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How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps

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

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

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

What is a sales plan and why create one?

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

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

The benefits of a sales plan

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

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

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

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

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

1. Company mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

What is brand positioning: The ultimate guide with 4 examples

2. Goals and targets

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

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

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

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

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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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10 Free Sales Plan Templates for an Effective Sales Strategy

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 15, 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?

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

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

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?

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

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

10 Sales Plan Templates to Help You Close Your Next Deal

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

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 marketing operations from one location.

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

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

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

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

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.

Reach Sales Goals With Free Sales Plan Templates

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

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

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How To Build a Strategic Sales Plan + 10 Examples

• March 28, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Plan? 

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

A sales plan should include the following three components: 

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

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

Sales Planning Process

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

You should: 

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

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

1. Decide on Your Timeline

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

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

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

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

2. Outline the Context

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

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

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

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

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

3. Company Mission and Values

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

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

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

4. Target Market and Product/Service Positioning

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

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

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

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

5. Sales Team and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

6. Concurrent Activities

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

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

7. Business Road Map

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

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

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

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

8. Sales Goals and KPIs

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

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

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

A bad example of a goal is as follows:

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

A better goal would look something like:

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

9. Action Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples 

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

Customer Profile 

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

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

Buyer’s Guide

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

30-60-90-Day Plan

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

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

Market Expansion Plan

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

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

Marketing-alignment Plan

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

New Product/Service Plan 

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

Sales Plan Template

4 additional sales plan templates.

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

• Template Lab 
• ProjectManager

5 Tips for Creating a Sales Plan 

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

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

When Should You Implement a Strategic Sales Plan? 

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

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

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

To Launch a New Product or Campaign 

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

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

To Increase Sales

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

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

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How to create a sales plan (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.

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

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

FREE SALES PLAN TEMPLATE

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

Published: 03/07/24

A strong sales strategy plan creates the foundation for a cohesive and successful sales organization.

Sales strategies and initiatives also align salespeople on shared goals and empower them to do their best work — keeping them happy and successful, too.

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

Table of Contents

What is a sales strategy?

Why is a sales strategy important, the most effective sales strategies, sales strategy types, sales planning: how to build a sales strategy plan, sales initiatives, sales strategy examples from successful sales teams.

A sales strategy is a set of decisions, actions, and goals that inform how your sales team positions the organization and its products to close new customers. It acts as a guide for sales reps to follow, with clear goals for sales processes, product positioning, and competitive analysis.

A clear sales strategy serves as a map for the growth of your business. Your sales strategy is key to future planning, problem-solving, goal-setting, and management.

An effective sales strategy can help you:

• Give your team direction and focus. Strategic clarity can help your sales reps and managers understand which goals and activities to prioritize. This can lead to improved productivity and outcomes.
• Ensure consistent messaging. Your sales strategy can help your team deliver a consistent message to prospects, partners, and customers. This can increase both trust and effectiveness.
• Optimize opportunities. Strong sales strategies will help you target the right prospects and customize your approach. This can help your team make the most of every sales opportunity.
• Improve resource allocation. Your sales strategy outlines your priorities and resources. In turn, this can help your sales team use their time, effort, and other resources more efficiently, boosting your team’s ability to focus on high-potential deals.

Next, let’s cover some of the sales strategies that I’ve found can be most effective.

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2. Become a thought leader.

Sharing your advice, tried-and-true best practices, and niche expertise are some of the most long-lasting ways to build your personal brand and lend more credibility to your organization. After all, nobody wants to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, it’s better to help people by offering solutions to their problems.

That’s what thought leaders do. Indeed, a recent report found that “Thought leadership is one of the most effective tools an organization can use to demonstrate its value to customers during a tough economy — even more so than traditional advertising or product marketing, according to B2B buyers.”

According to the study, 61% of decision-makers believed that thought leadership could be moderately or very effective in demonstrating the value of a company’s products. Moreover, more than half of C-suite executives in the study believed that thought leadership has a greater impact on purchases during an economic downturn, making this an even more important element of a sales strategy in today’s uncertain economic times.

So what’s the catch?

Not all thought leadership content is created equal.

When done right, thought leadership can have a huge positive impact, but poor thought leadership can be devastating to a company’s sales goals. So, before you plan a spree of LinkedIn posts to drive leads, consider who your audience is, what they need to know, and how your organization can help.

Also, it may not hurt to have a second set of eyes from your marketing, communication, and PR departments review your plan first to make sure everything is on-brand (and trackable!).

3. Prioritize inbound sales calls as hot leads.

There’s an age-old question in sales: “Should I discuss product pricing with a prospect on the first sales call?” The honest answer is: It depends.

You and your sales team know your process better than anyone. So take it from me — if you’ve seen success with pitching with pricing first, last, or somewhere in between, stick with what’s working for you.

But beyond that, your team should always prioritize the prospects who come to you. These hot leads are definitely interested in what you have to sell, and before they make a decision, they want to get the information they need about how it will benefit them.

By prioritizing talking to these prospects as soon as they call in or send an email, you’re putting your best foot forward and showing them that you’re helpful, solutions-oriented, and considerate of their time. And if that means closing a deal on the first call, there’s nothing wrong with that — as long as the customer has the information they need to make an informed decision.

4. Properly research and qualify prospects.

I’ve personally discovered that even the strongest sales strategy can’t compensate for targeting the wrong customers. To ensure your team is selling to the right type of customer, encourage reps to research and qualify prospects before attempting to discuss your product. Indeed, throughout my career, I’ve found that more work on the front end can lead to smoother closing conversations later on.

Outline the criteria a prospect needs to meet to be qualified as a high-probability potential customer. These criteria will depend on your unique business and target audience, but they should generally be based on a prospect’s engagement history and demographics.

Free Guide: 101 Sales Qualification Questions

101 Questions to Ask Contacts When Qualifying, Closing, Negotiating, and Upselling.

• Budget Questions
• Business Impact Questions
• Competitor Questions

5. Implement a free trial.

Offering a free trial or freemium version of your product can be a highly effective way to convert prospects. In fact, HubSpot’s sales strategy report found that 76% of sales professionals feel that free trials are effective in converting prospects into paying customers, while 69% of professionals believe that freemium offerings are effective.

Keeping a list of proven, go-to closing techniques will help salespeople routinely win deals. Some of my favorite techniques include the ‘now or never close’ — i.e., “If you commit now, I can get you a 20% discount” — or the ‘question close,’ i.e., “In your opinion, does what I am offering solve your problem?”

Free Sales Closing Guide

An easy-to-use sales closing guide with three tactics you can use right away.

• Using an ROI calculator for your prospects
• How to ask confirmation questions
• Sales question templates you can use today

To further improve your closing techniques and learn to close deals with confidence, check out this free, downloadable Sales Closing Guide .

11. Nurture existing accounts for future selling opportunities.

Once a deal is done, there’s no need for a sales strategy, right? Wrong.

Account management is an incredibly important part of the sales process, as this is how you foster loyal, happy customers and identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

So, after your sales team sees success with its sales strategy, it’s vital to form a partnership between the sales team and customer service/success teams.

Remember: Ensuring customers’ continued satisfaction with your product or service will make them more likely to do business with your company again. You may even inspire them to advocate for it proactively.

Free Sales Plan Template

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

• Target Market
• Prospecting Strategy

Inbound Sales Strategy

In contrast, inbound sales strategies are the modern methodology for sales teams. Companies following an inbound approach base their sales processes on buyer actions.

These organizations automatically capture seller and buyer data to monitor their pipelines and coach their salespeople. Inbound sales strategies connect reps’ activities to the three stages of the buyer journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — encouraging sales teams to map their tactics to the right step in the customer journey.

The inbound methodology also aligns sales and marketing, creating a seamless experience for buyers. Check out this post to learn more about inbound sales and how to develop an inbound sales process.

In addition, many popular sales strategies take a customer-centric approach, including:

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

You can learn more about these approaches in this post about customer-centric selling systems .

Inbound vs. Outbound Sales Methodology

In the past, buyers were often forced to suffer through evaluating a product and deciding whether to buy it using only the information offered to them by the seller. But today, much of the information needed to evaluate a product is available online — meaning that buyers are no longer nearly as dependent on the seller.

That means that if sales teams don’t align with the modern buyer’s process. If they fail to add value beyond the information already available online, then buyers will have no reason to engage with a sales team.

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

• Consideration.

Inbound sales teams help buyers become aware of potential problems or opportunities and discover strategies to solve those problems.

Then, buyers evaluate whether the salesperson can help with their problem, and if the buyer thinks they can, they’ll purchase a solution to their problem. Inbound sales reps are helpful and trustworthy, creating partnerships rather than power struggles.

Not sure how to get started with inbound selling? Every sales team should have a sales strategy plan outlining its goals, best practices, and processes designed to align the team and create consistency.

Below, I’ll walk through how to create a sales strategy plan for your team.

Now that you have the template you need, let’s go over how you can build a sales strategy.

How to Build a Sales Strategy

• Develop organizational goals.
• Create a customer profile that is tailored to a specific product offering.
• Hire, onboard, and compensate sales team members adequately.
• Create a plan to generate demand.
• Measure individual and team performance.
• Track sales activities.

To build a comprehensive sales plan, I’d recommend starting with the following activities:

1. Develop organizational goals.

Setting goals is a no-brainer for most sales teams. Otherwise, how will you know whether you’re executing the right activities or achieving the best results? There are three strategies that I’ve found can be particularly helpful in developing clear organizational goals for a sales strategy.

Involve cross-departmental stakeholders.

Avoid developing sales goals in a silo. Instead, be sure to get input from stakeholders across the organization, since every department is held accountable to the company’s bottom line.

Create SMART goals.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Setting SMART goals can help your team simplify and track complex, long-term sales goals .

For example, a specific, measurable, and time-bound goal could be to sell 150% of the projected sales quota in Q2. Your internal team can propose this goal and then decide whether it is both relevant and attainable (attainability is particularly important because setting unrealistic goals can harm team motivation).

At the end of the day, SMART goals help reduce confusion when it’s time to review your strategy, helping to ensure you know what worked and what didn’t.

Connect individual goals to organizational goals.

Finally, if you’re creating a team-specific strategy, you may also want to set goals for individual team members. Building ownership and accountability into sales goals can help keep your team aligned, and it also makes your sales strategy more cohesive.

2. Create a customer profile that is tailored to a specific product offering.

A detailed profile of your target customer — a buyer persona — is an essential component of an effective sales strategy. Below, I’ve outlined the key steps to take when creating a buyer persona to ensure you come up with a useful profile:

Find target markets and segments.

First, look at your industry as a whole. Get a sense of your ideal customer’s company size, psychographics, and buying process. You may want to look at industry trends, too.

Conduct market research to understand customer needs and preferences.

Next, do some market research. This template can help you streamline the process and understand which types of research will be best for your business.

You may also want to do some competitor analysis at this stage. Once you know the strengths and weaknesses of competing brands, you can more easily find gaps that you can fill for specific customers.

Create a clear value proposition to attract your ideal customer to your product or service.

Finally, make sure your product offering outlines the benefits of your product for your target customer. It’s important to use insights from your customer profile to emphasize features that solve your target customer’s pain points.

Your business may already have a clear value proposition — but if not, you can use these free value proposition templates to draft one.

Quick tip : Be sure to schedule time to update and refine your buyer persona to make sure it stays aligned with current customer trends and expectations.

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

To develop an effective sales strategy, you need to have a powerful sales team in place. That means investing in hiring, onboarding, and retaining top talent. Specifically, I have learned that there are three key components of building (and keeping) a supportive, successful sales team:

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

First and foremost, create a list of criteria for sales managers to screen for when interviewing candidates. A well-defined job description and competency framework are also useful. These tools can help your team recruit and retain top talent.

Develop sales onboarding, training, and development programs.

Your training and onboarding program should prepare your sales team to sell effectively and efficiently. It should also help sales reps build advanced skills and industry knowledge.

But what if you don’t have the resources to develop comprehensive training in-house? In these situations, it may be worth considering combining organization-specific training with online sales training programs .

Create a motivational compensation and rewards plan.

Finally, once you’ve built a strong team, it’s vital to ensure your compensation plan is set up to motivate and retain them.

Many organizations connect sales compensation to organizational sales goals, but regardless of the specific compensation plan you choose, make sure that it meets or exceeds industry expectations. It should also inspire your team to celebrate individual and team achievements.

4. Create a plan to generate demand.

Now, it’s time to put together a detailed plan for how to target potential customers and increase their awareness of your offering. This may include using paid social acquisition channels, creating e-books, hosting webinars, and the many other strategies laid out in this article.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

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4. Listen to your prospects.

Just because prospects aren’t customers yet doesn’t mean they don’t have valuable feedback to offer.

As you move prospects through the sales funnel (and especially when they drop off), ask for candid feedback about their experience with your team and products. Even if they’ve lost interest, you may learn something that can help you convert your next prospect.

5. Invest in sales development and team-building.

The best sales teams align not only with their customers but also with their coworkers.

Sales is a difficult career, and without proper encouragement and camaraderie, people can easily become burned out. So, to keep your sales team feeling satisfied and supported, don’t forget to invest in sales development and team-building activities.

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Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs

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.

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4. Map Out Your Customer’s Journey

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

• Consideration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Define Your Value Propositions

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

Start by asking a few simple questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Organize Your Sales Team

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

Here are three basic structures for your sales team :

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

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

7. Outline the Use of Sales Tools

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

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

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

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

8. Build a Prospecting List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Track, Measure, and Adjust As Needed

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

Remember what Basecamp founder Jason Fried said about plans:

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

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

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

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

Create a Strategic Sales Plan to Grow Your Business

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

Avoid Moving the Goalpost

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

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

Invite Your Others to Challenge Your Sales Plan

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

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

Set Individual Goals and Milestones for Your Sales Team

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

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

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

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

Ready to Hit Your Sales Goals?

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

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

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

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• TemplateLab

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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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.

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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2023 Playbook: How to Create a Revenue-Generating Sales Plan [Template + Examples]

Casey O'Connor

What Is a Sales Plan?

Why do i need a sales plan, how to create a sales plan: 7 steps + what to include, types of sales plans, how to measure sales progress, what to include in a sales plan template, sales plan template, sales plan examples, tips for creating a winning sales plan.

A sales plan is a detailed, A – Z roadmap for salespeople that outlines the various stages, executable actions, methodologies, outcomes, and goals of the sales process.

The document provides the sales team with an action plan for executing their roles and responsibilities in supporting your company goals.

In this article, we’ll go over all the steps you need to take (and exactly what to include) in order to create an effective sales plan as well as examples, templates, and proven tips.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• How to Create a Sales Plan

A sales plan is very similar to a business plan , except that it focuses entirely on sales activities. It’s an all-encompassing playbook that spells out everything a salesperson might need to know about what they’re working toward within their company, including: 

• Strategies or methods to adopt
• Action steps to follow
• Team players, their specific responsibilities, and the skills required to do their jobs
• Potential pitfalls and challenges
• Individual and team-wide, short-term, and long-term goals

An effective sales plan should be very thorough, and should outline for your salespeople all the various steps — and their potential outcomes — they will need to take in order to play their part in meeting the company’s targets.

A sales plan is meant to help sales reps understand their specific roles and responsibilities, and how their actions and outcomes contribute to the bigger picture. 

Like a business plan, a sales plan is a customizable document and should reflect the specifics of your company or small business. What you include in the document — and how you go about creating it — will be unique to your scenario. 

With that being said, there are some guidelines and best practices to follow to ensure your sales plan is as effective as possible. We’ll go over all of those later in this article.

First, let’s look at some of the reasons why it’s so important to make a sales plan.

For many sales reps, the name of the game is closing deals . It can be easy to lose sight of the process in favor of converting as many leads as quickly as possible.

But solidifying and systemizing the sales process is critically important. Creating a sales plan will help you:

• Maximize the efficiency of your sales process by determining which strategies and methods are most effective with your target market
• Identify a variety of targets and goals, and encourage your sales reps to continually strive to meet them
• Track individual and collective performance data from every stage of the sales process, which will help fine-tune your sales process and determine your budgeting needs

Though it may require some time and effort on the front end, creating a sales plan will pay off in spades in the long run.

It doesn’t matter how skilled or talented your sales team is — if they’re not efficient in their sales activities, they will never reach peak performance. 

In fact, most top-performing companies report that their sales activities are carefully structured , far more so than average or underperforming companies.

Having a structured system allows your sales team to meet their sales goals more quickly and easily. The detailed roadmap of the sales plan enables your reps to waste no time deciding what to do next, wondering whether what they’re doing is working, or how close they are to meeting their goals. 

One of the most effective ways to motivate a sales rep is through expertly crafted sales goals . It’s important that your goals are lofty, and will drive your business forward, but they should also be achievable. 

Once you’ve set effective goals, you also need to be able to see what steps and actions are helping you meet them, and which need some fine-tuning. 

Although your sales plan will be unique to your company’s current operating status and future goals, there is a relatively standard process that will help most sales managers create one to suit their needs. 

These seven steps will help you know where to start — and what all to include — in your sales plan.

1. Mission Statement & Positioning

Before you start nailing down the specifics of your goals and sales actions, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the big picture. What is your company’s purpose? What do you do and why do you do it? What are your company values? All of these things come together to form a company’s mission.

Creating a mission statement is an all-hands-on-deck exercise. Your company’s mission is developed by and given contributions from many departments. Be sure to consult with your marketing, account management, and content management teams, along with any other stakeholders that are impacted by the company’s larger purpose (in other words, everyone!). 

It’s also important during this step to acknowledge your company’s current position in the market. Who are your main competitors? What is the value you offer that sets you apart ? This isn’t necessarily part of your mission statement, but it does help your sales team understand where they currently fit in the bigger market picture.

Once you’ve zoomed out and gotten a handle on the higher-level ideals and values of your company, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty.

Do not cut corners in this step. The more specific, the better, and you should consider setting smaller, highly targeted goals for every stage of the sales pipeline .

For example, a high-level goal may be to close 100 deals in a month. That’s a good start at a SMART goal, but challenge yourself to go several steps further . Reverse engineer those 100 deals, and look at all of the steps that happened before close that helped you arrive there.

How many cold emails did it take to close a single deal? How many phone calls are reps making before qualifying a prospect ? How is your social media engagement ? Your sales process map can help you identify and target each individual step in the process, so you can create smaller, stepping-stone goals.

Here’s a general structure:

One last tip: make sure to set goals for activities that are directly within a sales rep’s control — things like how many phone calls they make in a day, or how long their demo takes to present — and the outcomes that are driven by those activities (like revenue or number of deals closed).

3. Sales Team Organization & Structure

Here is where you’ll outline your team roster , so to speak. This section of your sales plan should start with an overview of your current sales team, as well as the specific roles and responsibilities of each team member. 

Beyond that, it should also outline the specific skills and/or training that your sales reps currently possess, and what they (ideally) still need in order to be successful. You should also consider including projections for future growth or openings on the sales team. Similarly, you may consider including your compensation plan within the sales plan. 

Some of this section will be forward-looking and dependent on your sales budget — don’t exclude something just because it’s not happening now or seems too expensive. These projections will help further shape your revenue goals and allow you to budget appropriately. 

This section should rely heavily on self-reports from your sales reps. Take the time to interview them individually about how they view their role and what they currently take responsibility for within the sales process .

There are no right or wrong answers here, so be sure to let your reps know that this isn’t a performance evaluation. The point of gathering this kind of input is to see, from a high-level perspective, which responsibilities are currently well-served, and which need more attention.

4. Target Market & Buyer Persona

As important as it is to clearly understand the internal workings of your sales process, it’s just as important to outline things from the customer’s perspective.

5. Sales Strategies & Methodologies

In this section, you’ll want to give an overview of the various sales methodologies that are most successful for your target market, as well as the actionable steps required for each one. 

This doesn’t mean that you need to adopt one approach and stick with it. Many top-tier sales teams use a hybrid approach to sales strategies, combining a variety of methods depending on the rep and the customer. 

For example, you may find that inbound leads respond best to a value-selling approach.

This section works best when it’s laid out according to each stage of the sales cycle .

The sales landscape is changing faster than ever, particularly with the rise of social selling . With that in mind, here’s another reminder to update this section with best practices as you continue to adopt and practice new strategies.

6. Sales Execution & Action Plan

If the sales organization structure section is your roster, then the execution & action plan is your playbook.

Here is the real “meat” of your sales plan. This section is where you will outline the very specific sales activities, timelines, deadlines, and milestones that you expect to take place throughout the sales process. 

Be as specific as possible here. “Make 200 cold calls” is far more executable than “Call prospects.” The SMART goals and sales strategies you outlined will drive your execution plan. Include all relevant deadlines, as well as the individuals directly responsible for meeting them. It can be beneficial to break this section down into monthly, quarterly, and yearly timelines.

Tip: Grab this free interactive worksheet that helps you identify the number of calls, conversations, new opportunities, and deals needed to hit your quota each month.

The specificity here will serve two primary purposes.

First, it will be an enormous help to your sales team. There’s no better way to learn on the job than with a step-by-step manual. It also makes the onboarding process very smooth.

It will also allow you to pinpoint which stages of your sales process are converting well, and which need help. It can show you where your sales team’s energy is currently going and where it’s most needed. If, for example, you see that most reps are spending 70% of their time prospecting and still not meeting their quotas, you may want to reconsider your marketing plan.

7. Measure KPIs

The last part of your sales plan involves measuring and analyzing your sales KPIs . What you measure and how you measure it will depend on your specific company, but it’s important to standardize them across the company so that everyone is working toward — and knows exactly how to achieve — the same sales targets.

Most companies choose to track both primary metrics — the ones that measure your overall, big-picture progress — and secondary ones that indicate levels of success throughout the various stages of selling. We’ll go over some of these in the next section.

A robust CRM  can help you manage and track the many moving pieces of the sales process.

One of the most useful things about sales plans is that you can create one for just about any scenario your sales team might encounter. 

Whether you’re entering a new market, launching a new product, or simply wanting to grow your revenue, a sales plan specific to your goals can make all the difference in your success.

Here are a few examples of the different types of sales plans your team might create.

Annual/Quarterly/Weekly Sales Plan

One straightforward way to write a sales plan is by determining goals for a specific time period. 

Most sales teams create weekly/monthly/quarterly/annual goals; a sales plan can help everyone involved achieve those goals. 

A sales plan created around a specific time period should include revenue goals, specific sales strategies and tactics, and a means for measuring progress. 

Here’s an example of a quarterly sales plan :

New Product Sales Plan

A new product sales plan details the goals, strategies, tactics, and people involved in launching a new product. It’s essentially a blueprint for how to generate sustainable revenue from the launch.

A new product sales plan should also include competitive analysis, details or ideas about any potential strategic partnerships, information about your unique selling points, and a sales enablement strategy for the launch.

Customer Segment Sales Plan

A customer segment sales plan helps sales reps understand the many different sub-groups in their target market, and how to sell most effectively to each.

Your customer segments may be determined by geographic area. They may also be segmented by other demographic information, like company size or revenue bracket. A customer segment plan outlines the specifics of each of those segments and helps you optimize your sales strategies and tactics for each one.

30-60-90 Day Sales Plan

A 30-60-90 day sales plan is a popular option for new sales hires. This kind of sales plan outlines the approach and specific strategies that a new sales rep will take in their first 90 days on the job. 

Days 30 through 60 are for putting the plan into action. Sales reps should jump into the sales process and track their progress, challenges, and successes. These will be analyzed later in order to optimize the process. 

Days 61 through 90 are all about fine-tuning the plan. Sales reps should take the data they gathered through the first two phases and use any insights gained to create a new and improved iteration of the sales plan.

Market Expansion Sales Plan

If you’re hoping to start selling to a bigger market, a market expansion sales plan might help structure the process and improve productivity and results. 

A market expansion sales plan outlines what a sales team must do in order to successfully expand into a new market or territory. Most often, this kind of plan addresses expanding into a new geographic market. 

A market expansion plan should address distribution efforts to the new territory, as well as time zone issues and other logistical considerations. 

Revenue-Based Sales Plan

A revenue-based sales plan is based on — no surprise here — revenue.

This type of sales plan focuses on sales forecasting and strategies to improve conversion rates in order to close more deals and improve the bottom line.

There are a number of ways to use your sales plan to measure your sales progress. Remember, your sales plan is a living, breathing document and should be scrutinized and updated as often as needed to reflect your current sales team, product pricing, market conditions, and sales tactics.

As your sales plan changes over time, your measurable metrics may need updating, as well. Consider tracking some of the following KPIs to keep your finger on the pulse of your team’s progress.

Revenue is one of the most straightforward metrics to track, but keep in mind that there are many ways to approach this. You can measure revenue in one or several of the following ways:

• Overall revenue
• Revenue by product
• Revenue from new customers vs. existing ones
• Revenue by territory or market

If you only track overall revenue, you lose out on valuable insights for growth. Your total revenue, for example, might look healthy, but a closer look could reveal that it’s streaming almost entirely from existing customers. Tracking revenue from new customers would highlight the fact that your company needs to focus on customer acquisition in order to continue generating new business. 

Sales Activities

You can also track the day-to-day behavior and sales activities of your sales team. Consider monitoring things like:

• Social media engagement
• Scheduled meetings
• Demos and presentations

Remember, none of this is meant to spy on your sales team or micromanage their progress. Instead, the goal is to promote growth and efficiency. 

Funnel Metrics

The sales cadence is another lens through which to analyze your team’s progress. Take a bird’s eye view of your sales pipeline and start tracking some of the following:

• Length of sales cycle
• Number of closed deals
• Number of deals that didn’t close after reaching a certain stage
• Value of the pipeline by individual and team, by month and by quarter
• Average contract value
• Conversion rate

Tracking these metrics will help you see any kinks in the overall process.

Lead Generation Metrics

When you track your lead generation progress, you can get valuable data about how effectively you’re reaching your target customers. The following data will help you set benchmarks and reach your business goals. 

• Volume of new opportunities
• Lead response time
• Percentage of follow up 
• Dropped leads
• Qualified leads
• Customer acquisition cost

If any of these metrics are lagging, you may want to work with your marketing or content teams and reconsider your marketing strategy. 

Sales Productivity Metrics

Sales productivity metrics are great for seeing where your reps’ sales efforts are going. These metrics can be a bit more tedious to measure and track, but are well worth studying in the long run.

• Entering data
• Creating content
• Number of sales tools used
• Percentage of lead follow-up

Time is money, and knowing where your time is going has a direct impact on your bottom line.

Ultimately, it’s up to sales teams (ideally in collaboration with marketing) to decide what information will be most useful to them within a sales plan. 

Here are some of the more common components that teams include in their sales plans. 

Mission Statement

A company’s mission statement gives a high-level, goal-oriented synopsis of its purpose and how it serves the market.

Although this isn’t necessarily an actionable component of the sales process, it’s good to include it in the plan so that it’s front of mind as your team works to meet the goals laid out in the sales plan.

Target Customers

Your sales plan should always outline who your offer is best-fit to serve. 

At a minimum, your sales and marketing teams should collaborate to define the ICP and buyer personas. But certain sales plans need to go beyond the basics and define their target market into subgroups. Some examples of customer segments might include:

• Upsells and cross-sells

Your target customer segments can also be defined by geography, demographics, and company size — just to name a few. 

Team Structure

Many teams also include a section that succinctly outlines the people involved in the sales process, and their specific roles and responsibilities. 

Effective sales plans outline roles and DRIs, so it’s a good idea to ensure that everyone has access to the roster, so to speak, as they execute the sales plan. This is especially important for larger sales teams.

Sales Goals and Revenue Targets

Every sales plan needs to include the goals it aims to achieve. 

Remember to follow the SMART goal framework; our goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

It’s especially important to make clear in your sales plan how your team plans to track your progress toward those goals. How and when will you monitor/measure performance? What are the performance benchmarks you’re hoping to achieve in a given time period? These specifics should be outlined in full in your sales plan.

Performance During the Prior Period

You can give your sales plan context by including data about your team’s past performance in your goal areas. This helps salespeople understand how much of a gap they need to fill in order to succeed.

Strategies and Tactics

Your sales plan must include details about the specific strategies, tactics, and/or methodologies your team will use to reach their goals. This section should be action-oriented and aligned with the unique buyer’s journey of the target market.

You’ll also want to include details and actionable insights about any specific sales strategies you want your team to use.

Pricing and Promotions

Most sales plans will also need to include at least basic information about your offer’s pricing structure , and whether or not you plan to offer any promotions. 

Be thoughtful about these numbers, especially promotions. Sales teams need to strike a fine balance between attracting customers with hard-to-refuse deals and making enough profit to affect the bottom line in a meaningful way.

Deadlines and DRIs

Every sales plan needs to include clear information about who is responsible for which deliverables, and when those deliverables are due.

Everyone on the team needs to be clear on the DRIs (directly responsible individuals) for each step of the plan.

A timeline can also be a very helpful visual component of a sales plan.

It’s also a good idea to include an overview of the resources and/or tools your team will need to use in order to execute the plan successfully.

Resources might include a CRM system, project management software, sales enablement tools, forecasting software, or a sales dashboard . You should also include a breakdown of the budget.

Market Conditions

You can also add some context to your sales plan by including insights about the current state of the market.

Information about general trends and potential disruptions in the industry can help motivate your sales reps to buy into your sales plan, as well as help them know how to approach their responsibilities. You’ll also want to include an in-depth competitive analysis.

Below you’ll find a basic sales plan template that you can copy and paste as a starting point. Remember, the sales plan is meant to be highly specific to your company, so it’s likely that the template here will not meet all of your needs. Instead, treat it as a jumping-off point and customize it until it captures all of the pertinent information.

[COMPANY NAME]

SALES PLAN [YEAR]

1. Mission Statement

3. Sales Team Organization

4. Target Market

• Demographics (Age, Marital Status, Location, Profession, Etc.):
• Challenges:
• Pain Points:
• Objections:

5. Sales Methodologies

6. Action Plan

[This section is highly specific to your preference. Consider formatting as a list, table, or flowchart.]

Here are a few examples of sales plans to fit a variety of scenarios. Remember, these are intended to be templates or starting points; they should be tweaked or changed to fit the unique needs and goals of your team.

Basic Sales Plan Template

Best Templates offers a comprehensive and straightforward sales template that can be adapted to fit just about any sales goal.

Simply download the template and fill in each section with relevant data and information. This template includes sections for goals, lead demand generation, implementation, and progress tracking.

Single Page Sales Plan

If you’re going for brevity, a one-sheet sales plan might be a good fit for your team.

This template gets right down to brass tacks; it includes space for budget details, deliverables, and KPIs.

Customizable and Design-Forward

For a sales plan that’s custom to your needs and looks great to boot, try Venngage . Venngage is an online sales plan creation software that helps sales teams create actionable, visually engaging sales plans.

Venngage offers users the ability to choose from dozens of layout templates that they can further customize with charts, photos, and illustrations. 

Tip: If you’re interested in the checklist above — grab the Google Docs version of it here.

Microsoft Word Sales Plan

This template allows sales teams to tackle multiple goals at the same time, making it easy to get a bird’s-eye view of how close your team is to achieving both individual targets and big-picture goals.

Tip: Grab more sales plans here –> 13 Strategic Sales Plan Templates

Here are some of our best tips for creating a sales plan that gets results.

Get Input From Marketing

Your sales plan will only be effective if your marketing team can attract the right leads. 

It’s essential that sales and marketing teams remain in close collaboration as they create, track, and manage sales plans.

Understand Your Sales Rep’s Challenges

You can enable your sales reps to be most successful by creating your sales plans around their strengths, and taking their challenges into account.

Of course, sales reps will likely always encounter challenges during a deal — that’s to be expected. But the best sales plans are the ones that leverage their team’s strengths to get the job done and have built-in workarounds to address the team’s needs and potential challenges. 

Don’t Move the Goal Posts Once It’s Complete

Although it can be tempting, it’s important to finalize your sales plan and refrain from editing it until the given time period is complete. 

Your team will be best-served if you stick to the plan, collect data on the process, and use those insights to further optimize your next sales plan.

Get Feedback

Share your sales plan in draft form with members of other teams. Customer success , marketing, and finance teams can all offer valuable insights into how the proposed sales plan fits into the bigger picture of the company’s goals. 

Set Individual Goals and Milestones for Your Team

All sales plans should include SMART goals for the sales team. But some of the most effective plans also include SMART goals for each individual sales rep that’s involved. This helps keep everyone on the team accountable.

This guide was updated on November 30, 2022.

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30 free sales plan templates: Download these PDF, Excel, Word Doc, Google Docs examples

These free sales plans will see your revenue skyrocket

1. Basic sales plan

2. sales and marketing plan, 3. sales strategy guide, 4. sales project plan, 5. sales action plan, 6. b2b sales strategy plan, 7. retail sales action plan, 8. sales leads template, 9. sales tracker template, 10. sales pipeline template, 11. sales funnel template, 12. sales report template, 13. sales one-pager, 14. 30-60-90 day plan, 15. company territory sales plan, 16. sales budget plan, 17. business development sales plan, 18. product market expansion sales plan, 19. company sales sop plan, 20. consulting revenue-based sales plan, 21. cloud sales plan, 22. business plan infographic, 23. saas product sales plan, 24. real estate sales plan, 25. new product sales plan, 26. sales training plan, 27. health insurance sales plan, 28. customer journey roadmap, 29. pricing options, 30. analytics dashboard template.

There are many different ways to boost your sales figures but one thing is for certain: sales simply cannot be neglected. You might hope for passive sales or you may employ a team of cold-callers but either way, sales will ultimately determine how much money you are able to bring in and whether your business is sustainable. 

The importance of sales is underlined by the host of digital sales solutions on the market today. You could flick through a list of the  best sales CRMs , the  best sales management software , and the  best sales pipeline software  and still be unclear regarding what the next steps should be for your sales strategy.

If that’s the case, it might be time to employ a sales plan template. Fortunately, there are a number of free plans available to download in either  PDF ,  Excel ,  Word , or  Google Docs  formats. Deciding on the right one for your sales strategy will depend on a number of factors, including your products, market and customer base. 

Keep reading to discover 30 of the best free sales plan templates available to download now. Whatever your approach to sales, there’s bound to be one that’s right for you.

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30 free sales plan templates to download today

A basic sales plan template provides some structure to your sales process. The template is usually split into different sections, including task titles, deadlines, task assignees, approval status, and a visual progress bar. There may also be space to include details of your business goals, plan strategies, and tactics.

Download the ClickUp Sales Plan Template here .

Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Without a robust marketing plan, your sales figures will undoubtedly suffer. If your company would prefer to foster greater collaboration between its sales and marketing teams, then this template may help. Tasks that are relevant to both operations can be listed, as can KPIs - all in a single view.

Your sales are likely to be a little underwhelming if you don’t have an overarching goal you’re aiming at. And for that, a sales strategy is required. A sales strategy guide will put your organization on the right path by prompting you to answer key questions, such as “What is a sales strategy?” and “Why do you need a sales strategy?” By forcing you to consider the answers to these questions, you’ll ensure that your sales process remains on target at all times.

Within your overall sales strategy, there are likely to be individual projects contributing to your success. It’s a good idea to use a template to keep track of all these projects, providing a quick visualization of due dates, progress, and impact level. This will be a huge help for prioritization, allowing managers to identify the tasks that should be focused on immediately. 

Having a clear idea of how you want your sales to go is one thing, but taking concrete action to achieve your sales goals is another. A sales action plan can help you take the tangible steps you need to boost your sales figures, including ways to record and monitor specific tasks and visualizations for sales forecasting and goals.

Download the ClickUp Sales Action Plan Template here . 

Selling to consumers and selling to businesses require different skill sets, so it stands to reason that there would be specific templates for B2B sales. A B2B sales strategy plan will provide space for you to outline your B2B sales objectives and revenue targets, as well as prompts to ensure you create the type of sales content that really speaks to business customers.

No two industries are the same but luckily if you work in retail, there’s a sales plan template designed just for you. It will help you track inventory, monitor sales metrics, and negotiate with suppliers. It’s also worth taking a look at the best POS systems for retail and the best ecommerce platforms on the market for further technological support.

It may be more comforting to track your conversions, but it’s still a good idea to monitor your sales leads too. Templates for this purpose are available and are especially helpful if you don’t require the full functionality of a CRM . However, these templates will still allow you to include contact dates and status for potential customers so you can plan future engagement project potential sales. 

You won’t be able to see what items are flying off the shelves or where improvements to your inventory could be made unless you track your sales. A sales tracker template provides much-needed visibility, allowing you to keep track of items sold, the profit per item and your total earned income. It also becomes easier to track costs, including shipping charges and returns. 

Download Smartsheet’s sales tracker template here .

Standing as a useful alternative to CRM solutions, which obviously come in a range of shapes and sizes, including the best cloud CRM software , the best open-source CRM , and the best CRM for small businesses . It’s also definitely worth looking at a sales pipeline template, which can help you organize a host of useful information like quarterly sales forecasts, projected closing dates, and further actions 

A sales funnel is a great way to visualize the customer journey as they make their way to conversion - and the right template can prove a great help here. A sales funnel template can help you evaluate your sales process, providing a scorecard so you can give each stage a ranking.

In addition to making predictions about future sales, it’s worthwhile recording previous sales as part of a sales report. This template is great for that and lets you track sales activity by month, quarter or year. It’s also customizable so you can adjust the columns to meet your needs.

Download Smartsheet’s Sales report template here .

Sometimes, you want to strip away all the unnecessary information to leave you with the top-level direction needed to move forward. If that’s the case, you may find that a sales one-pager is just what you’re after. This is a concise template containing your sales tactics, goals, target audience, and key performance metrics but may not include the fine details. A great template for sharing with external stakeholders. 

This sales plan revolves around the time your sales personnel have been at the company and so represents a great tool for onboarding or general employee experience . This template comes with three sections of one month each, with corresponding targets and actionable steps. 

Download the Visme 30-60-90 day plan here .

Different markets will require different approaches if you are to optimize your sales. If you’re a multinational company, this template can streamline your sales process for different geographies, utilizing dynamic fields that mean you can reuse territory sales presentations and change the location information as required. 

For some businesses, keeping a close eye on budgets may be more important than others. Smaller businesses and start-ups, for example, are unlikely to have substantial resources that they can put towards sales and marketing gambles that may not pay off. A sales budget plan can help you keep on top of your finances even as you look to optimize your sales. Often, it will include a variety of budgeting aspects, such as revenue objectives, cost of goods sold, sales expenses and more.

Rising sales aren’t usually seen as the ultimate goal but a means to some other businesses target. This could involve sustainable growth, which is why many companies employ a business development sales plan to keep sight of the overarching target. Various stakeholders can all play a part, with many templates allowing commentary, annotations and the exchange of ideas.

Perhaps you’ve already conquered one market with your product(s) and are now looking to expand into another. That’s when a product market expansion sales plan na be put to good use with its market analyses, competition landscapes, marketing strategies, and distribution channels.

Download Visme’s product market expansion sales plan here .

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are particularly useful for businesses that have had to deal with fragmented or siloed approaches to their projects. Look for a sales template that’s clutter-free so that the sandardization of your sales processes is made clear for all departments to see.

Consultancy firms can derive massive revenues but only if they can convince businesses that there services will be useful. You’ll need a template full of high-quality content and boasting a visually-appealing design. Consultant don’t come cheap, so make sure your consulting sales plan looks good enough to convince internal and external stakeholders that you’re worth the expenditure.

The cloud computing market is extremely competitive these days, boasting cloud storage , cloud backup services, cloud hosting providers and more. In this crowded market, vendors have a job on their hands to maximize cloud sales. This template, outlining your competitive positioning, can help you stand out during your next sales call.

They say a picture can tell a thousand words, which is why you should consider if an infographics is better for your sales plan than a word document. This business plan infographic contains is ideal for presentations to external stakeholders. It looks great, while still containing all the info you need like goals, timelines, market analysis, performance metrics and more.

Software-as-a-service sales are fundamentally different to physical sales. You want recurring, subscription plans, rather than one-off purchases. As such, you’ll want to adopt a slightly different approach to sales, A data-focused approach is likely to be key in a fast-moving market.

Download Visme’s SaaS sales plan template here .

Real estate purchases are likely to be some of the biggest that any individual (or, indeed, company) is ever likely to make. As suvh, it’s essential you get your real estate sale plan right. Make sure your agents and marketing team are aligned in their messaging and goals. A template can really help ensure this is the case.

Starting from scratch? Issuing a new product can be daunting, but a new product sales plan can take some of the fear away. Make sure your template outlines how other similar products have fared initially and include growth projections to help monitor how the product is performing over time.

You can’t expect your sales team to perform to their best ability if they haven’t had the requisite training. This sales training plan template can ensure consistency when delivering onboarding for new sales personnel and explain your expectations for performance in the medium and long term.

Committing to health insurance is a big decision - but there are few more important. A health insurance template will ensure your sales team has access to all the necessary statistics around health and demographics so they can convince prospects to convert.

Conversions don’t just happen. In reality, sales take time and customer journeys can be far from direct. Prospects can take time to become leads. And leads can take time to become customers. The hard sell may work sometime and at other times is likely to push potential customers into the arms of your competitors. Use your template to outline the typical customer journey and give your sales team a helping hand. 

Princing may be crucial for sales but it’s not always straightforward. Depending on your industry, market and time, your pricing may change frequently. Using a table that clearly outlines various pricing options for your customer can be a great way of clearly detailing your product or service. It can also be a great help when upselling.

Data underpins many great sales strategies but data is only truly useful if it can be transformed into insight. Having a clear, visualization of your sales analytics can ensure that you are looking at something your sales team can really use - not just a a jumble of statistics.

Download a free analytics dashboard template here .

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Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things. 

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Top 10 Sales Business Plan Templates with Examples and Samples

Taranjeet Singh

A well-crafted sales business plan is essential for any company that wants to succeed. But creating a great sales plan can be time-consuming and challenging. That's where sales business plan templates come in.

Sales business plan templates provide a pre-made framework that you can design according to your plan and thus saving you time and effort. Furthermore, it helps you ensure that your plan is comprehensive and well-organized.

The best business plan ppt are 100% editable and customizable. Change the images, colors, and text to match your company's branding. You can also add or remove slides as needed.

If your requirement is to create a great sales business plan, then a sales business plan template is the perfect solution. 

With the below-mentioned templates, you can quickly and easily build a plan to help you achieve your sales goals.

Let’s begin!

Template 1: Sales Plan Presentation Template

This content-ready PPT template focuses on helping businesses decide their mission, drive business growth, and cultivate repeat customers. This concise and informative PowerPoint presentation is designed to equip your sales team with necessary skills and knowledge to elevate your company’s growth. It provides you with valuable insights and strategies for achieving sales objectives, capturing new markets, and fostering customer loyalty. Elevate your sales approach with this dynamic presentation, available for download to maximize your business potential.

Download Now!

Template 2: Sale Action Plan PPT

Experience the transformative potential of our ready to use PowerPoint slide.  This meticulously crafted presentation is your key to unlocking sales success. With in-depth market analysis and strategic insights, it equips you with the required tools to optimize your advertising campaigns to make sales. Seamlessly navigate market trends and consumer behavior to enhance your brand's impact. To access this invaluable resource and drive your business forward, download our PPT. Embrace the power of data-driven decision-making and elevate your sales performance.

Template 3: Sales Strategy Plan PPT

Introducing our professional and appealing curated PowerPoint template. This is a top-notch PowerPoint template to you effectively outline and convey your sales strategy. With a visually captivating layout and content that effortlessly highlights your market analysis, target audience, competitive advantages, and action plans, leave a lasting impression on your audience. Unlock the power of persuasive presentations and grow your business to unparalleled heights. Download now!

Template 4: Sales and Marketing Plan for Business Growth PPT

This PPT delves into crucial topics of sales such as, goals, targets, strategies, measurement, and tactics. This dynamic presentation provides you with a roadmap to propel your business toward success. By defining clear objectives, identifying the target audience, devising practical strategies, measuring performance, and implementing tactical approaches, this plan ensures a comprehensive approach to sales and marketing. Download this insightful resource now to gain valuable insights and actionable steps to accelerate your business growth.

Template 5: Business Sales Growth Strategy Plan Model PPT

Leverage the power of our PPT, covering key topics such as products, strategy, customers, geographical segments, and distribution channels. It consists of different segments and tools to help you identify growth opportunities, develop strategies to capture them, and track your progress. It is a valuable resource if you want to increase your sales. Download this template today and embrace the path to sustainable growth.

Template 6: Sales Strategy of Business Plan PPT

This is a content-ready PowerPoint template exhibiting six-stage process to optimize your sales approach. With visually captivating graphics and intuitive design, showcase different stages of sales, including its process and strategy, market knowledge, science metrics, sales excellence and performance, sales skills, and customer knowledge. This actionable PPT slide empowers you to present your sales strategy with precision and impact. Enhance your presentations today and achieve sales success by deploying this PPT.

Template 7: Sales Strategy Business Plan Template 

Designed by our experts, this professional and visually appealing template offers a streamlined six-stage process to guide you through your sales strategy. Whether you're focusing on marketing, channels, advertising, collateral, or training, this template has got you covered. Its clean & modern design makes it perfect for showcasing your business plan to your clients or team members. Grab this powerful PPT today.

Template 8: Strategic Sales Growth Action Plan PPT

This comprehensive presentation showcases a roadmap for success, emphasizing the key components necessary to reach new customers and expand into untapped markets. With estimated cost analysis, projected sales figures, actionable steps, and achievable targets, this PPT provides you the blueprint for sales growth. Deploy this PowerPoint slide now to to unleash your organization's potential for unparalleled success. It's time to seize opportunities and fuel exponential growth in the competitive business landscape.

Template 9: Framework of Business Plan for Sales Growth PPT

Achieving substantial sales growth requires a well-structured business plan. This content-ready PowerPoint presentation outlines critical components essential for success. It covers vital topics, such as, business strategy, sales strategy, resource development, technology, and sales operations. Discover strategic approaches to optimize your business's growth potential and enhance sales effectiveness. Unlock valuable insights and actionable steps to drive revenue and maximize profitability. To access this informative presentation, download it now.

Template 10: Key Sales Action Plans for Business Growth Template

This ready to use template is designed to help you drive success and achieve exponential growth. Focusing on strengthening and developing your sales strategies covers essential stages such as planning, budgeting, expenses, and revenues. Harness the well-crafted sales plan and unlock your business's full potential. Download this invaluable resource to transform your sales approach and propel your organization toward unprecedented success.

A well-crafted sales business plan is a critical component for any organization looking to thrive in the market. By outlining clear objectives, strategies, and tactics, it provides a roadmap for success and empowers businesses to effectively navigate challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and achieve sustainable growth. Therefore, SlideTeam brings you a collection of content-ready and custom-made PPT templates as a valuable tool for organizations seeking to achieve their revenue targets and drive growth. Deploy these premium slides for setting goals, defining strategies, and implementing effective sales tactics. With careful execution and adaptation, the sales business plan template becomes a roadmap to sustainable sales success.

FAQs on Sales Plan

What is a sales business plan.

A sales business plan is a strategic document that outlines the objectives, strategies, and tactics a company will employ to achieve its sales targets and generate revenue. It serves as a roadmap for the sales team, providing a clear direction and structure to follow. A well-crafted sales business plan includes thorough market analysis, target customer identification, sales goals, budgeting, and sales forecasting. It also outlines the sales strategies, such as pricing, promotional activities, distribution channels, and customer relationship management. A sales business plan is a blueprint for success, helping businesses align their efforts and maximize their sales potential.

How Do I Write a Sales Business Plan?

Writing a sales business plan requires careful consideration and attention to detail. Here are essential steps to guide you:

• Define objectives: Clearly state your sales goals and desired outcomes.
• Conduct market analysis: Understand your target market, competitors, and industry trends.
• Identify target customers: Define your ideal customers and their needs.
• Develop sales strategies: Outline lead generation, customer acquisition, and retention tactics.
• Set sales targets: Establish measurable and achievable sales objectives.
• Create a budget: Allocate resources for sales activities, marketing, and sales team development.
• Develop a sales forecast: Estimate sales projections based on market analysis and historical data.
• Define sales processes: Detail the steps involved in the sales cycle and align them with the customer journey.
• Monitor and evaluate: Establish key performance indicators and review progress regularly.
• Adapt and refine: Continuously refine your plan based on feedback and market dynamics.

What are the 4 Common Sales Strategies?

Four common sales strategies used by businesses are:

• Consultative Selling : This approach builds solid customer relationships and understands their needs. Salespeople act as consultants, providing personalized solutions and guidance.
• Solution Selling : This strategy involves identifying customer pain points and offering tailored solutions. It requires understanding the customer's business and aligning product/service features with their needs.
• Relationship Selling : This strategy centres around developing long-term relationships with customers. Salespeople focus on building trust, providing exceptional customer service, and nurturing ongoing partnerships.
• Social Selling : With the coming of social media, this strategy leverages platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to connect with customers, share relevant content, and engage in conversations that can lead to sales opportunities.

Businesses can effectively engage customers, differentiate themselves, and drive revenue growth by employing these sales strategies.

Why is a Sales Plan Important?

A sales plan is crucial for the success of a business for several reasons. Firstly, it provides the sales team with a clear roadmap and direction, ensuring everyone is aligned and working towards common goals. It helps set realistic sales targets and objectives, allowing businesses to measure progress and make necessary adjustments. A sale plan also aids in identifying and understanding the target market and customers, enabling businesses to tailor their sales strategies and approaches accordingly. Moreover, it assists in allocating resources effectively, optimizing budgeting and forecasting, and maximizing sales opportunities. A well-defined sale plan ultimately increases the chances of achieving sales targets, driving revenue growth, and outperforming competitors.

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How To Write A Business Plan For Sales Teams

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

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

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

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

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

What is a Sales Business Plan?

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

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

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

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

What Are Your Goals?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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

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

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

The Elements of a Strong Business Plan

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

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

Sales Business Plan Structure

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

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

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

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

Sales Business Plan Example: Nimble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About The Author

Nimble Editorial Team

Related articles.

The Power of Follow-Through: The Key to Business Success & Growth

How to Effectively Capture Leads? 10 Proven Ways

From Prospect to Profit: Why You Should Stop Avoiding Follow-Ups — Nimble

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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6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples [Pro Tips Included]

Updated on august 10, 2024.

Table of Contents

You're in quite the pickle.

You want to create a strategic sales plan for your sales team so you have a set of guidelines and a procedure to reach your sales goals for the end of the year.

But you don't really know where to start.

Or where to end.

Or what it should look like.

Or, if you're being honest with yourself, what should really be in it at all.

Don't worry! We've got you covered with some sales strategy plan examples and pro tips so you'll be developing a dynamite one of your own in no time.

But first, what is a sales strategy plan?

What is a Sales Strategy Plan

A strategic sales plan is a document containing the details of how your organization will reach its sales goals. It should be something of a guide that will lay out expectations for what and how you and other salespeople on your team should be going through the sales process by combining analysis, research, expectations, and your sales process.

If that sounds confusing, don't worry. We'll break it down more.

The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that a sales strategy plan is made up of several parts to create a plan of attack on reaching sales goals and increasing business revenue. It's your business's how-to guide for sales.

With a strategic sales plan, everyone on your sales team should be on the same page. Everyone will know what their expectations are and how to reach them. And everyone will know the overall sales goals for the company.

Your sales plan and strategy will make that clear.

4 Types of Strategic Sales Plans

When talking about types of sales strategy plans, you're most likely to see inbound and outbound sales plans discussed.

However, we're going to add 2 more into the mix:

B2B Strategic Sales Plans

B2c strategic sales plans, inbound sales strategy plans.

The idea behind inbound sales is that the prospect reaches out to you about your product(s) or service(s), rather than the other way around. An inbound sales strategy plan is the map you use to make that happen. This typically involves creating content that targets and will be seen by your target audience.

Inbound sales strategies can include:

• Digital web ads
• Social media
• Optimizing SEO

A lot of these strategies overlap with marketing strategies because really these two things work in tandem.

Outbound Sales Strategy Plans

The idea behind outbound sales is for you, as the salesperson, to reach out to a prospect with your product(s) or service(s). In this sales strategy, you're the one doing the research involved to generate leads and contact and qualify them to ensure they're a good fit for your product(s) or service(s).

Outbound sales strategies can include:

• Cold calling or emails
• Lead generation software
• Online research

Inbound vs Outbound Sales Strategy Plans

Inbound and outbound sales have their own benefits associated with them. However, the best leads are found when they're both used together .

Source 1 , 2 , 3

B2B sales stands for business-to-business sales. This means that rather than selling products or services to the general public, a business is selling its products to another business. You can think of wholesale businesses, or package suppliers as examples of B2B businesses. A B2B strategic sales plan is simply the procedure or the means to achieve this end.

B2B sales strategies can include:

• Digital ads

B2C sales stands for business-to-consumer sales. This means that a business is selling its products or services directly to the general public. Retail is a B2C business. So, as you've probably gathered at this point, a B2C strategic sales plan is the plan of attack on how to achieve this end.

B2C sales strategies can include:

B2B vs B2C Strategic Sales Plans

Although the target audience differs, there is a lot of overlap between the sales strategies used for B2B sales and B2C sales (depending on whether you're using inbound and/or outbound sales). The differences between selling to individuals vs to companies/organizations come into play more in how the strategies are applied, and how the relationship between you and the customer is shaped. And these differences can involve different skill sets to each other .

How to Write a Sales Strategy

So. Now you know what a strategic plan is. And you know a thing or two about different types of them.

It feels like time to learn a little about how to write one.

A sales strategy takes some work to develop. To create one you'll need to:

• Analyze your organization's sales data from the past: Before deciding where your company wants to go, know where it came from. Research past data, sales goals, strategies, successes, and failures
• Develop sales goals: Use this data to help steer your new sales goals
• Take stock of your current sales process: Perform a SWOT analysis to understand its strengths and weaknesses, how long the process typically takes, what areas have the most success vs where most prospects drop off, etc
• Understand your target demographic: If you don't already have buyer personas, develop them (using the data gathered in previous steps) so that you can understand your target demographic for prospect generation (and for finding and understanding your consumer base)
• Take stock of your sales team: Perform a SWOT analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your own sales team as well. What are different salespeople best at? What could they improve on? Where should their focus in the sales process be? Should it change? Should an opener try out being a closer, etc?
• Take stock of the sales resources and tools currently available to you: Simply take stock of what sales resources and tools you already have, what they're used for, if there's more they can do, etc
• Decide if there's anymore you'd like to get: Are there any sales tools you're missing? Is there a gap in your sales cycle somewhere that a new tool could help fill? You'll have to keep in mind your budget here (you'll need a budget if one hasn't already been developed)
• Use data to decide what strategies work best for your team: Using the data you've already collected, what strategies have you had success with in the past, and what strategies haven't been as successful?
• Be general and be specific: When developing sales goals and sales strategies, it can help to develop higher-level company goals and strategies, and more specific, maybe even team member specific, sales goals and sales strategies.
• Keep your sales strategy responsive: If something's not working, don't be afraid to address it. If something's working really well, take advantage of it.

And there's more where that came from. If you'd like more detail in developing a killer sales plan , you're in luck. Just click through for a breakdown of the 11 steps listed there.

Optimizing Sales Strategy and Planning

A well-defined strategic sales plan is the engine that drives revenue growth. It goes beyond setting quotas and outlines a clear roadmap for achieving your sales goals.

Here's how to optimize your sales strategy and planning:

1. Mapping out the Sales Process from Lead Generation to Closing

The first step is to create a detailed map of your entire sales process. This journey, often referred to as the sales funnel, starts with lead generation - identifying potential customers. Here, you'll define your ideal customer profile (ICP) to target the right audience. Next, qualified leads are nurtured through the funnel with informative content and outreach efforts. This stage often involves sales and marketing alignment to ensure a seamless transition.

As leads become sales-qualified opportunities, your sales reps take center stage. They engage with potential customers, understand their needs, and present your product or service as the ideal solution . Effective communication, negotiation, and clear value propositions are crucial for successful closing .

2. Identifying Bottlenecks and Areas for Improvement

Once you have a clear picture of your sales process, it's time to pinpoint bottlenecks and areas for improvement. This is where a critical analysis comes in. Are there specific stages in the funnel where leads are dropping off? Is your sales cycle longer than it should be?

Strategic sales plans should address these roadblocks. If lead generation is lagging, consider implementing new marketing campaigns or refining your ideal customer profile. If your sales cycle is lengthy, explore ways to streamline it by providing better sales enablement tools or training.

By constantly evaluating your sales funnel and identifying areas for improvement, you can make data-driven decisions that optimize your sales strategy and planning.

3. Implementing Technology and Automation to Streamline Processes

Technology plays a vital role in modern sales. Strategic sales tools can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up your sales reps to focus on high-value activities. This could include automating email sequences, scheduling appointments, or managing customer data.

For instance, CRM software provides a centralized platform for managing all customer interactions. It allows you to track leads, analyze sales data, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior. By leveraging technology, you can streamline your sales process, improve efficiency, and ultimately close more deals.

6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples

There are many variations of sales plans and strategies. When it comes to strategic sales plan examples, it can be helpful to have them broken down into examples of different types of sales strategies, as well as examples/templates for a strategic sales plan.

So that's what we've done.

3 Sales Strategy Examples

There are a variety of different types of sales strategies you can implement using a sales plan strategy. Some of those sales strategies are:

• Drip campaigns
• Cold calling campaigns
• In-person or video conference meetings and demonstrations

Drip Campaigns

A drip campaign is a series of scheduled messages to a specific segment of your prospects to coax them into making a purchase. Drip campaigns allow you to set up automated emails for you to schedule and then leave while you continue using other sales strategies to try and sell.

Check out the table below outlining different types of drip campaigns, what it's for, and who they'll target.

If you want to learn more about drip campaigns, make sure you check out our other articles on the subject, including The Ultimate Guide to Drip Campaigns (the above info is a summarized version of this article), 6 Drip Email Campaign Examples That Guarantee Results , and Drip CRM Explained .

Cold Calling Campaigns

Cold calling is when you call potential prospects who, as far as you know, have no experience or really even knowledge of your business, and you try to convince them to move forward in the sales process with you. Maybe that means the person on the other end of the line connects you with a key decision-maker. Maybe it means you'll schedule a meeting.

What is Cold-Calling provides these tips for cold-callers:

• Embrace rejection
• Use technological and digital tools
• Develop a schedule
• Be good at leaving voicemails

For more tips and tricks (and examples and templates) on cold calling, check out our article Cold Call Script .

In-Person or Video Conference Meetings and Demonstrations

Virtual selling is becoming more and more popular, especially with the push to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But whether it's digitally or in-person, meeting with your prospects can be a great strategy.

With a meeting, you're able to demonstrate your product for your prospects more clearly, and better able to gauge their reactions based on visual cues.

63% of leaders in sales say, according to HubSpot (citing its own report), that virtual meetings and in-person meetings are at least as effective as each other.

This just goes to show that the move to virtual sales doesn't remove the effectiveness or importance of meetings as a strategy.

Video conferencing technology like Zoom , Google Meet , or Microsoft Teams can be used to host virtual meetings so you can see each other, and access a chat which can be useful for sending links or documents to your prospects.

However, each platform has its own limitations depending on the plans you purchase.

3 Strategic Sales Plan Examples/Templates

Now moving on to some strategic sales plan examples/templates.

The first strategic sales plan template isn't actually a strategic sales plan template, but a strategic business plan template from HubSpot that can be modified to be for sales.

The template can be downloaded after submitting the requested information.

Next, we have two downloadable, free strategic sales plan examples (templates) from Smartsheet. Again, neither is directed exactly at sales, but both can be altered to be that way.

The first is a One-Page Strategic Planning Template :

The second is a Strategic Marketing Plan Template :

Both of these templates have an added disclaimer (pictured below) when you download them.

Source: Downloaded One-Page Strategic Planning Template

5 Strategic Sales Plan Pro Tips

Developing a strategic sales plan is an arduous task. Ensuring it works isn't necessarily easier. Luckily, we've rounded up some strategic sales plan pro tips for you.

Some of those tips are:

• Know your market position
• Keep your sales process in mind
• Adopt a sales CRM if you don't already have one
• Track the data available to you
• Don't be afraid to make adjustments

Know Your Market Position

To develop achievable goals, you want to know the market position of your industry and to create clever sales strategies, you'll need to know your business's specific market position.

What is the quality (or qualities) your business has that draws customers to it? Why should they choose your business over other competitors? What do you have that they don't? Or what don't you have that they do?

If you're not entirely sure, this may be something to collaborate with the marketing team on discovering, because it's very important to how you both pitch yourselves to potential customers.

Ultimately, your unique market position is what you'll be able to leverage in not only your sales strategy but sales on a one-to-one level, too.

Remember Your Sales Process

You already have a sales process. Keep it in mind when you're developing your sales strategy plan.

Even if your sales process isn't as effective as you'd like it to be, don't create a sales plan that will involve an entire overhaul of your sales process all at once. It'll be an inefficient way to introduce change to your team – it will just be too much at once. Sales may completely halt while everyone adjusts to the new way of selling.

So instead keep your sales process in mind when creating your strategic sales plan. If it'll need to be adjusted, create sales goals over time to increase its efficiency and have them built right into your sales strategy plan.

Adopt a Sales CRM

If you haven't adopted one already, you're already behind.

A sales CRM makes every aspect of the sales cycle easier. It helps manage and generate leads, keep track of data, and automate emails … CRMS like Ringy even allow you to call directly from the CRM, where the call will be logged and recorded.

CRMs are an invaluable tool for creating a more efficient sales process. You'll be able to increase the time your sales team spends selling rather than doing other administrative tasks.

(Which psst, most inside salespeople only spend a third of their time actually selling.)

Track Your Data

Another reason to adopt a CRM, make sure you're tracking your sales data. You'll want to analyze the progress of your strategic sales plan. Is it working? Are your salespeople struggling with it? Are sales goals being hit on time?

These are all the types of things you'll want to watch out for. Because if you don't know how well your sales strategy plan is working, you won't know if you've developed a good plan. Not only is this important for the company's sales success for the quarter, year, etc, but it affects how well you'll be able to develop strategic sales plans in the future, too.

Make Adjustments

All that being said, also keep in mind that a sales strategy plan doesn't have to be a static document. You can be making adjustments to it, and your sales process, as you go and realize what is and isn't working. Just make sure you're keeping your team updated on any changes.

And, as mentioned previously, just make sure you aren't introducing too many changes all at once.

But just like your sales process is an ever-evolving process, your sales strategy will also be ever-evolving. As new tools are introduced, A/B testing is done, goals are or aren't hit, you'll discover new and better ways of doing things. These things can be reflected in your plan. You want the business to be as successful as possible, and having a responsive plan that steers the sales ship is part of that.

Leveraging Technology and Tools to Assist With the Sales Strategy Plan Process

Strategic sales plan examples involve leveraging technology and tools to assist you with the sales strategy plan process.

Here's how to leverage technology throughout your sales strategy and planning process:

1. Utilizing CRM Software for Customer Relationship Management

A robust CRM system is the backbone of any modern sales organization. CRM software helps you manage all your customer interactions in one centralized location. This includes storing contact information, tracking lead activity, and managing sales opportunities.

Here's how CRM software supports your strategic sales plan:

• Improved Lead Management: CRM allows you to effectively nurture leads through the sales funnel. You can track lead interactions, assign tasks, and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
• Enhanced Sales Forecasting: CRM data provides valuable insights into sales pipelines and deal stages. This allows you to forecast sales performance more accurately and make informed decisions about resource allocation.
• Stronger Customer Relationships: By tracking communication history and preferences in the CRM, you can personalize interactions and provide exceptional customer service.

2. Incorporating Sales Analytics Tools for Data-Driven Decision-Making

Intuition is a valuable asset in sales, but data should be your guiding light. Sales analytics tools provide a wealth of information about sales performance. They track key metrics such as lead conversion rates, sales cycle length, and customer lifetime value.

Here's how sales analytics tools can inform your strategic sales plan:

• Identify Sales Trends: By analyzing historical data, you can identify trends and patterns in your sales performance. This allows you to spot areas for improvement and capitalize on successful strategies.
• Optimize Sales Resources: Sales analytics can help you understand which marketing channels and sales tactics are most effective. This allows you to allocate resources more efficiently and focus on activities that generate the greatest return on investment (ROI).
• Predict Customer Behavior: Sales analytics tools can help you identify buying signals and predict customer behavior. This allows you to personalize your sales approach and close deals more effectively.

3. Integrating Sales Enablement Platforms to Empower Sales Teams

Equipping your sales reps with the right tools and resources is crucial for success. Sales enablement platforms provide a comprehensive suite of content, training materials, and sales collateral, allowing your reps to be more knowledgeable, efficient, and persuasive.

Here's how:

• Improved Sales Onboarding: Sales enablement platforms can streamline the onboarding process for new hires by providing them with all the necessary training materials and resources.
• Content Management and Sharing: These platforms offer a centralized location for storing and sharing sales collateral such as presentations, product demos, and case studies. This ensures your sales reps are always armed with the most up-to-date information.
• Personalized Customer Presentations: Sales enablement tools allow your reps to tailor presentations and proposals to specific customer needs, increasing the effectiveness of their communication and improving deal-closing rates.

So there you go. There are some strategic sales plan examples, with some pro tips thrown in.

Just to go over it one more time, some examples of sales strategies are:

• In-person or virtual meetings

We've also offered you some free strategic sales plan templates, so don't forget to check those out and see if they can help you and your business develop a strategic sales plan of your own.

Some pro tips for developing those sales strategy plans are:

• Adopt a sales CRM

If you still don't have a sales CRM, or feel like yours isn't quite making the cut and are strategizing to get a new one, don't be afraid to contact Ringy to request a quote .

Skyrocket your sales with the CRM that does it all.

Calling? Check. SMS? Check. Automation and AI? Check. Effortlessly keep in touch with your customers and boost your revenue without limits.

Take your sales to new heights with Ringy.

Sales in a slump? Ringy gives you the tools and flexibility you need to capture leads, engage with them, and turn them into customers.

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How to Create a Business Plan

By Scott McDowell

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A business plan is a helpful step to create a roadmap as you start or start to grow your business. This guide will explain the value of having a business plan and provide a detailed, step-by-step process to help you create one.

Think of a business plan as more than just a theoretical overview. It is a practical, actionable resource that informs your business as you grow.

What is a business plan?

At its most basic, a business plan is a formal document that outlines your objectives, strategy, and timeline to profitability. It includes basic information all in one place: your mission , organizational structure, product offerings, financial projections, and more.

A good business plan will:

Clarify your vision and strategy

Guide growth and help you stay on track

Provide a framework for making informed decisions regarding your business

At the end of the day, a business plan helps you stay focused on your goals and demonstrates that you have a viable strategy for growth. 

Why create a business plan?

Even if you don’t need one right now, a business plan can help you clarify your goals and lay out the steps to grow your revenue and customer base, so you can keep doing work you enjoy. A solid business plan can keep you on track and provide a benchmark for measuring progress. Plus, you’ll likely need a comprehensive business plan if you plan to attract outside investors .

How to develop a business plan

Before you start putting together your business plan, there are a few key pieces of thinking and research that will inform the details. 

1. Evaluate your business idea

Take some time to evaluate your new business. This step helps you hone in on your mission and vision for the business and what makes it unique. 

Ask and answer the following questions:

What problem does my business solve?

Is there a demand for my product or service?

What are the potential pitfalls and risks?

2. Conduct market research

Market research involves gathering information about your industry, target audience, and competitors to understand your market and identify gaps and sales opportunities. This helps you look more closely at where you stand among similar businesses and how you can differentiate yourself.

Industry analysis: Look at industry trends, growth potential, and market size.

Target market: Identify who your customers are, their demographics, preferences, and buying behavior.

Competitor analysis : Analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, their market positioning, and their strategies.

Read our guide to audience research

3. Understand your audience

Developing a clear understanding of your target audience will help you figure out how to speak to them effectively, how to market your brand to them, and their unique needs.

Once you know your target market, dive deeper into their needs. Ask yourself:

How do you solve a problem or fill a need for them?

What are their priorities?

How do you reach them online or in person?

What type of message or behavior is likely to gain their trust or loyalty?

Creating a customer or buyer persona —a fictional version of your ideal customer—can be a helpful way to summarize these details. 

The elements of a business plan

A formal business plan includes several parts, including details about your business, how it’s structured, marketing plans, financials, and products. Which parts you need for your own business plan depends on its purpose. If you plan to present this to a potential partner or investor, you likely need most of the elements. If the business plan is to help you log your goals and plans, you can remove sections that don’t feel relevant to your needs.

Executive summary

The executive summary is the first section of your business plan, but you should probably write it last. It’s a one or two paragraph high-level summary of your entire plan. Remember, the executive summary is the first thing someone will see, so it needs to be concise and engaging.

What to include in your executive summary:

Business name: Your business' name and any relevant branding

Mission statement: A brief description of your business’s purpose and core values

Products/services: A summary of the products or services you offer

Market opportunity: An overview of the market need you are addressing

Financial highlights: Key financial projections, including expected revenue and profit

Example: For an eco-friendly clothing line, the executive summary might highlight the growing demand for sustainable fashion, the unique designs offered, and projected first-year revenues of $100,000.

"Our eco-friendly clothing line, GreenDress, is dedicated to providing stylish and sustainable fashion alternatives. With the mission to reduce fashion waste, our products are made from organic and recycled materials. Addressing the increasing consumer demand for eco-friendly options, we aim to capture a significant share of the sustainable fashion market, projecting first-year revenues of $100,000 with a profit margin of 20%."

Try the Squarespace Business Name Generator

Company description

Provide a comprehensive overview of your company, including its structure, history, and the problem it solves. This is similar to the About section you might write for your website bio .

What to include in your company description:

Business structure: Describe your legal business structure (for example, sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC ).

History: Provide a brief history of your business, if applicable.

Market needs: Reiterate the problem your business solves and why there’s a demand.

Example: “ GreenDress is an LLC founded in 2023 by Joan Campion, a fashion stylist and designer with over 10 years of experience in sustainable manufacturing. Our mission is to offer fashionable, eco-friendly women’s clothing options that minimize environmental impact. With growing awareness of fashion’s ecological footprint, there is an increasing demand for sustainable fashion.”

Market analysis

Conduct market analysis to help you understand your industry, market size, and competitors. This helps you and others understand where you sit among competitors, who your brand is for, and what makes you unique.

What to include in your market analysis:

Industry overview: Summarize the industry landscape and trends.

Target market: Define your target market, including demographics, location, and purchasing behavior.

Competitive analysis: Identify your main competitors and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

Example: “The sustainable fashion industry is growing at an annual rate of 10%. Our target market consists of eco-conscious consumers aged 18-35 who value sustainability and unique design. Competitors include established brands like Patagonia, independent sustainable fashion brands, and direct-to-consumer startups like Everlane. GreenDress differentiates itself by offering more affordable and fashion-forward options.”

Organization and management

Highlight the experience and expertise of your team members. If you’re creating a business plan for your own planning purposes, you can likely skip this section unless it’s helpful to sketch out your team structure.

What to include in your organization and management section:

Organizational structure: Include an org chart and provide a one or two sentence overview of your business’s organizational structure. 

Management team: Introduce team members, their roles, and relevant experience.

Advisors: Mention any advisors or board members.

Example: “ GreenDress is led by CEO Joan Campion, with over a decade of experience in sustainable fashion design. Our team includes COO Carlos Silver, who has a background in supply chain management, and CFO Emily Deschutes, an expert in financial planning for startups. We also have a board of advisors consisting of industry veterans and sustainability experts.”

Products or services

Describe your products and explain what makes them unique. Writing this out can help you clarify how you talk about your products and the process for creating and selling them.

What to include in the products or services section:

Description: Provide detailed descriptions of your products or services.

Benefits: Highlight the key benefits to your customers and the unique selling points of your products.

Lifecycle: Outline the lifecycle of your products or services, including development and future plans.

Example: “ Our product line includes organic cotton dresses, jeans, t-shirts, and jackets made of recycled and repurposed materials. Each item is designed with style and sustainability in mind. Our clothing is durable, stylish, and eco-friendly, appealing to consumers who want to reduce their environmental impact without sacrificing fashion.”

Marketing and sales strategy

How will you attract and retain customers? Include information about your preferred marketing channels, sales tactics, and customer retention plans.

What to include in the marketing and sales strategy section:

Marketing channels: Describe the channels you will use to reach your target market (for example: social media , email marketing , influencers).

Sales strategy: Explain your sales process and tactics.

Customer retention: State how you plan to retain customers and encourage repeat business.

Example: “ We will leverage social media platforms, fashionistas, and eco-influencers to promote our brand. Our sales strategy includes an ecommerce website and pop-up shops in vibrant neighborhoods. We will implement a customer loyalty program, offer discounts for repeat buyers, and regularly update our product line to retain customers and keep our brand fresh and appealing.”

Read our guide to creating a marketing strategy

Financial plan

Provide an overview of your business’ financial projections. You may need to talk to a financial expert or ask a friend who understands the financials of starting a business. 

What to include in the financial plan section:

Revenue model: Explain how your business will make money.

Funding requirements: Detail any funding you need to start or grow your business.

Financial projections: Provide projected income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets for the next 3-5 years.

Example: “ Our revenue model is based on direct-to-consumer sales through our website and pop-up shops. We are seeking $50,000 in seed funding to cover initial production costs and marketing expenses. Projected first-year revenue is $100,000, with a net profit margin of 20%.”

Include any additional information that supports your business plan in an appendix. Consider what additional questions your audience might have. If this business plan is for your records, think about what business documentation would be useful to keep in your plan for easy reference.

The appendix can include things like:

Resumes: Detailed resumes or bios of the management team.

Product photos: High-quality images of your products .

Legal documentation: Any relevant legal documents, such as patents or trademarks.

Creating a simple starter business plan

Depending on your business stage and goals, you may only need a truncated, straightforward business plan outline. Focus on the essentials and don’t get bogged down in too much detail. Instead of including everything listed above, start with these sections:

Financial projections

A shorter business plan may be all you need to get your venture off the ground. It will provide enough of a framework to take the idea in your head and make it a real, viable business.

4 tips for writing a good business plan

A few best practices apply no matter how long your business plan is or who it’s for. A great business plan is clear, realistic, and based on research.

Use clear and straightforward language. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms, use short sentences and paragraphs, and be specific and direct.

Support your claims with data and research. Use credible sources for market data, provide references and cite your sources, and use charts or graphs to illustrate data and make it easy on the eyes.

Set feasible and achievable goals.  Base your projections on realistic assumptions and don’t be overly optimistic, consider potential challenges and risks and how you plan to address them, and be able to explain for your projections.

Seek feedback from friends, mentors, and advisors. Share your plan with someone you trust, ideally with more experience than you and use the feedback to refine and improve your plan.

Crafting a well-structured business plan is an elemental step for starting a new business or side hustle. You can start with a simple bare-bones plan or develop a more robust one, depending on your needs. The process can seem daunting, but armed with a clear and detailed plan, you will be ready to guide your business to success.

Posted on 01 Aug 2024

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14 Effective Sales and Channel Partner Commission Plan Examples

Explore the best sales and channel partner commission plan examples. Learn how to design effective commission structures that motivate your team, drive sales, and achieve business goals. Discover key elements, best practices, and expert tips for creating commission plans that work.

Table of Contents

Have you ever wondered why some companies have sales teams and channel partners that are always on fire, hitting targets month after month? The secret lies in a well-designed commission plan. It's like rocket fuel for your sales force, driving performance and keeping partners engaged.

A well-structured commission plan is a powerful tool to drive performance and keep everyone engaged. In this blog, we’re diving into various sales commission plan examples for sales teams and channel partners, showing how these plans can be your secret weapon for success.

Did you know that companies with highly effective sales commission plans are 2.5 times more likely to be top performers in their industry? That’s right – a smart commission plan can make all the difference. We’ll cover everything from the basics of commission plans to real-life examples and best practices, all aimed at helping you design a plan that works for your team.

Understanding commission plans

A commission plan is a system where employees or partners earn additional compensation based on their performance, typically tied to sales or revenue goals. It’s a win-win: employees and partners get rewarded for their hard work, and companies see increased sales and engagement.

Why are commission plans so crucial? 

For starters, they align individual and organizational goals. When sales reps and partners know they’ll earn more by hitting specific targets, they’re naturally more motivated. In fact, companies with strong commission plans report up to 44% higher sales performance than those without. Plus, these plans help attract top talent who are confident in their ability to perform and earn rewards.

The role of commission plans in sales motivation

Commission plans are not just about money; they’re about motivation and morale. Sales teams with clear, attainable commission structures often experience better job satisfaction and lower turnover rates. Partners who see tangible rewards for their efforts are more likely to stay loyal and continue pushing for success.

With a clear understanding of what commission plans are and why they matter, let's dive into the key elements that make up an effective commission plan.

Key elements of a commission plan

1. base salary vs. commission:.

The balance between base salary and commission is crucial. A base salary provides financial stability, while commissions drive performance. 

For example , some companies opt for a 70/30 split, where 70% is the base salary and 30% is commission-based. This balance ensures that sales reps and partners have a secure income but are still incentivized to exceed their targets.

2. Commission structures

There are various types of commission structures, each suited to different business models and goals:

• Fixed commission: A straightforward approach where a fixed percentage is paid on every sale. For instance, a 5% commission on all sales.
• Tiered commission: This structure increases the commission rate as sales volume or targets are met. For example, 5% for the first $50,000 in sales, 7% for the next $50,000, and 10% for any amount beyond that.
• Revenue-based commission: Here, the commission is tied to the total revenue generated. This method is particularly effective for high-value sales environments.
• Profit-based commission: In this structure, commissions are based on the profit margin rather than total sales, encouraging sales reps to focus on high-margin products.

3. Incentives and bonuses

Beyond regular commissions, additional sales incentives and bonuses can further boost motivation. These might include:

• Performance bonuses: Extra payouts for exceeding targets or achieving certain milestones.
• Spiffs: Short-term incentives to push specific products or services.
• Non-monetary rewards: Things like trips, gadgets, or recognition awards can also be powerful motivators.

By understanding these key elements, you can create a commission plan that not only motivates your team but also aligns with your business goals.

Sales commission plans examples

Sales commission plans are vital in motivating and rewarding sales teams for their contributions to a company’s revenue growth. These plans can be tailored to suit various business models, sales strategies, and industry requirements. Here, are the sales commission plan examples with examples to illustrate how companies can effectively structure these incentives.

1. Straight commission plans

In a straight commission plan, salespeople earn a commission based solely on the sales they generate, with no fixed salary. This plan is common in real estate, where agents might earn:

• 5% commission on the sale price of each property sold.

This structure highly motivates agents to close deals, as their income is directly tied to their performance.

2. Base salary plus commission plans

A base salary plus commission plan provides a fixed salary with additional commission based on sales performance. A software company might offer:

• Base salary: $50,000 per year.
• Commission: 5% on all sales above $200,000 annually.

This approach provides financial stability while still incentivizing sales growth.

Use our Salary Plus Commission Calculator to effortlessly calculate your potential income based on different commission plans. It's easy, accurate, and designed to help you maximize your earnings.

3. Tiered commission plans

Tiered commission plans offer escalating commission rates as salespeople hit higher sales targets. For example, a medical device company might use the following structure:

• 5% commission on sales up to $500,000.
• 7% commission on sales between $500,001 and $1,000,000.
• 10% commission on sales exceeding $1,000,000.

This encourages salespeople to aim for higher sales volumes to earn increased commissions.

4. Revenue-based commission plans

In revenue-based commission plans, salespeople earn a percentage of the revenue they generate. An advertising sales team might earn:

• 10% commission on the total revenue from ad sales.

This aligns the salesperson’s goals with the company’s revenue objectives, ensuring a focus on high-value deals.

5. Profit-based commission plans

Profit-based commission plans reward salespeople based on the profit generated from their sales, rather than the sales amount. A manufacturing firm might implement:

• 5% commission on the profit margin of each sale.

This encourages salespeople to focus on profitable deals and manage discounts and pricing effectively.

6. Performance-based commission plans

Performance-based commission plans reward salespeople for achieving specific performance metrics, such as new customer acquisition or customer retention. An enterprise software company might offer:

• Base commission: 4% on all sales.
• Performance bonus: Additional 3% for acquiring more than 10 new customers in a quarter.

This structure motivates salespeople to meet broader business goals beyond just sales volume.

7. Territory volume commission plans

Territory volume commission plans provide commissions based on the total sales volume within a salesperson’s assigned territory. A consumer goods company might offer:

• 2% commission on total sales in the assigned region up to $1,000,000.
• 4% commission on sales exceeding $1,000,000.

This encourages sales managers to grow their territory’s market share.

8. Draw against commission plans

Draw against commission plans provides an advance on future commissions, which is later deducted from actual commission earnings. A wholesale distributor might offer:

• Monthly draw: $3,000.
• Commission: 7% on all sales.

This provides financial security while allowing salespeople to earn commissions once they exceed their draw amount.

Sales commission plans are essential for driving performance and aligning sales teams with a company’s revenue goals. By choosing the right structure, businesses can effectively motivate their salesforce, drive growth, and achieve their strategic objectives.

Channel partner commission plans examples

Channel partner commission plans play a crucial role in motivating and rewarding partners who help drive sales and expand market reach. These plans can vary widely depending on the industry, product, and strategic goals of a company. Here are common channel partner commission plan examples to provide a comprehensive understanding of how businesses can structure these incentives.

1. Tiered commission plans

A tiered commission plan rewards partners based on the volume of sales they achieve. For instance, a technology company might offer the following structure:

• Tier 1: 5% commission on sales up to $50,000.
• Tier 2: 7% commission on sales between $50,001 and $100,000.
• Tier 3: 10% commission on sales exceeding $100,000.

This incentivizes partners to sell more, as higher sales volumes lead to higher commission rates.

2. Performance-based commission plans

Performance-based commission plans are tailored to reward partners who meet or exceed specific targets or metrics. A SaaS company might set goals for new customer acquisition or annual recurring revenue (ARR). For example:

• New customer acquisition: 8% commission for acquiring up to 20 new customers and 12% for more than 20 new customers.
• ARR milestones: 6% commission on ARR up to $500,000, and 9% commission on ARR exceeding $500,000.

This structure encourages partners to focus on quality and long-term growth.

3. Revenue sharing plans

Revenue-sharing plans involve sharing a percentage of the revenue generated from sales with the channel partners. An advertising agency might implement a revenue-sharing model where:

• Partners receive 20% of the revenue generated from the campaigns they bring in.
• If the partner's efforts lead to additional business with the same client, they might receive an additional 5% on those sales.

This plan aligns the interests of the company and its partners, fostering a collaborative approach.

4. Product-specific commission plans

In industries with a diverse product range, companies might offer different commission rates for different products. For instance, a consumer electronics manufacturer could have the following structure:

• High-margin products (e.g., flagship smartphones): 10% commission.
• Mid-range products (e.g., accessories): 7% commission.
• Low-margin products (e.g., entry-level gadgets): 5% commission.

This encourages partners to focus on selling high-margin items, benefiting both the partner and the company.

5. Spiff programs

Spiff programs offer short-term incentives or bonuses for achieving specific sales targets. A retailer might run a spiff program during the holiday season:

• Bonus for selling 50 units of a specific product: $200.
• Additional bonus for exceeding 100 units: $500.

These temporary incentives boost sales during critical periods.

6. Hybrid commission plans

A hybrid commission plan combines elements from different commission structures to suit complex sales environments. An industrial equipment distributor might use a combination of tiered and performance-based plans:

• Base commission: 5% on all sales.
• Tiered bonus: Additional 3% for sales exceeding $100,000 in a quarter.
• Performance bonus: Extra 2% for meeting customer satisfaction targets.

This provides a balanced approach, rewarding both sales volume and customer satisfaction.

Channel partner commission plans are essential tools for motivating partners and aligning their efforts with the company’s strategic goals. By choosing the right structure, businesses can incentivize performance, drive sales growth, and build strong, lasting relationships with their channel partners. 

How Compass automates and enhances commission management to maximize sales performance

Compass, a sales commission automation platform , helps businesses run effective sales compensation programs by automating and simplifying the management of incentive programs and compensation calculations. This automation drives top-line revenue by ensuring sales teams are motivated and compensated accurately and efficiently.

Here’s how Compass can help streamline your sales compensation:

• ➡️ Automation of incentive calculations: Compass automates the complex process of calculating sales commissions, ensuring accuracy and eliminating errors associated with manual calculations.
• ➡️ Real-time visibility: Sales teams have real-time access to their earnings and performance metrics, which enhances transparency and motivation.
• ➡️ Customization of compensation plans: The platform supports various compensation structures, making it flexible to cater to different sales roles and business needs.
• ➡️ Integration with CRM Systems : Compass integrates with existing CRM systems, allowing for seamless data flow and reducing administrative overhead.
• ➡️ Performance analytics: The platform provides detailed analytics on sales performance, which helps users make informed decisions to optimize their sales strategies.
• ➡️ Scalability: Compass can scale with your business, supporting everything from small sales teams to large enterprises.

By leveraging Compass for sales compensation management , companies can ensure that their sales teams are focused on driving sales and achieving business goals rather than being bogged down by the intricacies of commission calculations.

Ready to simplify your sales compensation process and motivate your team like never before? Book a demo with our sales compensation experts to learn more and optimize your sales incentive programs today!

Case studies

Here are 2 case studies of businesses that have successfully used the above commission and have seen significant results.

1. German luxury auto brand boosts sales with Compass commission management

A prestigious German luxury auto brand faced challenges in maintaining a competitive edge in the highly saturated luxury automotive market. Their primary goal was to enhance their top-line sales and improve the efficiency and motivation of their sales team.

The luxury auto brand's sales figures stagnated, and its sales teams struggled with low engagement. The primary challenges were outdated sales incentives and a lack of transparent communication regarding performance metrics and compensation. This led to decreased motivation among sales representatives, directly impacting their sales performance and, consequently, the company's overall revenue growth.

To address these challenges, the brand partnered with Compass to implement a comprehensive sales enhancement strategy that included:

• Sales commission management software : Introduction of Compass's sales commission management software to automate commission calculations and streamline payout processes.
• Sales gamification techniques : Implementation of sales gamification to boost sales team engagement and competition.
• Real-time sales analytics : Integration of advanced analytics tools that provided real-time insights into sales trends and individual performance metrics.

Within just 90 days of implementing the new sales incentive program through Compass, the German luxury auto brand saw significant improvements in several key performance indicators:

• Top-line sales grew by 11%, directly attributable to increased sales activity and higher closing rates among the sales team.
• Sales team engagement soared, with a notable increase in sales reps' active participation in pursuing higher sales targets.
• Payout accuracy reached 96.2%, ensuring that sales reps were compensated correctly and promptly, boosting morale and trust in the system.

2. Sales compensation redesign at a leading food and beverage company

A distinguished food and beverage industry company boasting a 120-year legacy of market leadership encountered growth stagnation. Despite several attempts by the internal team to address the issues, no effective solutions were found, prompting the need for external expertise. 

Empirical Consulting Solutions was engaged to uncover the root problems and devise a strategic response to revamp the sales compensation framework to stimulate growth and enhance results.

The primary challenge was the existing compensation structure, which was not effectively driving the sales team towards achieving business objectives. This misalignment resulted in stagnated growth and decreased motivation among experienced sales personnel. Additionally, the company faced pressure to retain existing market share and expand into new, emerging markets.

Empirical Consulting Solutions adopted a comprehensive approach to address these challenges:

• Evaluation and gap identification : The initial commission structures were thoroughly assessed to identify weaknesses and immediate opportunities for improvement.
• Alignment of sales goals : Collaboration with the executive team helped align sales objectives with both short-term and long-term strategic business goals, focusing on account expansion and market penetration.
• Development of new compensation plans : Targets and incentive plans were benchmarked against those of high-performing organizations to ensure competitiveness and effectiveness.
• Implementation and communication : A new incentive plan was rolled out, accompanied by extensive training and coaching to ensure salespeople were well-prepared and informed.
• Tools for performance tracking : Empirical provided advanced tools for planning, measuring, and reporting performance to facilitate ongoing adjustments and improvements.

The restructuring of the sales compensation plan yielded significant improvements in the first year:

• The client saw a 10% increase in gross profit.
• There was a $500K reduction in the costs associated with the sales plan.
• The new plan improved pay alignment with business priorities and helped retain top sales talent.

A well-structured commission plan is vital. They not only motivate sales teams and partners but also align their efforts with the company’s strategic goals. By understanding the different types of commission plans and incorporating best practices, businesses can create effective incentives that drive performance and growth.

Whether you opt for a flat commission, tiered structure, or performance-based rewards, the key is to design a plan that is clear, fair, and aligned with your business objectives. Real-life examples from companies like Salesforce, Cisco, HubSpot, Microsoft, and Dell highlight how tailored commission plans can lead to significant improvements in sales performance and partner engagement.

As you consider implementing or revamping your commission plans, remember to communicate transparently, review regularly, and leverage technology to manage and track performance. By doing so, you can unlock the full potential of your sales and channel partners, driving success and achieving your business goals.

FAQs: Commission Plan Examples

What is the difference between a sales commission plan and a channel partner commission plan?

Sales commission plans are designed to incentivize a company's internal sales team, while channel partner commission plans reward external partners for promoting and selling the company's products or services.

How often should commission plans be reviewed and updated?

Commission plans should be reviewed at least annually to ensure they remain aligned with business goals and market conditions. However, more frequent reviews may be necessary if there are significant changes in the business environment.

What are common pitfalls to avoid when designing commission plans?

Common pitfalls include setting unclear or unattainable goals, lack of transparency, neglecting regular reviews, and failing to align the plan with business objectives. Avoiding these pitfalls ensures the commission plan is effective and motivating.

How can technology help in managing commission plans?

Commission management software can automate calculations, track performance in real-time, and provide clear reports. This reduces administrative burden, ensures accuracy, and enhances transparency.

Why is transparency important in commission plans?

Transparency builds trust and ensures that sales teams and partners understand how the plan works and how they can achieve their goals. Clear communication prevents misunderstandings and fosters a positive work environment.

Can non-monetary rewards be effective in commission plans?

Yes, non-monetary rewards like recognition awards, trips, or gadgets can be powerful motivators. These rewards can complement monetary commissions and help create a more engaging and motivating incentive program.

How do I determine the right commission percentage for my sales team?

The right commission percentage depends on various factors, including your industry, sales cycle, profit margins, and overall compensation strategy. Conducting market research, analyzing competitor plans, and considering your company's financial goals can help you determine a competitive and motivating commission rate.

What role do base salaries play in commission plans?

Base salaries provide financial stability and security for sales reps, ensuring they have a reliable income regardless of sales performance. Combining base salaries with commissions creates a balanced compensation plan that motivates reps to exceed their targets while providing a safety net.

How can I ensure that my commission plan is fair and motivates my team?

To ensure fairness and motivation, set clear, attainable goals and maintain open communication. Regularly review and adjust the plan based on feedback and performance data. Additionally, consider incorporating a mix of individual and team-based incentives to promote collaboration and a healthy competitive spirit.

6 Incentive Compensation Examples to Boost Employee Motivation

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Cloud Kitchen Business Model: Examples, Benefits, Business Plan, and Investment Ideas

• Cloud Kitchen
• August 9, 2024

Cloud kitchens are shaking up the food industry in the USA. They’re growing fast, at a rate of 11.8% each year, and big brands are jumping on this trend. In 2021, the real estate company CBRE predicted that ghost kitchens would make up 21% of the U.S. restaurant industry by 2025 .

This blog contains the ins and outs of various cloud kitchen models. Ever wondered how a restaurant without tables or chairs works? You’ll learn about single-brand cloud kitchens like Wow Bao, which focuses only on delivery. Discover multi-brand cloud kitchens like Rebel Foods, offering many cuisines in one place. Explore the pros and cons of delivery app-owned kitchens, shared commissaries, and franchises. Finally, see how hybrid models blend different services. Find out which model suits your business best and how to succeed in this exciting food trend.

1. Single Brand Cloud Kitchen

Ever heard of a restaurant without tables or chairs? That’s a single-brand cloud kitchen model! A single-brand cloud kitchen is like your secret kitchen, focusing on just one type of food—maybe your favorite pizzas or awesome burgers. It is a delivery-only restaurant, a concept that’s becoming increasingly popular in the restaurant industry. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar restaurant, these kitchens are set up specifically for delivery, allowing restaurant owners to streamline operations and reduce overhead costs. This innovative approach to dining is reshaping how we think about the cloud kitchen business models and offering new opportunities in the food delivery market.

Famous Cloud Kitchen Example: Wow Bao’s cloud kitchen in the United States represents a single-brand cloud kitchen; it is a brand-owned cloud kitchen that specializes in Asian-inspired foods such as steamed buns, potstickers, and rice bowls, only accepts delivery and takeaway orders, removing the need for a permanent eating location. This focus allows them to refine their menu and manage costs effectively. Their locations in cities like Chicago and New York are in cost-effective industrial areas. Advanced technology helps them streamline operations, manage orders, and maintain quality, ensuring that every dish is fresh and well-prepared.

Concept: The idea of a single-brand Cloud Kitchen is an online-only restaurant that doesn’t have an actual location. Customers use apps or websites to order their favorite meals and give delivery information. The cloud kitchen’s special tablet or system gets these orders and tells the cooks to start making the food. It’s like a virtual restaurant where you can order tasty food and deliver it to your door.

Cost Savings: No dining area means you can set up your kitchen in cheaper spots and need fewer staff since there’s no need for waiters.

Focus on Quality: A smaller, specialized menu ensures that every dish is perfect. Less distractions also allow the chefs to maintain high standards for every order.

Flexibility: You can set up your kitchen in various places, even less expensive areas, and it’s easier to open new cloud kitchens to reach more customers.

Efficiency: By focusing on delivery, you can streamline operations and get food out quickly. Advanced software helps manage orders and track deliveries.

Wider Reach: By focusing on delivery, your restaurant business can serve a larger area, reaching more people who prefer eating at home.

Limited Customer Interaction: Without face-to-face contact, getting immediate feedback is harder, which helps improve service and menu items. Also, customers miss out on the atmosphere and experience of a traditional restaurant.

Underutilization During Off-Peak Times: Walk-in traffic is necessary for the kitchen to avoid slow periods, affecting overall profits.

Marketing and Brand Awareness: Building your brand can be tougher without a physical location. You should invest more in online marketing to attract and keep customers coming back for more.

2. Multi-Brand Cloud Kitchen

A Multi-Brand Cloud Kitchen is a cloud kitchen model in which several restaurant brands operate out of a single kitchen facility. This arrangement enables different brands, usually under the same parent company, to share resources and infrastructure. Each brand can offer a range of cuisines from the same location, maximizing efficiency and reducing costs. 

Famous Examples : All Day Kitchens is a standout example of a multi-brand cloud kitchen in the USA. They operate a network of small, distributed kitchens close to residential areas, allowing quick and efficient delivery. Each kitchen serves food from numerous local restaurants, enabling customers to order from multiple eateries in a single delivery. This model helps local restaurants scale without traditional setups’ overhead costs, enhancing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. All Day Kitchens has rapidly grown, boasting impressive delivery times and profitability.

Concept: A multi-brand cloud kitchen operates from a single building, sharing resources such as equipment, supplies, and workers. This configuration lowers expenses and increases efficiency. Customers can place orders via numerous delivery apps or straight on brand websites. The kitchen can handle many cuisines simultaneously, and the chefs are educated to maintain good quality across all menu options. Advanced software organizes orders, maintains inventories, and optimizes delivery routes. Once cooked, the food is wrapped and given to delivery drivers, ensuring rapid and efficient service.

Cost Efficiency: Sharing kitchen resources reduces costs on rent, utilities, and equipment. Purchasing ingredients in bulk lowers food expenses across brands.

Flexibility and Scalability: By adding new brands or entering new markets, multi-brand cloud kitchens readily grow without requiring additional physical sites, enabling easy testing and rollout of new menu items.

Resource Optimization: Using the same kitchen staff, equipment, and space for multiple brands increases resource efficiency and minimizes downtime.

Market Reach: The more the cuisine is equal, the wider the market reach. Offering a range of cuisines from one location attracts a larger customer base and boosts revenue. Cross-promotion between brands increases overall visibility.

Risk Mitigation: Operating multiple brands reduces financial risk enables testing new concepts, and avoids chances of failure.

Operational Complexity: Running multiple brands from one kitchen can be quite challenging, especially during busy times. It requires precise coordination to keep quality consistent across different menus and dishes.

Brand Identity: When several brands share a single space, their unique identities might become blurred, reducing their appeal. Creating distinct and compelling marketing strategies for each brand can also be a tough and time-consuming.

Resource Allocation: Sharing kitchen staff and equipment among different brands can strain resources, leading to slower service and possible mistakes. Managing inventory for multiple brands demands careful oversight to avoid waste and ensure everything is in stock.

Customer Experience: With a physical restaurant, connecting personally with customers is easier, which can impact their loyalty. Relying on third-party delivery services introduces risks like high fees and inconsistent service.

Technological Dependence: A heavy reliance on technology means that any system issues can significantly disrupt operations. Managing large amounts of customer data also increases the risk of breaches, requiring strong security measures.

3. Delivery App-Owned Cloud Kitchen

A Delivery App-Owned Cloud Kitchen is a cloud kitchen operated by food delivery platforms. These kitchens prepare food exclusively for delivery without a dine-in option. The delivery app owns and manages the kitchen space, providing infrastructure and technology for various restaurant brands to cook and fulfill online orders efficiently.  

Famous Examples : Uber Eats runs virtual restaurants that only prepare food for delivery, using their extensive network to reach customers quickly. DoorDash also operates cloud kitchens where multiple brands cook exclusively for delivery, with locations chosen to speed up service. Meanwhile, Deliveroo’s Deliveroo Editions features a network of cloud kitchens hosting various brands, helping them expand delivery without opening new physical spots. These examples highlight how cloud kitchens are evolving to meet today’s delivery needs.

Concept : Delivery app-owned cloud kitchens (such as Uber Eats)  are a strategic combination of food preparation and delivery services. These kitchens are run directly by online food delivery platforms that concentrate only on cooking meals for delivery via their applications. Unlike typical restaurants, they do not serve clients on-site and instead rely on their parent company’s extensive delivery network to complete orders. This concept simplifies operations since the kitchens are designed for speed and efficiency while preparing and delivering orders. These solutions can maintain constant service quality while reducing delivery time by regulating the kitchen and the delivery process. Using innovative technology to manage orders, maintain inventory, and coordinate delivery improves operational efficiency and customer happiness.

Cost Savings : By sharing kitchen space, restaurants save money on rent, utilities, and upkeep. They do not need a physical store, so their costs are lower. 

Wider Reach : The kitchen’s visibility on popular delivery apps increases its reachability. It can attract more customers without having a physical restaurant. These kitchens can also open in different locations quickly, helping restaurants grow their business faster.

Efficient Operations : Delivery apps provide advanced technology to manage orders and track inventory, making kitchen operations smoother and faster. 

Flexible and Scalable : The expansion of cloud kitchens is easy. It can be done by opening new locations or adding new brands without much investment. They can also quickly try out new menu items or concepts to keep up with changing customer tastes.

Data Insights : Delivery apps gather important information about what customers like and how they order. This data helps restaurants improve their menus and make better business decisions. Performance metrics from the app also help restaurants see where they can improve.

Better Customer Experience : Customers enjoy the convenience of ordering from many brands through one app. The reliable delivery service ensures their food arrives on time and as ordered. Plus, having many brands in one kitchen means more choices for different tastes.

Limited Control : Restaurants may not have much say in how their brand appears on the app, which can affect its image. Also, the app controls customer data, making it hard for restaurants to connect directly with customers.

High Dependence : Big commission fees paid to the app can cut profits, and any changes the app makes can hurt visibility and earnings. Restaurants have little control over these changes.

Operational Challenges : Managing multiple brands from one kitchen is complex, with different menus and ingredients. Keeping quality consistent across brands is also difficult.

Financial Risks : Setting up a cloud kitchen needs a lot of money for tech, equipment, and training, which can be tough for small businesses. Fluctuating demand can lead to wasted resources and unpredictable revenue.

Customer Experience : Without a physical store, building a personal connection with customers is harder, which might affect loyalty. Relying on delivery services can also lead to high fees, delays, and inconsistent service.

Tech Dependence : Heavy reliance on technology means any tech issues can disrupt operations. Plus, handling lots of customer data increases the risk of data breaches, needing strong security.

4. Commissary/Shared Kitchen Model

Originally designed for food truck operators’ requirements, the Commissary/Shared Kitchen Model is a commercial-grade kitchen leased by many restaurants. It offers necessary cooking, cleaning, food storage tools, and equipment. This approach lets foodies run without having to pay for a full kitchen.

Famous Examples : The Commissary or Shared Kitchen Model has been instrumental in expanding many famous food brands. For example, the Vancouver, Canada-based Kozu Sushi Pizza serves a unique combination of sushi and pizza out of the Coho Commissary Kitchens. Famous American gyros and platter makers The Halal Guys eliminate the need for additional storefronts by using shared kitchens across many US sites to increase delivery reach. 

Concept : Shared kitchens are spaces with pre-installed arrangements of kitchen gear. The commercial kitchen spaces have different chefs, first-timers, food truck owners, and stall owners who can find breakthroughs. They can rent the kitchen by the hour, day, or month. This way, they can cook and sell food without spending too much money. 

Cost-Effective Option : Renting a shared kitchen is much cheaper than building your own, perfect for new food businesses and startups.

Shared Resources : You can use high-quality, commercial-grade kitchen gear without a big upfront cost.

Potential Collaboration : Working alongside other food entrepreneurs can lead to valuable networking and partnerships.

Scalability : Easily rent more kitchen time or space as your business grows without a huge investment.

Compliance and Safety : Shared kitchens meet health and safety regulations, ensuring you operate legally.

Less Kitchen Control : Customization of the kitchen is not possible in shared spaces as the brand does not fully own the place. 

Access and Scheduling : The most negative aspect of shared kitchens is that they can get crowded during busy times, making it hard to find a spot to cook.

Increased Costs : While renting a full kitchen is cheaper than owning one, rental fees can still be significant, especially for small businesses.

Brand Recognition and Customer Proximity : Operating from a shared kitchen can limit your ability to build a strong brand identity.

Operational Challenges : Managing operations in a shared space requires careful planning to avoid disruptions and conflicts with other businesses. 

5. Franchise Model

The franchise model for cloud kitchens allows you to run your branch of a well-known food brand without needing a full-service restaurant. You pay an initial fee to use their name, logo, and business plan, plus ongoing royalties. In return, the brand provides training, marketing, and support, making succeeding easier. This model is popular because it combines the stability of an established brand with the entrepreneurial spirit of owning your own business.

Famous Examples : Wayback Burgers is a great example of a successful franchise. Launched in 1991, it now has over 170 locations. While most of its outlets are full-service restaurants, it also offers ghost kitchens. Their menu includes burgers, chicken meals, salads, sandwiches, and milkshakes. By opting for a Wayback Burgers cloud kitchen, you save on business costs, enter new markets, and delight customers with premium burgers and other delicious foods without the overhead of a full-service restaurant.

Concept : A franchise model lets you run your branch of a famous brand. You pay an initial fee to use their name, logo, and business plan, plus ongoing royalties. In return, the brand gives you training, marketing, and support, making success easier than starting from scratch. It’s a win-win: the brand expands with less risk, and you get their reputation and customer base.

Faster Brand Recognition: Customers will recognize and trust new cloud kitchens faster using a well-known food brand.

Built-In Customer Base: Franchisees take advantage of customer trust and brand recognition, speeding up market entry and boosting initial sales.

Operational help: The owner provides franchisees with thorough training, operational rules, and ongoing help, which lowers the chance that the business will fail.

Standardized Processes: The staff and the owner follow pre-defined processes and systems for consistent service and food quality. 

Marketing and advertising: The brand’s marketing keeps the customer aware of new offers. 

Initial Fees: You’ll need to pay a significant upfront license fee, which adds to your startup costs.

Ongoing Royalties: Regular royalty payments to the company can reduce your overall profits.

Strict Compliance: You have to follow the franchisor’s rules, limiting your ability to make independent decisions.

Limited Customization: To maintain brand consistency, you can’t change much about the menus, marketing tactics, or operations.

Operational Constraints: There are limits on where you can source goods, pricing, and the kinds of promotions you can run.

Innovation Limitations: Sticking to the franchisor’s model can restrict your creativity and make adapting to local market trends tough.

Corporate Cloud Kitchens

Think of it as a big, shared kitchen where several restaurants cook their meals. These kitchens, also called ghost kitchens, don’t have dining areas. These ghost kitchen models instead focus on online orders and delivery through apps like Uber Eats or DoorDash. This setup helps keep costs low and reach more customers without needing a physical restaurant.

Conclusion 

After researching the numerous restaurant models, their advantages, and drawbacks, it’s time to choose which one best meets your company’s objectives. Whether you opt for pop up locations, a delivery only business model, or a virtual kitchen, the choice depends on your target market and resources. Some may find dark kitchens or a central kitchen appealing for their low overhead and efficient production. Whichever model you decide on, choosing the right tech partner is important to control costs and streamline operations. An integrated kitchen display system can be crucial for managing the entire business operation, from order taking to food preparation. Additionally, leveraging the right marketing channels will help you reach your audience effectively and maximize your restaurant’s visibility and success.

That’s where Restroworks can help— Restroworks Cloud Kitchen Software .

Frequently Asked Questions

Cloud kitchens can make substantial income due to lower overhead costs and high demand for delivery services. Successful ones often surpass traditional restaurants in profitability. However, exact earnings depend on location, market demand, and operational efficiency.

Cloud kitchens can be both B2B and B2C. They enable restaurants and brands to operate delivery and takeout locations without a storefront (B2B), while also facilitating direct sales to consumers (B2C) through online platforms.

Cloud kitchens are quite successful due to low overhead costs and high profit margins. They are popular among food entrepreneurs and established restaurants for expanding delivery services. Success, however, depends on factors like location, market demand, and operational efficiency.

CloudKitchens, founded by Travis Kalanick, provides shared kitchen spaces for multiple food brands. They enable delivery-only food services by offering necessary infrastructure and technology.

Kitchen United in the USA provides shared kitchen spaces for multiple food brands to operate delivery-only services. They partner with various restaurants and virtual brands, offering a streamlined solution for food preparation and delivery. 

In the USA, cloud kitchens, also known as ghost kitchens, are commercial food preparation facilities for delivery-only brands. They rely on online ordering platforms without having physical dining areas.

Cloud kitchens offer lower startup and operational costs, flexibility, and the ability to reach a wider audience through delivery platforms. They allow businesses to focus on food preparation and marketing without managing a physical restaurant.

Yes, cloud kitchens are worth it due to their cost-effectiveness and potential for high profit margins. They are ideal for startups and small businesses looking to enter the food industry with minimal risk.

A cloud kitchen is a commercial kitchen used solely for preparing food for delivery. They do not offer dine-in or take-out options, focusing exclusively on delivering fresh, made-to-order meals.

Yes, you can operate a cloud kitchen from home, primarily taking orders from online platforms or phone calls. This setup doesn’t require a dine-in area and can be a cost-effective way to start a food business.

CloudKitchens continues to expand, providing infrastructure for delivery-focused food businesses. They have grown significantly, helping numerous brands operate efficiently in the food delivery market.

Manasi Sharma

Manasi Sharma is the Product Marketing Manager at Restroworks. With a dynamic role in product and marketing teams and experience in the F&B industry, she drives product visibility on our website by aligning with customer needs. Her focus on understanding user requirements ensures that Restroworks delivers solutions tailored to meet customer expectations effectively

Restroworks is a leading platform that specializes in providing technological solutions to the restaurant industry. It stands out for its ability to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and enable scalability for global restaurant chains.

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By the team at Slack July 25th, 2024

No matter how good your company’s product is, it won’t sell itself. If your sales operations are coasting along without a strategically designed team, you could be missing out on growth opportunities.

A successful sales team does a lot more than just sell. It establishes and maintains loyal customer relationships. Sales experts can improve lead conversion rates, customer retention, and customer satisfaction. But when it comes to building a successful sales team, where do you start? Keep reading to learn how to onboard and retain talented sales employees, and more.

The Slack handbook for sales teams

Boost productivity so you can win deals as a team and close deals faster

Essential roles in a sales team

Every sales team is unique, but the most successful teams tend to have these key players in common:

Business development representatives (BDRs)

Business development representatives (BDRs) kick off the sales process. Before an account executive (AE) swoops in to make a sale, a BDR must identify and reach out to prospects. These reps research leads and make initial contacts with prospects through cold calls and emails. A great entry-level sales role, a BDR’s must-have qualities include:

• Research abilities
• Networking skills
• Communication skills

Sales development representatives (SDRs)

Like BDRs, sales development representatives (SDRs) focus on pre-sale tasks that take place early in the sales process. SDRs focus on clients who are already interested in the product — also called warm or inbound leads. Some companies use the terms BDR and SDR interchangeably, and both roles require many of the same skills.

Inside sales representatives (ISRs)

Inside sales representatives (ISRs) connect with prospects via email, phone calls, or video conferencing, which makes this sales role particularly remote-friendly. A good ISR should have the following:

• Research skills
• Product knowledge
• Excellent listening skills
• Communication abilities

Account executives (AEs)

These are the boots-on-the-ground sellers who convert leads into customers. AEs inform prospective customers about a product, make proposals, run negotiations, and close sales. Strengths to look for in an AE include:

• Deep knowledge and understanding of the product
• Robust negotiation skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Demonstrated sales experience

Customer success representatives

Also called customer success managers, these reps handle existing customers. They onboard customers and liaise with them to resolve problems, renew contracts, and cross-sell and upsell clients. Customer success representatives keep your customers happy and loyal. Hire customer success reps with:

• Excellent communication skills

Sales engineers (SEs)

If your company sells a tech-related product or service, you’ll probably want a sales engineer (SE) on your team. SEs have both sales prowess and technical skills, positioning them to provide strong support to prospective and existing customers. These reps identify consumer needs and provide solutions. They also troubleshoot technical problems. Look for the following when hiring for an SE:

• Technical knowledge
• Business skills
• Problem-solving skills

Sales representatives

Also called account managers, sales reps focus on existing customers. They ensure your company’s internal departments are aligned with client needs. Sales reps also field customer complaints and identify solutions. When hiring sales reps, keep an eye out for these qualities:

• Active listening skills
• Strategic thinking abilities

Sales director

Sales directors, also called heads of sales, are team leaders. They set budgets and determine key performance indicators. Sales directors are largely responsible for a company’s overarching sales strategy and often report to C-suite executives. Your sales director should have these qualities:

• Demonstrated history of meeting sales targets
• Negotiation skills
• Extensive experience selling to customer needs
• Relationship-building skills
• Mentorship skills and experience

Sales managers

Sales managers work alongside sales directors as team leaders. They oversee budgets and sales operations and determine plans, goals, and performance targets for team members. These professionals manage hiring and training for sales reps. A good sales manager should meet the following qualifications:

• Prior experience in sales management
• Proven success across the sales process
• Excellent leadership abilities
• Mentorship skills

Challenges of building a sales team

Building a sales team is not easy: Expect to sift through a high volume of candidates to find the cream of the crop. And once you hire the right people, training cycles can be long and complex, especially if you’re building a remote sales team.

Even after you conquer training, the challenges may continue. Sales teams often see high turnover rates, due in part to burnout and overwhelm with administrative tasks. The latest Salesforce State of Sales Report found that most reps spend less than 30% of their workweek selling, with mundane admin tasks eating up large chunks of their time.

But if you put in the effort to overcome these challenges, the results are worth it. By assembling a solid sales team, you’re investing not only in your product, but in your company’s future.

Salesforce on Salesforce: Use Slack to build better relationships

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Setting your sales teams up for success

Once you’ve hired a team of sales rock stars, it’s important to give them the tools they need to streamline operations and lighten their administrative load.

An easy place to start is Slack , an AI-powered work platform that centralizes your operations and helps your team accelerate work, share knowledge, and collaborate faster. In Slack channels , reps can not only communicate, but assemble files, stakeholders, and data in one place.

Slack’s innovative features and automations with over 2,600 software integrations help your reps make the best use of their time. Take, for example, Slack Sales Elevate , which natively integrates Sales Cloud accounts and customer insights right in Slack. Not only are reps able to access customer records, accounts, opportunities, and key metrics, they can effortlessly update pipelines, tap into process automation, and get notified of real-time deal changes. Automatic alerts and personalized reminders help increase engagement and speed up customer response times. With access to their go-to tools and resources , they can quickly take action and collaborate with their team right in Slack — without wasting time switching contexts.

Sales Slack Elevate helps me easily update my manager notes from anywhere, and I’m not kidding when I say it saves me over 30 minutes every week. I get notifications on when deals are closed, and the opportunity alerts help me a ton with forecast calls. Kristin Heaney RVP, Sales, Salesforce

Reps can also accelerate sales with Workflow Builder , a visual, no-code tool that enables them to automate routine functions by creating custom workflows for any Slack channel. Leaders can leverage such workflows to remind reps to share everything from deal win reports to expense report submissions. By taking some of these administrative duties off your team’s plate, you can free them up to focus on selling.

Your admin guide to launching Sales Elevate

Building a strong sales culture

Communication is the cornerstone of a positive sales culture. To start building trust, survey your team in Slack to gauge how they prefer to be managed. Establish clear goals and ensure that your reps understand their performance metrics. Implement incentives to spur motivation and create an atmosphere of encouragement.

To further facilitate an efficient and collaborative culture:

• Use sales templates from Slack canvas to encourage alignment on sales planning, customer briefings, and more.
• Tap into Sales Elevate and Slack integrations to fast-track sales cycles.
• Use Slack channels to communicate openly with your reps and publicly recognize team accomplishments. You can even automate celebratory messages so no wins go unnoticed.
• With visibility into Salesforce deals in Slack, leadership can offer feedback and capitalize on learning opportunities as they unfold.
• Check in regularly, and ensure your team feels comfortable providing honest feedback (and make it easy with Slack integrations like Polly ).

To make the sales process more collaborative, fold customers into your company’s workspace with Slack Connect , which allows you to securely communicate with external partners in Slack channels. Victoria Jones , a Slack senior account executive for large enterprises, said Slack Connect enhances reps’ relationships with customers.

“It used to be that if you got a customer into a texting relationship, the deal was as good as done. Today, getting them into a Slack relationship is the new gold standard,” Jones said, “You’re able to expedite what might have taken hours or days into minutes. You’re collaborating together, and it’s fun.”

Get out there and close deals

A good sales team can help move your business forward by bringing in new customers and strengthening relationships with existing ones. If you’re building a sales team from the ground up, it’s critical to establish a positive culture that makes collaboration and communication easy and efficient.

With Slack’s tools and integrations, you can put together an effective sales team that’s empowered to work together to deliver a better customer experience and close deals faster.

The Salesblazer Community has a new home on Slack

We’re building the largest and most successful community of sales professionals.

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