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10 Free Sales Plan Templates in Word, Excel, & ClickUp

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

August 12, 2024

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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?

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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.

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?

• Sales 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 sales 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.

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.

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. ✅

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 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. 📞

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. 📝

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.

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. 📈

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. 🎯

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.

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. 📄

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.

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.

Types of Sales Strategies

It’s essential to know that there isn’t a single ‘best’ strategy that will work for every business or every sales team. It all depends on your business goals, the nature of your product or service, your audience demographics, and various other factors. Here’s an overview of some of the most common types of sales strategies that you may consider incorporating into your sales plan:

Solution Selling: This strategy involves identifying a problem that your prospective customer is experiencing and positioning your product or service as the best solution. This requires a deep understanding of your customers’ pain points and how your offerings can address those issues.

Value Selling: Value selling is a strategy often used in B2B sales where the focus is on communicating the overall value that a product or service brings to a customer’s business. It involves demonstrating how features and benefits translate to significant returns on investment, savings, or productivity gains for your customer.

Social Selling: With the prevalence of social media platforms in today’s business landscape, social selling has become highly effective. It involves using social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook to find and engage with potential customers. By providing useful content, answering questions, and engaging in conversations, salespeople can build relationships and generate leads.

Inbound Selling: Inbound selling puts the customer first. It’s a sales methodology that focuses on personalizing the sales experience based on where the buyer is in their journey. This strategy aligns sales efforts with buyer needs to provide solutions that are the best fit for their individual challenges.

Consultative Selling: This strategy involves acting as a trusted adviser to potential customers. The focus is on building relationships, understanding the needs and problems of the customer, and then recommending solutions. It’s more about dialogue and less about pitching.

Account-Based Selling : Account-based selling is a strategic approach that treats individual accounts as markets of their own. It involves crafting personalized buying experiences that cater to the unique needs and challenges of high-value accounts.

Each of these sales strategies can bring efficiency and effectiveness to your sales process. However, the key to success is understanding and selecting which strategy aligns best with your business model and customer base. Then, incorporate it into your sales plan and support it with the right sales plan template.

Sales Planning Tips and Strategies

Planning is a crucial aspect for a successful sales strategy. Here are some valuable tips and strategies to boost your sales planning process:

1. Set Clear Objectives: Clearly outline what you want to achieve. Your objectives are your guiding light, providing a direction for your sales planning. These objectives should align with broader business goals.

2. Understand Your Audience: Research extensively about your target audience. Understand their needs, desires, and pain points. The more you know about your potential customers, the better you’ll be able to position your product or service effectively.

3. Implement SMART Goals : Your sales plan should be based on SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals. This way, your goals will be clear, realistic, and trackable.

4. Stay Informed about Market Trends: Business environments are constantly changing. Stay updated with the latest industry trends and competitor strategies to keep your sales plan agile and effective.

5. Incorporate Sales Tools: The effective use of technology can completely transform your sales process. Build your sales tech stack with CRM software , data analytics, and sales project management platforms like ClickUp to automate processes and give your sales team a high-impact lift.

6. Regularly Review and Adjust Your Plan: Your sales plan should be a dynamic document. Regularly revisiting and adjusting your plan based on performance metrics, market changes, or shifts in company goals ensures that your sales strategy remains relevant and effective.

7. Train and Empower Your Sales Team: The success of any plan lies in its execution. Provide your sales team with proper training and resources they need to effectively implement the sales plan. Encourage them to also bring innovative ideas to the table.

8. Customer Retention: Don’t just focus on acquiring new customers. Implement strategies in your sales plan to retain existing customers as it’s often more cost-effective to maintain a loyal customer base than to constantly seek out new ones.

9. Refine Your Sales Pitch: Ensure your value proposition is strong and compelling. Your sales pitch should highlight the unique values and benefits of your product or service.

10. Measure Performance: Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your sales plan. This can provide valuable insights about what’s working and what needs to be improved.

By incorporating these sales planning tips and strategies into your processes, you can improve your sales plan’s effectiveness and increase your chances of success. As always, keep an open mind to adjustments and improvements along the way!

Reach Sales Goals With Free Sales Strategy 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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How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps

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

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

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

What is a sales plan and why create one?

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

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

The benefits of a sales plan

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

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

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

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

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

1. Company mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

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2. Goals and targets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

200 total cold emails sent per day

200 total cold calls made per day

25 demos conducted per day

5 new sales appointments made a day

100 follow-up emails sent per day

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

How to communicate goals and targets

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

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

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

3. Sales organization and team structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate your sales organization and team structure

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

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

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

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

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4. Target audience and customer segments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate target audience and customer segments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Sales strategies and methodologies

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

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

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

9 essential sales stages

Traditionally, a sales process has nine sales stages :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate sales strategies and methodologies

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

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

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

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

6. Sales action plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate your sales action plan

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

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

7. Performance and results measurement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate sales performance metrics

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

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

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

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

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

To write a sales business plan, include:

An executive summary

A company overview

A market analysis

A target market description

Sales strategies and tactics

Financial projections

A budget and timeline

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

Final thoughts

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

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

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How to create a sales plan (and 3 templates that do it for you)

There's a 25-year-old "South Park" episode I think about way too often. Working on a presentation with a coffee-addicted classmate named Tweek, the boys see a gnome stealing underpants from Tweek's dresser. They follow him to a cave, where they discover a network of gnomes executing a massive underpants-smuggling operation.

Explaining their business model, the underpants gnomes present this outline:

Phase 1: Collect underpants

Phase 3: Profit

In this post:

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan is a strategic document outlining goals and strategies for reaching predetermined sales targets. For the "South Park" underpants gnomes, it's the glaring question mark standing between their product and their profits.

What goes into a sales plan (including examples)

A sales plan has the information stakeholders need to establish sales goals, set strategies, allocate resources, collaborate across teams, track goal progress, and measure success. Basically, whatever the stakeholders need to make sound decisions about sales processes.

The specific elements of a business plan differ by factors like sales plan type, industry, product type, goal horizon, and organizational structure. Some may have just a few sections across a page or two, others a dozen or more over several pages.

While your sections may differ in number or phrasing, you can expect some version of these elements to go into most sales plans.

This section is where you set measurable sales goals. (In fact, this section is also called "Goals" in many sales plans.) Depending on your industry, common sales objectives include:

Total revenue growth

Market share expansion

Customer acquisition volume

Adoption rate increase

Obviously, you could just write "$100 billion" here and insert a Dr. Evil meme, then hope for the best. But the real objective of the objectives section is to come to attainable sales goals that align with broader organizational growth goals.

Increase market share by 5-10% this fiscal year

Target market

If your product is a massive eCommerce space with rock-bottom prices and free next-day shipping, write "Everyone" and move on. But since you're probably not Jeff Bezos, you'll need a detailed description of your ideal customer profile. 

Project managers of midsized technology companies with distributed teams seeking streamlined collaboration and task management

This is where you'll give the broad strokes of the approach you'll take to achieve your sales goals with your target market. Whether it's for entering new markets, expanding within existing markets, or launching new products, this generalized section communicates the stepping stones that will lead to your objectives.

Improved prospecting, generating more qualified leads, and tailoring sales processes to market research to make existing sales processes more efficient

These tactics are still theoretical and don't have to be set in stone at this phase. But this is a space to describe specifics like customer survey or beta testing methods, social media marketing campaign concepts, new sales techniques, or new ways of utilizing existing sales software and resources.

Leverage social media influencer outreach with influencer-specific promo codes

As anyone who's ever watched a heist movie knows, every great plan needs a crack team. In this section, you'll list either each member of your sales team or the team leads, depending on your team size. Beyond a simple list of names, here are some helpful elements to include about each:

Aptitudes or experience

Certifications or completed trainings

Hourly pay rate (for budgeting and forecasting)

Daily or weekly utilization limits

Associated accounts

This should help you outline a structure for assigning individual roles and responsibilities related to your strategies and tactics, ensuring you've got the people power to get the job done.

John Doe, UX specialist | $100/hour incurred expense | 20 hours/week floating utilization | Manager: Jane Doe | Responsible for analyzing survey data and making recommendations for UI updates

It's possible you may even need new hires, freelancers, additional trainings, certifications, or third-party agencies to do the things you need to do. List those here, so you can incorporate them into your time and expenses.

Stakeholders won't just want to know what you're going to do—they'll want to know how long it'll take. Outline your strategies by breaking them into key milestones and deadlines according to the personnel you have. This should also map to revenue projections as your strategies mature.

2/15: Complete market research | 3/1: Synthesize findings | 3/15: Schedule strategies for Q2 execution

The last thing you want is to create a beautiful, perfectly crafted sales plan and discover that you don't actually have the funds to execute it. Based on entries in the last few fields, you should have a good idea of expenses based on strategy resources, personnel utilization, timelines, and any purchases your team may need. 

Chart those here with estimates for any other potential expenses related to marketing, advertising, and sales promotion activities.

Sure, you've been making sales since you started executing your plan. But how do you know you're making enough sales to justify your efforts?

This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. By setting these during the sales planning stage, you allow stakeholders to measure the success of individual sales efforts, so you can report on how performance compares to sales targets over time. 

Potential challenges

If sales were easy, every company would be successful. Even at the planning stage, you should be able to see some possible roadblocks on the horizon.

The best plans are realistic enough to be actualized, so be realistic about what might stand in your team's way. Try to get ahead of challenges relating to things like target market sensitivities, general market conditions, internal resources, competition, seasonality, or campaign effectiveness. Then, come up with contingencies, so you're ready for these obstacles if they do arise.

Free sales plan templates

Here are three templates for the same general sales plan structure to choose from, depending on the level of granularity and presentation you're looking for.

Sales plan template 1: Comprehensive document

If you're looking to get buy-in for your sales plan from senior stakeholders, you'll need a document that can organize and communicate your research.

This comprehensive sales plan template includes fields for each of the sections outlined above. Just copy it, rename it to your liking, and then click into each field to start filling in the information outlined in this post. (For sections you don't need, just delete or fill with "N/A" and move along.)

Best for: Communicating every element of your sales plan in full detail with (virtually) unlimited space

Sales plan template 2: Summary document

Maybe you need a sales plan template that gets the point across quickly. This one distills the gist of a sales plan into six concise, actionable sections, so you can share the most important elements of every sales objective in one document.

If you need room for more objectives, just copy/paste an empty row.

Best for: Quickly sharing the fine points of a sales plan with only actionable takeaways

Sales plan template 3: Project workflow document

What does your sales plan look like on a day-to-day basis? If you're having a hard time translating that, use this template.

Just include your sequence of objectives and related tasks, include the person they're assigned to, and tweak the date ranges. You can even update the progress graph for each task as you progress through them.

Best for: Organizing tasks, roles, and timelines within a greater sales plan

How to start sales planning

Step 1: Start sales planning. Step 2: ? Step 3: Start selling.

Sales planning may not be that easy, but it doesn't have to be especially complicated, either. It should take enough time and resources to come up with a document that's persuasive and detailed but not so much that it cuts into the real money-making efforts themselves. 

Here are a few ways you can set your plan up for efficiency, success, and—maybe most importantly—stakeholder buy-in.

Start with competitor research

You may be tempted to start the sales planning process by outlining your objectives and tactics, but competitor research can go a long way in setting the stage for both. This can show you what works, how well it works, and what doesn't work. It can also show you opportunities to fill market gaps your competitors are missing.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but it can be very helpful to just reinvent what your competition is doing.

Don't shy away from established frameworks and methodologies

Here are a few benefits many of these can potentially bring:

Iterative internal processes

Improved collaboration

Predictable lines of communication between teams

More useful insights from stakeholders

More accurate internal data

More reliable goal-setting

Obviously, the benefits will depend on the types of frameworks and methodologies you use. But the real key to any of them is the ability to standardize some element of the planning process and make collaboration more efficient.

Collaborate with stakeholders to define success

You may have one definition of success, while your stakeholders have a completely different one. Remember that your objectives and KPIs need to have bases in two realities: the market's and your company's.

It's the job of senior stakeholders to align sales efforts with high-level goals that help keep the entire operation afloat. That means they may have goals in mind that conflict with your market research findings about sales potential. The sales team, on the other hand, may need to help align expectations with market realities.

Successful sales plans keep both parties on the same page. As such, it helps to collaborate before setting sales benchmarks to see what success can look like for all involved parties.

Don't forget about operations

S&OP helps align sales teams with operations teams to ensure they have the inventory needed to both keep up with demand and promote maximum stocking efficiency. Since inventory can take time and careful scheduling, it's best to get S&OP underway as early as possible. Demand forecasting, for example, is closely related to both sales and inventory projections, so combining these projections early is worthwhile.

Establish clear lines of communication

If all good plans require a team, then all good teams require sound communication.

Since sales campaigns require collaboration between multiple parties and teams, it helps to have open communication channels during the sales planning process. This could mean adopting an Agile workflow and establishing daily Scrum meetings, hosting regular "office hours," or even just checking in with team leads.

While you're setting up these channels, tap them to get more accurate insights into sales planning elements like budgets, assets, and resource needs.

Types of sales plans

While the sales plan templates in this post are somewhat generically designed for new product or feature launches, there are tons of other types of sales plans you can choose from. Many expand on specific elements already included at a high level in our templates, foregoing some of the other sections that aren't as relevant. 

If you know you want your plan to have a more granular focus on specific use cases, you could consider one of these options.

New product sales plan

This details the introduction and promotion of a recently launched or forthcoming product. Similar to the template and example in this post, it can be for a physical product, digital product, or service. It includes general information without getting too bogged down in details.

Best for: General sales planning for new products, services, or features

Milestone sales plan

Prioritizing timelines, this plan delineates sales objectives and targets to be achieved within specific timeframes. Typically, these timelines fall into weekly, monthly, and quarterly milestones. You can list these in a timeline section for any plan, but this plan is structured around those elements.

Best for: A bird's-eye view of the time a sales campaign will take

30/60/90 sales plan

This sales strategy outlines goals and priorities for the first three months of a new hire's tenure, typically focusing on short-term objectives. This can lean toward onboarding milestones to get the new rep up-to-date on sales processes.

Best for: Bringing on new sales reps

Sales budget plan

As a financial framework, this plan details allocated resources for sales activities and expenses to achieve revenue targets. This gets much more granular about the costs associated with sales, making that element of planning its primary focus.

Best for: Communicating nuanced expense figures

Sales tactics plan

Similar to a sales budget plan, a sales tactics plan is mainly concerned with one area of the sales planning process: the tactics. It takes a comprehensive approach to specifying the methods and techniques required to achieve sales goals and overcome challenges.

Best for: Communicating specific details about sales strategies

Sales territory plan

This one makes me think of classic mob movies—two families hashing out their territories in the Bronx over plates of spaghetti. It's a strategic outline of how you'll distribute sales resources within specific geographic areas or customer segments.

Best for: Segmenting sales efforts geographically

Sales focus area plan

This one highlights specific product lines, customer segments, or markets on which the sales team will concentrate their efforts. It helps align sales team members on their individual responsibilities.

Best for: Setting expectations for sales team roles

Market expansion plan

When you use this sales plan, you're taking a strategic approach to broadening the reach of a product or service by entering new geographical areas or targeting additional customer demographics. You can tailor it to go deep on a range of KPIs that suit your specific goals for saturation. 

Best for: Planning specifically for market growth KPIs

Marketing alignment plan

Marketing and sales—one hand (or team) washes the other. To help bump that cleaning sesh along, consider one of these plans. They help coordinate strategies, ensuring a solid connection between sales and marketing efforts.

Best for: Aligning sales and marketing teams

Growth action plan

This strategic roadmap details initiatives and steps to foster business expansion, increase market share, and achieve sustainable growth. It includes actionable strategies for making growth-oriented goals a reality.

Best for: Establishing actionable strategies for growth KPIs

Sales planning tips

As you build out your sales plan, you might find that you need a little help. Here are some of our top tips for sales planning:

Know your audience: The sales plan will either be for stakeholders, team members, or both. Write to their level and with the level of detail they need.

Start with SWOT: A SWOT analysis is a great way to get a quick, relevant picture of fundamental sales plan elements like aptitudes, challenges, and opportunities.

Budget carefully: Not every sales plan style includes budgets by default—but don't let this deter you. It's vital to know what you can afford before you start executing your plan.

Vary strategies: To reduce volatility, try to keep your sales tactics varied. This also helps you find the strategies that work best and back them with data.

Continue monitoring: You can't know if you hit your KPIs unless you monitor according to the benchmarks you're tracking.

Make a (sales) plan to automate

Hopefully this post has you pumped for sales planning—or at least finding a mysterious new three-step business model (or even just watching "South Park"). 

Related reading:

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Bryce Emley

Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience. His work has been published in magazines including The Atlantic, Boston Review, Salon, and Modern Farmer and has received a regional Emmy and awards from venues including Narrative, Wesleyan University, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Pablo Neruda Prize. When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry.

• Sales & business development

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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 .

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

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

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

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

Clear, Time-Bound Goals Help You Reach Revenue Targets

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

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

Prioritize Time and Resources

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

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

Clear Action Plan to Reach Your Goals

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

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

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

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

How to Choose the Right Sales Planning Style

Ultimately, this will depend on factors such as:

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

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

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

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

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

1. Define Your Sales Goals and Milestones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Clearly Define Your Target Market or Niche

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

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

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

Don’t do that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Understand Your Target Customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GET THE IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE KIT →

4. Map Out Your Customer’s Journey

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

• Consideration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Define Your Value Propositions

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

Start by asking a few simple questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Organize Your Sales Team

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

Here are three basic structures for your sales team :

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

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

7. Outline the Use of Sales Tools

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

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

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

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

8. Build a Prospecting List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Track, Measure, and Adjust As Needed

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

Remember what Basecamp founder Jason Fried said about plans:

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

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

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

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

Create a Strategic Sales Plan to Grow Your Business

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

Avoid Moving the Goalpost

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

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

Invite Your Others to Challenge Your Sales Plan

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

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

Set Individual Goals and Milestones for Your Sales Team

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

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

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

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

Ready to Hit Your Sales Goals?

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

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

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

More articles from The Close Blog

Discover our latest free sales tools powered by AI

Learn from the sales pros with our free sales guides.

Free Sales Plan Template

Free Template

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent plan by HubSpot and Aircall .

This template includes sections for:.

• Company History & Mission
• Team Structure
• Target Market
• Tools and Software
• Positioning
• Marketing Strategy
• Prospecting Strategy
• Action Plan
• Sales Cadence

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

Sales departments are doubling down their efforts. Only  18% of buyers  trust salespeople,  meaning that sales teams need to work smarter, not just harder. How can sales leaders ensure this happens?

A sales plan is an actionable way to simplify and document your sales goals and your strategies to accomplish them. Budgets, marketing strategy, positioning, and other topics are explained in detail as well. 

Download this template from HubSpot and Aircall , and build your sales plan . Make it simple for your team, direct reports, and execs to understand what your goals are, how you'll accomplish them, and any support you'll need. 

How do I write a sales plan?

Set your targets and goals, create your sales strategies, choose sales tactics and train your sales staff, set your budget and implement your plan.

Why do I need to fill out the information requested?

We will always keep your personal information safe. We ask for your information in exchange for a valuable resource in order to (a) improve your browsing experience by personalizing the HubSpot site to your needs; (b) send information to you that we think may be of interest to you by email or other means; (c) send you marketing communications that we think may be of value to you. You can read more about our privacy policy  here .

How do you create an individual sales plan?

Creating an effective sales plan: define your objectives, assign roles and responsibilities to the sales team, create your strategy, find your sales tools, define your metrics for success, set your budget, outline our action plan.

Is this really free?

Absolutely . Just sharing some free knowledge that we hope you’ll find useful. Keep us in mind next time you have marketing questions!

What are the 7 steps to creating a sales plan?

Step-by-step guide to creating your sales plan: set your target, assess the situation, identify barriers to success, list your strengths and resources, develop your sales strategy, figure out what you will need for your strategy, make an action plan.

What are the 4 selling strategies?

Four basic sales strategies for B2B are solution selling, account-based selling, strategic selling, and social selling.

Over 32,000 sales leaders and entrepreneurs are already using this sales plan template.

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Blog Graphic Design How To Write a Sales Plan That Converts (+ Templates)

How To Write a Sales Plan That Converts (+ Templates)

Written by: Letícia Fonseca Nov 17, 2021

Sales plans are often considered the foundation of any successful business plan.

A sales plan outlines an organization’s goals for its future operations and steers the sales team in the right direction.

Every successful business relies on a sales plan to reach its sales goals and pivot its strategy when necessary. 

Learn what you need to succeed in writing an impactful sales plan that boosts your conversions and increases customer loyalty.

Don’t know where to start? Create a sales business plan with Venngage’s templates and improve your growth strategy.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a sales strategy plan, what is included in a sales plan, what are the objectives of sales and operations planning.

• How do you write an excellent sales plan?

A sales strategy plan is a document that lists what a company is going to sell, how much the company intends to earn, and how the company plans to go about it.

The sales strategy helps the company determine how to maximize profit margins and stay competitive in the industry.

Here’s an example of a sales strategy plan that includes every action that the sales team is expected to perform.

This ensures that sales managers know what they are responsible for and how the desired output or deliverables for the sales process tie into the business plan.

Return to Table of Contents

A good sales strategy includes a sales plan for your product or service, as well as a plan to market it. Goals to reach your target customers make a sales campaign easy to create and follow.

Here are the most important points to include in a sales strategy plan:

• Product research
• Target audience
• Customer service and customer retention
• Product and service pricing
• Marketing and advertising plan
• Estimated budget for the entire campaign

This sales plan highlights measurable milestones for sales reps to aim for.

We’ve already touched on reasons why companies should use a sales plan, like this example, for their upcoming campaigns.

Below are the four main objectives of creating a sales plan and how they help with sales forecasting.

Align company departments and sales department goals

Different departments can have different perspectives on priorities and progress.

By aligning the company’s other departments with your sales team’s goals, you can ensure that all teams have a shared understanding of the sales plan’s objectives and their holistic contribution towards the business goal.

Create strategic direction for sales teams

A strategic direction plan establishes the company’s goals and objectives for the sales team.

You can formulate strategic direction plans by identifying the following:

• Target audience demographics
• Brand and product niche
• Actions that you want your customers to take
• The best channels to reach customers, such as social media and search engines

Once you’ve identified these, you can create an in-depth plan that can generate conversions in no time. Effective plans, like the one below, keep every customer detail in check.

Better customer-relationship management

A sales plan identifies the individuals and teams responsible for producing results that qualify as milestones for an upcoming business campaign.

With clear assignments, sales managers will easily know which individual or sales team member to approach for additional data.

Mark sales team milestones

Measuring plan milestones are important because they help assess a plan’s performance in a given period or by the end of its execution.

In doing so, team leaders can determine whether the project efficiently used every team member’s efforts and company resources to achieve the plan’s objectives.

The following are excellent examples of milestones for a sales plan:

• Completion of the research phase
• Development of the plan
• Approval of the plan
• Implementation of the plan

How do you write a sales plan?

Take a look at this sales plan. It’s fully detailed, sets deadlines, and keeps everyone updated with the most relevant and newest information so the team is aware of their responsibilities.

Here’s an overview of making an excellent and greatly convincing sales plan:

Compile data from the previous sales year

Create sales targets that meet your sales plan objectives, create a swot analysis, identify demand trends using sales data, look for existing market gaps.

• Appoint key roles for each of your objectives

So, let’s get to it!

Evaluating data from previous marketing campaigns could reveal helpful trends that can improve your upcoming sales plans.

Previous sales data can indicate accurate demographic data, such as lifestyle, age, income, and high sales activities in a given area.

With this data, your team can develop a detailed sales plan that includes your products while keeping in mind your demographic’s language, lifestyle, sensibilities, and more.

Here’s a great way to present this to your superiors and team members.

Related: 10 Demographic Infographic Templates to Share Population Data and More

Simple food sales action plan template

Take your reports from dull to comprehensively lively with this Venngage template. This is a great sales plan template when you have a significant amount of data to show.

You want to get to the point with your sales plan presentations. This fully customizable template makes it easy to share your sales plan data quickly and easily.

With Venngage, you can share your sales plan online with anyone. And when you upgrade to a business account, you can download your plan in a variety of formats, including PNG, PNG HD, PDF, Interactive PDF, and PowerPoint.

All sales targets must be clear, measurable goals that are specific and realistic with a defined deadline.

For example, ‘increase customer retention by 20 percent by the fourth quarter of this year’ is a specific, measurable, attainable, and timely goal.

Aligning your sales targets with the company’s general objectives is the best way to create sales plan objectives that incentivize customers to take action and make a purchase.

These sales KPIs or key performance indicators will keep the sales team aligned and on track with sales goals.

Light strategic sales action plan template

Organize your KPIs for measuring with this simple template. It’s easy to add to a project management interface. Alternately, it can be shared via email.

This helps to have everyone synchronized with the sales plan objectives.

All the colors in this template are neutral, and you can switch them out with your branding assets using Venngage’s convenient drag-and-drop editor.

A SWOT analysis is a tool utilized in the business world to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that a company’s business model may face.

Conducting a SWOT analysis is important for business owners to ensure that their company is as prepared as possible for the future. It can help businesses identify what strategies should be utilized for sales plans.

There are numerous reasons why businesses should use a SWOT analysis:

• A SWOT analysis makes forecasting easier when it is difficult to accurately predict the direction of an industry
• The SWOT analysis is a simplified view of the company’s situation and helps in reaching revenue targets
• It helps companies compare themselves to competitors and create a sales plan that is impactful 

It’s undeniable that the data a SWOT analysis produces is essential for any brand.

Blue competitor SWOT analysis template

Easily organize your thoughts with this simple but effective SWOT analysis template.

The grid format helps your team organize their thoughts and build an efficient sales pipeline.

Change the color scheme to suit your brand, or add a background or header image to make the text stand out.

Related: 15+ Business Plan Examples to Win Your Next Round of Funding

Demand trends are changes in the type and quantity of goods that consumers want to buy.

This is crucial data for sales plans because demand helps sales managers gauge if people identify the brand’s products as essentials or luxuries.

One way to identify demand trends is to use a scatter plot. This is what a scatter plot graph looks like:

This graph is an excellent way to find trends and correlations in your data. Here’s how:

• Plot two sets of data on the same graph
• Pick a line that divides the graph into two equal halves
• Compare the height of each data point on the left side of the line to the height of data points on the right side of the line
• Consider how many data points are on one side of the line than the other

If there are more data points on one side, there is likely a correlation between the two sides and possible causation.

Once you’ve identified these trends, you can include graphs and charts on a sales plan template during your presentation.

Visuals and well-made infographic designs are excellent ways to present your data without cluttering your documents or slides.

Revenue scatter plot chart

A great way to present prospective trends is by customizing this simple scatter plot graph.

This template fits perfectly into a presentation slide deck. There aren’t heavy visuals in this template. The layout is clean and simple, leaving nothing to the reader’s imagination.

You can make the chart more relevant by adding brand-related or relevant images. Or use an image from the 3 million+ stock photos available in the Venngage library.

Upload your own images, change the colors and fonts, and more with this template.

Related: How to Choose the Best Types of Charts For Your Data

A market gap is a space between supply and demand. It’s important because if there is a large market gap, it can indicate an economic opportunity for a company to capitalize on.

Market gaps can be as simple as solving a problem identified by an emerging group of customers.

For example, not every business has food delivery services because it’s expensive to make a fleet, and this gap helped create food delivery services.

A market team can find gaps based on three inputs:

• Forecasting models that help analyze data from the company’s previous-year data
• Qualitative research on lacking areas and industry expert reports identifying the target audience’s pain points
• Finding micro to small emerging trends that are already existing in the market

Market research mind map template

Display your research data with an easy-to-understand template, like the example below. You can present every single detail of your research without making it look like a cluttered report.

Using visuals and an easy-to-understand table, your readers can easily follow the strategic sales plan process from start to finish.

Appoint key roles for each of your sales objectives

With a strategic sales plan, you’ll need to appoint team members or departments to specific tasks. This is crucial for achieving the sales plan’s goals.

A good sales manager will assign roles according to each member’s specialty. For example, front-facing sales reps are better positioned to handle the CRM components of sales plans.

Appointing key roles can be as simple as using a table to align a team member’s position with their responsibilities.

However, you will need much more complex diagrams if you’re assigning tasks to projects with dozens of members.

Food Customer Sales Action Plan Template

Highlight every important detail with this free sales plan template that you can send to team members and other departments.

This sales plan template includes a dedicated section for your target market, customer profile, action plan, and task assignments. It’s a great briefing document for both internal and external use.

Fully customize this sales plan template for your brand with Venngage’s My Brand Kit feature.

Related: 9 Sales Infographics to Guide Strategy and Increase Sales

Now you can execute your sales plan with confidence and grow your customer base

Sales plans should be visually attractive as well as impactful. It isn’t always easy to create a sales plan without design experience.

Use the free sales plan template examples in this post to write a sales plan that is powerful and effective.

With these examples as inspiration, you can help team members and your business convince your target market about the dependability and quality of your products.

The Venngage sales plan templates will help you reach your sales goals faster and grow your business in the process.

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Sales Plan Templates

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.

They can identify sale market prospects; plan the requirements of their staff and adapt a timeline in reaching their goals. But the sales plan is just one aspect of business management and planning.

Table of Contents

• 1 Sales Plan Templates
• 2 Main parts and purpose of a sales plan template
• 3 Sale Strategies
• 4 The benefits of using a sales plan template
• 5 Free Sales Plan Templates
• 6 Tips for creating your sales plan template

The design of a good sales tracking spreadsheet could be costly in terms of time, money, and effort. To facilitate this requirement, you can just download a template here. This can provide efficiency and easy organization.

Then you can use the resources meant for the design in achieving your business goals . Sales and marketing personnel can use the template as a tool to communicate their ideas. A sales plan template can be part of your business.

But it would depend upon the nature of scope of your business.

Main parts and purpose of a sales plan template

A sales strategy will be helpful for any organization. This is especially true when planning their activities in a structured manner. This will ensure that they achieve all their objectives and goals.

It’s paramount that you design the plan with meticulous care. Make sure to include all the necessary parts. To have an inkling of what and how a sales template looks like, you can go online. To help you out, here are some main parts of such a plan:

• Executive summary
• Elevator pitch
• Mission of the organization
• Analysis details
• Objectives and goals
• Relevant performance indicators
• End users and target audience
• Analysis of advantages and the competition
• Marketing strategy

There are good reasons why businesses invest a lot of money and effort in formulating a sales plan. Fortunately, you can simply download a template to make things easier for you. Such plan will serve varied purposes which we shall briefly enumerate:

• Setting up goals for each individual and for the business too.
• Creating an effective operational plan.
• Setting up the business expenses/finances.
• Analyzing the business’s financial statements.
• Determining and analyzing the potential risks.
• Devising an efficient marketing strategy.
• Creating an actual profile of customers who patronize the business’s products or services.
• Identifying target audiences and would-be customers.
• Getting more familiar with the sales cycle.
• The plan will play an important role in determining the financial goals of the business.

It’s important to have an efficient and effective sales plan. Then you’re expected to meet all your company’s predefined objectives and goals.

More importantly, it will enhance the organization’s profits. If you prefer to create your own templates, consider the following tips. These will prove beneficial to your endeavor:

• The customers take first consideration when creating the plan.
• Do intensive researches work on market trends before starting to plan.
• Consider the weaknesses and strengths of the competition.
• Give particular attention to details when creating the plan.
• Include all the relevant angles that are essential to the sales plan.

Sales plan templates are periodically made by businesses. They can have them monthly or even seasonal. In the case of small businesses , a two-week period is best to provide a better insight into market trends.

Sale Strategies

The benefits of using a sales plan template

Have you ever tried to plan an event without a plan? It certainly is a winning formula for chaos and disorganization. Some people take for granted the use of a plan. They may find it difficult or expensive and would rather not part with their money.

This situation can be bad because they are missing the advantages of good planning. Consider these benefits:

• You’ll be able to stay on your strategy. A sales strategy will provide you a synopsis of the most important aspects of your plan. It will also remind you of issues that you need to include. Interruptions may happen when people don’t know what issues should to prioritize.
• Your objectives will be clearer. A good plan should incorporate specific objectives. You need to establish then manage these objectives. These can include sales, website visitors, margins or the launching of new products . Make the achievement of objectives the measure of success.
• You’ll make better-educated guesses. With the progression of the plan, you’ll be able to predict the outcomes of certain issues. These include potential markets, lead processing, sales costs, and other business processes.
• Your priorities will become more sensible. A business definitely has some other priorities aside from its sales strategy. You can plan the company’s management, its growth, and financial health. These should all be part of the plan. Set the groundwork for your priorities and make changes as the business develops.
• You’ll be able to understand independencies more. You can define the plan as a schedule of events that should happen chronologically. Use the plan to determine what activities should occur and in what order. The plan will prove its value in making you organized and on time.
• Setting milestones will keep you right on track. The plan will provide you with target deadlines and dates for the goals you need to accomplish. This will apply to either a solo enterprise or for a team in a company.
• You’ll be able to delegate better. The plan will define the responsibility of each team and individual. There will always be a member who will be in charge of some important task.
• Team management and results tracking will be a lot easier. Businesses usually set review time for their employees . This is to determine their performances, particularly as team members. Many hate these reviews but they’re a gauge of performance. You can use them to commend, improve or correct the employee’s work . These reviews should be part of the plan. Also, you should put them in writing as part of the member’s record.
• You can manage and plan the cash flow better. A business that mismanages their cash flow will definitely fail. There’s a need for a cash-flow plan. Educated guesses based on market trends will be important. Use it to bring together what assets you need to purchase and what debts you need to pay .
• Course corrections will help keep your business going. The presence of a sales plan makes the business more proactive than reactive. Planning ahead makes for lesser mistakes. Constantly tracking activities could help predict better results and make corrections when needed. A prediction based on nothing is a myth. But predictions can eventuate if based on trends and facts. The plan should define and set expectations and establish assumptions. You can better manage what comes next and make course corrections if they happen.

Sales tracking spreadsheets and plans aren’t only for giant corporations. They can apply to small enterprises as well. No need to delve into complicated matters regarding your business. It’s a fairly straightforward document but it’s powerful enough to do a big job.

Free Sales Plan Templates

Tips for creating your sales plan template

In a business, a sales strategy is also important as this serves as a guide to the sales team of the company. A sales plan is specifically for sales personnel. It will guide them in attaining their objectives and goals.

The plan can be long-term which could last for years or short-term, such as an annual plan. In either case, the common ground is that the plan steers the members to their goals through sales.

• Set definite sales goals. Businesses usually have financial goals. After all, they are in it for the money. It’s important to set specific goals. Those which sales personnel must attain within a certain period of time. Specific goals can help the employees break them down into quantifiable objectives.
• Define your sales objectives based on sales goals. Write them down. Specific achievements can help you meet your sales goals. You can have a sales objective which will include an increase in sales by a specific number of units. You can hasten to reach the objective by cross-selling products during a period of time. This will undoubtedly incur an increase in expenditures. This is inevitable when doing promotions or advertisements.
• You need to identify three important aspects of your customer’s sales focus. First, there’s the customer profile. Salespersons will need some information about their customers so they can make predictions. From this information, they can target the products they can sell to their customers. Then, there’s the organization profile. You will have to explain the kind of organization you’re targeting. Finally, there’s the sales territory. This will refer to the region that you will be operating in. A list of accounts of each salesperson would be helpful as each would focus on a distinct market niche.
• Identify your target sales market. The sales plan should have a target sales market. This will include the research you’ve done on market trends. Consider the industry sales data associated with the products and services you offer. You should be aware of current developments in the industry. This will be important for your sales projections which you based on sales figures of the industry. Also, make mention of competitors in the market. These competitors offer the same goods or services. Make comparisons on each other’s market shares, customer base, and competitive advantages. You’ll spend the most hours of research and work on this section of the plan. What you intend to do will define your strategies and the tactics to execute them.
• The next thing to do is to identify the tools and systems. Here, enumerate the things that you’ll need to successfully implement your plan. The main systems to outline consist of regular weekly meetings on sales progress. Also, you need a CRM system. Use it to execute your plan and come up with sales plan metrics. Finally, list the communication equipment too.
• After you have formulated the sales objectives, you’ll now work on measures. These would keep track of your sales objective’s progress as against achieving them.
• Create a pipeline that can identify each stage of development. You need to identify the stages of your newly acquired business leads. You can also source out more sales opportunities within your customer accounts on-hand. The important metrics that you need to measure are conversion rates for every stage of your sales process. Name the reasons why sales opportunities are being lost for each stage. The percentage or win rate of all new leads that which you’ve converted into sales.
• The next thing to plan is your team. This section of the plan will list the members of your sales team. Also, identify their roles and responsibilities. In case you have a separate marketing agency team, include them in this section. Describe also the proper roles of this team. They are an essential part of your sales performances.
• Design a target date to accomplish all your goals. Also, include the calendaring of all milestones, task, and activities. All those required for you to achieve such goals. Be specific about time management methods. These will provide assistance in prioritization, delegation, and scheduling.
• Based on your financial resources, create a budget plan. One that’s required to accomplish your sales objectives. The budget for your team will be part of the bigger budget for the company. You will need to develop a system. Use it to track down and monitor the expenditures that are specific to your sales objectives. Always be aware that your team doesn’t exceed the budget. Some items may have allocations in your budget. These can include increased production, labor, advertising, equipment, travel, and supplies.
• Make an outline of the strategies and tactics that you’ll need. Everything required to successfully executing your sales plan. A top-down strategy would be great. One which allows you to communicate the goals to every salesperson in your team. Mention the HR personnel who provided assistance to execute the plan. To strengthen the capabilities of your people, they may need more training. Include this as a component of the sales plan.

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

• January 21, 2021

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

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

It usually includes:

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

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

Specifically, it covers 9 pieces of strategic information.

1. Executive Summary and Scope of The Sales Plan

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

2. Business Goals and Revenue Targets

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

3. Review of Prior Period Performance

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

4. Market and Industry Conditions

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

5. Strategies, Methodologies, and Tactics

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

6. Customer Segments

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

• Cross-sells
• New Prospects
• New Segments

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

7. Team Capabilities, Resources, and Upgrades

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

8. Action Plan For Teams and Individuals

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

9. Performance Benchmarks & Monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

30-60-90-day Sales Plan

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

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

Day 1 to 30: 

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

Day 31 to 60:

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

Day 61 to 90:

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

Sales Plan For Specific Sales

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

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

Territory Sales Plan

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

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

A good territory sales plan will:

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

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

Sales Training Plan

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

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

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

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

Sales Budget Plan

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

A good sales budget plan  should include the following:

Sales forecasting: 

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

Anticipated expenses: 

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

Expect the unexpected: 

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

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

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

Without a written plan, it’s just talk.

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

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

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

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

1. Your goals

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

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

2. Your SWOT analysis

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

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

3. Your strategy

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

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

4. Your tactics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tip #2: Use data and statistics

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

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

Tip #3: Verify your facts

Accuracy matters!

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

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

Tip #4: Get tactical

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

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

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

Tip #5: Use Historical Performance Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sales plan should contain the following sections:

1. Executive Summary

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

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

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

2. Business Goals With Revenue Targets

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

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

3. Review of Past Performance

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

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

4. Specific Strategies, Methods, and Playbooks

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

5. Customer Segments/ Buyers Persona

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

6. Team Capabilities and Resources

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

7. Action Plan

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

Below is an example of an action plan table:

8. Sales Tools

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

9. Performance Benchmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Max Altschuler

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How to Create a Sales Plan That Converts [ + Templates]

Written by: Raja Mandal

As a business owner, the only thing that you should focus on is generating as much revenue as possible. Whether you're a B2C or B2B company , sales can help you generate revenue and grow your business.

Only a steady approach with a defined sales plan will help your sales team achieve its targets . However, creating an effective plan for your sales process is not an easy task. We've come up with this comprehensive guide to provide you with all the necessary tools and techniques to create an effective sales plan that converts.

Read this article carefully and use our sales plan templates to create an effective sales plan for your business.

Table of Contents

What is a sales plan & why do you need one, the benefits of a sales plan, what should a sales plan include.

• How To Create a Sales Plan

9 Sales Plan Templates You Can Use

A sales plan is a document that lays out your business's sales strategy to improve sales results in a specified period. It brings everyone in the sales team on the same page to see the bigger picture, share the same objectives and work together to reach the sales target.

In other words, while a business plan is about business goals, a sales plan is all about making those goals happen.

An effective sales plan should:

• Communicate your sales goals and objectives to your sales team.
• Help your sales team strategize their efforts.
• Outline roles and responsibilities for your sales team and leadership.
• Track the progress of your sales reps in organizational roles.

Build relationships with customers and drive sales growth

• Reach out to prospects with impressive pitch decks and proposals that convert
• Monitor clients' level of engagement to see what they are most interested in
• Build a winning sales playbook to maximize your sales team's efficiency

Sign up. It’s free.

The primary objective of creating a sales plan is to execute all your best sales ideas. However, that's not all.

Before jumping into how to create a sales plan, let's look at some of its benefits.

Identify Potential Problems

Sales problems are no joke. They can minimize qualified opportunities and bring your potential revenue way down. Dealing with sales problems is a painful task for your sales team.

Creating a sales plan helps you identify problems in your sales process, allowing you to adjust your strategy and goals accordingly.

Set Realistic Goals

With a mindfully created sales plan, every sales team member will know what they need to accomplish to meet your sales goals. However, always try to set achievable goals. Challenge your sales team but don't push too hard.

Your deliverables should be as specific as possible and moderately challenging to achieve. A sales plan will help you understand and set realistic goals so your sales reps can succeed without being stressed out.

Have a look at these goal-setting templates to help you establish realistic goals. This detailed SMART goals worksheet is particularly useful for documenting your sales goals.

Understand Your Company's Strengths and Weaknesses

Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses helps you assess where your business stands in the marketplace. Also, it gives you insights into how it compares with your competitors and how to leverage your unique selling proposition (USP) to get more market share.

A sales plan will gear your sales team to bring out your company's strengths. Including sales battle cards and a SWOT analysis in your sales plan is one of the best ways to do the same.

Measure Your Progress Effectively

Looking at bottom-line results in the budget, sales, profits or other areas will not help you understand the reasons behind your achievement or how to improve your performance. Once you set realistic goals, measuring the progress will help you do that, leading to exponential growth in profits.

Use a sales plan to rethink your sales approach and make changes accordingly to reach your goals.

Discipline and Diligence

Sales reps sometimes find it lonely and discouraging while selling. Using a sales plan and explaining it to your sales team brings a sense of urgency to selling and motivation. It helps an employee become more task-oriented and disciplined.

For example, your sales representatives know that they must close at least five deals per month. They will try their best to achieve the goal and always stay disciplined in their job.

An effective sales plan should include many critical aspects of business growth, such as revenue goals, selling strategies, target audience, current salesforce and more.

Before creating a sales plan, it is crucial to learn what goes into a sales plan. Here is some strategic information that you can include in your sales plan.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is like planting the seed of your organization in the sales plan. It should include your company's vision and mission statement and the background of its founding story.

This section introduces your sales plan to the audience it is made for, focusing on the goals, strategies and execution plans.

Sales Goals

Focus on setting sales goals such as increasing revenue, increasing customer base, improving customer satisfaction and more. It will give your sales team a roadmap of what they need to accomplish to help you achieve specific targets.

A HubSpot survey reported that nearly 40% of businesses stated that they failed to achieve their sales goals in 2020. Therefore, always try to keep an achievable sales target; only then your sales reps will be able to achieve them.

Brief Review of Prior Period Performance

Help your sales team understand where they stand and how far they need to reach to achieve your sales objectives by giving them a glimpse of prior period performance. It's like a recap of past performance to identify mistakes and decisions that led to positive and negative outcomes.

Look at the performance metrics section of this sales plan template for inspiration.

Target Market

Identifying the target market is crucial for every business, regardless of its size. If you are an SMB owner, you will most likely face cut-throat competition from the leading business. This fierce competition for resources can leave your store struggling almost every day to generate leads and close more deals.

Therefore, you and your sales team need to dig deeper into your target market, break it down and understand it to the core. And a sales plan is probably the most important document that should include your target market.

Sales Strategy

To align the salespeople on your team on shared goals and empower them to do their best, you need to include a strong sales strategy in your sales plan. Your sales strategy will also keep your sales reps successful and happy, the ultimate foundation for a cohesive and successful business.

Competitor Analysis

The best sales teams use competitive intelligence to gain an advantage over their competitors. As a responsible business owner, you might have studied your competitors to improve your products.

Let your salespeople know about your and your competitors' different offerings and what makes you better than them.

Action Plan

This section should include your action plan that details how you reach prospective customers and turn them into potential customers.

For example, let's say you are a digital marketing agency and want to generate $300k revenue by the end of 2022. Here are some example action plans that your sales plan should include:

• Set refined goals
• Refine pricing strategies
• Offer bundled services
• Offer subscriptions

Your budget for the year is an essential element of the sales plan. How much are you willing to spend to achieve those sales goals?

Your sales plan budget should include salaries, bonuses, commissions, training and development expenses, team building activity costs and others. Include all of them in the sales plan to help the team understand your spending priorities.

KPIs to Measure

Modern sales teams are driven by a collaborative spirit and an awareness of metrics and KPIs. This section lays out the performance metrics you should track progress to monitor the progress and help make changes in the plan.

Your Sales Team Structure

An effective sales team results from many strategic decisions - who you hire, what you pay, train and much more. Your sales team is responsible for reaching the sales goals and accelerating your business growth. Furthermore, they help you enrich your company culture and build better products and services.

Make sure the roles and responsibilities of your team members are clearly defined with a beautiful Meet the Team template like the one below.

How to Create a Sales Plan

A sales plan sits within or alongside a marketing plan to streamline your sales process. Visme offers a wide range of beautifully designed marketing plan templates that helps you create one.

But for now let's discuss how to create a sales plan.

Step 1: Establish Your Mission, Values and Vision Statement

Sales teams, especially those in small businesses, are often very goal-oriented. The inclusion of a vision statement helps the team clearly see their goals, whereas a mission statement details the team's present purpose.

Before setting the goals and actions, provide your sales team with a clear understanding of the big picture. Why does your company exist? What problems do your products solve? What are your company's values?

Put these things together to form the mission statement. Without a clearly defined vision and mission statement, there is no destination to head to.

Step 2: Set Goals and Objectives

Now that you and your team know your company's mission, it's time to set the goals and objectives. Your sales plan should include both short-term and long-term goals. These goals should be data-driven using the sales data you have collected in the past.

Though most sales goals are revenue-based, they can include other things like profit margin, conversion rate, total volume and others. However, your goals should be achievable and synchronized with each step of the sales pipeline .

Step 3: Define Your Target Market

Your team knows your company's nuts and bolts and the goals and objectives. Now they should know your target market to whom they will be selling. Include detailed information about your target market in your sales plan to proceed further.

To understand your target market, you need to clearly define your ideal customer persona – their challenges, goals, demographics and how your product or service serves their needs and pain points.

Check out these 20 customer persona templates to get inspiration and create your own.

Step 4: Do a Competitive Analysis

Use competitive intelligence to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your potential competitors. It will help you understand how your competition works and identify potential opportunities where you can outperform them.

Furthermore, it helps you capture most of the market by consistently improving your products and services. Ultimately, it will help your sales reps understand and explain the distinguishing features to the target market and close more deals.

Step 5: Define Your Marketing Strategy

The more your sales pipeline is filled with leads, the more you close deals. Define your company's marketing strategy to help you create a unique brand identity , increase brand awareness and generate leads.

According to a report from Hubspot, 61% of marketers find generating traffic and leads as their biggest challenge. Thus, making the marketing strategy a crucial yet challenging part of your sales plan. Include your pricing and promotion strategy in this section to create your marketing plan.

Watch the video below and learn to create an effective marketing plan.

Step 6: Set the Budget

Now, lay out all the costs you think you will incur to achieve your sales goals. This includes salaries, tools and equipment, training and development expenses, hiring, commissions and many others that are part of your sales plan.a

Step 7: Create an Action Pan

Once you know your destination, you need to find a way to get there. This section is where you must outline the sales activities, deadlines, timeline and milestones that will take place throughout the sales process.

Create action plans according to your sales goals and objectives. For example, sales goals, such as increasing annual revenue by 30%. Action plan:

• Develop a customer referral program
• Implement a referral program in CRM
• Promote it via email and social media

Step 8: Assign Roles & Responsibilities

This section is where you should introduce your current sales team and assign their specific roles and responsibilities. Ideally, your sales team should consist of sales representatives, sales specialists, inbound sales reps, outbound sales reps and account executives, led by a sales manager.

Depending on your company size, your sales team can range in scope from a handful of roles to hundreds and thousands of team members.

Creating a sales plan from scratch takes a lot of time and effort. Also, making the sales plan aesthetically appealing requires some design experience.

Below are nine sales plan templates for various types of businesses.

Choose the one that suits your industry and customize it accordingly in the Visme editor. Replace the colors, fonts, text, icons and more with a few clicks.

1. Health Insurance Sales Plan

Health insurance sales are now higher than ever, but that doesn't mean it has become easy. To ensure your health insurance company does not get behind, you need to create an effective sales plan.

Use this health insurance sales plan template to create a strong sales plan so that your sales reps can understand your sales strategy and close more deals.

2. Consumer Product Sales Plan

The consumer products industry is a broad one that deals with several sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how people shop and how retailers sell. As a consumer product company owner, you must build new capabilities and change how you operate to skyrocket your sales.

Use this consumer product sales plan template to help your sales reps learn about your products, strategies, goals and so on.

3. Internet Services Sales Plan

The internet service provider market is overly saturated and standing out from the competition is crucial to successfully running your business. Create a sales plan that helps you win more deals and stay ahead of your competition.

This sales plan template helps you explain your pricing strategy, target customers, sales strategy, sales goals and more to your team. Customize it to create an effective sales plan in minutes.

4. Sales Training Company Sales Plan

As a training provider, you might be juggling a million balls already. So, we thought we'd take care of this one thing. We have crafted this sales plan template just for you to create the best sales plan possible.

And if you are a sales training provider company, your sales plan should be the best. Customize this sales plan template and strengthen your sales plan quickly.

5. Marketing Agency Sales Plan

As a marketing agency, your strategies should be creative enough to help the clients grow. Everything you do should reflect your creativity.

Therefore, we have designed this sales plan template by focusing on making it aesthetically pleasing. From the color combination to the font pairing , everything is perfect.

Replace the company name with yours and customize all the other fields like company background, target market, market analysis, marketing strategies and more to make it your own.

6. Real Estate Sales Plan

If disorganized, the real estate sales process can be time-consuming, frustrating and full of back-and-forth discussions. However, if you can optimize your sales process, it will save you a lot of time and close more deals.

Furthermore, a streamlined sales process will help you delight your customers and prospects. To ensure you don't have a fragmented sales process, brainstorm your sales strategy and use this template to create the best sales plan for your real estate business.

7. Digital Marketing Agency Sales Plan

According to a recent survey, 77% of B2B purchasers don't speak to a salesperson before completing their own research. So, as a digital marketing agency, your sales plan should be one of the most effective and your sales reps should be trained enough to convert the leads into potential customers.

Use this sales plan template to explain your budgets, marketing strategies, sales goals, action plan, KPIs and more to your sales representatives.

8. SaaS Product Sales Plan

SaaS has become extremely popular due to its scalability and ability to address almost any business or individual need. But having the wrong sales strategy can mean losing users and leaving huge amounts of money on the table.

Create your sales plan using this template, secure paying customers for the platform and make sure existing customers don't leave.

9. Sales Cloud Software Sales Plan

Similar to the Saas sales plan template, this sales plan is the best fit for a sales cloud software company that wants to streamline its sales process by creating a great sales plan. Replace the fields to do a competitive analysis, define the target market, set SMART goals and many more.

Learn more about the 15 sales enablement content that can help you maximize sales and conversions.

Create Your Sales Plan With Visme

By following the steps mentioned above and using the sales plan templates, you should be able to create a sales plan in minutes. Choose the sales plan template that best suits your needs and start customizing it using Visme.

Additionally, Visme helps you create compelling and stunning sales materials like sales proposals , sales presentations , pitch decks and product sell sheets .

Put simply, there are so many ways Visme can help you close more sales .

Create a free account in Visme and start designing your sales materials with little or no design skills.

Develop a sales plan with your team in Visme.

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About the Author

Raja Antony Mandal is a Content Writer at Visme. He can quickly adapt to different writing styles, possess strong research skills, and know SEO fundamentals. Raja wants to share valuable information with his audience by telling captivating stories in his articles. He wants to travel and party a lot on the weekends, but his guitar, drum set, and volleyball court don’t let him.

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• How to Create a Sales Plan? 10 Free Templates 

Selling without a plan is akin to setting out on a journey without a map.  

While you might stumble upon your destination by chance, having a plan significantly increases the likelihood of success. 

Without a sales plan in place, businesses risk operating in a reactive mode, addressing immediate issues but lacking a cohesive strategy for long-term growth. 

In this article, we go beyond theory and cover the practical side of creating sales plans with a step-by-step guide, actionable templates and best practices for tried and tested success. (If you’re in a hurry, you can skip right to the sales plan templates.) 

What is a Sales Plan?  

A sales plan is a detailed strategy that lays out how a company intends to meet its sales goals.  

It involves setting objectives, identifying target customers, outlining the tactics to reach them, and detailing the resources and steps needed to close deals successfully.  

It’s the playbook that guides sales teams in achieving their targets. If you’re wondering whether you really need a sales plan, you’ll find your answer below. 

Benefits of Creating a Sales Plan  

Having a solid sales plan offers a range of benefits that contribute to the overall success and sustainability of a business.  

Here are the key advantages: 

• Clear Direction: A solid sales plan provides a clear roadmap for the sales team, outlining objectives, strategies, and tactics. It ensures that everyone is moving in the same direction, minimizing confusion and maximizing efficiency. 
• Goal Alignment: The plan aligns sales goals with overall business objectives, ensuring that the sales team’s efforts directly contribute to the company’s growth and success. 
• Efficient Resource Allocation: With a plan in place, businesses can allocate resources more effectively, whether it’s budget, personnel, or technology. This optimization enhances the team’s ability to achieve its goals. 
• Proactive Problem Solving: A sales plan involves anticipating potential challenges and developing strategies to address them. This proactive approach minimizes risks and enhances the team’s ability to navigate obstacles. 
• Strategic Decision-Making: It provides a strategic framework for decision-making, helping businesses make informed choices based on data, analysis, and a clear understanding of market dynamics. 
• Performance Measurement: Sales plans include key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable businesses to measure success systematically. This data-driven approach facilitates informed decision-making and continuous improvement. 
• Adaptability: A well-structured sales plan is adaptable to changes in the market, customer preferences, and other external factors. It allows businesses to pivot strategies when needed and stay ahead of the competition. 
• Team Accountability: The plan establishes clear roles and responsibilities within the sales team, fostering accountability. Team members understand their contributions to overall goals, enhancing collaboration and performance. 

Given the significance of having an effective sales plan, here’s an actionable guide to help you create one. 

How to Create an Effective Sales Plan  

An effective sales plan typically has several key characteristics, but if there’s one thing that stands out, it would be clarity of purpose and alignment with business goals.  

Here’s how you can create a sales plan: 

• Set Clear Objectives  
• Clarify not only the quantitative objectives but also the qualitative ones, such as improving customer satisfaction or penetrating a new market segment. 
• Align objectives with the overall business strategy to ensure synergy across departments. 

• Know Your Target Market  
• Develop buyer personas with detailed narratives that go beyond demographics to capture motivations, pain points, and aspirations. 
• Use advanced analytics tools to track real-time market changes and consumer sentiments. 

• Understand Your Product/Service  
• Conduct a comprehensive value proposition analysis, exploring emotional and functional benefits to create a more compelling narrative. 
• Regularly update your understanding of the product-market fit as customer needs evolve. 
• SWOT Analysis  
• Dig deep into the nuances of each element of SWOT, identifying not only current factors but potential future shifts. 
• Leverage external consultants or industry experts to gain a fresh perspective on your business landscape. 
• Sales Team Structure  
• Consider hybrid or agile team structures that allow for quick adaptation to market changes. 
• Foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing to capitalize on the diverse strengths within the team. 
• Sales Strategies and Tactics  
• Develop strategies for lead generation, prospecting, and closing deals. 
• Develop a multi-channel approach that integrates online and offline strategies seamlessly. 
• Implement A/B testing and data-driven decision-making to refine tactics continuously. 
• Sales Forecasting  
• Utilize predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms for more accurate forecasting . 
• Incorporate scenario planning to prepare for unexpected market shifts or disruptions. 
• Budget Allocation  
• Adopt a zero-based budgeting approach , challenging the necessity of each expense to ensure optimal resource allocation. 
• Create contingency funds for quick adaptation to unforeseen circumstances. 

• Training and Development  
• Implement personalized training programs based on individual strengths and weaknesses. 
• Foster a culture of self-directed learning, encouraging team members to proactively seek knowledge. 
• Technology and Tools  
• Embrace emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation for more efficient sales processes. 
• Regularly assess the technological landscape for innovative tools that can provide a competitive edge. 
• Monitoring and Evaluation  
• Establish a dynamic dashboard that provides real-time insights into KPIs, enabling agile decision-making. 
• Conduct regular “post-mortem” analyses on both successful and unsuccessful sales initiatives for continuous improvement. 
• Feedback Loop  
• Implement a 360-degree feedback system that includes input from customers, frontline sales staff, and management. 
• Actively seek out dissenting opinions to avoid groupthink and encourage innovative problem-solving. 
• Adaptability  
• Foster a mindset of adaptability and resilience within the sales team. 
• Develop agile response plans that can be quickly deployed in response to unexpected challenges or opportunities. 

Remember, a sales plan is a dynamic document that should be revisited and adjusted regularly to stay aligned with your business goals and market conditions. 

Types of Sales Plan Templates  

Exploring the potential of different sales strategies is crucial for organizational growth.  

The following table outlines key focus areas and stakeholders for various sales plans, providing a comprehensive view of how each plan contributes to overall success. 

While there are many sales plans, successful sales come down to understanding the important parts of each strategy. Let’s uncover what makes sales planning work. 

Sales Plan Templates  

Essential elements of a sales plan  .

A well-put-together sales plan plays a crucial role in directing a company’s sales initiatives and achieving revenue objectives.  

Now, every industry and company is unique, so the details might vary, but the basics are pretty much the same. Here’s what you usually find in a sales plan: 

1. Executive summary 

• Briefly outline the key components of the sales plan. 
• Provide an overview of the company’s current sales performance. 

2. Business objectives 

• Clearly define the sales goals and objectives. 
• Align these objectives with the overall business strategy. 

3. Target market and customer segmentation 

• Identify and describe the target market. 
• Segment customers based on demographics, psychographics, and behavior. 

4. Competitive analysis 

• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. 
• Identify opportunities and threats in the market. 

5. Sales goals and quotas 

• Set specific, measurable, and achievable sales targets. 
• Assign sales quotas to individual team members or regions. 

6. Sales strategies 

• Outline the strategies for reaching the target audience. 
• Include positioning, pricing, and differentiation strategies. 

7. Sales tactics 

• Detail the specific actions and activities the sales team will undertake. 
• Include prospecting, lead generation, and closing techniques . 

8. Sales channels 

• Specify the channels through which products or services will be sold. 
• Consider direct sales, online sales, partnerships, etc. 

9. Sales training and development 

• Outline training programs to enhance the skills of the sales team. 
• Include ongoing development initiatives. 

10. Sales forecast 

• Provide a realistic projection of sales revenues. 
• Break down forecasts by product, service, or region. 

11. Budget 

• Detail the budget required for implementing the sales plan. 
• Include expenses for marketing, promotions, and sales activities. 

12. Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 

• Define the metrics used to measure sales performance. 
• Examples include conversion rates, average deal size, and customer acquisition cost. 

13. Implementation timeline 

• Create a timeline outlining the key milestones and deadlines. 
• Ensure alignment with broader business timelines. 

14. Risk analysis and contingency plans 

• Identify potential risks to the sales plan’s success. 
• Develop contingency plans to address unforeseen challenges. 

15. Monitoring and evaluation 

• Establish a process for monitoring and evaluating sales performance . 
• Regularly review and adjust the sales plan based on feedback and results. 

When businesses throw in these key elements into their sales plan, they’re basically mapping out how to hit their sales goals and improve overall performance. 

Best Practices for Sales Planning  

Best laid sales plans often subscribe to a few standard “best practices”. 

These go a long way in ensuring the plan’s effectiveness. Here are some key ones: 

1. Developing your sales team  

• Continuous Training: Implement ongoing training programs to keep the sales team updated on industry trends, product knowledge, and effective sales techniques. 
• Mentorship Programs: Foster mentorship relationships within the team to facilitate knowledge transfer and skill development. 
• Performance Reviews: Conduct regular performance reviews to identify areas for improvement and provide constructive feedback. 

2. Defining roles for the sales team  

• Clear Role Definitions: Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each member of the sales team to avoid confusion and overlap. 
• Specialization: Consider specialization within the team (e.g., inbound sales, outbound sales, account management) to leverage individual strengths. 
• Goal Alignment: Ensure that individual roles align with overall sales and business goals. 

3. Developing prospecting strategies  

• Targeted Prospecting: Tailor prospecting strategies to target specific market segments identified through thorough research. 
• Utilize Technology: Leverage CRM tools and other technologies to streamline prospecting processes and manage leads efficiently. 
• Multi-Channel Approach: Implement a multi-channel approach to prospecting, incorporating email campaigns, social media, and traditional outreach methods. 

4. Training programs to bolster sales competencies  

• Soft Skills Training: Include training modules that focus on developing soft skills such as communication, negotiation , and relationship-building. 
• Product Knowledge: Ensure that the sales team has in-depth knowledge of products or services to effectively communicate value propositions to customers. 
• Role-specific Training: Tailor training programs to address the unique needs of different sales roles within the team. 

5. Performance metrics and measurement  

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Establish and track KPIs that align with sales objectives, such as conversion rates, lead generation, and revenue growth. 
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Use analytics and data to make informed decisions about sales strategies and resource allocation. 
• Regular Performance Reviews: Conduct regular reviews to assess individual and team performance against set metrics. 

6. Collaboration and communication  

• Interdepartmental Collaboration: Foster collaboration between sales, marketing, and other relevant departments to ensure a cohesive approach. 
• Regular Team Meetings: Conduct regular team meetings to share updates, discuss challenges, and brainstorm strategies for improvement. 
• Open Communication Channels: Encourage open communication channels within the team to facilitate the exchange of ideas and feedback. 

7. Adaptability and continuous improvement  

• Agile Approach: Foster an agile mindset within the sales team to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and customer needs. 
• Feedback Loops: Establish feedback loops to gather input from the sales team, customers, and other stakeholders for continuous improvement. 
• Benchmarking: Regularly benchmark sales performance against industry standards and competitors to identify areas for enhancement. 

Implementing these best practices can contribute to the development of a high-performing sales team and the formulation of productive sales strategies. 

Utilizing Tools & Resources in Your Sales Plan  

Meeting your strategic goals hinges on integrating the right tools and resources into your sales plan 

Here’s how you can go about it: 

I. Incorporating CRM data into your sales plan  

• Customer segmentation:  
• Utilize CRM data to segment customers based on characteristics such as demographics, purchase history, and preferences. 
• Tailor marketing and sales strategies to address the unique needs of each customer segment. 

• Predictive analytics  
• Implement predictive analytics using CRM data to forecast future sales trends and identify potential opportunities. 
• Use predictive modeling to prioritize leads and focus efforts on prospects with a higher likelihood of conversion. 
• Lead scoring systems  

• Utilize lead scoring systems within your CRM to prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert.  
• This helps the sales team focus on high-potential opportunities. 
• Workflow automation:  
• Implement workflow automation tools to streamline and automate routine tasks, reducing manual effort and allowing the sales team to focus on high-value activities. 

• Real-time analytics   
• Provide the sales team with real-time analytics dashboards that offer instant insights into performance metrics, allowing for quick adjustments to strategies as needed. 
• Minimize distractions and maximize productivity by ensuring your team is seeing only what is relevant.  

• Sales performance management   
• Sales performance tools like LeadSquared’s Ace , feature leaderboards and gamification to create friendly competition. Real-time rankings and rewards encourage a motivated and competitive spirit among team members. 

• These tools track key performance metrics, allowing individuals to set and monitor goals. The transparency promotes accountability, fostering a results-oriented mindset and encouraging continuous improvement. 
• You can break down targets into smaller units by specific cycles to see how your team performs in regular intervals. Performance tracking tools can help you gain increased visibility into you team’s performance by analysing various aspects of their goal, dependencies in the process and more.
• Ace, for example, enables you to analyse not just the performance of your direct team but also their respective hierarchies. If you’d like to see how Ace further helps influence the performance of efficiency of your sales reps, book a free demo now ! 

II. Outlining the use of other software and resources  

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools  
• Explore AI-driven tools for sales forecasting, lead scoring, and personalized customer interactions. 
• Leverage AI algorithms to automate routine tasks, freeing up the sales team to focus on strategic activities. 
• Integration with marketing automation  
• Integrate sales tools with marketing automation platforms to align marketing and sales efforts. 
• Ensure a seamless handover of leads from marketing to sales for a cohesive customer journey. 

• E-learning platforms  
• Utilize e-learning platforms for ongoing training and development. 
• Offer a variety of learning resources, including videos, webinars, and interactive modules, to cater to different learning styles. 
• Customer feedback software  
• Implement customer feedback software to gather insights directly from customers. 
• Analyze feedback to identify areas for improvement and incorporate customer suggestions into the sales strategy. 

III. Choosing the right sales channels  

• Social media integration  
• Integrate social media platforms into your sales strategy for customer engagement and lead generation. 
• Utilize social listening tools to monitor conversations and trends relevant to your industry. 
• Mobile sales apps  
• Develop or utilize mobile sales apps to empower the sales team to access critical information and collaborate while on the go. 
• Ensure mobile apps are user-friendly and provide real-time updates. 

• Global expansion strategies  
• Consider global expansion by identifying and entering new international markets. 
• Tailor sales channels to local preferences and regulations, considering factors such as language and cultural nuances. 

Getting the hang of using tools and resources is a continuous journey. By constantly tweaking strategies, you set the stage for long-term success in sales planning. 

How Does a CRM Help you Plan Sales? 

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems serve as indispensable tools in refining sales planning strategies.  

By replacing guesswork with precision and basing conclusions on data-backed insights, a CRM system injects agility and impact into your sales plan. Here’s the nitty gritty of how that goes down:  

1. Centralized data management  

• Insightful consolidation: Seamlessly gather and organize vital customer information, ranging from contact details to purchase history and preferences, facilitating a comprehensive understanding of clientele. 
• Lead prioritization: Effectively manage potential leads by meticulously storing pertinent details, enabling strategic planning and allocation of resources. 

2. Accurate sales forecasting  

• Analytical precision: Leverage historical sales data analysis to discern patterns and trends, enabling more accurate projections and informed decision-making. 
• Pipeline visualization: Gain valuable insights into the sales pipeline, facilitating proactive measures to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate risks. 

3. Efficient activity planning  

• Structured planning: Exercise meticulous control over sales activities through task scheduling and tracking, ensuring optimal utilization of time and resources. 
• Seamless integration: Harmonize sales activities with calendar schedules, minimizing conflicts and streamlining operational efficiency. 

4. Strategic lead and opportunity management  

• Lead progress tracking: Monitor lead progression through the sales funnel, adapting engagement strategies based on evolving customer behavior and preferences. 
• Opportunity optimization: Systematically manage sales opportunities to maximize potential deals, fostering a methodical approach to achieving sales targets. 

5. Targeted customer segmentation  

• Segmentation precision: Employ segmentation criteria such as demographics, behavior, and purchase history to tailor sales strategies to specific customer segments, enhancing engagement and conversion rates. 

6. Effective communication and collaboration  

• Comprehensive documentation: Maintain detailed records of customer interactions, facilitating informed decision-making and strategic planning for future engagements. 
• Collaborative integration: Foster teamwork and synergy among sales teams through centralized platforms for information sharing and collaborative efforts. 

7. Performance analysis and enhancement  

• Analytical insight: Harness the analytical capabilities of CRM tools to evaluate sales performance metrics, identifying areas for improvement and refining strategies for optimized results. 

In summary, a powerful CRM like LeadSquared streamlines sales planning by centralizing data, enabling accurate forecasting, supporting activity planning, managing leads and opportunities, facilitating customer segmentation, promoting communication and collaboration, and providing performance analytics for continuous improvement.  

With LeadSquared, your sales plan transforms into a dynamic roadmap, driving efficiency, maximizing opportunities, and propelling your business to unprecedented success. Ready to transform your sales planning and propel your business to new heights? 

Book a demo!  

Conclusion 

A solid sales plan is the cornerstone of a successful business strategy, guiding your team towards achieving revenue goals and fostering long-term customer relationships.  

As you delve into the intricacies of sales planning, consider the game-changing capabilities offered by LeadSquared. This all-in-one CRM solution seamlessly centralizes customer data, refines sales forecasting, streamlines lead management, and enhances team collaboration.  

A good sales plan clearly outlines revenue targets, identifies key customer segments, and incorporates strategies as per your market segment and competition. 

A sales plan is only effective if it reflects a thorough understanding of your customers and your sales team. What do your customers want and is your team equipped to deliver?   To know the answer to that, you need real-time analytics.  These analytics serve as a compass guiding your sales plan and ensuring it stays relevant. 

That depends entirely on the market and its components, including shifts in customer behaviour, trends in your niche and competitor strategies.  However, a general rule of thumb calls for a quarterly assessment of your sales plan and its effectiveness. 

Saleha Mariam is a marketing enthusiast with an affinity for all things business and a fondness for the written word. She is presently interning at LeadSquared as a Content Writer. You can reach her on LinkedIn or write to her at [email protected]

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What should you look for in a CRM software?

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

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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.

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Sales Leads Template

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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

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

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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

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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

‌ ‌ 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

‌ ‌ 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

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.

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.

How to Create a Sales Plan in 8 Steps: Guide + Free Template for 2023

It can happen to the best of us. We start off the year with big ambitions, certain our sales team is gonna crush it. We’re making lots of calls, selling to new customers, and getting our product out there. 

But soon, we wonder: how are we actually doing? Are we on track to meet our revenue goals for the year? Should we focus on building outreach or closing more deals? 

This is where a sales plan can make all the difference. Goals and objectives are clearly stated, day-to-day tasks are aligned with company priorities, and sales reps are working towards individual goals. It’s a beautiful thing. 

And it doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, we’ve put together this guide to make the sales planning process as easy as following a template. Let’s get started. 

What’s a Sales Plan?

A sales plan is a forecast of the sales you expect to achieve and how you’re going to get there. It typically covers important elements like:

• Past performance numbers
• Sales operations strategies
• Sales forecasting
• Current goals and objectives
• An action plan for finding and selling to new customers

Having an action plan in place for your sales process aligns your team’s day-to-day actions with your company’s priorities and business goals.

So, for example, if you’re trying to sell to a very specific target market, your team should focus on account-based selling as opposed to lead generation. If you’re looking to generate new business or break into a new market, you should focus sales activities more on outreach and prospecting. 

An action plan also empowers you to spend more time intentionally working towards your revenue targets, rather than getting stuck in reactionary mode dealing with daily hiccups and distractions.

What’s Inside a Typical Sales Plan? (Plus a Free Sales Plan Template)

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for developing a strategic sales plan, a good plan usually includes the following: 

• Company mission and vision statements
• Realistic, time-based goals with action steps to achieve them
• Purposeful tasks and daily activities for your sales reps to achieve
• Proven sales strategies to improve outcomes and get results
• Lead generation tactics for finding new customers
• Metrics you’ll use to see how your team is progressing

Download Your Free Sales Plan Templates Today

Want to build your own sales plan that kick-starts growth? Grab our Sales Success Kit. You won’t only get a sales strategy , you’ll get:

• Templates for sales planning
• Checklists for things like sales calls and hiring
• Worksheets for overcoming objections
• Guides for writing sales scripts

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

8 Steps to Build a Sales Plan that Drives Revenue

In this section, we’ll go over the steps you need to take to build a strategic sales plan that gets the kind of results you’re looking for. 

1. Determine Your Primary & Secondary Sales Goals & KPIs

A successful sales plan begins with setting goals. These goals will be the targets your sales reps are working to reach—so it’s important to define them carefully.

When determining your goals, keep the S.M.A.R.T. system in mind. Company goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Here’s an example: 

• Bad goal: “Grow sales.”
• SMART goal: “Hit $100k in revenue by the end of the 1st quarter.”

Also, keep in mind that the right sales goals are those at the edge of achievable and challenging. If a goal is too easy or too hard, your team’s motivation will probably plummet. 

For example, if you’re a small business or startup that just reached $50k in revenue last year, shooting for $500k is a bit of a stretch, while $60k is probably too easy. 

That said, you’ll also want to determine specific metrics and KPIs in this step, including how they’re currently performing, and how you plan to improve them. 

Author’s note: If you’re using a tool like Close to manage your sales team and processes, you get a KPI dashboard that looks something like this—so your team can better align and track progress:

But remember this golden rule when choosing key performance indicators:

You don’t need to track every sales KPI. You just need to track the right ones.

Here are ten benchmarks and KPIs worth tracking that are commonly used by sales teams: 

• Monthly sales growth
• Calls and cold emails per rep (daily, weekly, monthly)
• Sales opportunities created
• Monthly onboarding and demo calls booked
• Lead conversion rate
• Sales by contact method
• Average conversion time
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Customer lifetime value (LTV)
• New and expansion monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

2. Find Your Target Customers’ Needs

One of the best ways to find the needs of your target audience is to develop an ideal customer profile (ICP). An ICP is an example of the perfect customer for your business. 

Normally used by B2B companies, this profile defines the characteristics of a company that would buy your product or service. 

Here are some of the traits to look out for in them:

To get started, think of your top ten to twenty customers. These should be customers who say your solution is so valuable, it outweighs the cost. 

Then, gather information about each customer and identify traits they have in common. Write a description of your ideal customer that includes data like what we’ve shared earlier: 

• General information about the company or customer, such as size, demographics, and industry
• Typical budget and revenue
• Location, if it’s applicable to what you’re selling
• Main challenges and pain points the customer is looking to solve
• Common objections that are raised during the sales process
• Typical purchase process, including decision-makers
• Timelines and deadlines to purchase

By identifying these common traits, you can better target the market that is best suited for your product and really hone in on their needs. 

3. Define Your Value Proposition

Now that you know what your customers need, it’s time to explain how your company meets that need. Enter: the value proposition . 

A value proposition describes the specific value your company provides to your customers. It should focus on benefits, not features. And it should explain how you stand out from the crowd. For example:

• What problem does your product solve? Is it a new product? 
• What does your product do for your customers? 
• How does your product stand out? 
• What makes you different from the competition? 

One of the best ways to nail down your value proposition is to talk to actual customers or prospects. Ask them how they would describe your product to a colleague. How would they sell it to them if asked for a recommendation? 

You can also look up reviews on websites like G2 and read what your customers are raving about online. Is there a common thread? What benefits do your customers keep bringing up, especially as it relates to the competition? Is there something your company is doing that others aren’t? 

4. Choose a Structure for Your Sales Team

Just as there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to creating a sales plan, there isn’t one right way to structure your sales force. What works best depends on your product, team, and sales processes. Here are three common sales team structures to choose from: 

• Island: Individual reps work through the sales process alone. This means they handle everything from cold calling and outreach to closing major deals.

• 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 group that’s responsible for the entire journey of specific customers.

No matter what structure you choose, determine which reps are available during what times of the year, their specialties and skills, and what they’re responsible for in the sales process. It’s also important to include information about the sales managers, other team members, and the incentives you offer your reps.

5. Create a Plan For Execution

At this point, you know what you want to get done. You know your goals, you know your customers, and you know how your sales team will be organized. Now it’s time to come up with a specific plan of attack. 

To do this, take a look at your overall goals and figure out how to create milestones. This involves breaking down that big number into smaller expectations with strict deadlines. Milestones should challenge and motivate your sales team , without being so difficult they kill morale.

Involve your sales team during this process. Learn what they do during the week 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 your team can execute.

Then, create specific milestones 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% at the end of Q1, or increasing sales by 50% for a specific product during Q3.

Finally, break these milestones down into action items. If you’re trying to increase your customer base, for instance, your sales team will need to increase prospecting and lead generation activities. How will your team approach this? Assign specific tasks to team members with daily, weekly, or monthly targets.  

Here’s an example to show how your goals, milestones, and action items are related to each other: 

Goal: Increase revenue by 15% YOY

Milestone: Increase customer base by 20% by the end of Q1

Action items: Each sales rep makes 10 new prospecting calls per week and spends 30 minutes qualifying leads

6. Evaluate Your Existing Sales Tools

In this step, take a look at your existing sales tools. Ask your team the following questions about each one: 

• How are we using this tool? What sales tactics does it help with? 
• Do we have another tool that does the same thing? 
• How much does this tool cost? 
• What’s the learning curve with this tool in the short term? 
• How easy is it to onboard new team members? 
• Is there anything we wish this tool did better? 
• What’s customer support like when we have issues? 
• Does this tool integrate easily with our other tools? 
• How does this tool make our lives easier? 
• How does this tool help us close more deals? 
• Where does it fit in the sales funnel? 

Once you’ve answered these questions for all of your sales tools, decide if there are any you don’t need in your stack anymore. Also, make note of any gaps in your capabilities or areas you feel could be improved with a better tool. 

Then, list the resources you have available and how you plan to use them. For example, how much will you spend on your sales tools? Which CRM software or prospecting tools are your sales professionals lost without? Briefly explain each tool’s value and why you’ve allocated resources towards it.

7. Build a List of Dream Clients 

If you could close the deal with anyone you wanted, who would it be? Write it down. Then, go back to your ideal customer profile and find more companies that fit the bill. 

Using this strategy is called target account sales or account-based selling. It’s a sales strategy where every prospect is handpicked and matched to your ICP. This means you know their pain points , their competitors, and how you’ll sell to them—long before you pick up the phone. 

Using the target account method will help you fill your pipeline with high-value leads that are a perfect fit for your product. It’s also a great way to build confidence with your reps since they can do a lot of legwork before making a call. 

8. Schedule Progress Checks 

A sales plan is a living, breathing document that needs to adapt to the dynamic world around it. New features, new marketing campaigns, new team members—all of these things can change the game. 

With that in mind, the last step in creating your sales plan is to set regular meetings (at least monthly) to review progress towards hitting your sales targets. At each meeting, plan to identify and solve any new issues and re-align activities across teams to adapt to real-world events and feedback. 

That said, try to avoid moving the actual goalposts—even if you discover you’ve been overly optimistic or pessimistic in your forecasting . Instead, carefully document what needs updating so you’re prepared when it comes time to make your next sales plan. 

5 Best Practices for Creating a Profitable Sales Plan

Now that you know how to build your plan, here’s a list of best practices to make sure you’re successful. 

1. Touch Base with Existing Customers  

Existing customers can be a huge source of knowledge when building your sales plan. After all, they’re using your product and can provide valuable feedback on what’s working and what’s not. 

But knowledge isn’t the only thing existing customers have to offer. They’re also a goldmine for generating new leads. In fact, according to SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin , “At least 20% of your new customers should come from referrals and word of mouth.”

If you’re still in the early stages of business development, use your sales plan to show your team how to leverage their own network to get introductions to new prospects. If you’re at a later stage, build a referral program for customers that refer new leads. 

2. Get Input From Colleagues Outside of Sales

It’s easy to get caught up in our little sales bubble and forget the outside world. But you’d be doing yourself and your company a disservice if you don’t get input from people on the outside. 

Getting a different point of view can open doors you didn’t even realize were there. Or keep you from wasting time going down a road to nowhere. 

So reach out to colleagues in other departments (i.e. marketing, tech support, human resources, etc.) Ask them to look over your sales plan and give you feedback. What have they heard from customers? Is there a marketing strategy that could work in tandem with your efforts? You may be surprised at what they have to offer. 

3. Include Your Sales Team in the Planning Process

As we mentioned earlier, your sales reps can be super helpful during the planning process. They know your customers and they know the daily grind. So they usually have valuable insight in terms of realistic goal-setting, how customers may respond to certain strategies, and more. 

Plus, including your sales team in the process is a great way to get buy-in. People are way more likely to get on board with a plan if they were involved in its creation. On the flip side, if you just drop a plan on your team without getting their input, you’ll likely face some pushback. 

So get your team involved early in the process. Schedule planning meetings and quick brainstorming sessions. Explain why the plan matters and why you want their participation. 

4. Compare Plans with Strategic Partners

Strategic partners or stakeholders are usually other businesses that benefit in some way from your success. These can be suppliers, retailers, or companies with complimentary products or services (also known as Complementary Service Providers, or CSPs). 

If you have a good working relationship, ask them to compare notes. You take a look at their sales plan and have them look at yours. After all, you’re typically targeting the same type of customers. 

Maybe they’ve tried something you’re planning to implement and can give you feedback on how it went. Or maybe you’re planning similar strategies and can piggyback off each other or refer leads. 

5. Set Individual Goals for Your Sales Team

Finally, take your overall goals and break them down into individual goals for your sales team. Not only will this make your plan more actionable but it’s a great opportunity for professional development if you take into account the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and skills among your salespeople.

For example, if someone on your team is making a lot of calls but not closing many deals, set an individual goal of upping their close rate . On the other hand, if someone’s great at closing but doesn’t do much outreach, give them the goal of contacting ten new prospects a month.

Create a Sales Plan That Drives Growth 

Taking the time to create a solid, effective sales plan (or business plan) is always worth it. It gives you the roadmap you need to push through the inertia and stay on track to meet your goals. 

We’re here to help. Download our free Sales Success Kit and get access to 11 different templates, checklists, worksheets, and guides. All are action-oriented and easy to use, so you can have your best sales year yet.

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How To Build a Strategic Sales Plan + 10 Examples

• March 28, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Plan? 

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

A sales plan should include the following three components: 

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

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

Sales Planning Process

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

You should: 

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

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

1. Decide on Your Timeline

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

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

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

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

2. Outline the Context

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

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

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

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

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

3. Company Mission and Values

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

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

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

4. Target Market and Product/Service Positioning

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

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

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

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

5. Sales Team and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

6. Concurrent Activities

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

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

7. Business Road Map

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

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

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

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

8. Sales Goals and KPIs

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

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

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

A bad example of a goal is as follows:

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

A better goal would look something like:

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

9. Action Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples 

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

Customer Profile 

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

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

Buyer’s Guide

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

30-60-90-Day Plan

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

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

Market Expansion Plan

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

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

Marketing-alignment Plan

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

New Product/Service Plan 

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

Sales Plan Template

4 additional sales plan templates.

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

• Template Lab 
• ProjectManager

5 Tips for Creating a Sales Plan 

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

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

When Should You Implement a Strategic Sales Plan? 

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

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

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

To Launch a New Product or Campaign 

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

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

To Increase Sales

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

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

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Strategic Sales Plan Examples: 13 Sales Plan Templates

Casey O'Connor

What Is a Strategic Sales Plan?

When you should implement a strategic sales plan, what to include in your sales plan, 13 sales plan template examples, put your sales plan into action with yesware.

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

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

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• When You Should Implement a Strategic Sales Plan 

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

Strategic sales plans can include any combination of the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re Trying to Increase Sales

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

You’re Looking to Amp Up Your Revenue

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

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

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

You’re Gearing Up to Launch a New Product

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

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

Ultimately, your strategic sales plan will be unique to your company and its specific goals.

Consider including the following components in your strategic business plan. 

Mission Statement

Industry & Market Conditions

Great sales planning cannot be performed in isolation. Your plan must take into account the current market conditions, including any challenges, recent disruptions, or upcoming notable events.

Organization Chart

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

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

Product Info & Pricing

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

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

Compensation Plan

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

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

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

Target Market & Customer

Sales Enablement

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

Branding & Positioning

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

Marketing Strategy

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

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

Prospecting Strategy

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

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

Action Plan

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

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

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

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

KPIs, Metrics, and Benchmarks

Be sure to give your team a snapshot of how they’re currently performing, with real numbers to back it up.

By doing so, you help them self-initiate regular SWOT analysis of their own sales actions and processes. This will give them an opportunity to right the course if things aren’t going according to plan. 

Tip: Looking to fuel your sales plan with data-backed findings? Grab our free ebook below.

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

Here are 13 sales plan templates to help you get started.

1. Product Launch Plan Template

Sales and marketing teams create a product launch plan when they’re preparing to launch a new product. 

A product launch plan should include your product’s positioning statement , a SWOT competitive analysis, detailed market analysis, sales strategies and tactics, and details about the target market. 

2. Ideal Customer Profile Template

One way to avoid wasting time on unproductive leads is to include an ideal customer profile (ICP) in your sales plan. Here’s a sample : 

This will help ensure your prospecting campaigns are targeted and attract only the most qualified leads from the get-go. 

3. Microsoft Word Sales Plan Template

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

4. 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan Template

5. Buyer’s Guide Template

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

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

6. Marketing Alignment Sales Plan Template

If your company hasn’t already formally aligned sales and marketing, start with this type of sales plan template (basic example below), as most traditional sales plans already assume that these two teams collaborate regularly. 

One key component of a marketing alignment sales plan template is the presence of an ideal customer profile and buyer personas. 

The marketing alignment sales plan template should also focus on cohesive, on-brand messaging between marketing campaigns and sales conversations . 

This type of sales plan template helps keep everyone on the same page, increases efficiency, and improves sales effectiveness. 

7. Battle Card Template

8. Territory Design Template

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

9. Market Expansion Plan Template

A market expansion plan outlines the strategies, tactics, metrics, resources, and more that teams will use when expanding into a new market or (more commonly) a new geographical territory. 

Market expansion plans also need to include details about distribution expenses and timelines, time zone variations, industry notes or important compliance information, local/cultural expectations and laws, and sometimes more. 

10. Compensation Plan Template

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

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

11. Sales Funnel Template

The sales funnel is a visual representation of the sales process. 

12. Marketing Plan Template

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

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

13. B2B Sales Strategy Template

A B2B sales strategy template helps sales teams outline their goals, as well as the specific methodologies and tactics they will use to achieve them. Here’s an example :

The B2B sales strategy plan will vary widely depending on your team’s specific goals and strategies, but most teams include at least the categories highlighted in the template above. 

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

Communication

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

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

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

Prospecting

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

This feature enables salespeople to create automated, personalized campaigns with multi-channel touches. 

The tool tracks communication and engagement throughout the process and helps move prospects through the pipeline with little administrative effort from the sales team.

Yesware’s attachment tracking feature helps you find your winning content by tracking which attachments are most often opened and read by your prospects.

You can use these insights to sharpen your content and increase your engagement.

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

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

This guide was updated on March 6, 2024.

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Create a sales plan: tips and templates

Posted May 31, 2023

By Serena Miller

Editor, Sales Best Practices at Outreach

What is a sales plan? 

The sales planning process, key elements of a sales plan , examples of strategic sales plans , tips for creating an effective sales plan , sales plan templates , a powerful platform for effective sales planning, stay up-to-date with all things outreach.

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The sales world is ever-changing. Customer demand and expectations, market conditions, technological advancements, evolving techniques, shifting employee demographics, and more threaten an organization’s ability to stay ahead of the curve and be successful.

Simply improvising in the face of change isn’t an adequate strategy to ensure your team will meet their goals. While flexibility is a vital quality for any great sales team, proper planning is crucial for reaching your goals consistently and predictably. 

A strong sales plan can help your team boost alignment and collaboration, better understand competitors and the broader market, effectively analyze performance, and improve future outcomes.

Let’s explore some important elements of sales plans, including key process steps and elements, real-world examples, tips and tricks for getting it right, and the template you’ll need to get started.

• What is a sales plan?
• Key elements of a sales plan
• Examples of strategic sales plans
• Tips for creating an effective sales plan
• Sales plan templates

A sales plan is a document that outlines your specific objectives, challenges, strategies, and target audience. It’s a sales-specific illustration of exactly what steps your team will take to succeed. While a business plan lays out your organization’s broader goals, a sales plan maps out how you’ll actually achieve them.

What are the benefits of a sales plan

Effective sales plans help organizations align their sales and marketing teams and avoid conflicting efforts. It’s an essential part of a strong sales management process because it reduces distractions and helps managers and sellers focus on selling to the right prospects at the right time. When used as an ongoing process, sales planning enables teams to track their progress, boosts rep motivation, and reduces wasted time. 

Nothing about sales is static. Sales planning should therefore be a living, breathing process that managers review as new products are updated or released, market conditions change, or their team scales.

Nothing about sales is static. Sales planning should therefore be a living, breathing process that managers review as new products are updated or released, market conditions change, or their team scales. 

The typical sales planning process includes 5 key steps:

1. Align your mission statement with your sales plan

Take the first step by crafting an awesome mission statement. This will establish your company’s purpose and unify your team around a succinct principle. 

But it is vital to bring that mission statement to increase employee engagement, boost productivity , and commit everyone to the same goals and objectives. To keep your big-picture strategy from floating around in the stratosphere, tie it together with your already-established mission statement. 

For example, if your mission statement centers around finding the best possible solutions for each customer’s unique problems, your sales plan should mirror that same sentiment—and offer ways you can actually deliver. 

Once you’ve ironed out these details, be sure to clearly communicate them with your team. Explain how your sales plan aligns with your mission statement and the importance of maintaining that continuity. 

2. Analyze your market 

Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and neither should your sales plan. Take a close look at each of your competitors and your own company’s current performance in the market and incorporate that data into a holistic plan. How do your competitors serve your target audience? How do your own strategies stand up to — or fail to meet — market demands?

In order to identify your ideal customers, as well as their product and service needs, you should utilize customer feedback, user research, client surveys, sales team and service team interviews, social listening, keyword research, and competitive analysis.. Instead of assuming that you already know what customers want, potentially wasting time, resources, and revenue, take the time to pinpoint their demands, expectations, and requirements. Then train and develop your sales plan to address them. 

Remember that 77% of B2B customers find their buying journey difficult, so a sales plan that takes their unique needs into account can make all the difference when it comes to attracting and retaining clients. 

3. Set sales goals and targets 

Setting both short- and long-term goals and targets is sometimes challenging. Managers often scramble to improve everything all at once without a clear understanding of how to do it. The foundation for strong goal-setting is a healthy mix of the right sales metrics (e.g., activity metrics, pipeline metrics, lead gen metrics, and productivity metrics) and measuring them against the right KPIs . 

The best way to set realistic, yet challenging targets for your sales plan is to collect and make effective use of high-quality data. Powerful, fully-integrated sales tools help your team accomplish this by eliminating the need for manual data entry and updating. Your team can glean a comprehensive, up-to-date understanding of where they are and where they want to go; all without missing a beat. 

Over time, you can use metrics and KPIs from previous periods to fine-tune your targets. Integrate both your sales and marketing metrics to help you refine your goals and find more opportunities to improve your processes. 

4. Define your sales team’s roles and responsibilities

Each sales team member plays a crucial role in the success of the larger unit:

• Inside and outside sales reps focus on making contact with prospects
• Account managers retain, engage, and satisfy clients
• Regional sales managers support their direct reports and coordinate sales operations 
• Sales operations managers improve team efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness
• Sales development reps (SDRs) research, prospect, and qualify leads
• Account executives (AEs) run demos, conduct compelling presentations, identify and resolve purchasing challenges, and negotiate buying terms
• Sales engineers address in-depth product questions, identify customers’ technical needs, and develop demos

While this isn't an exhaustive list of each individual role’s responsibilities, it illustrates how many moving parts a well-oiled sales team needs to run. Executive sales team members (like the Director of Sales, VP of Sales, and Chief Sales Officer) focus on higher-level sales initiatives, and their knowledge and expertise is crucial to the team’s overall success.

Because there are so many different sales career pathways , managers should clearly define each person's responsibilities and outline how their efforts will contribute to the sales plan. Break down tasks and targets for each team member and measure their performance alongside those larger KPIs. For example, you might measure SDRs against number of deals closed, number of calls, or number of meetings, while evaluating account executives using number of demos, opportunities won, and win rate.

5. Evaluate results

Your sales plan should never be rigid. Even if you think you’ve crafted a sales plan masterpiece, it’s essential to follow up after implementation and evaluate your results. Using robust sales technology, you can easily track every activity within your sales process and evaluate how the execution of each task reveals your team’s strengths and shortcomings. 

A strong sales tool offers a variety of features that help you assess performance—one of which being a sales dashboard . Dashboards standardize, centralize, and visually illustrate all of your sales data in a single place, helping managers evaluate team performance and progress against their set goals in real time.   

Then, armed with those deep insights, you can adjust your sales plan as needed for even better outcomes in the future. 

Though your specific sales plan will vary depending on your unique business, goals, target audience, team size, and industry, there are several common elements you should always consider.

Set realistic goals

Goals motivate sellers and keep them excited about their work. Since highly-engaged teams are 14% more productive than those with low engagement, taking the time to create achievable targets based on market conditions and your customers’ needs, which tie into the things that engage your sellers.

A varying combination of daily, weekly, and monthly goals can help managers keep sales people inspired. Make sure you clearly establish how these smaller goals impact the success of the sales plan to get reps fully committed. 

Explore sales tools

Many of today’s sales teams rely heavily on their tools, but some still struggle with lackluster, disconnected, or outdated technology. To create and carry out a seamless sales plan, your team needs tools that are completely integrated and offer the type of transparency that streamlines your entire operation.

Most sales teams use customer relationship management (CRM) tools to organize contacts and optimize sales management. In fact, 50% of top tech sellers use CRM tools, while 97% of sales professionals say that their CRM is important for closing deals. 

While your CRM is crucial , that one tool alone is not enough to support your team at every step of the sales process. Your team needs a full suite of integrated features, like dashboards, forecasts, automation, and buyer sentiment analysis . With the right SalesTech , your team can improve productivity, communication, and lead conversion to ultimately build and execute excellent sales plans. 

Communicate clear expectations 

Establishing and enforcing expectations is critical to just about every part of a business. After all, how are employees supposed to know what they should do and whether they’re doing it properly without understanding what’s expected of them? 

In sales, this is especially important. Success often hinges on specific, time-sensitive activities that are properly executed. For instance, swift customer follow-up can make or break a deal. A rep’s failure to understand where their co-worker’s responsibility ends and theirs begins can change a success into a failure. 

To anticipate or resolve any existing confusion, managers should define crystal-clear expectations both for the team and for individual sellers. Document those expectations in an easy-to-access place. Each seller should have the right resources and direction to execute every sales task in a timely manner. This builds trust and communication within the team, which is the key to the success of  any sales plan. 

Develop training programs 

Organizations that invest in training receive about $453 for every dollar invested (a 353% ROI). Top-performing sellers are more likely to spend a significant amount of time training with their managers. It’s no wonder 89% of sales leaders have invested or plan to invest in internal sales training. Those that fail to prioritize skill development will likely fall behind their competitors. 

There are many different types of training programs , each with varying benefits and costs. One thing to note is that regardless of which type of training program you choose, make sure your team has the right tools and the training to effectively use those tools to help everyone get the most out of the investment.

There are several different types of sales plans that might be useful to your specific business and team. Here are some examples of the most commonly used strategic sales plans.

Customer profile  

Developing an ideal customer profile (ICP) is an excellent way to make sure your team targets the right prospects. An ICP can fine-tune messaging, and establish a strong overall sales strategy. To get started building this type of sales plan, identify your best current customers, reach out to those customers for feedback, and study your customer and sales data. Then, use those insights to craft a valuable ICP that’ll drive even more business from new verticals . 

30-60-90-day plan

It’s helpful to break your sales plan up into more digestible chunks. A 30-60-90-day plan divides goals, activities, and metrics into 30-day intervals, each with progressively challenging steps. It’s a great way to set reps up for continuous improvement without overwhelming them right off the bat. 

Market expansion plan 

Stimulating growth in new markets is a daunting task, but a market expansion sales plan gives your team clear direction on how to break through. This model is best used for new territories or regions where your ICP, account distribution costs, time zones, and other key factors differ from those in your typical market. 

Marketing-alignment plan 

Getting your sales and marketing departments on the same page can ameliorate many issues that might hinder your sales success—like inconsistent messaging, uncoordinated strategy, disparate data, disconnected tools, lack of understanding, differing priorities, competition for funding, and more. A sales plan that’s grounded in sales-marketing alignment can effectively bring both teams together for greater cohesion, better resource sharing, more scalable playbooks, and shorter sales cycles .

New product/service plan

If your organization plans to launch a new product or service in the near future, it’s probably ideal to create a sales plan around that debut. This will help your team properly track revenue, understand subsequent growth, and identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. 

Regardless of the type of sales plan you choose, there are some well-established best practices that’ll help your team translate the plan into real-world success.

Create a market analysis

Fluctuating market trends make it difficult to stay on top of the competitive landscape and customer demands. Be sure to conduct an in-depth market analysis to better understand how to reach your target audience. Then, create a sales and prospecting approach geared to those insights. 

If your sales plan is founded upon hard facts and data, like industry standards, previous performance data and sales forecasts, and qualitative and quantitative feedback from sales and marketing teams, you can make meaningful adjustments that will garner better results at a faster rate. 

Utilize your marketing team 

If you establish your marketing team as your collaborative partner on your sales plan, they become your team’s secret weapon. Ask your marketing team to share their insights, and regularly voice their questions and concerns about your strategy. The effort required for getting sales and marketing teams in rhythm is worth it to make your plan more optimized and robust. 

Communicate with your sales team

At the core of any great sales plan is effective communication, so make sure your team has everything they need to receive updates, share input, and explore their colleagues’ challenges. Encourage them to let you know what’s working and what isn’t. Company chat applications (e.g., Slack) are great, but they don’t always enable the seamless communication required for a fully-optimized sales operation. Leverage tools that act as a central hub for all things sales.

Sales execution platforms, for example, offer centralized communication in a single place. Team members can always access and share updates and communication histories, collaborate, and work efficiently toward the same goals. 

Even with a deeper understanding of what your sales plan needs and why it’s important, crafting one of your own can be confusing. Sales plan templates can help guide your process and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. An effective template should include spaces for key elements, strategy specifics, roles and responsibilities, KPIs, short- and long-term goals, and deadlines. 

To help get your sales planning juices flowing, we’ve created a sales plan template with everything you’ll need for success:

Your sales plan acts as your team’s guiding light for developing a clear, effective strategy. Effective planning aligns sales and marketing, helps teams progress and performance, and improves seller engagement, motivation, and productivity. But the various moving pieces of a strong sales plan require the support of an intelligent system of action.

Outreach’s Sales Execution Platform reduces the time-consuming, manual activities typically associated with sales planning. As the only AI-powered Sales Execution Platform, Outreach unlocks seller productivity to create more pipeline and close more deals.

Learn more about how Outreach helps managers boost their team’s productivity , or request a demo today.

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

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

FREE SALES PLAN TEMPLATE

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

Published: 08/28/24

A strong sales strategy plan creates the foundation for a cohesive and successful sales organization. Sales strategies and initiatives also align salespeople on shared goals and empower them to do their best work — keeping them happy and successful, too.

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

Table of Contents

What is a sales strategy?

Why is a sales strategy important, the most effective sales strategies, how to build a sales strategy, sales initiatives, sales strategy examples from successful sales teams.

A sales strategy is a set of decisions, actions, and goals that inform how your sales team positions the organization and its products to close new customers. It acts as a guide for sales reps to follow, with clear goals for sales processes, product positioning, and competitive analysis.

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Account-Based Selling

Account-Based Selling (ABS) is a sales strategy that's rooted in locking in on key, higher-value accounts as opposed to casting a wide net for a broad range of prospects. With ABS, salespeople are expected to identify and pursue specific accounts that have high conversion potential.

That means salespeople are expected to conduct thorough, thoughtful research on prospects to more effectively meet them where they are. The strategy also places emphasis on collaboration with marketing — sales teams lean on their marketing departments to create personalized, targeted content for each account.

Ultimately, successfully executed Account-Based Selling rests on a sales team's ability to take a granular approach to really lock in on individual prospects' needs and interests. Salespeople leveraging the strategy also need to know how to prioritize the accounts they pursue.

ABS can be extremely effective if it's done right, but it does come with its share of risk — if your sales org elects to forego reaching out to a wide range of prospects in favor of connecting with key accounts, you generally have less room for error.

For a look at some other key methodologies that can inform your sales strategy, check out this article.

Below, I’ll walk through how to create a sales strategy plan for your team.

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

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

RELATED: Marketing and Sales: Why They Need Each Other

In this article:

What Is a Sales Plan?

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

Sample Sales Plan Template

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

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

Typically, a sales plan template has the following parts:

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

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

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

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

Who Creates a Sales Plan ?

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

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

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

Why Do I Need a Sales Plan Template?

Having a sales plan template will help you:

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

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

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

Where Does the Sales Plan Fit Within a Business?

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

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

When Should I Create and Update My Sales Plan Template?

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

RELATED: 7 Ways to Boost Sales Effectiveness

How Do I Create My Own Sales Plan?

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

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

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

1. Executive Summary and Scope

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

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

2. Goals and Timeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Team Members

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

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

4. Target Market

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

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

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

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

5. Resources

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

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

6. Market Position

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

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

7. Marketing Strategy

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

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

8. Prospecting

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

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

9. Action Plan

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

To create an action plan, follow this simple process:

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

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

Tips To Keep In Mind When Writing Your Sales Plan 

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

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

Name of Company:

Prepared by: 

I. Executive Summary and Scope

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

II. Goals and Timeline

Sample Sales Goals and Timeline

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

III. Team Members

• Name — job title

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

IV. Target Market 

Buyer Persona 

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

V. Resources 

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

VI. Market Position 

Competitors

Similarities and Differences Between Products/Services

Pricing Comparison 

Current Market Situation

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

VII. Marketing Strategy 

Sample Pricing and Promotional Strategy:

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

VIII. Prospecting 

Prospecting Strategy

Identify sales methods reps will use to close deals. 

Criteria to Qualify Leads:

IX. Action Plan

Objective #1: 

Sample Costs:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sales Planning: How To Create a Sales Plan (+ Template)

Sales planning helps you set goals, forecast revenue, and chart a course to growth. With an easy-to-use sales planning template, you’ll be set up for success.

You can buy and hire all the resources to build a house. But without blueprints, you’ll end up with a stack of boards, piles of nails, and construction workers twiddling their thumbs.

Sales teams need a blueprint, too. It’s called sales planning. Like a construction blueprint, sales planning ensures your resources are put to their best use, and team members are focused on what’s most important.

“If you’re not looking at the sales data and making a plan, you might be giving equal weight to all of your products when there are a few that are really the workhorses,” says Shawn Khemsurov, cofounder of strategic design and development agency Electric Eye . “ Those are the products you should invest in and focus on.”

Learn how to create an effective sales plan that aligns with your business objectives, and keeps your sales team driving growth.

What is sales planning?

Sales planning is a set of processes to drive sales for a business—specifically, setting sales goals and outlining the actions needed to achieve them.

The sales planning process helps leaders understand market conditions, analyze customers and trends, allocate resources effectively, and set realistic sales targets.

Sales plan template

Sales planning templates can provide a good framework for you to get started with sales planning. Shopify’s free sales plan template makes it easy to visualize your goals for the year or quarter and keep your team on track.

Sales planning process

• Analyze market conditions and historical performance
• Identify and understand your target audience
• Determine sales goals
• Set strategy
• Allocate budget and resources
• Create action plans
• Monitor sales performance and adjust accordingly

Create a sales plan by following these steps:

1. Analyze market conditions and historical performance

To position your products well and set appropriate goals, you’ll first need to understand what’s going on both inside and outside of your company.

Pull data from your preferred ecommerce analytics tools to analyze your company’s past performance and your customers’ behavior, looking at key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rate , session length, and average order value (AOV). This will help you identify areas of strength and opportunities to improve within your sales process.

Also, perform external market research to understand trends, evolving customer needs, and the competitive landscape. Shawn recommends asking yourself a series of questions to help dig deeper into the market and your brand’s place within it.

“Who else is selling in this category? How much are they charging?” says Shawn. “Is the market saturated? If so, what’s our differentiator that we can play up? Or is there a niche that isn’t being served that we can develop something around?”

2. Identify and understand your target audience

Once you’ve identified some overall business and market trends, you can use the same analytics reports to learn more about your target customers. You can divide your target market into smaller customer segments based on details like geography, preferences, and pain points.

Deeply understanding these different audiences can help you market effectively and identify your best customers, both of which can fuel sales and, ultimately, business growth.

3. Determine sales goals

Armed with both internal and market data, you can set clear goals for your sales reps. Consider using the SMART goals framework to ensure your sales objectives are strategic, measurable, actionable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (i.e., SMART).

Most sales teams have revenue goals, but you might set sales goals that involve market share, the number of new customers acquired, a reduction in customer churn , or channel-specific sales.

4. Set strategy

Identify specific methods and sales techniques that your team will leverage to achieve sales goals. Depending on your business, you can leverage a variety of sales tools and marketing strategies including:

• Email marketing campaigns
• Influencer partnerships
• Search engine optimization
• Retargeting ads
• Content marketing
• Social media advertising
• Sales automation
• Website redesigns

Your data analysis and market research can help guide you to the best techniques for your needs. For example, you might find that your average order value is solid, but you need to market more widely to draw more people to visit the site. Or perhaps your site traffic is good, but people drop off rather than convert with a purchase—suggesting an update of your product page or checkout process may be in order.

Market your business with Shopify’s customer marketing tools

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5. Allocate budget and resources

Focus is important not only to avoid being overwhelmed, but to allocate resources accordingly. Sales teams rarely have unlimited budgets, so you’ll need to decide how much to invest in each of your sales activities, including marketing campaigns , promotions, partnerships , and staffing.

6. Create action plans

Outline and assign the specific actions required to execute each sales strategy. A successful sales plan lays out clear timelines and expectations.

For example, a set of sales representatives may be called on to contact 25 leads and set 10 sales appointments by the end of the month. Or, sales managers could assign them to check in with all existing customers on their accounts to ensure retention and attempt to upsell with new complementary services.

Depending on your strategies, action plans may include delegating tasks to people outside the sales organization. For example, an email newsletter or content marketing strategy requires looping in the marketing team to create these assets. Marketing and sales alignment is crucial in this example to ensure sales messaging is maintained.

7. Monitor sales performance and adjust strategies accordingly

Effective sales planning involves keeping track of what works and what doesn’t to inform future plans.

Define the metrics you’ll use to measure the effectiveness of each sales strategy you choose, and identify data sources and tools to help you track sales success. You may find one strategic process isn’t as successful as others, or that you need to swap strategies over time.

Tips for sales planning

Set realistic goals, focus on what’s most impactful.

• Allocate resources to get the most bang for your buck

Align planning and goals to overall business objectives

Here are a few tips sales leaders can use to create effective sales plans:

Dream big, yet not too big. “Reach” goals can help your team strive to achieve more, but be careful to strike a balance.

There’s a fine line between aspirational and unrealistic, and if you’re on the wrong side of things, your sales team will end up frustrated.

Setting impossible revenue targets and other goals helps no one. Ensure your objectives are realistic based on past sales efforts, historical performance, and market research.

Dig enough, and you’ll find seemingly endless tools, strategies, and potential ways to boost future sales. But not every method is right for your business, right now.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed,” Shawn says. “Simplify your focus to the few key areas that have the biggest impact on your sales, and figure out how you can attack those hard.”

Allocate resources to get the bang for your buck

Monitor your sales and strategies to see which efforts have the greatest impact, and put your resources into them.

For example, you may find promotions or abandoned-cart email campaigns tend to bring customers to the site. In other cases, factors like supply chain issues and low inventory might be denting your sales.

“Some shops are surprised to find it’s a small number of products that are really pulling the weight—so in that case, you want to make sure you’re always in stock,” Shawn says.

“If a customer on your site can’t make that purchase, it’s frustrating for them and a lost sale for you. Fixing that problem can have a massive effect on your sales, because even the best marketing messaging doesn’t help if you don’t have a product to ship.”

As you perform sales planning activities—whether it’s conducting an in-depth competitive analysis, reorganizing the sales team structure, or forecasting sales—never lose sight of the overall business plan .

Not every company is necessarily focused on how much revenue they can generate or increasing the sales quota. Instead, they may be looking to break into new geographic areas, reach new target markets, or overcome the sales team’s challenges in explaining the product’s differentiators. You define what sales success means, based on your company’s overall goals right now.

Sales planning FAQ

What is the first step in the sales planning process.

Analyze internal data and external market trends to better understand sales opportunities and your customers. This will help you develop informed, clear, realistic sales forecasts and goals.

Why is sales planning important?

Sales planning is important because it provides a structured approach to achieving sales goals. It helps companies set data-based goals, select appropriate sales techniques, allocate resources effectively, track progress toward sales goals, and adjust strategies over time.

What should be included in a sales plan?

A sales planning template often includes an executive summary, sales goals, market trends and historical sales data, audience data, sales strategies, budget and allocations, action plans, and monitoring.

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WTO / Business / Planners / 23 Free Sales Plan Templates | How to Create – Examples

23 Free Sales Plan Templates | How to Create – Examples

A sales plan is used by businesses and companies to document target sales and outline sales strategies required to realize the set sales objectives.  

Business success can be directly attributed to good planning within the organization.

A strategic sales plan is usually designed to assist the company in driving sales to facilitate growth in the company’s revenue.

It is a month-to-month plan. The plan will cover the objectives, target audience/customers, high-level sales and marketing tactics , and potential obstacles. It also outlines the roles and responsibilities of the sales team members.

Free Sales Plan Templates

Components of a Sales Plan

Developing a sales plan that impacts sales in a company should be the primary objective. The set goals should be specific, realistic, measurable, and attainable. Generally, a plan can be categorized into market and customer research, sales forecasting and goal setting , and prospecting and partnerships.

Below are the fundamental components of a plan.

Executive summary and scope

An executive summary is a brief outline of the contents of the sales plan. The scope is the depth that the plan shall cover in terms of sales. An executive summary and scope introduce the reader to what they should expect to find in the document by concisely discussing the sales goals and strategies and stating the specific period in which the plan is to be implemented.

Target customers

Target customers are the people the company aims to cater to with its products and services. Identifying the target customers ensures the company may not spend time and resources on the wrong customers who would not buy their products. Target customers should be defined by any traits common amongst most existing and projected customers – customer profile. 

Revenue targets

A good sales plan will have an end goal. This will be either of the two things, sales or customers. These two factors influence the revenue generated by a business. Therefore, the plan should have target sales that are to be realized at different stages of the strategic plan implementation and after a specified period, say one year or three years. After that, revenue will usually mean profits for the company.

Review of prior period performance

Before forecasting, it is essential to check previous sales. Previous sales help a company avoid relying on wishful thinking when making projections, and thus realistic goals can be set. The plan should include data and decisions from the previous recording period used to develop the new figures and set goals. Previous mistakes should also be noted.

Pricing and promotions

The plan should outline the pricing of products and any promotional campaigns the company runs to keep existing customers and attract new ones. The pricing should reflect the value of the product or service conveyed to the customers.

Deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs)

The plan should outline any deadlines that should be met and the individuals or teams responsible for making this happen. Setting deadlines ensures each goal is realized on time so as the plan and the end goal can be realized. In addition, it helps the company actualize the plan (deliverables) within the set period. Finally, assigning individuals or teams specific roles and responsibilities ensures the order is maintained and enhances accountability. 

Action plan for teams and individuals

The plan should have a quantifiable action of what is to be done and the specific goals they should achieve.  The action plan should detail the actions/activities that should be done to realize the set goals. An action plan is fundamentally a summary of the company’s game plan (strategy).

Every output requires an input. The plan should outline what is needed to achieve the objectives of the strategy/plan. Resources are tools that the sales team will utilize in the process of implementing the plan. Resources include labor (sales team, specialists), technology (software, online ads), stationery (banners, flyers), and compensation for the team. Including the resources in the plan ensures the plan balances costs and sales to avoid a situation where the sales costs exceed sales revenue reducing profit margins to an unsustainable level.

Market and industry conditions

Market and industry conditions are essential factors about the company’s sector that should be considered. Market conditions will determine the position of the company as a business and a competitor. Regarding market conditions , the plan will indicate the niche in the market (size of market, demand for product, opportunities), key competitors (strengths and weaknesses), market trends that directly influence sales performance, government policies, and social behaviors of customer decisions.

Customer segments

The plan should show the target customers’ demographics. Understanding the different customer segments influences the approach to be taken to reach out to them. Standard customer segments are referrals, renewals, new prospects, upsells, cross-sells, and new segments.

Performance benchmarks & monitoring

A measurable sales plan implies that the plan’s performance can be quantified. The plan must indicate the set benchmarks and metrics used to assess performance and progress. Monitoring helps identify skews in the plan, and thus timely corrective measures can be implemented. The plan must also indicate which systems and processes will be used to monitor the mentioned metrics.

How to Create a Sales Plan

Each part of a sales plan serves a specific purpose towards the plan’s end goal. Creating an effective plan will involve an in-depth assessment of the sales of a company.

The steps below can be used to come up with an up to standard plan.

Mission and background

First and foremost, the document ought to state the company’s mission and vision. In addition, it should provide a background of the company by providing a summary of its history. Finally, the overall goals or objectives of the strategic plan should also be declared.

SWOT analysis 

Secondly, a SWOT analysis on the sales team should be carried out to determine where they are strong (strengths), opportunities, and where they can improve on (weaknesses and threats). These strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities should then be stated in the document.  

Team and their roles

Thirdly, indicate the individuals making up the sales team and each individual’s roles in the team. The team must reflect the current and projected number of team members. For projected members, indicate their job title, headcount, and when they are expected to join the team.

Target market

Next, indicate the company’s target market . First, the document should show the target market’s demographic. Then, transparent information to show the growth and projections of the size and diversity of the customers should be given.  

Marketing strategy & personal tactics

After indicating the target market, include a sales strategy and the tactics adopted to achieve the set sales goals. Tactics can revolve around pricing products and services and promotion campaigns. However, the tactics proposed must be realistic and based on field data and measurable by specified benchmarks and metrics.

Tools, software, and resources 

Then include the tools and resources such as training , software, sales budget, and documentation that the sales team will require to execute the laid-out strategy. Again, be descriptive as possible for clarity.

Positioning 

The following section should state the company’s position in comparison to its competitors by listing its competitors. Positions can also be described in terms of technology advancement, market trends, pricing, etc. this section should discuss how these factors influence the company’s sales.

Prospecting strategy

The prospecting strategy should then follow. First, the plan should illustrate the strategies to be adopted to acquire inbound and outbound sales. Inbound sales are sales initiated by the customer, for instance, when enquiring about a particular product or service. Outbound sales are generated from the prospecting efforts of the company,

Contacting customers who have not expressed interest in a product or service.

Sales objectives

Then state the company’s sales goals. Sales objectives are vital considerations in business growth, and as a result, specificity is essential in this section. Often, sales goals are in terms of revenue.

A $50 million turnover.

Alternatively, sales goals can be volume-based such as 1000 sales.  Factors to consider are pricing, resources, total addressable market (TAM), and market penetration. Although a company can have more than one sales goal, list them all in order of priority.

Ensure to include the timeline and the DRI,

Shop A to increase sales by 1500 which will amount to $300,000 in the 1 st Quarter of 2021 (January to March). Harry’s team will be in charge and will report to the Head office.

Action plan 

After, the plan should state the action plan to be followed by the sales team. The action plan should have broken down steps that outline how the sales goals/objectives will be achieved.

Goal: Increase market share from 20% to 35%, equivalent to 10,000 sales.

• Offer a 10% discount for purchase orders above ten items.
• Give away coupons for all purchases every Friday.

Lastly, provide a budget for the plan . The budget should outline the costs associated with the plan, such as salary and commission of the sales team, sales tools and resources, travel costs, food, sales training, and team bonding activities. A comparison should be drawn between the associated costs and projected revenue for a more wholesome budget. Ordinarily, it should include sales forecasting, anticipated expenses, and miscellaneous.

Sales Plan Examples

A company can decide to use one of the different plans available that best suits their needs. Below are examples of the types of sales plans.

30-60-90-Day sales plan

It is time-based and used by a new salesperson to bring them up to speed about the sales in a company within their first three months. It is segmented into three timeframes.

• Day 1-30 : In the first thirty days, the new salesperson gets to learn the intricacies of the company in terms of the customers, products, processes, procedures, and competition.
• Day 31-60: A new action plan is developed by carefully assessing the existing processes while identifying necessary changes incorporated into the new action plan.
• Day 61-90 : The new action plan is optimized and improved before it is implemented.

Sales plan for specific sales

A company can also use a plan that addresses a specific customer or tactic towards improving sales – one sales goal or task. In addition, the company can focus on a specific sales tactic.

E-mail follow-up frequency, etc.

Marketing-alignment sales plan

A company can create this plan to align marketing and sales to foster sales growth. Primarily, it focuses on establishing ideal customer profiles and customer persona to align marketing strategies with sales’ product pitches.

Territory sales plan

These plans are meant for sales plans limited to a specified geo-location or region. The goals of a good territory sales plan usually are to increase productivity, increase sales, improve customer coverage, reduce operational costs and improve the customer-client relationship.

Business development strategic sales plan

This plan is meant to attract new business opportunities by fostering networking with other companies, events sponsorship, and outreach.

Market expansion plan

A market expansion plan is developed when a company intends to expand into a new market in terms of a new target market or geographical area. It details the list of activities and target metrics the company intends to use for this expansion.

Sales training plan

A sales strategy will sometimes involve training programs for the sales team to facilitate the implementation of the action plan. A sales training plan outlines different sales training programs to be executed and can be broken down to address different positions in the company, sales records, assets, etc.

New product sales plan

When a company launches a new product, this plan is the go-to guide. A new product sales plan analyzes the competition, the brand positioning of the company, secure channel partners for the new product, and synthesizes a sales strategy to be adopted to ensure the new product becomes a revenue-generating source.

Sales budget plan

A sales budget plan forecasts sales, expenses, and revenue. A sales budget plan includes marketing campaigns, sales staff, tools, and other resources to raise the target revenue. It should accommodate the predicted sales the team is predicted to sell in a given period, the expenses they are expected to incur in that same period, and unforeseen expenses.

Tips for an Effective Sales Plan

To ensure that the plan effectively communicates to the intended audience (sales team and shareholders), certain things can be considered when preparing one.

They include:

Requires in-depth and up-to-date research

The plan should reflect a deep and up-to-date understanding of data and market trends associated with the niche, industry, and target customers. Markets and customers are ever-changing, and as a result, the plan should focus on where the benefits are highest.

Specify tracking technology

Tracking progress is crucial to ensuring the plan is adopted and actualized as intended. Therefore, ensure all tracking methods and technology such as monitoring techniques, software, tools, performance metrics, and any other ways of tracking progress are listed.

Use data and statistics

When identifying a problem, opportunity, or validating assumptions or ideas, data and statistics should be used. Also, predictions of sales should be data-based.

Get tactical

Overall action plans should be broken down into tactical plans focusing on specific areas of sales such as sales operations and enablement, customer access, and SDRs and account executives. Then, collaborate with other cross-functional teams like marketing, customer relations, and production to realize the goals.

Each team should have a different plan and a specific objective

Sale is a vast department that assigns duties to different teams. Therefore, each team should have different plans, specific goals, and performance metrics that address their roles, such as business development, field sales, outbound sales, etc. 

Get the marketing team’s input

Aligning the company’s marketing and sales is crucial to a plan’s success. Get marketing input to facilitate processes such as prospecting.

Consult the sales reps to understand their challenges

Remember that sales reps are doing the actual legwork. Therefore, understanding their day-to-day operations can help develop an inclusive plan that is effective and feasible to the people at the bottom of the pyramid.

A sales plan should grow with the Business

A plan should grow as the business grows. Periodic review and updating should be done as implementation progresses. This helps keep the team focused and on track, and improvements and adjustments can be made promptly. A plan should be unique to the company.

Benefits of a Sales Plan Template

A template serves distinct purposes within a company. Therefore, it should be structured to fit the overall company objectives supplementary to its business plan.

Below are ways in which a plan is used to benefit a company.

• A sales plan template allows the company to develop novel ideas to strategize and implement in its sales operations.
• The plan communicates the goals and objectives of the company’s sales team this way, the team is on the same page and is working towards an expected end.
• By outlining the sales goals, target market, and target revenue, the team can know the team’s expectations in a given period.
• The template indicates data-based revenue goals set by the company. Consequently, it is a source of inspiration and motivation to the shareholders, for it helps them see the trajectory the company is predicted to take towards profitability.
• A template details the specific steps involved in the strategic plan and therefore acts as a guide to the sales team by giving them direction and purpose.
• By outlining DRIs and their roles and responsibilities, a plan enhances accountability and helps the team to focus.
• A template is an adequate baseline to monitor progress and enhance the performance optimization of a company within set timeframes.

  A sales plan is an effective way of finding new ways to improve sales and increase revenue generation in a company. A company can set its sales goals and objectives and communicate them to the sales team and shareholders through a sales plan. The template should be detailed to show the actual tasks carried out to realize the set sales goals and objectives. A standard sales plan will include the company’s vision and mission, an executive summary, target market, revenue targets, marketing strategies and tactics, deadlines and DRIS, resources, market and industry conditions, performance benchmarks, and a sales budget.

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Let’s face it—your sales team is busy. They’re so busy, in fact, that they spend less than 30% of the week actually engaging with prospects. As a sales enablement professional, part of your job is to ensure that they have more time to do their jobs. 

That’s where these sales templates come in. Think about how many prospects a seller may be juggling at the same time. Now consider the fact that many of these prospects are at all different stages of their buying journey. It’s no wonder why 42% of businesses say they lack the ability to produce personalized content quickly. 

Sales professionals may know the value of personalized content that targets prospects at different stages of the sales cycle, but that doesn’t mean that they have the time to generate this content. From sales emails to sales decks to invoices, there’s a lot of content your sellers are handling on a day-to-day basis. These sales templates give them a starting place for their content personalization needs, saving them valuable time while also helping them utilize tried-and-true engagement tactics.

What are Sales Templates?

Sales templates are pre-designed documents or resources used by sales teams to streamline and standardize various aspects of the sales process. These templates help ensure consistency in communication, improve efficiency, and maintain a professional image across all sales activities. They come in a variety of categories, including email templates , invoice templates, and forecasting templates, and they provide a basic framework for sales teams to customize.

Spekit offers a library filled with sales templates that help your team better connect with their prospects. From learning how to use valuable sales enablement tools to unpacking different sales methodologies to providing structure for important sales interactions, you can use these free sales templates to empower your reps. 

Sales Email Templates

Your sales team can build upon these sales email templates to personalize each email, which can increase your open rate by 29% and your click-through rate by 41%. For even more personalization, you can start with these templates and then personalize them with the help of an AI email writing tool .

1. Cold Email Template

This cold email template, courtesy of Zendesk , is a great option for getting in contact and introducing yourself to a prospect. In this template, you introduce your product or service, address that your product or service helps with a particular pain point, and provide a CTA to move forward with a meeting.

2. BANT Post Cold Call Follow-Up Email Template

This post cold call follow-up email template by Spekit fits right in with your BANT framework. With this email template, you utilize the four main pieces of BANT: address their budget, establish your authority, target their needs, and set a timeline. 

Spekit is a sales enablement platform that can help you optimize your sales emails, as well as other essential sales practices. With Spekit, you can generate content with a simple prompt, summarize lengthy content, and get AI-driven content recommendations that help you further your relationship with a prospect. 

You also get Spekit’s just-in-time learning , where your sales professionals receive bite-sized bits of content wherever they’re working to help foster an environment of continuous learning.

3. Warm Email Sales Template

A cold email is best when you’ve had no prior interactions, but sometimes a warm email is a better option. This warm email template, courtesy of Zendesk , allows you to reintroduce yourself to someone you’ve already met, offer more information that adds clarity to what you’ve already discussed, and provide a CTA to move forward with a more formal meeting.

4. Useful Resource Email Template

Providing value from your first interaction can enable you to establish yourself as an authority on a particular topic. One of the easiest ways to offer value is by including valuable information and content in your introductory email, like in this sales email template by HubSpot .

Spekit makes finding the right content to send simple. With Spekit’s AI-powered content recommendations , Spekit unpacks your email and previous interactions and sends you the content your prospect wants to see—delivered to you right in whatever email platform you use.

5. Introduction Email for Sales

Nielsen found that 77% of people trust referrals from their friends and family , making it the most persuasive source of new product information. This sales email template from Pipedrive enables you to utilize existing relationships to build new ones. With this template, you can reach out to previous connections to ask them to make an introduction to someone that they think will benefit from your product or service.

Sales Playbook Templates

A sales playbook establishes a standard set of expectations for your sales professionals, ensuring that your sales team is on the same page and reaching their goals. These sales playbook templates help you build your own set of standards.

6. Standard Sales Playbook Template

This sales playbook template by Spekit provides your sales team with the building blocks for a solid sales playbook. Through this template, your team will learn a structure that guides them through using sales enablement tools to research prospects, build relationships, and convert leads.

7. E-commerce Sales Playbook Template

This downloadable sales playbook template by Visme is focused on the unique needs of e-commerce companies. The template includes the company’s selling structure and pain point solutions, but it also provides users with a place to store all company information. This info can be helpful for training, even beyond the sales team, including training for call center workers , marketing professionals, and customer success representatives.

8. SaaS Brand Sales Playbook Template

Visme’s SaaS-focused sales playbook template gives sales teams a place to keep track of their own company information, as well as other essential information needed for quota attainment, including ideal company profiles, content repositories and guides for utilizing said content, and sales methodologies.

Sales Invoice Templates

Nearly half of all businesses handle up to 500 invoices per month. Make invoicing easier on your sales team by providing them with these handy sales invoice templates:

9. Cost Estimate Template

This downloadable sales invoice template by HubSpot is an example of what to send when your prospect asks for a quote. If you have a product or service and the cost is variable and depends on multiple factors, this cost estimate template addresses the price breakdown. 

10. Product Invoice Template

Microsoft has a number of sales invoice templates , including this template example, which is ideal for invoicing for a particular product or group of products. In addition to breaking down the cost, this invoice template has more spots for important product information, like the delivery date and shipping method.

11. Basic Invoice Template

This basic invoice from Square is easily customizable and straightforward. You can include essential branding elements, like your logo and color palette. The template is also already filled with all the basic invoicing information you need, like the billing info, itemization, and payment terms.

12. Branded Invoice Template

Your brand is a crucial part of your business’s identity. By using an invoice template that can be tailored to fit your brand, such as the invoice template examples provided by Adobe , you can ensure that even your invoicing stays on brand. When you send out these types of invoices, you further solidify your brand identity in the minds of your customers and prospects.

13. Contractor Invoice Template

If your company functions as a contractor, this invoice template from Canva is a straightforward way to ensure your invoice stays on-brand and isn’t forgotten. This invoice is simple and doesn’t contain any unnecessary information. You include your payment information, the invoice date and due date, the payor’s information, and a breakdown of your services.

Sales Forecasting Templates

Building an accurate sales forecast is vital for keeping your sales team on track and hitting your monetary goals. These sales forecasting templates can set your team up for success.

14. Sales Forecasting and Spend

Spekit’s customizable sales forecasting and spend template is an all-encompassing template that helps you paint a full picture of how much you’re spending and how much you expect to bring in. Beyond simply making predictions, you can make data-backed decisions on your spending and projections of your financial growth, keeping you out of the red.

15. Long-Term Sales Analysis Forecasting

This sales forecasting template by Close is ideal for companies that have been in business for a while and have already kept track of their historical sales reports. This template utilizes 12 full months of historical sales data, as well as data and insights for the company dating back over the course of the past five years. This template lets you look deep into the past to influence your forecasting for the future.

16. Startup Sales Forecasting

Not every company has a lot of historical data to help them predict the future of their sales. This sales forecasting template by Zendesk is designed with startups in mind. With this template, startups can track their average revenue per unit and month-over-month growth rate to see how many units the business would have to sell to reach their desired revenue.

18. Monthly Sales Projection Forecasting

This downloadable sales forecasting template by HubSpot is easy to read and is broken down by quarter. At a glance, you can see how you estimate you’ll perform according to your current sales cycles and then compare each quarter’s projections. This template also tracks which deal was won by which sales rep, which also enables you to track your sales reps’ performance each quarter.

Sales Project Management Templates

A successful sales enablement strategy must be organized and save your sales reps time—not add to it, especially considering the limited amount of time they currently have to engage in actual selling. These project management templates keep your sales team on schedule and save them from time wasted due to being disorganized.

19. Cross-Functional Project Plan Template

This cross-functional project plan template, courtesy of Asana , uses the tools provided by the project management platform to create a project plan that bridges the gaps between multiple teams, like sales, marketing, and customer success. This project management template is ideal to use if you want more than one team to have oversight over a project.

20. Platform Training Template

A part of project management is being able to use the platforms required for the project. During your sales enablement training , use platform training templates, like this ZoomInfo Best Practices Template , to ensure your sales team has the resources to use the tools needed for any project. Spekit has a number of platform training templates , from Salesforce to HubSpot and beyond.

21. Customer Projects Template

Especially helpful for creating connections and collaboration between the sales and customer success team, this customer projects template by Monday.com provides multiple teams with insight into a customer’s journey and the projects surrounding a particular client. With this template, you can view completed projects and track the movement of ongoing projects for a particular client.

22. Process Documentation Template

Whether you’re onboarding a new hire or advancing the sales training of a long-time employee, there are many policies and procedures your sales team needs to learn—but the only way to do that is if you have the documentation to support your training. Use this project documentation template by HubSpot to create uniformity in how you handle similar projects and support your sales professionals’ learning.

23. Ultimate Project Management Dashboard Template

If you want to track the status of a project all in one place, this project management dashboard template by Smartsheet can help. This template lets you keep track of the timeline of a particular project, update your team on the status of each task in the project, visualize the time spent on each task, and see at a glance if you are on budget or over budget.

Sales Deck Templates

A sales deck is a presentation that lets you show off your product or service to your prospect, and you may only get one opportunity to wow your audience. Use these templates to build something that truly impresses.

24. People-Focused Sales Deck

Visme has a variety of sales deck template options, like this sales deck, which utilizes color theory and people-focused and community-focused images to tell a story of how the company is driven by its friends and neighbors to provide better business solutions.

25. Bold Sales Deck

This sales deck template by Pitch utilizes a bold design with bright colors, dramatic slides, and customizable text focused on important talking points. With this template, companies can show prospects that their business is one that isn’t afraid to take risks and inspire them to take action.

26. High-Performance Sales Deck

Utilizing dynamic animation and slides built around performance statistics, this sales deck template by Storydoc uses numbers and figures to show why your company is the best company to work with. It’s a visually engaging deck that will keep your prospect interested.

27. Customer-Focused Sales Deck

While many sales deck templates feature slides that focus on the problem that the company is attempting to solve and the solutions they put in place to fix that problem, this sales deck by Pitch takes your proposal a step forward by providing plenty of space to show how the solution has already helped their customers. If you’d like to make case studies the focus of your sales deck, this template is a perfect place to start.

28. Sales Presentation Deck

This sales deck by Canva is a thorough presentation for your sales reps to use to show off your product or service to your prospects. In addition to talking about the problem your product solves, the solution you created with your product, and case studies on how your current clients are performing, this deck also breaks down additional important information, such as your pricing plans, how your product works, and where your product is available. 

This template also contains a slide dedicated to what you’re striving to do next, helping your customer envision a future with your business.

Sales One-on-one Meeting Templates

More than half of sales reps say that the most crucial factor in them reaching quota attainment is support from sales leadership , which just goes to show how vital sales coaching and one-on-one time is. Use these sales one-on-one meeting templates to optimize your coaching time.

29. General One-on-One Sales Meeting

This one-on-one meeting template by Leapsome provides sales managers with a general list of agenda items. This template offers suggestions on what to talk about, but it’s customizable to fit what you’d like to talk about with your team.

30. OKR Goal Setting One-on-One Meeting

This one-on-one meeting sales template from Hypercontext utilizes objectives and key results (OKRs) to establish goals for your sales reps. This format of one-on-ones allows your sales professionals to review their previous successes and plan for an even better quarter.

31. Sales Manager and Sales Rep One-on-One

If you feel that the general one-on-one template is too general, this sales-specific one-on-one template by Atrium may be a better option for you. This template already contains agenda items that are tailored for the relationship between a sales manager and a sales rep.

32. Peer-to-Peer One-on-One

One-on-ones don’t have to just be between an employee and a higher-up. A peer-to-peer one-on-one can happen within someone’s team, but it can also provide an opportunity for cross-functional collaboration and break down data silos. This template by Hypercontext offers a structure for making sharing information between teams easier.

33. Sales Manager and Account Executive One-on-One

Vouris offers one-on-one meeting templates for a variety of relationships, including this one-on-one template designed for a meeting between an account executive and a sales manager. One of the benefits of this template is that it has space to track the answers to each question over time, so you can see how your account executive is improving throughout their time with the company.

Sales Pitch Templates

A sales pitch is how your sales team introduces your company to your prospect. These sales pitch templates help them paint a thorough picture of what your product or service can do and help you keep your prospect interested and engaged.

34. ROI Calculator Template for Sales

This ROI calculator template enables your sales team to help their prospect understand their pricing proposal and the financial benefits of signing up for your solution. As your sales team pitches, this template gives them the ability to highlight the cost benefit of your product.

35. Sales Demo Opportunity Template

Research shows that you only have between three and seven seconds to get someone’s attention before they become distracted, which may be why the CEO of Hipmunk, Adam Goldstein’s two-sentence sales pitch is so effective. Goldstein used this formula to secure more than $55 million from investors.

37. Ed McLean Cold Email Sales Pitch

Ed McLean was considered one of the best copywriters of all time, which is why his style of writing is still among the most effective ways to pitch new customers. This cold email sales pitch by Mailshake is inspired by McLean’s writing and utilizes charm and honesty to make connections with new potential customers. 

38. The Pixar Pitch Template

If you’re a fan of Pixar movies, you might already be familiar with the Pixar sales pitch , even if you don’t realize it. Through this sales pitch template, you can tell a story that keeps your audience engaged. First, you explain the backstory and then the problem that background creates. 

Then, you get into your solution, followed by two ways in which that solution has helped previous clients. You wrap it all up with a happily ever after in which you guide your prospect to envision their happy future with you.

Sales Battle Card Templates

You can think of a sales battle card as a type of flashcard, like those you may have used to study for a test. But instead of historic dates and people or your multiplication table, battle cards hold important information and talking points that sellers need. These templates can help you build your own set of sales battle cards.

Spekit and battle cards go hand-in-hand. With Spekit, important battle cards pop right into your sales professionals’ workflow. You create the battle cards, and Spekit ensures that your sales reps see that card right when they need it most.

39. E-commerce Sales Battle Card Template

This sales battle card by Visme is designed with e-commerce companies in mind. With this battle card, e-commerce businesses can provide their sales team with talking points around use cases, plans and pricing, and how to address common customer pain points.

40. Head-to-Head Competitor Sales Battle Card Template

Battle cards can be used to store not only information on your own company but also on your competition. This competitive sales battle card by HubSpot includes talking points for sales reps when they need to go head-to-head against a particular competitor. You may want to develop one of these battle cards for each of your top competitors.

41. Software Solutions Battle Card Template

This software-focused sales battle card by Visme helps sales professionals gain a complete picture of how to talk about their product, as well as who the product is for and why it was created. It also contains a helpful visual so sales reps know at a glance what features are in each plan or package, ensuring that they’re always guiding prospects toward what type of plan they truly need the most.

42. Objection Handling Battle Card Template

Learning to handle objections is an integral part of your sales team’s training, and the success they have at handling objections is a sales enablement metric that’s worth tracking. You can prepare your sales reps for handling objections better by providing them with battle cards built around this sales battle cards template by Klue , which breaks down common objections and offers talking points on how to address them.

43. How Customers Use Our Product Battle Card Template

One of the key parts of using battle cards is highlighting the ways in which your business’s products or services stand out. This battle card by Pipedrive puts the focus on the usage cases of a particular product, allowing the sales rep to show off the solutions it solves and why customers choose to work with your company.

Get Started with Free Sales Templates 

Providing sales representatives with the content that they need to gain more conversions is an essential part of your business’s sales enablement measures. But content shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all solution. You may be targeting a specific type of prospect according to your ideal customer profiles, but that doesn’t mean that your prospects all have the same pain points, day-to-day challenges, and needs. 

If your prospects are all individuals, shouldn’t your content be individualized to fit who they are and what they need and want the most? These sales templates provide your sales reps with a starting place to build more personalized connections. These templates are supported by time-tested engagement tactics, ensuring that you’re giving your sales team the support they need and the content that will make their prospects excited and ready to buy.

Looking for even more templates? Spekit offers a free content template library to support your sales enablement efforts. Spekit’s library features sales methodology frameworks, essential platform training resources, cold call scripts, and much more.

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The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Go-to-Market Roadmap

Kyle Coleman

Kyle’s foray into B2B tech sales started in 2013 when he joined Looker as the 6th employee. Over the next 6 years, he grew the SDR team from 1 to 60+ as the company scaled from $100k in ARR to $100m+, and was acquired by Google for $2.6b. He then moved on to Clari and for the next 5 years, led growth marketing, SDR, and enablement as the CMO. Kyle is now the CMO @ Copy.ai, an AI workflow automation platform. He’s an avid runner, a proud corgi owner, and is always looking to talk shop.

Launching a new product or service can feel like trying to juggle flaming torches while riding a unicycle. The competition is fierce, and market trends change faster than you can say "pivot." That's why you need a go-to-market (GTM) roadmap. Think of it as your strategic GPS, guiding your product to success by aligning marketing, sales, and product development efforts.

A GTM roadmap is your team's compass, steering you through the maze of product launch complexities. It defines your target audience, value proposition, marketing and sales strategies, and key milestones. With a clear roadmap, you can streamline efforts, dodge common pitfalls, and boost your chances of commercial success.

Creating a GTM roadmap offers numerous benefits. It fosters cross-functional collaboration, ensuring everyone is rowing in the same direction. It helps allocate resources efficiently, prioritize tasks, and track progress. Plus, it allows you to adapt to market changes, customer needs, or competitive shifts, making your go-to-market strategy more agile and resilient.

To craft an effective GTM roadmap, you need to understand its key components and follow a structured process. This involves conducting thorough market research, defining your target audience and value proposition, developing marketing and sales strategies, and setting realistic timelines and milestones. Breaking down the process into manageable steps helps create a comprehensive roadmap that aligns with your business objectives and maximizes your product's potential.

But let's not sugarcoat it—creating a GTM roadmap isn't a walk in the park. One of the biggest challenges is misalignment across GTM teams , which can lead to inefficiencies, delays, and missed opportunities. To overcome this, foster open communication, collaboration, and a shared vision among all stakeholders involved in the product launch.

In the following sections, we'll dive deeper into the definition, importance, and key components of a go-to-market roadmap. You'll get the knowledge and tools to create your own roadmap and set your product up for success. So, grab a coffee, and let's get started!

What is a Go-to-Market Roadmap?

Imagine your GTM roadmap as the ultimate treasure map for launching your product or service. This strategic plan outlines every step, resource, and timeline needed to hit the market running. It's the go-to guide for your cross-functional teams—marketing, sales, product development, and customer success—to ensure everyone’s rowing in the same direction.

The GTM roadmap's mission? To provide a crystal-clear, actionable plan for your product launch, from the initial brainstorming sessions to post-launch fine-tuning. It helps teams prioritize tasks, allocate resources wisely, and track progress like a hawk. A well-defined GTM roadmap means you can reduce time-to-market, dodge risks, and boost your chances of hitting it big.

Forget the generic business buzzwords. A GTM roadmap is your secret weapon for gaining a competitive edge and driving growth. It enables you to:

• Pinpoint your target audience and nail down your value proposition
• Craft killer marketing and sales strategies
• Synchronize cross-functional efforts and resources
• Set a timeline and milestones for your product launch
• Keep tabs on performance and tweak as needed post-launch

A well-executed GTM roadmap can help you stand out in crowded markets, build brand buzz, and create demand for your products or services. Investing time and resources into crafting a comprehensive GTM roadmap lays the groundwork for a successful product launch and long-term market domination.

For B2B companies, where the sales cycle can feel like a marathon, a GTM roadmap is even more crucial. B2B marketers need to whip up targeted content that speaks to the unique needs and pain points of their audience at every stage of the buyer's journey. A GTM roadmap aligns your B2B content marketing efforts with your big-picture goals, ensuring your content is strategically crafted and distributed to drive lead generation and sales.

Benefits of a Go-to-Market Roadmap

A well-crafted go-to-market roadmap is like a secret weapon for businesses launching new products or services. Here are some key perks:

• Improved cross-functional alignment: A GTM roadmap gets marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams on the same page, ensuring everyone marches towards common goals. Sirius Decisions found that B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth. Not too shabby, right?
• Increased efficiency and productivity: A GTM roadmap outlines clear objectives, timelines, and deliverables, streamlining processes and cutting down on wasted time and resources. Take Stance Socks, for instance. After implementing a project management tool to align their GTM efforts, they saw a 50% reduction in time spent on routine tasks, according to a case study by Asana.
• Enhanced customer understanding: Crafting a GTM roadmap means diving deep into market research and customer analysis. This leads to a better grasp of your target audience and their needs, which can inform product development, positioning, and influencer marketing strategies for more effective customer acquisition and retention.
• Faster time-to-market: A clear roadmap helps teams prioritize tasks and stick to schedules, reducing delays and speeding up product launches. According to the Product Management Institute, 71% of organizations using roadmaps report delivering products on time or even early. Talk about a time-saver!
• Improved ROI: Focusing resources on high-impact activities and minimizing waste, a GTM roadmap can boost your returns on investment. Just ask Salesforce. After rolling out a comprehensive GTM strategy, they increased their annual revenue from $51 million to $1.1 billion within five years. Now that's some serious ROI.

To unlock these benefits, it's crucial to understand the key components that make up a successful go-to-market roadmap.

Key Components of a Go-to-Market Roadmap

A go-to-market roadmap isn't just a fancy term—it's your blueprint for a successful product launch. Think of it as your strategic GPS, guiding you through market research, value propositions, target audiences, marketing and sales strategies, and timelines with milestones. Each piece is essential for hitting your go-to-market goals.

1. Market Research

Market research isn't just a checkbox on your GTM roadmap; it's the secret sauce that helps you truly understand your target audience, their needs, and how your product or service can meet those needs. Skip this step, and you might as well be launching a product into a black hole, hoping it resonates with someone, somewhere. Spoiler: it won't. Poor sales and wasted resources, here we come.

To ace your market research for your GTM roadmap, start by pinpointing your target market segments. Dive into demographic data—age, gender, income level, geographic location—and psychographic info like interests, values, and lifestyle preferences. Knowing your ideal customers inside and out lets you tailor your product positioning and messaging to hit them right in the feels.

Next up, gather intel on your target market's needs, pain points, and buying behaviors. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews with potential customers or industry experts are your go-to tools here. Look for trends and patterns in the data to uncover what makes your audience tick and what might make them hesitate to buy your product.

Streamline your market research process with a variety of tools and techniques. AI-powered sales enablement platforms like Copy.ai can help you sift through mountains of data at lightning speed to pinpoint key insights and trends. Social listening tools keep you in the loop on online chatter about your brand, competitors, and industry, so you stay attuned to customer sentiment. And if you want to go all-in, market research firms can dish out in-depth reports and analysis on specific industries or target markets.

Investing time and resources into thorough market research upfront sets you up to create a value proposition that truly resonates with your target audience, driving the success of your go-to-market strategy. With a crystal-clear understanding of your market's needs and preferences, you're ready to nail down your product's unique value proposition in the next stage of your GTM roadmap. Onward to GTM Velocity!

2. Value Proposition

A value proposition is your elevator pitch on steroids. It’s the crystal-clear statement that tells your target audience exactly what unique benefits your product or service brings to the table. Think of it as your chance to explain how you solve their problems or make their lives better, and why they should pick you over the competition.

Ready to craft a killer value proposition? Here’s the game plan:

• Know your audience: Get inside the heads of your ideal customers. What keeps them up at night? What do they need?
• Spell out the benefits: Lay out the specific perks your product or service offers. No vague promises—be crystal clear.
• Stand out from the crowd: Show what makes your offering the unicorn in a field of horses.
• Keep it short and sweet: Your value proposition should be a quick read. Aim for a few punchy sentences.
• Test and tweak: Gather feedback from your audience and refine your message until it’s spot on.

Nail your value proposition, and you’ve got a secret weapon for sales forecasting . By pinpointing the unique benefits you offer and aligning them with customer needs, you can predict how your product or service will perform in the market with greater accuracy.

Check out these stellar value propositions:

• Slack: "Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get work done."
• Uber: "Tap the app, get a ride. Uber is the smartest way to get around."
• Airbnb: "Rent unique places to stay from local hosts in 190+ countries."

These examples hit the nail on the head, clearly communicating the core benefits and solving specific problems for their target audiences.

3. Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is the cornerstone of a successful go-to-market roadmap. This means pinpointing the specific group of customers most likely to buy your product or service. Clearly defining your target audience allows you to tailor your marketing and sales efforts to effectively reach and engage them.

Start by analyzing your existing customer base to identify common characteristics like age, location, income level, job title, or industry. Dive into market research through surveys, focus groups, and interviews to gather insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points. Use this data to create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers.

Once you've nailed down your target audience, leverage tools like web analytics, social media monitoring, and AI-powered sales prospecting to understand their online behavior, interests, and engagement patterns. This intel will help you determine the most effective channels and messaging to reach them.

Keep a close eye on your target audience as your business grows and evolves. Regularly seek feedback and tweak your strategies to ensure you're meeting their needs and expectations.

With a crystal-clear picture of your target audience, you're ready to craft targeted marketing and sales strategies that resonate and drive conversions.

4. Marketing and Sales Strategy

Crafting top-notch marketing and sales strategies is the secret sauce for a killer go-to-market roadmap. Nail this, and you'll be chatting up your target audience, showcasing your value like a pro, and raking in the revenue.

First up, your marketing strategy. Zero in on your target audience and get to know their quirks, likes, and behaviors. This intel is gold for creating buyer personas that will shape your messaging and content. Next, figure out the best channels to reach them—whether it's social media, email, content marketing, or paid ads. Whip up a content plan that hits their sweet spots and aligns with your product's value proposition. And don't forget to set metrics to gauge your success and keep tweaking your strategy based on solid data.

Your sales strategy should be the dynamic duo to your marketing efforts, focusing on turning leads into loyal customers. Kick things off by defining your sales process from the first hello to sealing the deal. Pinpoint the decision-makers in your target accounts and craft a plan to win them over. Arm your sales team with the tools, resources, and training they need to sell your value proposition and tackle objections like pros. Consider leveraging AI-powered tools to supercharge your sales calls and boost conversions. Set clear metrics to track your sales team's performance and keep refining your strategy based on what you learn from both wins and losses.

With rock-solid marketing and sales strategies, you'll be primed to connect with and convert your target audience, driving your go-to-market roadmap to success.

Timeline and Milestones

Let's talk timelines and milestones—two pillars of a rock-solid go-to-market (GTM) roadmap. Think of a timeline as your project's GPS, showing you where you are and where you're headed. Milestones? They're the pit stops that make sure you're still on track and not lost in the wilderness of GTM Bloat.

Ready to map out your GTM timeline? Here's your game plan:

• Pinpoint the major phases of your GTM strategy: market research, product development, marketing campaign planning, and sales enablement.
• Break each phase into bite-sized tasks and assign them to your top-notch team members.
• Estimate how long each task will take and figure out which tasks depend on others.
• Visualize it all with a project management tool like Gantt charts or Kanban boards—because seeing is believing.
• Regularly review and tweak the timeline to deal with any curveballs that come your way.

Milestones are your GTM roadmap’s signposts, marking key achievements and keeping everyone focused and accountable. Here are some milestone examples to aim for:

• Wrapping up market research and target audience analysis
• Finalizing product positioning and messaging
• Launching the marketing campaign
• Hitting a specific sales target
• Collecting customer feedback and using it to improve the product

AI-powered tools can be your secret weapon here. They automate the mundane, provide data-driven insights, and optimize resource allocation, helping your sales team stay on track and make smart decisions throughout the GTM process.

Establishing a clear timeline and defining meaningful milestones ensures your GTM roadmap is structured, measurable, and adaptable to market shifts. This approach will help you streamline your product launch and boost your chances of commercial success. And remember, Copy.ai is your go-to GTM AI Platform to make it all happen.

How to Create a Go-to-Market Roadmap: Step-by-Step Guide

Ready to launch your product like a pro? Buckle up and follow this no-nonsense guide to streamline your GTM process:

First Things First:

• Dive deep into market research to pinpoint your target audience, scope out competitors, and spot market trends.
• Craft a killer unique value proposition and positioning strategy for your product.
• Set crystal-clear goals and objectives for your product launch.
• Assemble your dream team from marketing, sales, product development, and customer success.

Mid-Mission Moves:

• Build detailed buyer personas to grasp your target customers' needs, pain points, and buying habits.
• Whip up a comprehensive marketing plan that covers content marketing, digital advertising, PR, and events.
• Design a sales strategy that syncs perfectly with your marketing efforts and target audience.
• Set a timeline with key milestones and deliverables for each phase of the GTM process.
• Assign tasks and responsibilities to each team member, ensuring clear communication and accountability.

Finishing Touches:

• Create sales enablement materials like pitch decks, demos, and case studies.
• Train your sales team on the product, value proposition, and target audience.
• Finalize all marketing assets, sales materials, and product documentation for launch.
• Keep an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the success of your GTM efforts.
• Gather feedback from customers and internal teams to continuously refine your GTM strategy.

To keep your GTM roadmap on track and turbocharge your efforts, check out an AI sales manager —your new best friend for streamlining processes, analyzing data, and delivering actionable insights.

Best Practices and Tips

Ready to nail your go-to-market roadmap? Here are some top-notch tips and tricks to get you there:

• Align your GTM roadmap with your company's overall business strategy and goals. This way, all efforts are laser-focused on the same objectives.
• Foster clear communication and collaboration among cross-functional teams. Regular meetings, progress updates, and a shared project management tool can keep everyone in sync.
• Stay flexible and adaptable. Market conditions, customer needs, and competitive landscapes can shift rapidly. Regularly review and tweak your GTM roadmap to stay agile.
• Set realistic timelines and milestones. Ambition is great, but unattainable goals can lead to frustration and burnout. Break down larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks.
• Leverage data and analytics to make informed decisions. Regularly monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and use insights to fine-tune your GTM strategy.
• Prioritize customer needs and feedback. Continuously gather and analyze customer data to ensure your product and marketing efforts align with their evolving needs and preferences.
• Invest in the right tools and technologies to streamline processes and boost efficiency. A robust MarTech stack, starting with Copy.ai, can automate tasks, provide valuable insights, and enhance team collaboration.

Follow these best practices and expert tips to increase the likelihood of a successful GTM roadmap implementation and, ultimately, a more effective product launch.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Creating a go-to-market roadmap can feel like navigating a maze with a blindfold on. Here are the common pitfalls businesses often stumble into and how to sidestep them:

• Vague objectives: A GTM roadmap without crystal-clear goals is like a ship without a compass. Make sure your objectives are SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
• Skipping market research: Ignoring market research is like trying to hit a bullseye while blindfolded. Dive deep into understanding your target audience, competitors, and industry trends.
• Lack of cross-functional teamwork: A GTM roadmap thrives on collaboration across departments—marketing, sales, product development, and customer service. Open those lines of communication and ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction.
• Underestimating time and resources: Launching a product often demands more time and resources than you think. Plan realistically and allocate enough resources to each phase of your GTM roadmap.
• Ignoring the need to adapt: Markets and customer preferences shift faster than a caffeine-fueled startup. Regularly review and tweak your GTM roadmap to keep it relevant and effective.

To dodge these common traps, start by setting clear objectives and diving into thorough market research. Promote cross-functional collaboration, be realistic with your resource allocation, and keep an eye on your progress, ready to pivot as needed. For more insights on avoiding common B2B sales strategy mistakes , check out our blog post on the topic.

Now that we've navigated the common mistakes, let's delve into some tools and resources that can help you effectively implement your go-to-market roadmap.

Tools and Resources

Implementing a go-to-market roadmap can feel like solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded, but fear not—there are tools and resources designed to streamline your workflow and turbocharge your team's productivity. These tools help you manage tasks, collaborate like a dream team, and harness AI-powered insights to supercharge your GTM strategy.

GTM AI Platforms

GTM AI platforms are revolutionizing how businesses streamline and optimize their go-to-market strategies. These platforms harness the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist in every phase of the GTM roadmap—from market research and content creation to sales enablement and performance tracking.

Take Copy.ai, for example. This GTM AI Platform offers a suite of AI-powered tools that help businesses craft compelling marketing content, generate product descriptions, and fine-tune their messaging for various channels and audiences. Automating and enhancing these tasks, Copy.ai saves time, improves consistency, and drives better results from GTM efforts.

Why should you care about GTM AI platforms? Let’s break it down:

• Increased Efficiency: AI-powered tools automate repetitive tasks and streamline processes, freeing up teams to focus on high-value activities.
• Enhanced Insights: GTM AI platforms crunch vast amounts of data to deliver actionable insights and recommendations, making data-driven decisions a breeze.
• Improved Consistency: AI ensures consistent messaging and branding across all touchpoints, enhancing the overall customer experience.
• Faster Time-to-Market: By speeding up content creation, market research, and other key tasks, GTM AI platforms help businesses launch products and campaigns faster.
• Better Performance: AI-driven optimization and personalization boost engagement, conversion rates, and overall GTM success.

Effective planning is the cornerstone of successful GTM strategies, as highlighted in this article on account planning . GTM AI platforms significantly support this process by providing valuable insights, automating tasks, and ensuring team alignment.

While GTM AI platforms are game-changers, project management tools also play a crucial role in implementing and tracking go-to-market roadmaps.

Project Management Tools

Ready to conquer your go-to-market roadmap? Cross-functional collaboration and effective project management are your secret weapons. With the right project management tools, you can streamline processes, boost communication, and keep everyone on track. These tools help teams organize tasks, set deadlines, assign responsibilities, and monitor progress like a well-oiled machine.

Here are some top-notch project management tools that can supercharge your GTM roadmap:

• Asana : A versatile tool that lets teams create tasks, set deadlines, and collaborate on projects in real-time.
• Trello : A visual project management tool using boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and workflows.
• Jira : An agile project management tool designed for software development teams but adaptable for various projects.
• Monday.com : A customizable platform offering a range of project management features, including task tracking, timeline views, and integrations.
• Smartsheet : A spreadsheet-like tool with enhanced project management capabilities, such as Gantt charts and automated workflows.

Why should you care about project management tools for your GTM roadmap? Here’s the lowdown:

• Improved collaboration : These tools enable cross-functional teams to work together seamlessly, share updates, and provide feedback in a centralized location.
• Increased visibility : Project management tools offer a clear overview of the entire GTM roadmap, making it easy to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions.
• Enhanced accountability : By assigning tasks and setting deadlines, project management tools ensure that team members are accountable for their responsibilities and deliverables.
• Streamlined communication : These tools reduce the need for lengthy email chains and meetings by providing a platform for real-time updates and discussions.
• Integration with other tools : Many project management tools integrate with other software, such as AI-powered sales enablement platforms , allowing for a more seamless workflow and data synchronization.

Leveraging project management tools can help teams effectively plan, execute, and monitor their go-to-market roadmap, ultimately increasing the likelihood of a successful product launch.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a go-to-market roadmap.

A go-to-market (GTM) roadmap is your strategic blueprint for launching a product or service. It details the steps, timeline, and resources necessary to hit the market running. Think of it as the ultimate coordination tool, aligning marketing, sales, product development, and customer success teams for a seamless launch.

Why is a GTM roadmap important?

A GTM roadmap is essential for several reasons:

• Aligns teams around a unified goal and strategy
• Clarifies roles and responsibilities
• Identifies potential obstacles and risks
• Ensures efficient resource allocation
• Provides a timeline for key milestones and deliverables
• Helps measure and track progress

What are the key components of a GTM roadmap?

A comprehensive GTM roadmap typically includes:

• Market research and analysis
• Target audience and buyer personas
• Value proposition and positioning
• Pricing and revenue model
• Marketing and sales strategies
• Product development and launch timeline
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics

How do I create a GTM roadmap?

To create a GTM roadmap, follow these steps:

• Conduct thorough market research
• Define your target audience and develop buyer personas
• Craft a compelling value proposition and positioning
• Determine pricing and revenue model
• Develop marketing and sales strategies
• Create a product development and launch timeline
• Establish KPIs and metrics to measure success
• Align and communicate with cross-functional teams

What tools can I use to create and manage a GTM roadmap?

Several tools can help you create and manage your GTM roadmap, including:

• Project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Monday.com
• Roadmapping software such as ProductPlan or Aha!
• GTM tech stacks that include AI-powered platforms like Copy.ai
• Collaboration and communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams

How often should I update my GTM roadmap?

Your GTM roadmap should be a living document that evolves with market changes, customer feedback, and team progress. Review and adjust your roadmap at least quarterly, or more frequently if needed, to keep it relevant and aligned with your overall business objectives.

## Conclusion

We've dived deep into the nuts and bolts of crafting an effective go-to-market roadmap. Conduct thorough market research, define a clear value proposition, identify your target audience, develop marketing and sales strategies, and set a timeline with milestones. This approach will streamline your product launch and boost your chances of commercial success.

Creating a go-to-market roadmap isn't just about planning; it's about executing with precision. Follow the step-by-step guide, best practices, and tips we've laid out here to navigate the process efficiently and dodge common pitfalls. With AI revolutionizing the sales landscape, staying informed about how AI will affect sales jobs is crucial. Adapt your strategies and stay ahead of the curve.

Ready to elevate your go-to-market strategy? Dive into Copy.ai's cutting-edge GTM AI Platform and see how AI-powered tools can optimize your product launch, align your teams, and help you achieve your business goals. Sign up for a free trial today and experience the power of AI in your go-to-market efforts!

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