so much. State laws govern them, but the Uniform Partnership Act has become the law in most states. That act, however, mostly sets the specific partnership agreement as the real legal core of the partnership, so the legal details can vary widely.

Usually, the income or loss from partnerships passes through to the partners without any partnership tax. The agreements can define different levels of risk, which is why you’ll read about some partnerships with general and limited partners, with different levels of risk for each. The agreement should also define what happens if a partner withdraws, buy and sell arrangements for partners, and liquidation arrangements if that becomes necessary.

If you think a partnership might work for your business, do this right. Find an attorney with experience in partnerships, and check for references of present and past clients. This is a complicated area, and a mistake in the agreement will cause a lot of problems.

Payables is short for account payables—bills to be paid as part of the normal course of business. This is a standard accounting term, one of the most common liabilities, which normally appears in the balance sheet listing of liabilities.

Businesses receive goods or services from a supplier, receive an invoice, and until that invoice is paid the amount is recorded as part of “accounts payable.”

Payback Period

A payback period is the number of years an organization requires to recapture an initial investment. This may apply to an entire business operation or an individual project.

Payment Days

Payment days are the average number of days that pass between receiving an invoice and paying it.

It is not a simple estimate; it is calculated with a financial formula: =(Accounts_payable_balance*360)/(Total entries to accounts payable*12)

Payment Delay

Payment delay is the number of days on average a business waits between receiving a bill and paying a bill. Also called payment days.

Payroll refers to wages, salaries, or employee compensation.

Payroll Burden

Payroll burden includes payroll taxes and benefits. It is calculated using a percentage assumption that is applied to payroll.

For example, if payroll is $1,000 and the burden rate is 10 percent, the burden is an extra $100. Acceptable payroll burden rates vary by market, industry, and company.

Penetration Pricing Strategy

Penetration pricing strategy refers to setting a relatively low initial price for a new product or service.

Perceived Risk

Perceived risk is the extent to which a customer or client is uncertain about the consequences of an action, often relating to purchase decisions.

Perceptual Map

A perceptual map is a two or three-dimensional illustration of a customer’s perceptions of competing products comparing select attributes based on market research.

Personal Selling

Personal selling is the use of face-to-face communication between the seller and buyer.

PEST analysis

PEST is a popular framework for situation analysis, looking at political, economic, and social trends. Analyzing these factors can help generate marketing ideas, product ideas, and so on.

Plant and Equipment

Plant and equipment is the same as long-term, fixed, or capital assets. These are generally assets that are depreciated over terms of more than five years, and are likely to last that long, too.

Point of Purchase Advertising (POP)

Point of purchase advertising is a retail in-store presentation that displays product and communicates information to retail consumers at the place of purchase.

A portfolio is the complete array of an organization’s offerings including all products and services. Also called an offering mix.

Positioning

Positioning refers to orchestrating an organization’s offering and image to occupy a unique and valued place in the customer’s mind relative to competitive offerings. A product or service can be positioned on the basis of an attribute or benefit, use or application, user, class, price, or quality.

Premiums refers to a product-oriented promotion that offers some free or reduced-price item contingent on the purchase of advertised or featured merchandise or service.

Price Elasticity of Demand

Price elasticity of demand is the change in demand relative to a change in price for a product or service.

Privately Owned

A company whose shares are not publicly traded on a stock market. Such companies usually have less restrictive reporting requirements than publicly traded companies. A company that is not owned by the government (state-owned).

Pro Forma Income Statement

A pro forma income statement is a projected income statement. Pro forma in this context means projected. An income statement is the same as a profit and loss statement, a financial statement that shows sales, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses, and profits.

Pro Forma Statements

The term “pro forma” in front of any financial statement primarily serves to label that version of the statement as not adhering to the strict “generally accepted accounting principles” (GAAP) standards that all publicly-traded companies must use to produce their financial statements.

Major corporations use pro forma statements to illustrate projected numbers, like in the case of a merger or acquisition, or to emphasize certain current figures.

GAAP standards don’t apply to small businesses, so you don’t really need to worry about distinguishing your financial statements as “pro forma” or not—everyone you show them to expects that they’re not GAAP-compliant. But if you want to be technically correct in your terminology, go ahead and call your financial statements “pro forma.”

Product Definition

A product definition is a stage in a new product development process in which concepts are translated into actual products for additional testing based on interactions with customers. 

Product Development

Product development refers to expenses incurred in the development of new products (salaries, laboratory equipment, test equipment, prototypes, research and development, and so on).

Product Development Strategy

A product development strategy is a product-market strategy whereby an organization creates new offerings for existing markets innovation, product augmentation, or product line extensions.

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

Product life cycle refers to the phases of the sales projections or history of a product or service category over time used to assist with marketing mix decisions and strategic options available.

The four stages of the product life cycle include introduction, growth, maturity, and decline, and typically follow a predictable pattern based on sales volume over a period of time.

Product Line

A product line is a group of closely related products with similar attributes or target markets.

Product Line Pricing

Product line pricing refers to the setting of prices for all items in a product line involving the lowest-priced product price, the highest-priced product, and price differentials for all other products in the line.

Profit is an accounting concept, normally the bottom line of the income statement, which is also called profit or loss statement. Start with sales, subtract all costs of sales and all expenses, and that produces profit before tax. Subtract tax to get net profit.

Profit Before Interest and Taxes

Profit before interest and taxes is also called EBIT, for Earnings Before Interest and Taxes. It is gross margin minus operating expenses.

Profit or Loss

Also called profit and loss statement, a profit or loss statement is an income statement is a financial statement that shows sales, cost of sales, gross margin, operating expenses, and profits or losses. 

Proprietary (Private) Limited Company

A Proprietary Limited Company (often abbreviated as “Pty Ltd”) is a private company, in which the right to transfer shares is restricted and the number of members is limited to no more than fifty.

In addition, the company is prohibited from inviting the public to subscribe for its shares and, from inviting the public to deposit money with the company.

Public Relations

Public relations refers to communications often in the form of news distributed in a non-personal form which may include newspaper, magazine, radio, television, internet, or other form of media for which the sponsoring organization does not pay a fee.

Publicly Traded

Publicly traded means a company owned by shareholders who are members of the general public and trade shares publicly, as on the stock market.

Pull Communication Strategy

A pull communication strategy creates interest among potential buyers, who demand the offering from intermediaries, ultimately “pulling” the offering through the channel.

Push Communication Strategy

A push communication strategy is the practice of “pushing” an offering through a marketing channel in a sequential fashion, with each channel focusing on a distinct target market.

The principal emphasis is on personal selling and trade promotions directed toward wholesalers and retailers. 

Questionable Costs

Questionable costs are costs that may be considered as variable or as fixed costs, depending on the specifics of the situation.

Receivables

Short for account receivables, this refers to debts owed to your company, usually from sales on credit. Accounts receivable is a business asset, the sum of the money owed to you by customers who haven’t paid.

The standard procedure in business-to-business sales is that when goods or services are delivered, they come with an invoice, which is to be paid later. Business customers expect to be invoiced and to pay later. The money involved goes onto the seller’s books as accounts receivable and the buyer’s books as accounts payable.

Receivables Turnover

Receivables turnover refers to sales on credit for an accounting period divided by the average accounts receivables balance.

Regional Marketing

Regional marketing is the practice of using different marketing mixes to accommodate unique preferences and competitive conditions in different geographical areas.

Relevant Cost

Relevant cost refers to expenditures that are expected to occur in the future as a result of some marketing action and differ among other potential marketing alternatives.

Repositioning

Repositioning is the process of strategically changing the perceptions surrounding a product or service.

Resource Requirements (Websites)

Your resource requirements are the personnel, time, space, and equipment necessary to create and maintain your website. Remember that a website is never done—it will always require resources, some of which will be used to create new content periodically.

Retained Earnings

Retained earnings are earnings (or losses) that have been reinvested into the company, not paid out as dividends to the owners. When retained earnings are negative, the company has accumulated losses.

Return on Assets

Return on assets is your net profits divided by total assets. It is a measure of profitability.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on investment, or ROI is your net profits divided by net worth or total equity. It’s another measure of profitability.

Return on Sales

Return on sales is net profits divided by sales. It’s another measure of profitability.

Return Visitors

In online marketing, a website visitor who has made at least one previous visit to the site or page in question is considered a return visitor.

Rich-Gumpert Evaluation System

The Rich-Gumpert evaluation system is a method of analysis that associates a numeric value between 1 and 4 regarding the spectrums of product development and the entrepreneur and management team.

S Corporation (S Corp)

The C corporation is the classic legal entity of the vast majority of successful companies in the United States. Most lawyers would agree that the C corporation is the structure that provides the best shielding from personal liability for owners, and provides the best non-tax benefits to owers. This is a separate legal entity, different from its owners, which pays its own taxes.

Most lawyers would also probably agree that for a company that has ambitions of raising major investment capital and eventually going public, the C corporation is the standard form of legal entity. The S corporation is used for family companies and smaller ownership groups. The clearest distinction from C is that the S corporation’s profits or losses go straight through to the S corporation’s owners, without being taxed separately first.

In practical terms, this means that the owners of the corporation can take their profits home without first paying the corporation’s separate tax on profits, so those profits are taxed once for the S owner, and twice for the C owner. In practical terms the C corporation doesn’t send its profits home to its owners as much as the S corporation does, because it usually has different goals and objectives. It often wants to grow and go public, or it already is public. In most states an S corporation is owned by a limited number (25 is a common maximum) of private owners, and corporations can’t hold stock in S corporations, just individuals.

Corporations can switch from C to S and back again, but not often. The IRS has strict rules for when and how those switches are made. You’ll almost always want to have your CPA and in some cases your attorney guide you through the legal requirements for switching.

Sales Break Even

Sales break-even is the sales volume at which costs are exactly equal to sales.

The exact formula is =Fixed_costs/(1-(Unit_Variable_Cost/Unit_Price))

Sales Forecast

A sales forecast is the level of sales a single organization expects to achieve based on a chosen marketing strategy and assumed competitive environment.

Sales on Credit

Sales on credit are sales made on account; shipments against invoices to be paid later.

Scrambled Merchandising

Scrambled merchandising is the practice by wholesalers and retailers that carry an increasingly wider assortment of merchandise.

Seed Capital

Seed capital is investment contributed at a very early stage of a new venture, usually in relatively small amounts. It comes even before what they call “first round” venture capital.

How much is that “relatively small amount?” Some high-end high-tech ventures in the heart of Silicon Valley call an investment of $500K seed capital, and other ventures that called $35K investment seed capital, and the following $300K investment the first round. It depends on the point of view.

Selective Distribution

Selective distribution is a strategy where a producer sells its products or services in a few exclusively chosen retail outlets in a specific geographical area.

Selling Approaches

Selling approaches are potential selling resources based on the sales value and the distribution of the product.

Senior Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE)

SCORE is a no-cost consulting and resources service offered through the Small Business Administration.

Shareholders

Shareholders are individuals or companies that legally own one or more shares of stock in a company.

Short-term is normally used to distinguish between short-term and long-term, when referring to assets or liabilities. Definitions vary because different companies and accountants handle this in different ways.

Accounts payable is always a short-term liability, and cash, accounts receivable and inventory are always short-term assets. Most companies call any debt of less than five-year terms short-term debt. Assets that depreciate over more than five years (e.g., plant and equipment) are usually long-term assets.

Short-Term Assets

Short-term assets are cash, securities, bank accounts, accounts receivable, inventory, business equipment, assets that last less than five years or are depreciated over terms of less than five years. Also called current assets.

Short-Term Notes

Short-term notes are the same as short-term loans. These are debts with terms of five years or less.

Short-Term Liabilities

Short-term liabilities are debts with terms of five years or less. These are also called current liabilities, short-term loans, or short-term (current) debts. These may also include short-term debts that don’t cause interest expenses.

For example, they might be loans from founders or accrued taxes (taxes owed, already incurred, but not yet paid).

Simple Linear Regression

Simple linear regression is a linear correlation that offers a straight-line projection based on the variables considered.

Situation Analysis

A situation analysis is the assessment of operations to determine the reasons for the gap between what was or is expected, and what has happened or will happen.

Skimming Pricing Strategy

Skimming pricing strategy refers to setting a relatively high initial price for a new product or service when there is a strong price-perceived quality relationship that targets early adopters who are price insensitive. The price may be lowered over time.

Slotting Allowances

Slotting allowances are payments to store chains for acquiring and maintaining shelf space.

Small Business Investment Council (SBIC)

The SBIC is a division of the Small Business Administration that offers “venture capital-like” resources to higher-risk businesses seeking capital.

Sole Proprietorship

The simplest business structure is the sole proprietorship. Simply put, your business is a sole proprietorship if you don’t create a separate legal entity for it.

This is true whether you operate it in your own name, or under a trade name. If it isn’t your own name, then you register a company name as a “Fictitious business name,” also called a DBA (“Doing Business As”).

Depending on your state, you can usually obtain this through the county government, and the cost is no more than a small registration fee plus a required newspaper ad, for a total of less than $100 in most states.

Sole Trader

A sole trader is the easiest and quickest form of corporation for a small, privately-owned business. Your Memorandum and Articles of Association are usually fairly straightforward to obtain, and your taxes will be lower than those of a public company.

However, the owner of a sole trader is personally liable for all of its actions and debts, and may not be entitled to benefits, like unemployment payments, that would accrue to those running public companies.

Starting Date

Starting date refers to the starting date for the entire business plan.

Goods on hand, either finished goods or materials to be used to manufacture goods. Also called inventory.

Stock can also refer to privately held or publicly traded shares or securities representing an investment in, or partial ownership of, a business. Public trading of such stock occurs on the stock market.

Stock Market

The stock market is the organized trading of stocks, bonds, or other securities, or the place where such trading occurs.

Stock Turnover

Stock turnover is the total cost of sales divided by inventory (materials or goods on hand). Usually calculated using the average inventory over an accounting period, not an ending-inventory value. Also called inventory turnover.

Strategic Control

Strategic control is the practice of assessing the direction of the organization as evidenced by its implicit or explicit goals, objectives, strategies, and capacity to perform in the context of changing environmental and competitive actions.

Strategic Marketing Management

Strategic marketing management is the planned process of defining the organization’s business, mission, and goals; identifying and framing organizational opportunities; formulating product-market strategies, budgeting marketing, financial, and production resources; developing reformulation.

Success Factors

Primary success factors include considerations regarding:

  • The choice of business based on the status of the market
  • Education and experience
  • People and collaboration
  • Creativity and innovation versus business skills and networks
  • Incubation potential
  • Leveraging available resources
  • Management practices

Success Requirements

Success requirements are the basic tasks that must be performed by an organization in a market or industry to compete successfully.

Sunk cost refers to past expenditures for a given activity that are typically irrelevant in whole or in part to future decisions. The “sunk cost fallacy” is an attempt to recoup spent dollars by spending still more dollars in the future.

Surplus or Deficit

Surplus or deficit is a term used by nonprofits. It’s also called profit and loss statement or an income statement in for-profit plans.

An income statement is a financial statement that shows funding, cost of funding, gross surplus, operating expenses, and surplus or deficit. Gross surplus is funding less cost of funding, and surplus (or deficit) is gross surplus less operating expenses and taxes. The result is surplus if it is positive, a deficit if it is negative.

Switching Costs

Switching costs are the costs incurred in changing from one provider of a product or service to another. Switching costs may be tangible or intangible costs incurred due to the change of this source.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is a formal framework of identifying and framing organizational growth opportunities. SWOT is an acronym for an organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.

Systematic Innovation

Systematic innovation is innovation resulting from an intentional and organized process to evaluate opportunities to introduce change, based on a definition provided by Peter Drucker. The sources of innovation may be internal or external to the enterprise.

Tactics are a collection of tools, activities and business decisions required to implement a strategy.

Target Market

A target market is a defined segment of the market that is the strategic focus of a business or a marketing plan. Normally the members of this segment possess common characteristics and a relative high propensity to purchase a particular product or service. 

Because of this, the member of this segment represent the greatest potential for sales volume and frequency. The target market is often defined in terms of geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics.

Target Marketing

Target marketing is the process of marketing to a specific market segment or multiple segments. Differentiated target marketing occurs when an organization simultaneously pursues several different market segments, usually with a different strategy for each. 

Concentrated target marketing occurs when a single market segment is pursued.

Tax Rate Percent

Tax rate percent is an assumed percentage applied against pre-tax income to determine taxes.

Taxes Incurred

Taxes incurred are taxes that are owed but not yet paid.

Telemarketing

Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing that uses the telephone to reach potential customers.

Trade Margin

Trade margin is the difference between unit sales price and unit cost and each level of a marketing channel usually expressed in percentage terms.

Trading Down

Trading down is the process of reducing the number of features or quality of an offering to realize a lower purchase price.

Trading up is the practice of improving an offering by adding new features and higher quality materials or adding products or services to increase the purchase price.

In broad, general terms, traffic is the number of visitors and visits a website receives.

Types of Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs may be categorized into eleven areas, including:

  • Solo self-employed individuals
  • Team builders
  • Independent innovators
  • Pattern multipliers
  • Economy of scale exploiters
  • Capital aggregators
  • Buy-sell artists
  • Conglomerates
  • Speculators
  • Apparent value manipulators

User Interface (UI)

User interface is the graphic design and appearance of a website, its function as seen and used by the person on the user end, at the website in a browser.

The UI of a website is ultimately how it lets users know what it has to offer them. If it lacks an easy navigation scheme users get lost, and never find the information on a site.

Unique User Sessions

In online marketing, unique user sessions is a website metric tracking the number of uniquely identified clients generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging). A visitor can make multiple visits.

Unit Variable Cost

Unit variable cost is the specific labor and materials associated with a single unit of goods sold. Does not include general overhead.

Units Break-Even

Units break-even refers to the unit sales volume at which the fixed and variable costs are exactly equal to sales. 

The formula is UBE=Fixed_costs/(Unit_Price-Unit_Variable_Cost)

Unpaid Expenses

Unpaid expenses are money owed to vendors for expenses incurred, but not yet paid. In bookkeeping and accounting, this is called accounts payable. A simple example would be the advertising expense from advertising that has already run but not yet been paid for by the advertiser.

User Benefits

User benefits refer to understanding and appreciating the base reason an individual purchases a product or service that may not directly correlate with the feature or function of the good or service. These benefits may be intangible.

User Registrations

In online marketing, user registrations is a conversion value measuring the number of website visitors who voluntarily include themselves in your database in order to access the content you provide on your website.

Used as a noun, valuation is what a business is worth, as in, “this company’s valuation is $10 million.”

This would mean that a company is valued at $10 million, or worth $10 million. The term is used most often for discussions of sale or purchase of a company; it’s valuation is the price of a share times the number of shares outstanding, and the price of a share is the total valuation divided by the number of shares outstanding.

Value is the ratio of perceived benefits compared to price for a product or service.

Variable Cost

Variable costs are costs that fluctuate in direct proportion to the volume of units produced. The best and most obvious example are physical costs of goods sold, direct costs, such as materials, products purchased for resale, production costs and overhead, etc.

The concept of variable cost is an important component of risk in a company. Generally, variable costs are less risky than fixed costs, because variable costs are not incurred unless there are sales and production. See also break-even analysis, fixed costs, and contribution.

For more on this, check out What Is Break-Even Analysis?

Variance is a calculation of the difference between plan and actual results, used by analysts to manage and track the impact of planning and budgeting.

Venture Capitalists (VC)

Venture capitalists are thought of in two ways, first, some people think of any wealthy individual who invests in young companies as a venture capitalist. Second, among the more informed investors, analysts, and entrepreneurs, a venture capitalist is a manager of a mainstream venture capital fund.

Venture Capital

Venture capital nowadays is used two ways. First, people often take venture capital as any investment capital obtained through private investment or public investment funds directed to high-risk and high-potential enterprises. 

Second, within the more informed and sophisticated business circles, venture capital is defined more narrowly as investment money coming from the mainstream venture capital firms, a few hundred major firms, different from investment money from other private investors, angels, etc.

A website (or site) is a virtual location, identified and located by a URL (uniform resource locator), an address that can lead you to a file on any connected machine anywhere in the world.

Website Metrics

In online marketing, website metrics metrics are measurement tools used to evaluate how effectively a website is marketing a business.

These can include:

  • Unique user sessions
  • New visitors
  • Return visitors
  • Click-through rate
  • Conversion rate

Website Traffic

In broad, general terms, website traffic is the number of visitors and visits a website receives. This traffic can be measured by a variety of website metrics.

A wholesaler is a channel member that purchases from the producer and supplies to the retailer and primarily performs the function of physical distribution and amassing inventory for rapid delivery.

Working Capital

The accessible resources needed to support the day-to-day operations of an organization.

Working capital is commonly in the form of cash and current (short-term) assets, including accounts receivable, prepaid expenses, accounts payable for goods and services, and current unpaid income taxes.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Content Author: Tim Berry

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

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  2. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

    sales business plans templates

  3. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

    sales business plans templates

  4. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

    sales business plans templates

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

    sales business plans templates

  6. How to Create a Sales Plan in 7 Steps [+ Free Template]

    sales business plans templates

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COMMENTS

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

    The Best Free Business Plan Template For Individual Sales Reps Download Now: Free Business Plan Template Mike Weinberg Published: August 14, 2023 Working in sales is challenging at times, and after a while, you may begin to feel fatigued or experience low motivation.

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

    Download Now: Free Sales Plan Template Jay Fuchs Published: December 06, 2023 Sales planning is a fundamental component of sound selling. After all, you can't structure an effective sales effort if you don't have, well, structure.

  3. 10 Free Sales Plan Templates to Strategize & Reach Sales Goals

    10 Free Sales Plan Templates for an Effective Sales Strategy Erica Dias ClickUp Contributor February 15, 2024 10min read Table of Contents 8. Word Sales Plan Template by Business News Daily 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!

  4. Free Sales Plan Templates

    In this section, you'll find over 15 free sales planning templates in Microsoft Excel and Word formats. Sales Plan Template Download Excel Template Try Smartsheet Template This template allows you to plan your sales goals with the flexibility and functionality of an Excel spreadsheet.

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

    Free Sales Plan Template Download as PDF Download as Word Doc Download as Google Doc 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.

  6. 32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates [Word & Excel]

    32 Sales Plan & Sales Strategy Templates People involved in sales usually depend on a specific plan. One which would set their sales goals and establish the strategies they need. With the help of a sales strategy, they can also establish the budgets they need.

  7. Sales Plan

    Blog 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. It helps them better understand their role, responsibilities, targets, tactics and methods.

  8. 9 Stunning Sales Business Plan Templates to Close Your Next Deal

    The sales business planning process includes figuring out the scope, organizing the team and assigning roles, collecting critical information in a centralized location, setting up branded templates, customizing the templates and collaborating with the team to finalize the document.

  9. How to Write a Sales Plan

    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 ...

  10. How to create a sales plan: Template and guide

    Sales plan template Implement your sales plan What is a sales plan? A sales plan lays out all sales-related activities and details sales objectives, strategies, budgets, timelines, and processes. It includes information on your target audience, market conditions, resources needed, and high-level tactics for achieving goals.

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

    In basic terms, a sales plan template includes: Sales forecasting and goal-setting Market and customer research Prospecting and partnerships

  12. How to Create a Sales Plan: Template to Use Now

    2. Sample Sales Plan by BestTemplates. Best Templates provides a 9-page sales plan that you can download and edit to customize to your specific needs. The template is designed to do all the work for you since all sections are already highlighted, and your job is to fill them in. 3. Asana Sales Plan.

  13. 16 Sales Plan Templates to Plan Your Sales Strategy

    Sales plan templates streamline your sales planning efforts, enhance productivity and ultimately improve your team's chances of achieving sales targets. In this article, we've curated a collection of the finest templates out there, designed to rescue you from the time-consuming ordeal of creating your sales plan from scratch. Let's get to it!

  14. Free Sales Plan Template With Asana [2024] • Asana

    Connecting your sales goals to your business goals is an important part of developing a sales plan template. Your sales plan template should have a dedicated section for success metrics, so your team knows exactly how certain tasks connect with larger goals. These success metrics should connect directly with the sales objective you established ...

  15. 8 Free Business Plans Templates & Examples

    A collection of professionally designed Business Plans templates available for Word, PDF, and Excel. Download, customize, and send in minutes. ... All of HubSpot's marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, operations, and commerce software on one platform. Free HubSpot CRM. Overview of all products.

  16. Sales Business Plan: Create a Killer Plan

    Templates Sales Business Plan Unlocking Success: A Step-By-Step Sales Business Plan Blueprint Download Sales Business Plan Template for Strategic Growth Download Now By Anisha N Contributor Reviewed By Praveen S Editor Published: April 13, 2023

  17. 30-60-90 day sales plan for managers, reps, and sales territories

    When acclimating a new manager to a sales team, a solid three-month plan is an effective tool for setting expectations and learning how people respond to incremental changes. Below is a 30-60-90 day plan for district sales managers: Phase 1: Days 1-30. 1. Learn key pieces of information (birthdays, likes/dislikes, etc.) about every team member.

  18. How to Create an Effective Sales and Marketing Plan

    Sales Plan Template: The Essential Components. A sales plan is a strategic document that outlines the tactics and activities a business will undertake to achieve its sales objectives. Here are the key components that typically go into a sales plan: Executive Summary

  19. Simple Business Plan Template (2024)

    Our simple business plan template covers everything you need to consider when launching a side gig, solo operation or small business. By following this step-by-step process, you might even...

  20. Sales Business Plan Template

    Sales Business Plan Template - 16+ Free Word, Excel, PDF Format Download If you are a part of the retail industry, medical, hospitality or the sales service, a sales business plan template will provide a suitable platform to articulate issues relating to business and derive effective results.

  21. Create A Sales Plan Template

    Use the following steps to create a template on monday.com: 1. Head over to the monday.com template center and choose the template that best fits your needs. 2. Fill in the fields and customize columns, groups, statuses, and more to create your desired workflow. 3.

  22. How to Craft a Winning Sales Action Plan [ + Templates]

    Step 4: Input Necessary Data. The next step is to input crucial sales data into the sales action plan. You can leverage Visme's data visualization tools to convert complex data into concise and easily understandable visuals. You can access a wide range of graphs, charts, tables and data widgets in Visme's library.

  23. How to Create a Winning B2B Sales Plan [+ Free Template]

    6. Sales goals (short/long-term) It's also important to include a goals section in this plan. Challenges your team faces, listed in the section above, focus on things that are out of your team's control. Goals, while still challenging, deal with things that your sales team can control.

  24. Business Plan Template

    Learn everything you need to know about business plan templates. Read on and download a free business plan template with Adobe. Business Plan Template. While your company's goals might be crystal clear in your head, going in without a formal business plan could make things tricky. ... Sales and Marketing Plans. Detailing your sales and ...

  25. Glossary of Business Terms for Small Businesses

    Our glossary of business terms provides definitions for common terminology and acronyms in business plans, accounting, finance, and other areas of business. ... Free business plan template. A fill-in-the-blank template designed for business owners. Download Now. ... The standard procedure in business-to-business sales is that when goods or ...