sales business plan template

The Best Free Business Plan Template For Individual Sales Reps

Published: August 14, 2023

Working in sales is challenging at times, and after a while, you may begin to feel fatigued or experience low motivation. Drafting a strategy using a sales business plan template can be just the thing to help refocus your goals.

As a sales rep or account executive , a business plan requires you to think about your efforts from a high level. Who are you targeting? What are your performance goals? How do you plan to achieve them? Not only will a high-level view of your audience and goals help you meet and exceed them, but it might even help you climb the sales career ladder .

Next, I'll share the key elements of a sales business plan as well as provide templates to help get you started.

Sales Business Plan Layout

Free business plan template, the sales plan.

• Individual Business Plan Examples
• High-Level Review
• Tactics and Actions
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Sales and Marketing Alignment
• Obstacles to Success
• Personal and Professional Development

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Before writing your plan, doing a bit of work prior to getting started with a template will help you better organize the information you'll need to include. Here's a roadmap to help you brainstorm:

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I’ve found it easiest to start with the end in mind and work backward from there. Naturally, your goals will include your company’s expectations (i.e., quota), but why not go even further?

Be more specific. What do you want to achieve?

A promotion? A certain level of income? A certain number of conversions per month? X number of new clients acquired over the year? How about increasing your average deal size? Whatever it is, put it down in writing and build a plan to get yourself there.

It’s powerful to write down our goals. One year, I decided to write five goals on the whiteboard in my office. At year-end, I had hit four of them, including finally buying the classic car I have had my eye on for 30 years.

2. High-Level Review

Got your goals on hand? Great. Now take a few minutes to ponder the strategies you pursued previously. Which ones worked well and made sense to incorporate again this year? And which didn’t work at all and either need to be adjusted or scrapped altogether?

This review will be your guidepost as you create a strategy and action plan. Be honest with yourself during this reflection. Consider asking for feedback from managers, peers, and clients. You might even seek feedback from prospects who didn’t end up buying from you. What can you do better? Was there anything about your sales tactics that put them off ? Why did they choose a competitor over you?

If this all sounds vague, take a numbers approach to this review. Instead of reviewing your sales strategies , review how your numbers fared throughout the year — revenue generated, number of meetings, number of proposals, number of demos, close rate, and so on. (Your review will be even more telling and powerful if you combine that qualitative review with a quantitative one.)

3. A Strategy

Once you have articulated what you want to achieve, here are the next logical questions to ask:

• How will you do better to reach your goals?
• What new markets will you approach?
• Which customers and prospects will you target?
• How will you frame the sales conversation or sharpen your sales story?
• What new things will you try on the phone, online, or face-to-face?

See that review that we did in that last step? This is where it’ll come in handy. Having a clear idea of what worked and what didn’t will tell you what you should keep or remove from your new strategy. For example, if last year you sent follow-up emails three days after a demo, you could try sending follow-up emails two days this time. This is one of the tactics you could use.

That brings me to my next point. After creating a strategy, it’s time to come up with some tactics and take action.

4. Tactics and Actions

This section is critical because sales is a verb (it may not be in the dictionary, but in my book, it is).

The most well-intentioned goals and the soundest strategies mean nothing if you don’t know what steps to take to achieve them. So for this section of your plan, ask yourself, "What activities am I going to commit to?"

For example, you’ll have X number of face-to-face conversations per month or make Y prospecting calls per week. Whatever the activities are, they should drive what ends up on your calendar on a daily or weekly basis.

Let's say your goal is to make more sales in a shorter time. Include the resources and tools you'll use to achieve that goal in your business plan. In this case, one option would be to use a CRM database to help you keep track of your prospects and eliminate manual data entry (e.g., logging emails and calls), ultimately increasing your efficiency.

5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Action is action, but if there’s no way to measure its success, you won’t know what worked and what didn’t. You’ll therefore want to put metrics in place to monitor your progress. I recommend setting target numbers for the following KPIs:

• Raw number of deals closed
• Close ratio
• Revenue per account
• Customer retention rate
• Calls and emails
• Quotes or proposals

Remember, set a target number for each of these metrics. That way, you have something to reach toward. You can manually keep track of this information or use dedicated sales software . Or you can ask your manager to give you the performance data.

6. Sales and Marketing Alignment

You know what you want to do, how you’re going to do it, and which metrics you want to track. As you carry out your strategy, be sure to align your efforts with the efforts of your company’s marketing team.

Aligning your sales plan with a whole other department may sound over-the-top, but hear me out: sales teams depend on marketing teams to deliver leads. Even when you’re prospecting, marketing has likely identified the types of companies — and the best job titles — you should use for outreach.

When those leads get to your desk, it’s time to sell to them in a way that continues the nurturing process that marketing started. Say the lead was acquired when they downloaded an ebook on how to improve their productivity. When that lead gets assigned to you, propose your company’s product as a solution. Don’t try to sell it as if you don’t know the person and why they’re there.

It’s helpful to have a CRM that keeps track of your leads’ marketing-related activity. That way, you know which pages they’ve visited, what they’ve downloaded, and whether they’ve reached out to your company before. When carrying out your sales strategy, do so in a way that can fulfill the promises extended by marketing. Take a look at the content on your website, your company’s slogan, and your buyer personas . Use this information to create the perfect pitch.

After, connect with the marketing team to let them know whether that was a good lead or whether the buyer personas and the content on the website need adjustment. If your team does not meet regularly with marketing, bring the issue to your manager. Marketing and sales alignment is critical for your plan’s success.

But there are other obstacles to look out for, too — and you must have them.

7. Obstacles to Success

This is a unique addition I haven’t seen in many plans, but I think it’s an important component. This is where you lay out what could prevent you from reaching your goals and highlight areas where you might need some help. The truth is that you likely know what will get in the way of your success. So instead of using these obstacles as excuses later, point them out at the beginning.

Think carefully: What obstacles will keep you from succeeding?

Do you need new tools or different technology? More flexibility? Better internal support? Put it down in writing now. That way, when you present your plan to your manager (and I strongly encourage you to present your plan to your manager and maybe even a few peers), you give them a chance to support you.

They can either remove the obstacle or tell you it can't be removed in the short term. Either way, it’s in your best interest to declare these potential pitfalls now so that they’re not excuses down the road.

8. Personal and Professional Development

This is another important aspect of the business plan that's often overlooked. I regularly see salespeople fail because they’ve stopped learning and growing.

Many have become stale. Others are bored and ineffective from deploying the same techniques year after year. You wouldn’t go to a doctor that didn’t read medical journals and was treating patients with the same protocol he used twenty years ago, would you?

So commit to growing as a sales professional this year. What are you going to do to grow in your career?

What conferences are you going to attend? Which books are you going to read? Which sales blogs will you follow?

Now, once you have the layout for your sales business plan solidified, you must do two things:

• Get it down on paper - You’re more likely to achieve goals if you write them down. Just trust me on that.
• Get more specific - Using an actual business plan template can prompt you to think deeper about your motivation and action plan.

Below is a free business plan template you can use to get started.

Start building your business plan with this free template.

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

Click Here to Download the Template

Your goal is to think like a business. I’ll teach you how to adapt each section of this general business plan to fit your role as a sales representative.

Business Plan Sections Explained

1. the business opportunity.

The business opportunity is an overview of why you’re doing what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, and what you hope to achieve. Include your mission statement as a sales representative and why you’re working with the leads and accounts you chose.

In a typical business plan, this section is called an executive summary and highlights the most crucial information for readers. This means you can get creative and inspirational with it, summarizing the information that will motivate you most.

2. Company Description

The company description can refer to the organization(s) you sell for, or you can consider yourself the business being described. Because this is a personal document, choose the format that will most benefit you.

Keep in mind that there are a few elements to include in this section:

3. Company Purpose

This is a short description of the business, providing a high-level overview of who they are, what they offer, and who they offer it to. You might consider creating multiple purposes if you sell on behalf of more than one organization or outlining your purpose as a salesperson.

4. Mission Statement

A mission statement is a formal summary of the aims and values of an organization. If you’re making multiple company descriptions, include one for each organization. You can also include a personal mission statement for why you’ve chosen this organization and how you plan to support their success.

For example, say I’m a sales rep for an editorial company. My mission statement might be “to reach out to writers suffering from imposter syndrome and encourage them to consider editorial help so they can publish with confidence … and inspire future writers who dream of doing the same.”

5. Core Values

Use the core values for the organization(s) you work for, why you chose them, and how they will manifest in your interactions with prospects. For example, HubSpot’s values are humility, empathy, adaptability, remarkableness, and transparency.

If your organization doesn’t have clear core values defined, feel free to come up with your own that will serve as your modus operandi. Three to five values are what you want to have.

6. Product & Service Lines

This section will include:

• Product or service offerings - What are the lines you’re trying to sell, and what functionality does each have?
• Pricing model - How much does each product or service cost prospects, how much commission do you make for each sale, and what parameters do you have for discounts or special deals?

Outline this information in an easy-to-scan table.

In a typical business plan, this would manifest as an overview of the company and all the key leadership roles. However, the most relevant information could be key contacts at your company or companies you sell to, including your sales and marketing contacts (if applicable). If you’re filling out the template to create your sales plan, you’d simply include yourself.

8. Industry Analysis

In this section, you’ll take a look at the state of the industry, including your company’s competitors and your prospect’s competitors. You’ll ask:

• Is the market in growth or decline?
• Who are your competitors?
• What edge do they have over your product?
• How can you get your prospects to buy into the product you’re selling instead?

Your sales manager might already have answers for you or relay new information as it becomes available.

If you’re filling out a business plan to understand your prospects, you’ll want to answer similar questions:

• Who are their competitors?
• What challenges are they looking to solve?
• Is their industry in decline, and if so, can your product help them grow during this decline?

9. Target Market

This will manifest in your business plan as an overview or outline of whom you’re targeting, including general demographics and psychographics. You might want to include:

• Business title
• Location and language
• Pains or problems they're looking to solve

Consider consolidating this information and creating dedicated buyer personas .

10. Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of individuals within your target market. The best practice is to create a buyer persona for each “type” of customer you serve. You can do so using HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool and exporting the information into your business plan.

If you’re filling out the template for a prospect, come up with a buyer persona for the target audience they serve.

11. Location Analysis

Where is the geographic location of your target market? Explain why you’ve chosen the location and the benefits of it. Do the same for your prospects and customers if you’re using the template for them.

Here’s a template you can use:

[Organization name] serves [Location] because [reason]. We found that one of the key drivers of a successful acquisition is [key element], which means our target buyers tend to be in [more specific location descriptor]. We plan to tap into this market by [method].

This might manifest as something like:

“Editorial Company serves authors throughout the United States because editorial work can be done online with virtual meetings and file sharing. We found that one of the key drivers of a successful acquisition is participation in online writing groups, which means our target buyers tend to be active in social media circles. We plan to tap into this market with inbound marketing.”

12. Implementation Timeline

In this section, a business typically specifies how long it will take for its operation to be up and running. They take logistics, partnerships, and other operational elements into account. For your sales plan, you might specify an implementation timeline for various checkpoints, including software adoption, sales-marketing meetings, and more.

Say you told your sales manager you need sales software to keep track of the KPIs you identified earlier. You should take into account the time it will take for that CRM to be purchased and distributed to your team.

If you’re filling out the template to understand a prospect, consider laying out a timeline that specifies when they’ll buy the product, when you’re to follow up with them, and so on.

13. Marketing Plan

If your organization is an inbound sales organization with a marketing department, you might include your marketing and sales service-level agreement (SLA) in this section.

On the other hand, if you’re responsible for cold outreach and prospecting, this section might be helpful to complete on your own. The elements you’ll need to consider are:

Positioning Strategy

• How is this product or service unique and unbeatable compared to its competitors?
• Why are potential buyers going to be interested in the product or service?
• How will you address the buyer persona’s biggest challenges and goals?

Acquisition Channels

• What are your main lead acquisition channels (e.g., search engine marketing, event marketing, blogging, paid advertising, etc.)?
• What do you plan to prioritize this year for lead acquisition?

Tools and Technology

• What tools or systems are you equipped with (e.g., CMS , marketing automation software , etc.)?

14. Financial Considerations and Funding Required

This section is likely more suited for sales reps who are commission-only. You’ll want to consider how much financial collateral will be your responsibility as you sell for the organization. You’ll want to outline:

• Startup costs
• Sales forecasts
• When you'll break even
• Profit and loss projections

These things can be estimated and calculated in Excel and then imported into the template. There’s also a section on the funding required, but you won’t need to fill it out as an individual sales representative. And since your prospects have already secured funding or are established firms, you won’t need to fill this out to understand their business.

Now, finally, we’ve reached the sales plan. This will be done in a separate worksheet — a Google Doc or Word document that you can continue to edit as you evolve in your sales role. You will likely be able to draw on your experience to outline the following:

Sales Methodology

• How will you reach and engage with new leads?
• Are you pursuing an inbound or outbound sales strategy?
• Why does your prospecting strategy make sense for your business?

Sales Organization Structure

• Who do you report to within the organization?
• Is there a marketing department and existing SLA between the departments?
• How are leads qualified?

Sales Channels

• What are your main customer acquisition channels (e.g., online purchasing, through a rep, on location, via email, etc.)?
• What tools or systems are you equipped with (e.g., CMS, live chat , etc.)?

We've covered the different parts of a sales reps' business plan, but what does one of these plans actually look like? Here are five amazing examples of individual business plans for sales reps.

Individual Business Plan Examples for Sales Reps

1. individual development plan.

Image Source

An individual development plan (IDP) is a document that you would make to identify your goals and objectives to your employer. After identifying your goals, ensure that your objectives follow the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal framework. Lastly, for each action, assign a target date. While it does not need to be a specific day of the year, set your timeline by quarters of the year — as seen in the above example.

In addition to the long-term and short-term goals that the above example from Simplicable demonstrates, the resources required section is another useful component of the individual development plan. It directly informs your employer that you require support to achieve the goals and objectives that will ultimately benefit the entire company.

2. Medical Sales Business Plan

Automotive sales business plans are slightly more challenging than other business plans because there are a lot of factors to consider. When building your plan, you need to start with an analysis. It includes an analysis of your company, industry, customers, and competitors.

Once you have included in-depth analysis, focus on demonstrating your ideas with the four Ps of marketing . The four Ps of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion.

First, outline your focus products. Second, discuss price. You can include current pricing and any proposed changes. Further analysis would include how these prices stack up against competitors and how they affect your customers.

Third, concentrate on your location. This information should detail how your location either adds or decreases traffic and propose solutions for the latter. Lastly, recommend promotions. In the automotive industry, customers are always looking for the best deal.

You also have to be very visible with your marketing. Possibly one of the most important sections of your automotive sales business template, include a detailed course of action for promotional ideas and plans.

4. Territory Business Plan

A territory business plan should cover your sales territory. Historically, sales territory is the division of geographical regions for assignments to sales representatives. These representatives are responsible for all customers or clients within that area. This template from Slide Team is for convenience stores, but it can be adapted to suit your business type.

Now, industry, sales potential, and customer type affect territory business planning. An example of customer type is focusing your territory planning on individuals with the same median income. Instead of using geography, this alternative can lead to more strategic success.

When creating a territory business plan, you want to start by analyzing your business goals and objectives. As you build your plan, include an analysis of your prospects and a SWOT analysis . It’s a planning technique that identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This information will allow you to propose strategies for sales territories and devise an action plan.

5. Quarterly Business Plan

Creating a business plan for an entire year can be too complex. By separating the year into quarters, you can make your business strategy more actionable. Quarterly business planning is when you set goals and objectives and measure performance after each quarter. Typically, the year segments into Quarter 1 (January 1 to March 31), Quarter 2 (April 1 to June 30), Quarter 3 (July 1 to September 30), and Quarter 4 (October 1 to December 31).

Quarterly business planning focuses on short-term goals that ultimately help fulfill any long-term goals. Your quarterly business plan should include your focus areas, metrics for determining success, and your action plan.

Crush Your Sales Goals with a Business and Sales Plan

With the plan I’ve shared, you'll be prepared to take on any goal or challenge in your career. Consider it a gift to yourself that keeps on giving. Use your plan like a living document, review it weekly, and make tweaks as necessary along the way. Let it dictate what makes it onto your calendar. At year-end, you will be amazed at what you accomplished and thankful you invested the time to do this now.

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

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

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

August 12, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Plan and Why Create One?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This sales KPI template includes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Types of Sales Strategies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sales Planning Tips and Strategies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reach Sales Goals With Free Sales Strategy Templates

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

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

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How to create a sales plan in 7 Steps

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

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

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

What is a sales plan and why create one?

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

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

The benefits of a sales plan

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

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

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

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

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

1. Company mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate mission and positioning

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

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

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

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

What is brand positioning: The ultimate guide with 4 examples

2. Goals and targets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

200 total cold emails sent per day

200 total cold calls made per day

25 demos conducted per day

5 new sales appointments made a day

100 follow-up emails sent per day

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

How to communicate goals and targets

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

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

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

3. Sales organization and team structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate your sales organization and team structure

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

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

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

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

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

4. Target audience and customer segments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate target audience and customer segments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Sales strategies and methodologies

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

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

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

9 essential sales stages

Traditionally, a sales process has nine sales stages :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate sales strategies and methodologies

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

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

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

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

6. Sales action plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate your sales action plan

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

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

7. Performance and results measurement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to communicate sales performance metrics

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

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

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

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

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

To write a sales business plan, include:

An executive summary

A company overview

A market analysis

A target market description

Sales strategies and tactics

Financial projections

A budget and timeline

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

Final thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GET THE SALES SUCCESS KIT →

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

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

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

Sound exciting? Let’s jump right in.

Download Your Free Sales Plan Templates Today

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

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

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

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

In basic terms, a sales plan template includes:

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

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

Here are the key elements to include in your plan:

1. Mission Statement

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

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

2. Sales Goals and Revenue Targets

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

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

3. Analysis of the Target Market

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

4. Sales Strategy Overview and Methods to Reach Target Customers

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

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

5. Use of Resources and Sales Tools

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

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

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

6. Sales Team Structure

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

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

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

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

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

Clear, Time-Bound Goals Help You Reach Revenue Targets

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

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

Prioritize Time and Resources

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

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

Clear Action Plan to Reach Your Goals

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

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

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

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

How to Choose the Right Sales Planning Style

Ultimately, this will depend on factors such as:

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

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

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

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

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

1. Define Your Sales Goals and Milestones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Clearly Define Your Target Market or Niche

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

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

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

Don’t do that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Understand Your Target Customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GET THE IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE KIT →

4. Map Out Your Customer’s Journey

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

• Consideration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Define Your Value Propositions

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

Start by asking a few simple questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Organize Your Sales Team

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

Here are three basic structures for your sales team :

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

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

7. Outline the Use of Sales Tools

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

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

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

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

8. Build a Prospecting List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Track, Measure, and Adjust As Needed

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

Remember what Basecamp founder Jason Fried said about plans:

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

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

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

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

Create a Strategic Sales Plan to Grow Your Business

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

Avoid Moving the Goalpost

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

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

Invite Your Others to Challenge Your Sales Plan

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

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

Set Individual Goals and Milestones for Your Sales Team

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

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

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

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

Ready to Hit Your Sales Goals?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phase 1: Collect underpants

Phase 3: Profit

In this post:

What is a sales plan?

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

What goes into a sales plan (including examples)

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

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

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

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

Total revenue growth

Market share expansion

Customer acquisition volume

Adoption rate increase

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

Increase market share by 5-10% this fiscal year

Target market

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

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

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

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

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

Leverage social media influencer outreach with influencer-specific promo codes

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

Aptitudes or experience

Certifications or completed trainings

Hourly pay rate (for budgeting and forecasting)

Daily or weekly utilization limits

Associated accounts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potential challenges

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

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

Free sales plan templates

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

Sales plan template 1: Comprehensive document

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

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

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

Sales plan template 2: Summary document

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

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

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

Sales plan template 3: Project workflow document

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

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

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

How to start sales planning

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

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

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

Start with competitor research

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

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

Don't shy away from established frameworks and methodologies

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

Iterative internal processes

Improved collaboration

Predictable lines of communication between teams

More useful insights from stakeholders

More accurate internal data

More reliable goal-setting

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

Collaborate with stakeholders to define success

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

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

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

Don't forget about operations

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

Establish clear lines of communication

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

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

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

Types of sales plans

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

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

New product sales plan

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

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

Milestone sales plan

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

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

30/60/90 sales plan

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

Best for: Bringing on new sales reps

Sales budget plan

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

Best for: Communicating nuanced expense figures

Sales tactics plan

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

Best for: Communicating specific details about sales strategies

Sales territory plan

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

Best for: Segmenting sales efforts geographically

Sales focus area plan

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

Best for: Setting expectations for sales team roles

Market expansion plan

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

Best for: Planning specifically for market growth KPIs

Marketing alignment plan

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

Best for: Aligning sales and marketing teams

Growth action plan

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

Best for: Establishing actionable strategies for growth KPIs

Sales planning tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make a (sales) plan to automate

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

Related reading:

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Bryce Emley

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

• Sales & business development

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Free Sales Plan Template

Free Template

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

This template includes sections for:.

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

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

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

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

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

How do I write a sales plan?

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

Why do I need to fill out the information requested?

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

How do you create an individual sales plan?

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

Is this really free?

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

What are the 7 steps to creating a sales plan?

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

What are the 4 selling strategies?

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

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

Download the free sales plan template.

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

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

Written by: Letícia Fonseca Nov 17, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Click to jump ahead:

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

• How do you write an excellent sales plan?

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

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

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

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

Return to Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

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

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

Align company departments and sales department goals

Different departments can have different perspectives on priorities and progress.

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

Create strategic direction for sales teams

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

You can formulate strategic direction plans by identifying the following:

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

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

Better customer-relationship management

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

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

Mark sales team milestones

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

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

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

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

How do you write a sales plan?

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

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

Compile data from the previous sales year

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

• Appoint key roles for each of your objectives

So, let’s get to it!

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

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

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

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

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

Simple food sales action plan template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Light strategic sales action plan template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blue competitor SWOT analysis template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revenue scatter plot chart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A market team can find gaps based on three inputs:

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

Market research mind map template

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

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

Appoint key roles for each of your sales objectives

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

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

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

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

Food Customer Sales Action Plan Template

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

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

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

Related: 9 Sales Infographics to Guide Strategy and Increase Sales

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

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

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

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

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

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

• January 21, 2021

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

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

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

Table of Contents

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

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

It usually includes:

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

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

Specifically, it covers 9 pieces of strategic information.

1. Executive Summary and Scope of The Sales Plan

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

2. Business Goals and Revenue Targets

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

3. Review of Prior Period Performance

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

4. Market and Industry Conditions

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

5. Strategies, Methodologies, and Tactics

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

6. Customer Segments

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

• Cross-sells
• New Prospects
• New Segments

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

7. Team Capabilities, Resources, and Upgrades

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

8. Action Plan For Teams and Individuals

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

9. Performance Benchmarks & Monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

30-60-90-day Sales Plan

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

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

Day 1 to 30: 

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

Day 31 to 60:

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

Day 61 to 90:

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

Sales Plan For Specific Sales

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

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

Territory Sales Plan

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

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

A good territory sales plan will:

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

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

Sales Training Plan

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

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

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

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

Sales Budget Plan

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

A good sales budget plan  should include the following:

Sales forecasting: 

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

Anticipated expenses: 

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

Expect the unexpected: 

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

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

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

Without a written plan, it’s just talk.

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

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

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

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

1. Your goals

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

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

2. Your SWOT analysis

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

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

3. Your strategy

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

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

4. Your tactics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tip #2: Use data and statistics

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

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

Tip #3: Verify your facts

Accuracy matters!

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

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

Tip #4: Get tactical

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

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

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

Tip #5: Use Historical Performance Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sales plan should contain the following sections:

1. Executive Summary

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

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

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

2. Business Goals With Revenue Targets

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

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

3. Review of Past Performance

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

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

4. Specific Strategies, Methods, and Playbooks

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

5. Customer Segments/ Buyers Persona

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

6. Team Capabilities and Resources

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

7. Action Plan

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

Below is an example of an action plan table:

8. Sales Tools

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

9. Performance Benchmarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Max Altschuler

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

By Kate Eby | July 27, 2018

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

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

Free Sales Plan Templates

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

Sales Plan Template

‌   Download Excel Template

Try Smartsheet Template

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

Keep deals moving forward with sales pipeline management in Smartsheet

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

Watch a free demo

Sales Leads Template

Try Smartsheet Template  

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

Sales Tracker Template

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

Sales Pipeline Template

Try Smartsheet Template   ‌

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

Sales and Marketing Plan Template

‌   Download Template in Word

Try Smartsheet Template  ‌

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

Sales Funnel Template

‌ ‌ Download Sales Funnel Template - Excel

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

Sales Report Template

‌ ‌ Download Sales Report Template

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

Sales Action Plan Template

Download Sales Action Plan Template

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

Using a Sales Plan Template

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

The Basics of a Sales Plan

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

What Is the Difference Between Sales Forecasting and Sales Planning?

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Pipeline?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is the Sales Funnel? 

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

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

Benefits of Using a Sales Plan

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

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

Best Practices for Writing a Sales Plan

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

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

Sales Plans Challenges

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

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

What Is Included in a Sales Plan?

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

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

Improve Sales Planning with Smartsheet for Sales

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

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

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

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

Try Smartsheet for Sales

Additional Resources

Operations management

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

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

Nov 18, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s a Sales Plan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download Your Free Sales Plan Templates Today

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

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

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

8 Steps to Build a Sales Plan that Drives Revenue

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

1. Determine Your Primary & Secondary Sales Goals & KPIs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But remember this golden rule when choosing key performance indicators:

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

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

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

2. Find Your Target Customers’ Needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Define Your Value Proposition

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

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

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

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

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

4. Choose a Structure for Your Sales Team

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

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

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

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

5. Create a Plan For Execution

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

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

Involve your sales team during this process. Learn what they do during the week to close deals. Ask how much they’re currently doing, and how much bandwidth they have to do more. This will give you a real, frontline take on what your team can execute.

Then, create specific milestones with clear deadlines. For example, to achieve a sales goal of increasing revenue by 15% YOY, you might set the milestone of increasing your customer base by 20% at the end of Q1, or increasing sales by 50% for a specific product during Q3.

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

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

Goal: Increase revenue by 15% YOY

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

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

6. Evaluate Your Existing Sales Tools

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

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

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

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

7. Build a List of Dream Clients 

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

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

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

8. Schedule Progress Checks 

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

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

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

5 Best Practices for Creating a Profitable Sales Plan

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

1. Touch Base with Existing Customers  

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

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

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

2. Get Input From Colleagues Outside of Sales

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

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

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

3. Include Your Sales Team in the Planning Process

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

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

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

4. Compare Plans with Strategic Partners

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

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

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

5. Set Individual Goals for Your Sales Team

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

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

Create a Sales Plan That Drives Growth 

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

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

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How To Build a Strategic Sales Plan + 10 Examples

• March 28, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Plan? 

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

A sales plan should include the following three components: 

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

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

Sales Planning Process

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

You should: 

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

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

1. Decide on Your Timeline

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

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

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

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

2. Outline the Context

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

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

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

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

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

3. Company Mission and Values

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

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

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

4. Target Market and Product/Service Positioning

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

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

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

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

5. Sales Team and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

6. Concurrent Activities

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

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

7. Business Road Map

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

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

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

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

8. Sales Goals and KPIs

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

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

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

A bad example of a goal is as follows:

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

A better goal would look something like:

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

9. Action Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Strategic Sales Plan Examples 

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

Customer Profile 

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

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

Buyer’s Guide

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

30-60-90-Day Plan

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

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

Market Expansion Plan

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

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

Marketing-alignment Plan

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

New Product/Service Plan 

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

Sales Plan Template

4 additional sales plan templates.

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

• Template Lab 
• ProjectManager

5 Tips for Creating a Sales Plan 

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

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

When Should You Implement a Strategic Sales Plan? 

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

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

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

To Launch a New Product or Campaign 

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

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

To Increase Sales

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

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

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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.

More Templates

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

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

RELATED: Marketing and Sales: Why They Need Each Other

In this article:

What Is a Sales Plan?

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

Sample Sales Plan Template

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

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

Typically, a sales plan template has the following parts:

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

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

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

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

Who Creates a Sales Plan ?

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

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

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

Why Do I Need a Sales Plan Template?

Having a sales plan template will help you:

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

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

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

Where Does the Sales Plan Fit Within a Business?

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

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

When Should I Create and Update My Sales Plan Template?

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

RELATED: 7 Ways to Boost Sales Effectiveness

How Do I Create My Own Sales Plan?

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

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

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

1. Executive Summary and Scope

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

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

2. Goals and Timeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Team Members

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

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

4. Target Market

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

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

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

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

5. Resources

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

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

6. Market Position

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

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

7. Marketing Strategy

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

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

8. Prospecting

What will be your strategy when it comes to prospecting ? List down the criteria that your sales reps need to look for in leads and prospects before they reach out.

Along with this, you should also identify the sales methods your sales team will employ to close more deals.

9. Action Plan

You now have your goals, so it’s time to come up with action plans that will help you reach them. This is basically your game plan to hit the revenue targets you set.

To create an action plan, follow this simple process:

• Set an objective
• List down the tasks that will help you accomplish the objective

Lay out the costs that will come with hitting your sales goals. To make sure that your sales plan budget is accurate, compare it with your sales forecast.

Tips To Keep In Mind When Writing Your Sales Plan 

• Set practical and reasonable goals.
• Look at historical performance data to help set achievable targets.
• Do in-depth research and use this to identify problems and opportunities.
• Get input from your sales team.
• Be specific and concise.
• Don’t forget to monitor the progress of your sales plan. Your plan should adapt and evolve to fit the current situation (Unexpected changes in the market, new sales members etc.)

Here’s a handy sales plan template based on the elements mentioned above. Fill in each part as a starting point in creating your own template.

Name of Company:

Prepared by: 

I. Executive Summary and Scope

Write 3-4 lines to summarize the rest of the document.

II. Goals and Timeline

Sample Sales Goals and Timeline

• April 2020: $10,000
• May 2020 $10,000
• June 2020: $12,000

III. Team Members

• Name — job title

Describe the role, including tasks and expectations. Also, include information about onboarding. 

IV. Target Market 

Buyer Persona 

Thoroughly describe who this person is — basic demographics, what their lifestyle is like, interests, etc. 

V. Resources 

Make a list of resources, tools, and software employees need to perform their tasks and for the team to achieve the sales goals

VI. Market Position 

Competitors

Similarities and Differences Between Products/Services

Pricing Comparison 

Current Market Situation

Include information about any market or industry trends that may impact you or your competitors. 

VII. Marketing Strategy 

Sample Pricing and Promotional Strategy:

• Pricing Strategy: Lower price from $500 to $450 on June 1.
• Sales Impact: Increase monthly sales by 10%
• Promotional Strategy: Run a customer referral incentive from June 15-30.
• Sales Impact: Increase monthly sales by 15%.

VIII. Prospecting 

Prospecting Strategy

Identify sales methods reps will use to close deals. 

Criteria to Qualify Leads:

IX. Action Plan

Objective #1: 

Sample Costs:

• Salary/Commission
• Sales Tools and Resources
• Travel Expenses

If you’re stuck with your own sales plan template, try going by any of these templates:

• One-Page Sales Plan by The Balance
• Free Sales Plan Template by Fit Small Business

There is no one-size-fits-all sales plan. Take your time to identify opportunities and ways to overcome challenges.

Lastly, remember to monitor your progress and to update your strategic sales plan to optimize performance.

What challenges do you experience when creating a sales plan? Tell us in the comments section below!

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9 Stunning Sales Business Plan Templates to Close Deals

Written by: Orana Velarde

When sales and marketing teams work together, amazing things can happen for a business. Take, for example, the creation of an integral sales business plan that covers not only the goals the team aspires to but also all the data to support the actions, timelines, roadmaps and org charts.

Your business plan for sales and marketing activities is the guideline by which both teams undertake their tasks, aiming for a common goal. Creating a sales business plan collaboratively can help the teams see the big picture faster and be ready for any eventuality along the way.

In this guide, we will share nine business plan templates to help you build the perfect plan for your teams to work with. Share it digitally with your sales and marketing teams; they will be more productive and close more deals.

Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is a sales business plan, what is the sales business planning process, what goes in a sales business plan template, 9 business sales plan templates, sales plan faqs.

• A sales business plan is a document that outlines the goals, strategies and tactics of a company’s sales department, including current state and future plans.
• The sales business planning process includes figuring out the scope, organizing the team and assigning roles, collecting critical information in a centralized location, setting up branded templates, customizing the templates and collaborating with the team to finalize the document.
• The five different types of strategic sales planning are goal-oriented planning, account-based planning, product planning, relationship planning and sales process planning.
• Explore the nine templates provided according to sales business plan examples and choose the one that matches your sales goals.
• Sign up for Visme to create your sales business plans and all your sales and marketing collateral without needing any design skills.

A sales business plan—sales plan for short—is a document or presentation that defines the strategies your team will undertake to close deals, retain clients and bring in new leads. With a business plan , sales are contrastingly better overall.

Each section defines the steps toward hitting milestones and achieving goals. It lays a forecast for all activities that have to do with selling and hitting sales targets. The team members who benefit the most from a sales business plan are the sales reps and marketing strategists. It gives them all a vision of the big picture, a mission to aim for and a roadmap to achieving the goal.

Overall, a well-crafted sales business plan is crucial for optimizing the sales cycle and achieving success in the competitive world of sales.

To create a business plan for sales activities, follow an industry-standard format and add your team's unique content plus the company’s branded elements. Build a sales action plan based on your strategies and goals, backed up by your chosen sales plan template .

Here’s the path to take:

1. Figure out the scope

First, you need to know the scope of possibilities for the sales business plan you’re working on.

To figure this out, you need to answer these questions:

• What do you intend to cover in your sales plan?
• What aspects of the business will the sales plan cover?
• How far can this plan take you?
• Will it span weeks, months, a quarter, or an entire year?
• How many people will need to work together from how many teams?

This is the perfect opportunity to use mind maps . Visualizing your scope with mind maps makes it easy for you to organize the information and communicate it with everyone. And if you want to gather ideas from your sales team, brainstorming is the way to go.

Read this article to learn how to maximize your brainstorming meetings using online whiteboards.

Brainstorm the sales plan with your team using Visme’s infinite whiteboard . Our infinite whiteboard supports real-time collaboration and has more than enough space for you to lay out all the information.

Once you’ve mapped out your scope, create an outline for the overall plan. The outline will be the foundation for the pages and sections in your sales business plan. The next section, “What goes in a business plan” includes a list of essential sections that will help create a business plan for sales.

2. Organize the team and roles within the team

Part of the planning includes organizing a group of people who will work together to meet the goals laid out in the plan. Create a branded org chart visualizing team roles and responsibilities. Include this chart on a page in your sales plan; make it part of the process.

Using hotspots and hyperlinks, connect each team member's photo to their task list on monday.com or your favorite productivity platform.

Do you need more people to achieve the goals you’re pitching? Use this template to assign roles and tasks to team members.

3. Collect all information, analysis and data in one digital location.

No plan gets anywhere without data. Research, analysis, and investigation are your best friends at this point. Collect all the data you need and organize it in an accessible way. This will help immensely when building the sales plan .

Gather raw data about your current sales activities and performance, competitors, user persona, target market, industry analysis and more. Keep all visual documentation and relevant research samples inside a folder in your Visme workspace and name it accordingly.

Give access to those folders only to people involved in the project. The permission settings are in the brand controls for your workspace.

When you take advantage of the workspace organization features in your Visme account, you can plan your team's activity productively.

4. Set up a branded template

Are you regularly creating the same document more than once to share with different people? Branded templates are your secret weapon for any visual asset creation task. It saves time and serves as the guideline for all future versions of that document.

Applying your brand to industry templates is simple. First, pick one of our professionally designed templates, and then use our intuitive editor to change the color scheme, fonts and other design elements. You can also create a master layout to control fonts and logo placements.

Better yet, try Visme's Brand Wizard feature . Input your website URL and follow the steps. In the end, you’ll have a full set of templates with your brand colors and fonts.

5. Create each page in the document/slide in the deck

Transfer content from the outline to the document, section by section. Analyze and customize the visualization of each slide or page so it's optimized for the story you will tell. Yes, even sales plans can use storytelling techniques to be functional and effective. It’s the single most important communication tool in your arsenal.

Customize the sections, pages and slides with all the design elements available inside your Visme editor. Tap into all the interactive features to create an interactive sales business plan experience or make your digital PDF more engaging.

Take note of all the pages and slides as you create them to help you build the "table of contents" page. Use hyperlinking to let readers navigate the sales business plan however they wish.

6. Collaborate with the team

Involve the teams from the start. Task them with providing information or creating sections of the plan that pertain to their sector. Create the pages together, tag team members and leave comments to share information.

Ask managers for feedback through the Visme workspace; send them a live link to the project where they can leave notes and comments for edits.

Use a template to create an org chart that explains and details everyone’s role in the plan moving forward. When you make the process, plan and action collaborative, the team culture is strengthened. It’s a win-win in all directions.

7. Finalize and Share Your Plan

Take care of the last edits and proofread all the content. Double-check all image permissions and finalize all the layouts. Now that all the slides or pages are ready, it’s time to share and present the finished project. Use Presenter Studio to add a personalized message to the sales plan presentation, which is ideal for remote teams.

How do you wish to share the sales business plan with your team?

If there's any degree of interactivity in your plan, digital is the way to go. In the settings tab, publish your Visme project to the web and generate a live link to share with anyone you wish.

Download or share your sales business presentation as a video, a flip book, an interactive PDF or an interactive digital experience. All of these and more are possible with Visme.

There are templates, and then there are branded templates. A regular template has a color palette chosen by our designers for anyone to use. A branded template has all your company colors and fonts ready to fill up with content and finalize.

Here's a comprehensive list of the actual slides or pages in a sales business plan template. These apply to the document or presentation format of a top-down sales business plan.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

 Start with the stunning cover page, then follow up with an interactive table of contents and other pages such as:

• Executive summary. Summarize your company goals, sales objectives, revenue targets, and top-level strategies. This lays the foundation for the rest of your document.
• Business goals (SMART goals & KPIs). Provide clear goals that you'll use to guide your sales plan activities and resources. 
• Current sales performance.  Use data visualization to present an overview of your current sales performance. 
• Industry and market overview.  Provide actionable insights on data or trends to support your sales plan.
• Description of sales strategies and tactics.  Break down the sales techniques that will be used to execute your plan.
• Customer segments.  Define your customer persona , target audience or segmentation, answering the question, "Who do you plan to sell to."
• SWOT Analysis.  Take a look at your sales team or brand's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and potential threats. 
• Resources and team capabilities. Using the organizational chart , visualize the team roles and list resources to accomplish your goal.
• Timeframe for execution.  Provide an estimated timeframe you'll need to execute your sales plan. 
• Budget.  State how much you plan to spend or need to accommodate your sales plan's resources.  

Here’s the collection of sales business plan examples you’ve been looking for. They are available in different selling styles, covering an array of industries. Simply add your brand content with elements of storytelling to make it unforgettable.

If time is running out or you need a speedy start for your sales business plan, Visme's AI business plan generator can get it done in just a few minutes.

These business sales plans are a great starting point for sales managers looking for more templates to use with their team.

1. New Product Sales Plan

Plan the sales strategy for a new product with a new product sales plan template. Put together a strategy to promote the new product to existing clients and new prospects. Look at the data from previous campaigns and use it as the foundation for future product launches and sales plans.

The document-style sales business plan template below has all the pages you need to share information about the products, the goals, the KPIs to follow and the team in charge of getting it done. Finally, there are data pages for the budget and market analysis.

2. SaaS Sales Plan

SaaS companies need effective sales plans to grow their client base and increase quarterly revenue. A comprehensive sales plan for a SaaS company needs specific sections for each item and clear strategies for reaching team goals. Link to the materials the sales team will use, like sales playbooks and surveys .

This sales plan sample template, designed especially for SaaS companies, concentrates on the strengths, opportunities and unique selling points. The color blocks and data widgets offer a quick overview of the foundation, goals and team in charge of taking care of it.

Beyond creating a sales plan, you want to visualize your sales pipeline to see where your sales prospects are in the purchasing process.

3. 30-60-90-day Sales Plan

Maximize the efficiency of your sales team by utilizing this comprehensive sales action plan template. This 30 60 90 day sales plan example template is based on the idea of time. The strategies in the plan are laid out in three sections of one month each. Roadmaps have a timeframe, and there are three sets of goals. The purpose is to integrate new technology better or train a new sales rep into the team.

Get the most from your 30-60-90 sales business plan with the template below. Each page concentrates on the dedicated time period, explaining everything expected from the employee or the team.

4. Territory Sales Plan

Territory sales business plans are based on a specific geolocation or localization where the sales will occur. You need this type of sales plan if your company has client bases in different areas of the country or world. Culturally, each location can have different approaches and sales tactics. Use the dynamic fields feature to reuse territory sales presentations and easily change the location information.

Across nine pages in a purple color scheme, this territory sales plan is ready for your team’s detailed strategic planning. Create a document per location, or use interactivity to create hotspots that change the data or information according to the reader’s choice.

5. Business Development Sales Plan

Strategic business development can mean increasing client reach, improving business partnerships and many other business activities that increase revenue. Using this business development sales plan, your team can strategize different approaches to achieve positive goals.

In the business development sales plan template below, you’ll find all the graphic organizers to help your team see the big picture across different factors. Create timelines , Gantt charts and roadmaps to organize tasks and measure goals.

6. Market Expansion Sales Plan

Expanding the market is a large part of many sales strategies. And it also needs a solid sales business plan for the team and higher-ups to know what they can expect. To expand your target market efficiently, you’ll need to do a lot of research. All the data you collect goes on the pages of the market expansion sales plan in attractive data visualizations and infographic layouts.

Get inspired to set bold market expansion goals with this colorful and clean-cut template design. Each page has a specific function and purpose, and charts and data visualizations grace the pages without visual obstacles. This template is great for fast and easy information sharing.

7. Revenue-based Sales Plan

The name of this sales plan says it all. The entirety of this plan stems from revenue-how much there is, how much the company wants, and how to get it. These are ideal for sales teams that separate the big picture into actionable parts.

With the template below, your team can create an actionable sales plan that moves the needle forward. The angled leading lines on each page take the reader on a visual journey across goals and timelines to success. Part of the plan is to inspire the team members and stakeholders to believe in the process and work together.

8. Real Estate Sales Plan

In real estate, you’ll have to plan strategies for your agents and teams to follow together. Real estate agents must work with the marketing team to be on the same page about messaging, strategies and goals. With a sales plan, you can put it all together into one.

In this template, all the marketing, prospecting, and target market calculations work together to improve your sales strategies. Strategic planning can improve revenue for the agency, the agents, and the homeowners.

9. Sales Training Plan

New sales reps perform better when their onboarding and training are inspiring and motivating. Use this template to plan your training and onboarding strategies and create a better company culture. Instruct new hires in the systems and explain timelines of expected performance during the probation and orientation phase.

The choice of color palette and design elements is important for telling the story of your sales training plan. Cover both high and low levels of the sales process by training efficiently. Plan how to train and get results.

After personalizing your preferred sales business plan template, the next step is to download and share it with your team and stakeholders.

With Visme, you have complete freedom over how you use your documents. You can download the design in various formats, such as PDF, JPG, PNG, and HTML5, or share it online via email or a shareable link.

You can even publish your content anywhere on the internet by generating a snippet of code from the Visme app.

One of our satisfied customers, Sean, a Web Designer & Digital Marketing Specialist, has shared their positive experience with Visme's templates and sharing options.

Web Designer & Digital Marketing Specialist

Q. What Are the Different Types of Strategic Sales Planning?

As a sales leader, it is crucial to avoid poor planning, as it can result in missing up to 10% of annual sales opportunities . Your responsibility is to ensure that your company does not experience this setback.

To help you avoid this pitfall, here are five distinct approaches, each with its own unique flair.

1. Goal-Oriented Planning: This approach begins with setting ambitious yet achievable revenue targets, followed by reverse-engineering your sales process to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) necessary to reach those targets. Sales activities are then meticulously aligned with the overarching goals to create a cohesive roadmap to success.

2. Account Planning: It focuses on developing a comprehensive strategy for managing individual accounts. This type of planning involves researching the account, identifying key stakeholders, and creating a plan to engage with them. Account planning benefits businesses that rely on a small number of large accounts for their revenue.

3. Product Planning: Product planning involves the development of a strategy for selling a particular product or product line. This type of planning focuses on understanding the market for the product, identifying key features and benefits, and developing a plan for promoting and selling the product.

4. Relationship Planning: Relationship selling is a long-term approach focusing on building strong customer relationships. It involves understanding the customer's needs, building trust and providing ongoing support and value. This approach requires excellent communication skills, a customer-centric mindset and a commitment to delivering exceptional service.

5. Sales Process Planning: This involves developing a comprehensive plan for managing the sales process, from lead generation to closing the sale. This type of planning involves identifying the critical steps in the sales process, developing a plan for each step, and establishing metrics to measure the effectiveness of the process.

Q. How Do I Write a Sales Business Plan?

After learning about the various types of sales planning and their advantages, as well as the components of a sales business plan, it's time to delve into the process of drafting one. Let's explore some tips for writing a successful sales business plan.

• Define Your Sales Objectives: Start by defining your sales objectives. What are your revenue goals? What products or services do you want to sell? Who is your sales ICP ? Defining these objectives will help you create a clear roadmap for achieving your sales goals.
• Conduct a Market Analysis: Conduct a market analysis to identify opportunities and threats in the marketplace. Analyze your industry, competitors, and target audience. This will help you understand how to position your product or service in the market.
• I dentify Your Unique Selling Proposition: Identify your unique selling proposition (USP)—what makes your product or service different from your competitors? What are the benefits of your product or service? Understanding your USP will help you market and sell your product or service better.
• Develop a Sales Strategy: Develop a sales strategy that aligns with your sales objectives. This should include a plan for lead generation, lead qualification and the sales process. You can revisit the types of strategic sales planning sections to choose the one that fits your sales goals. Consider the sales channels you'll use, the sales team structure and the sales tools you'll need.
• Define Sales Metrics: Define sales metrics that will help you measure your progress toward achieving your sales objectives. This could include revenue, sales growth rate, conversion rate and customer acquisition cost.
• Develop a Sales Budget: Develop a sales budget that aligns with your sales strategy and objectives. This should include expenses related to lead generation, sales team compensation, sales tools, and marketing.
• Review and Refine: Review and refine your sales business plan regularly. This will help you stay on track toward achieving your sales goals and make adjustments as needed.

Additionally, you can read this article on creating a strategic sales plan to get more help writing your own sales business plan.

Create Your Sales Business Plan With Visme

Jumping right into a project isn’t always the best idea; you won’t be prepared for the obstacles and hurdles. Every layer of your sales stack should be potentially planned and brainstormed for optimal results.

This is where sales business plans come into play. With well-designed and personalized plans, you create meaningful connections with prospects, turning them into loyal clients.

Create an interactive sales business plan to engage your team in a shared journey toward a common goal. Designate roles and link them together in the sales plan and your productivity platform so everyone is always on track.

Visme has plenty of features to help you and your team close deal after deal. Not only can you create a sales business plan collaboratively, but you can also brainstorm, create other content, share it online, track performance and keep all assets organized within your workspace. Make your team more efficient at creating visual content at every level of your organization using our third-party integrations .

Ready to up your company's sales game and close more deals? Book a demo or sign up today to see how we can help your sales team succeed.

Easily put together winning sales business plans in Visme

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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 business . 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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Strategic Sales Plan Examples: 13 Sales Plan Templates

Casey O'Connor

What Is a Strategic Sales Plan?

When you should implement a strategic sales plan, what to include in your sales plan, 13 sales plan template examples, put your sales plan into action with yesware.

A strategic sales plan is a must-have for any business looking to increase their sales, amp up their revenue, bring a new product to market, or branch into a new territory.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about strategic sales plans: what they are, when to create one, and exactly what they need to include. We’ll also show you a handful of real-life, tangible sales plan template examples and tips for implementation. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• When You Should Implement a Strategic Sales Plan 

A strategic sales plan is designed to guide a sales organization through their overarching sales strategy. It provides them with access to the resources needed to prospect, pitch to, and close new accounts.

Strategic sales plans can include any combination of the following:

• Ideas: If you utilize a certain sales methodology — consultative selling or target account selling , for example — you might outline its key principles and a few tactical examples of it in action in your strategic sales plan. Your strategic sales plan should also include an overview of your target customer.
• Processes: In order for your sales team to reach maximum productivity, it’s important that your sales processes are clearly defined and standardized. Your sales team — both new hires and seasoned vets alike — should be able to refer to your sales plan for a repeatable, scalable process that’s backed by solid metrics. The processes should provide direction to sales reps that allow them to contribute to the company’s goals.
• Tools & Tactics: The best strategic sales plans are more than just high-level strategy and goals. They also include specific, step-by-step strategies that sales reps can implement in sales conversations, as well as the specific tools and content that reps need to close more deals.

Sales plans also typically spell out the organization’s revenue and overall business goals, as well as the KPIs and benchmarks that sales managers and other stakeholders will monitor to determine whether or not those goals are being met.

They should also outline management’s strategic territory design and quota expectations, with specific indicators and data to back those decisions. 

Finally, these sales plans should take into account your current team’s sales capacity and specifically address the acquisition plan for any resources that are not yet available but may be necessary for future growth.

If your sales team doesn’t already have a strategic sales plan in place — that is, one that’s referenced and updated regularly and the product of careful data analysis and inter-team collaboration — you may want to consider creating one. 

Research shows that the majority of the highest-performing sales teams operate under a formalized, closely monitored sales structure. 

On the other hand, most underperforming sales teams lack this structure. 

It’s clear that a well-defined sales plan is one of the prerequisites to optimized sales productivity and success; every salesforce should strive to create and adopt one if they want to meet their sales goals more efficiently.

That being said, there are a few key indicators that signal a need for more urgency in putting a strategic sales plan in place. 

You’re Trying to Increase Sales

A strategic sales plan will help your sales and marketing teams align their processes so that your outreach efforts are tailored to your target audience. 

You’re Looking to Amp Up Your Revenue

For startups and small businesses, attaining as many new customers as possible is usually the name of the game.

For larger or more established businesses, however, the business plan may instead emphasize revenue goals. In other words, the deal size starts to matter much more than deal volume. 

A sales strategy plan can help salespeople target and nurture higher-value accounts. Sales planning can also boost your revenue by illuminating untapped potentials for revenue growth within your existing customer base through cross-selling, upselling , and referrals .

You’re Gearing Up to Launch a New Product

A sales strategy plan is crucial for businesses that are preparing to bring a new product to market.

One last note: for businesses that already use strategic business planning (or for those on their way after reading this article), be sure to update your plan at least yearly. Many businesses at least review their plan, if not update it more formally, on a quarterly basis.

Ultimately, your strategic sales plan will be unique to your company and its specific goals.

Consider including the following components in your strategic business plan. 

Mission Statement

Industry & Market Conditions

Great sales planning cannot be performed in isolation. Your plan must take into account the current market conditions, including any challenges, recent disruptions, or upcoming notable events.

Organization Chart

A sales org chart can range in scope from very simple, like the one above, to more complicated. Some go as far as naming individual employees and outlining their specific responsibilities. 

A detailed org chart is especially helpful for efficiently onboarding new hires.

Product Info & Pricing

No sales plan would be complete without a one-sheet that outlines the features, benefits, and value proposition of your product or service.

It’s also helpful to include information about pricing tiers, as well as any discounts or promotions available for leverage at a sales rep’s discretion.

Compensation Plan

While we have no doubt that you’ve hired only the most intrinsically motivated salespeople, remember the bottom line: cash is king.

Money is the primary motivator for most salespeople, regardless of how truly loyal and hard-working they may be.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to include your company’s compensation plan and commission structure in your sales plan. This is a surefire way to motivate your team to continuously improve their sales performance. 

Target Market & Customer

Sales Enablement

With the tremendous rise in content marketing, it can be challenging for salespeople to keep track of the various materials available for generating new business.

Branding & Positioning

The strategic sales plan should offer at least a high-level overview of your brand and messaging specifics, including social media presence. Take the time to optimize your company’s LinkedIn presence — it’s a goldmine of new business opportunities.

Marketing Strategy

In today’s day and age, it’s unlikely that your sales and marketing team are working in isolation from one another. At a certain point, sales and marketing strategies start to flow together until they (ideally) perform in harmony.

Still, it’s important to outline the perspective of the marketing team within your strategic sales plan. This will help your salespeople fine-tune their sales pitch and speak more meaningfully to the needs of the customer. 

Prospecting Strategy

Most salespeople report that their number one challenge in lead generation is attracting qualified leads. 

Prospecting can certainly be daunting, but it’s worth the effort to get it right. Tweak and fine-tune the process until you’re sure it’s as efficient as possible. Make sure it’s repeatable and scalable, and map it out within your sales plan. 

Action Plan

Any good strategic sales plan will also include a step-by-step section, much like a playbook. Here, you’ll outline the specific tactics and processes — including scripts, demos, and email templates — that have been proven to move prospects through the sales funnel . 

Be as specific as possible here. This will act as a blueprint for the day-to-day sales activities for your team.

It can be tempting to leave the numbers with the finance department, but financial transparency can go a long way in creating a culture of trust among your sales team.

You don’t need to go through every line item in the spreadsheet, but it’s not a bad idea to include a high-level look at where the dollars are flowing. 

KPIs, Metrics, and Benchmarks

Be sure to give your team a snapshot of how they’re currently performing, with real numbers to back it up.

By doing so, you help them self-initiate regular SWOT analysis of their own sales actions and processes. This will give them an opportunity to right the course if things aren’t going according to plan. 

Tip: Looking to fuel your sales plan with data-backed findings? Grab our free ebook below.

Remember that your company’s strategic sales plan will be highly unique. It may take some time and tweaking to find the components and format that best meet the needs of your business.

Here are 13 sales plan templates to help you get started.

1. Product Launch Plan Template

Sales and marketing teams create a product launch plan when they’re preparing to launch a new product. 

A product launch plan should include your product’s positioning statement , a SWOT competitive analysis, detailed market analysis, sales strategies and tactics, and details about the target market. 

2. Ideal Customer Profile Template

One way to avoid wasting time on unproductive leads is to include an ideal customer profile (ICP) in your sales plan. Here’s a sample : 

This will help ensure your prospecting campaigns are targeted and attract only the most qualified leads from the get-go. 

3. Microsoft Word Sales Plan Template

Here’s a great example of a sales plan goals template , easily accessible through Microsoft Word. 

4. 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan Template

5. Buyer’s Guide Template

A buyer’s guide is a short, simple information sheet that describes your product or service, its features and benefits, and its use. Below is an example of a buyer’s guide from Wayfair . 

In many cases, this document is as useful internally as it is for the customer. 

6. Marketing Alignment Sales Plan Template

If your company hasn’t already formally aligned sales and marketing, start with this type of sales plan template (basic example below), as most traditional sales plans already assume that these two teams collaborate regularly. 

One key component of a marketing alignment sales plan template is the presence of an ideal customer profile and buyer personas. 

The marketing alignment sales plan template should also focus on cohesive, on-brand messaging between marketing campaigns and sales conversations . 

This type of sales plan template helps keep everyone on the same page, increases efficiency, and improves sales effectiveness. 

7. Battle Card Template

8. Territory Design Template

Well-designed sales territories see a 10% – 20% increase in sales productivity. Be low is a basic example of a territory design map.

9. Market Expansion Plan Template

A market expansion plan outlines the strategies, tactics, metrics, resources, and more that teams will use when expanding into a new market or (more commonly) a new geographical territory. 

Market expansion plans also need to include details about distribution expenses and timelines, time zone variations, industry notes or important compliance information, local/cultural expectations and laws, and sometimes more. 

10. Compensation Plan Template

Your compensation plan (including a specific commission structure) is one way to motivate your sales reps.

While it may seem controversial or sensitive, the compensation plan is an important component of a strategic sale plan.

11. Sales Funnel Template

The sales funnel is a visual representation of the sales process. 

12. Marketing Plan Template

Your salespeople should be extremely familiar with the marketing strategies your company is using to attract new leads. Here’s a great example of a template you can use in your sales plan that outlines the different campaigns at work.

This kind of resource will help your reps know who to contact, when, and with what kind of content throughout the sales cycle .

13. B2B Sales Strategy Template

A B2B sales strategy template helps sales teams outline their goals, as well as the specific methodologies and tactics they will use to achieve them. Here’s an example :

The B2B sales strategy plan will vary widely depending on your team’s specific goals and strategies, but most teams include at least the categories highlighted in the template above. 

Yesware is the all-in-one sales toolkit that helps you win more business. It can be an invaluable resource for putting your sales plan into action in a way that’s streamlined, productive, and intuitive.

Communication

Yesware’s meeting scheduler tool helps you skip the back-and-forth when scheduling meetings.

Meeting Scheduler integrates with your Outlook or Gmail calendar and helps your clients automatically schedule meetings with you during times of availability. New events will automatically sync to your calendar. 

​ It can also create meeting types for common calls, like a 30-minute intro call or a 60-minute demo call. These templates can be automatically saved and generated with custom descriptions and agendas so everyone can come prepared. 

Prospecting

One of Yesware’s most popular features is its prospecting campaigns .

This feature enables salespeople to create automated, personalized campaigns with multi-channel touches. 

The tool tracks communication and engagement throughout the process and helps move prospects through the pipeline with little administrative effort from the sales team.

Yesware’s attachment tracking feature helps you find your winning content by tracking which attachments are most often opened and read by your prospects.

You can use these insights to sharpen your content and increase your engagement.

The reporting and analytics tools are also extremely valuable in optimizing your sales plan.  These reports enable salespeople to use data to win more business. The feature generates daily activity, engagement data, and outcomes to show you what is/isn’t working across the board.

Try Yesware for free to see how it can help your team carry out your sales plan today.

This guide was updated on March 6, 2024.

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Create a sales plan: tips and templates

Posted May 31, 2023

By Serena Miller

Editor, Sales Best Practices at Outreach

What is a sales plan? 

The sales planning process, key elements of a sales plan , examples of strategic sales plans , tips for creating an effective sales plan , sales plan templates , a powerful platform for effective sales planning, stay up-to-date with all things outreach.

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The sales world is ever-changing. Customer demand and expectations, market conditions, technological advancements, evolving techniques, shifting employee demographics, and more threaten an organization’s ability to stay ahead of the curve and be successful.

Simply improvising in the face of change isn’t an adequate strategy to ensure your team will meet their goals. While flexibility is a vital quality for any great sales team, proper planning is crucial for reaching your goals consistently and predictably. 

A strong sales plan can help your team boost alignment and collaboration, better understand competitors and the broader market, effectively analyze performance, and improve future outcomes.

Let’s explore some important elements of sales plans, including key process steps and elements, real-world examples, tips and tricks for getting it right, and the template you’ll need to get started.

• What is a sales plan?
• Key elements of a sales plan
• Examples of strategic sales plans
• Tips for creating an effective sales plan
• Sales plan templates

A sales plan is a document that outlines your specific objectives, challenges, strategies, and target audience. It’s a sales-specific illustration of exactly what steps your team will take to succeed. While a business plan lays out your organization’s broader goals, a sales plan maps out how you’ll actually achieve them.

What are the benefits of a sales plan

Effective sales plans help organizations align their sales and marketing teams and avoid conflicting efforts. It’s an essential part of a strong sales management process because it reduces distractions and helps managers and sellers focus on selling to the right prospects at the right time. When used as an ongoing process, sales planning enables teams to track their progress, boosts rep motivation, and reduces wasted time. 

Nothing about sales is static. Sales planning should therefore be a living, breathing process that managers review as new products are updated or released, market conditions change, or their team scales.

Nothing about sales is static. Sales planning should therefore be a living, breathing process that managers review as new products are updated or released, market conditions change, or their team scales. 

The typical sales planning process includes 5 key steps:

1. Align your mission statement with your sales plan

Take the first step by crafting an awesome mission statement. This will establish your company’s purpose and unify your team around a succinct principle. 

But it is vital to bring that mission statement to increase employee engagement, boost productivity , and commit everyone to the same goals and objectives. To keep your big-picture strategy from floating around in the stratosphere, tie it together with your already-established mission statement. 

For example, if your mission statement centers around finding the best possible solutions for each customer’s unique problems, your sales plan should mirror that same sentiment—and offer ways you can actually deliver. 

Once you’ve ironed out these details, be sure to clearly communicate them with your team. Explain how your sales plan aligns with your mission statement and the importance of maintaining that continuity. 

2. Analyze your market 

Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and neither should your sales plan. Take a close look at each of your competitors and your own company’s current performance in the market and incorporate that data into a holistic plan. How do your competitors serve your target audience? How do your own strategies stand up to — or fail to meet — market demands?

In order to identify your ideal customers, as well as their product and service needs, you should utilize customer feedback, user research, client surveys, sales team and service team interviews, social listening, keyword research, and competitive analysis.. Instead of assuming that you already know what customers want, potentially wasting time, resources, and revenue, take the time to pinpoint their demands, expectations, and requirements. Then train and develop your sales plan to address them. 

Remember that 77% of B2B customers find their buying journey difficult, so a sales plan that takes their unique needs into account can make all the difference when it comes to attracting and retaining clients. 

3. Set sales goals and targets 

Setting both short- and long-term goals and targets is sometimes challenging. Managers often scramble to improve everything all at once without a clear understanding of how to do it. The foundation for strong goal-setting is a healthy mix of the right sales metrics (e.g., activity metrics, pipeline metrics, lead gen metrics, and productivity metrics) and measuring them against the right KPIs . 

The best way to set realistic, yet challenging targets for your sales plan is to collect and make effective use of high-quality data. Powerful, fully-integrated sales tools help your team accomplish this by eliminating the need for manual data entry and updating. Your team can glean a comprehensive, up-to-date understanding of where they are and where they want to go; all without missing a beat. 

Over time, you can use metrics and KPIs from previous periods to fine-tune your targets. Integrate both your sales and marketing metrics to help you refine your goals and find more opportunities to improve your processes. 

4. Define your sales team’s roles and responsibilities

Each sales team member plays a crucial role in the success of the larger unit:

• Inside and outside sales reps focus on making contact with prospects
• Account managers retain, engage, and satisfy clients
• Regional sales managers support their direct reports and coordinate sales operations 
• Sales operations managers improve team efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness
• Sales development reps (SDRs) research, prospect, and qualify leads
• Account executives (AEs) run demos, conduct compelling presentations, identify and resolve purchasing challenges, and negotiate buying terms
• Sales engineers address in-depth product questions, identify customers’ technical needs, and develop demos

While this isn't an exhaustive list of each individual role’s responsibilities, it illustrates how many moving parts a well-oiled sales team needs to run. Executive sales team members (like the Director of Sales, VP of Sales, and Chief Sales Officer) focus on higher-level sales initiatives, and their knowledge and expertise is crucial to the team’s overall success.

Because there are so many different sales career pathways , managers should clearly define each person's responsibilities and outline how their efforts will contribute to the sales plan. Break down tasks and targets for each team member and measure their performance alongside those larger KPIs. For example, you might measure SDRs against number of deals closed, number of calls, or number of meetings, while evaluating account executives using number of demos, opportunities won, and win rate.

5. Evaluate results

Your sales plan should never be rigid. Even if you think you’ve crafted a sales plan masterpiece, it’s essential to follow up after implementation and evaluate your results. Using robust sales technology, you can easily track every activity within your sales process and evaluate how the execution of each task reveals your team’s strengths and shortcomings. 

A strong sales tool offers a variety of features that help you assess performance—one of which being a sales dashboard . Dashboards standardize, centralize, and visually illustrate all of your sales data in a single place, helping managers evaluate team performance and progress against their set goals in real time.   

Then, armed with those deep insights, you can adjust your sales plan as needed for even better outcomes in the future. 

Though your specific sales plan will vary depending on your unique business, goals, target audience, team size, and industry, there are several common elements you should always consider.

Set realistic goals

Goals motivate sellers and keep them excited about their work. Since highly-engaged teams are 14% more productive than those with low engagement, taking the time to create achievable targets based on market conditions and your customers’ needs, which tie into the things that engage your sellers.

A varying combination of daily, weekly, and monthly goals can help managers keep sales people inspired. Make sure you clearly establish how these smaller goals impact the success of the sales plan to get reps fully committed. 

Explore sales tools

Many of today’s sales teams rely heavily on their tools, but some still struggle with lackluster, disconnected, or outdated technology. To create and carry out a seamless sales plan, your team needs tools that are completely integrated and offer the type of transparency that streamlines your entire operation.

Most sales teams use customer relationship management (CRM) tools to organize contacts and optimize sales management. In fact, 50% of top tech sellers use CRM tools, while 97% of sales professionals say that their CRM is important for closing deals. 

While your CRM is crucial , that one tool alone is not enough to support your team at every step of the sales process. Your team needs a full suite of integrated features, like dashboards, forecasts, automation, and buyer sentiment analysis . With the right SalesTech , your team can improve productivity, communication, and lead conversion to ultimately build and execute excellent sales plans. 

Communicate clear expectations 

Establishing and enforcing expectations is critical to just about every part of a business. After all, how are employees supposed to know what they should do and whether they’re doing it properly without understanding what’s expected of them? 

In sales, this is especially important. Success often hinges on specific, time-sensitive activities that are properly executed. For instance, swift customer follow-up can make or break a deal. A rep’s failure to understand where their co-worker’s responsibility ends and theirs begins can change a success into a failure. 

To anticipate or resolve any existing confusion, managers should define crystal-clear expectations both for the team and for individual sellers. Document those expectations in an easy-to-access place. Each seller should have the right resources and direction to execute every sales task in a timely manner. This builds trust and communication within the team, which is the key to the success of  any sales plan. 

Develop training programs 

Organizations that invest in training receive about $453 for every dollar invested (a 353% ROI). Top-performing sellers are more likely to spend a significant amount of time training with their managers. It’s no wonder 89% of sales leaders have invested or plan to invest in internal sales training. Those that fail to prioritize skill development will likely fall behind their competitors. 

There are many different types of training programs , each with varying benefits and costs. One thing to note is that regardless of which type of training program you choose, make sure your team has the right tools and the training to effectively use those tools to help everyone get the most out of the investment.

There are several different types of sales plans that might be useful to your specific business and team. Here are some examples of the most commonly used strategic sales plans.

Customer profile  

Developing an ideal customer profile (ICP) is an excellent way to make sure your team targets the right prospects. An ICP can fine-tune messaging, and establish a strong overall sales strategy. To get started building this type of sales plan, identify your best current customers, reach out to those customers for feedback, and study your customer and sales data. Then, use those insights to craft a valuable ICP that’ll drive even more business from new verticals . 

30-60-90-day plan

It’s helpful to break your sales plan up into more digestible chunks. A 30-60-90-day plan divides goals, activities, and metrics into 30-day intervals, each with progressively challenging steps. It’s a great way to set reps up for continuous improvement without overwhelming them right off the bat. 

Market expansion plan 

Stimulating growth in new markets is a daunting task, but a market expansion sales plan gives your team clear direction on how to break through. This model is best used for new territories or regions where your ICP, account distribution costs, time zones, and other key factors differ from those in your typical market. 

Marketing-alignment plan 

Getting your sales and marketing departments on the same page can ameliorate many issues that might hinder your sales success—like inconsistent messaging, uncoordinated strategy, disparate data, disconnected tools, lack of understanding, differing priorities, competition for funding, and more. A sales plan that’s grounded in sales-marketing alignment can effectively bring both teams together for greater cohesion, better resource sharing, more scalable playbooks, and shorter sales cycles .

New product/service plan

If your organization plans to launch a new product or service in the near future, it’s probably ideal to create a sales plan around that debut. This will help your team properly track revenue, understand subsequent growth, and identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. 

Regardless of the type of sales plan you choose, there are some well-established best practices that’ll help your team translate the plan into real-world success.

Create a market analysis

Fluctuating market trends make it difficult to stay on top of the competitive landscape and customer demands. Be sure to conduct an in-depth market analysis to better understand how to reach your target audience. Then, create a sales and prospecting approach geared to those insights. 

If your sales plan is founded upon hard facts and data, like industry standards, previous performance data and sales forecasts, and qualitative and quantitative feedback from sales and marketing teams, you can make meaningful adjustments that will garner better results at a faster rate. 

Utilize your marketing team 

If you establish your marketing team as your collaborative partner on your sales plan, they become your team’s secret weapon. Ask your marketing team to share their insights, and regularly voice their questions and concerns about your strategy. The effort required for getting sales and marketing teams in rhythm is worth it to make your plan more optimized and robust. 

Communicate with your sales team

At the core of any great sales plan is effective communication, so make sure your team has everything they need to receive updates, share input, and explore their colleagues’ challenges. Encourage them to let you know what’s working and what isn’t. Company chat applications (e.g., Slack) are great, but they don’t always enable the seamless communication required for a fully-optimized sales operation. Leverage tools that act as a central hub for all things sales.

Sales execution platforms , for example, offer centralized communication in a single place. Team members can always access and share updates and communication histories, collaborate, and work efficiently toward the same goals. 

Even with a deeper understanding of what your sales plan needs and why it’s important, crafting one of your own can be confusing. Sales plan templates can help guide your process and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. An effective template should include spaces for key elements, strategy specifics, roles and responsibilities, KPIs, short- and long-term goals, and deadlines. 

To help get your sales planning juices flowing, we’ve created a sales plan template with everything you’ll need for success:

Your sales plan acts as your team’s guiding light for developing a clear, effective strategy. Effective planning aligns sales and marketing, helps teams progress and performance, and improves seller engagement, motivation, and productivity. But the various moving pieces of a strong sales plan require the support of an intelligent system of action.

Outreach’s Sales Execution Platform reduces the time-consuming, manual activities typically associated with sales planning. As the only AI-powered Sales Execution Platform, Outreach unlocks seller productivity to create more pipeline and close more deals.

Learn more about how Outreach helps managers boost their team’s productivity , or request a demo today.

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How to write a cleaning business plan, with example

GorillaDesk Staff

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

A house cleaning service business plan can help you get a loan. It’s also a roadmap to a successful cleaning company. But — 

There are seven key elements every business plan must have. It’s not hard to write one, but you’ll need to know the answers to some questions before you start.

See how to write a cleaning business plan below, along with tips, advice, and a sample cleaning business plan to get you off on the right foot.

What is a cleaning business plan?

A cleaning business plan is a document that shows why your business should exist, what it will do, how you’ll do it, and who you’ll do it for. It maps out your path to success, including financial projections, a market analysis, your services, and a description of your organizational structure.

Most banks will want to see a business plan before they’ll lend you money. Even if you don’t need a loan, a plan can guide you as you start and scale your business.

Pro Tip: If you’re just looking for the steps to create a successful cleaning company, one of the most important is to set your prices higher than you think. See our article on how to start a cleaning business for more.

The 7 parts of a cleaning business plan

Each cleaning service business plan has seven important parts. The best way to write your own plan is to read this article, then come back with a pen and notebook and jot down your best answers and to-do items. Writing the plan will be a lot easier if you’ve answered all the questions first.

1. Executive summary

Since you haven’t written your house cleaning business plan yet, you’ll skip this part for now. Then when you’ve finished writing the rest, you’ll come back and summarize your plan at the top.

• Your business name
• A very brief overview of your services
• Your mission and vision statements (see examples here and here )
• Why you’re writing the plan (for example, to get a loan or to increase your odds of success)

2. Company description

What is your company all about, and how will it be structured? Write about 100 words on:

• Your business structure ( LLC , corporation , sole proprietorship )
• The types of consumers you’ll serve
• A complete list of your service offerings (for example, cleaning homes and Airbnbs)
• Your business goals

3. Cleaning services you’ll offer

Re-list your service offerings, and this time, write a short description of each one. Include:

• Benefits to the customer of each service
• Why your services are better than the competition’s

4. Market analysis

This is where you show how much you understand the cleaning industry. Include:

• A list of your different types of customers (like property managers and homeowners)
• How many customers are in your area
• A detailed description of the other cleaning companies near you and their strengths and weaknesses

Pro Tip: Make it easier by introducing yourself to a few cleaning company owners and asking how-to questions. (You can find them by searching “cleaning business owner” on LinkedIn.)

5. Strategy

Describe your sales and marketing plan and how you’ll put it into action, including:

• Your operating hours and locations
• Your service area
• How many employees you’ll have, and where you’ll find them
• How you’ll find and connect with customers
• Your pricing
• Your costs, both fixed and per cleaning
• How the company will function (from getting a new customer to doing a cleaning and invoicing)

6. Leadership

Who’s in charge of your cleaning company, and what are they responsible for? Make:

• A list of your company’s leaders and job descriptions
• Names of the owners, what percent of the business they own, their background, and how much they’ll be involved
• Names and bios of any advisors or mentors who will help, including attorneys or other professionals

7. Financial plan and projections

You’ll most likely need to pay an accountant to help with creating financial projections. Create 3-year projections of:

• P&L statement
• Balance sheet
• Cash flow statement

You can see examples of all three projections below, at the bottom of the cleaning company business plan template below.

Pro Tip: Writer’s block? Tell ChatGPT the answers to the questions above, then ask it to write your plan up for you. Then read and adjust it to fit it to your business goals.

Example cleaning business plan

You can copy, paste, and edit this sample cleaning service business plan template to get started:

1) Executive Summary

Business Name: [Your Business Name]

Owner: [Your Name]

Location: [City, State]

Business Structure: Sole Proprietorship / LLC

Services Offered: Residential Cleaning, Deep Cleaning, Move-In/Move-Out Cleaning, Seasonal Cleaning

Mission Statement: Our mission is to provide high-quality, reliable, and affordable cleaning services that make our clients’ homes healthier and more comfortable.

2) Business Description

A) Company Overview:

[Your Business Name] is a residential cleaning service committed to offering top-tier cleaning solutions to homeowners. We specialize in maintaining a clean, organized, and hygienic living space that enhances the well-being of our clients. Our services cater to a variety of needs, from regular upkeep to deep cleaning sessions.

B) Target Market:

Our primary target market includes busy professionals, families, and elderly individuals who require assistance with maintaining their homes. Our services are also ideal for property managers and real estate agents in need of cleaning services for move-in/move-out or post-renovation scenarios.

C) Unique Selling Proposition (USP):

We stand out by offering personalized cleaning plans tailored to each client’s specific needs. Our commitment to using eco-friendly products and methods sets us apart, ensuring a safe environment for children, pets, and allergy-sensitive individuals.

3) Market Analysis

A) Industry Overview:

The residential cleaning industry is a growing market with increasing demand due to busy lifestyles, dual-income households, and an aging population. The shift towards eco-friendly cleaning solutions is also driving growth.

B) Competitor Analysis:

• Competitor A: Offers basic cleaning services at low prices but lacks personalized service.
• Competitor B: Focuses on high-end clients with premium pricing but limited availability.
• Competitor C: Uses eco-friendly products but charges extra for this service.

C) Market Trends:

• Increasing demand for green cleaning services.
• Growing preference for personalized and flexible cleaning schedules.
• Rising use of online booking platforms for convenience.

D) Target Customer:

• Demographics: Ages 25-65, middle to upper-middle income, homeowners, renters, and property managers.
• Geographic: Residential areas within [City/Region].
• Psychographics: Value convenience, cleanliness, and a healthy living environment.

4) Services Offered

• Standard Residential Cleaning: Regular cleaning services including dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and bathroom/kitchen cleaning.
• Deep Cleaning: Comprehensive cleaning, including areas not typically covered in standard cleaning, such as baseboards, inside appliances, and behind furniture.
• Move-In/Move-Out Cleaning: Specialized cleaning service for homes being prepared for new occupants or post-move-out.
• Seasonal Cleaning: Deep cleaning services tailored to specific seasonal needs, like spring cleaning or pre-holiday preparation.
• Customized Cleaning Plans: Tailored cleaning schedules and services based on individual client preferences.

5) Marketing Strategy

A) Branding:

Develop a professional brand image with a clean, modern logo, and a user-friendly website. Emphasize your commitment to eco-friendly products and personalized service.

B) Marketing Channels:

• Online Presence: Develop a website with online booking options, service descriptions, and testimonials. Use SEO strategies to increase visibility.
• Social Media: Engage potential clients on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn with before-and-after photos, cleaning tips, and promotions.
• Local Advertising: Distribute flyers, post ads in local newspapers, and participate in community events.
• Referral Program: Offer discounts or free services for clients who refer new customers.

C) Pricing Strategy:

• Competitive Pricing: Set prices based on market research, offering competitive rates that reflect the quality and value of your services.
• Package Deals: Create cleaning packages for regular clients, offering discounted rates for long-term contracts.

6) Operations Plan

A) Location and Equipment:

• Location: Operate from a home office with a storage area for supplies and equipment.
• Equipment: Invest in high-quality cleaning tools, vacuum cleaners, mops, and eco-friendly cleaning products.

B) Staffing Plan:

• Initial Staffing: Start as a sole proprietor or with a small team. As the business grows, hire part-time cleaners or contract workers.
• Training: Provide thorough training in cleaning techniques, customer service, and safety protocols.

C) Operations Workflow:

• Client Consultation: Discuss client needs, schedule, and pricing.
• Service Delivery: Perform the cleaning service based on the agreed plan.
• Quality Control: Conduct follow-up checks to ensure client satisfaction.
• Billing and Payment: Use an invoicing system for easy payment processing.

7) Financial Plan

A) Startup Costs:

• Initial Equipment: $2,000
• Supplies (3 months): $500
• Marketing Materials: $1,000
• Website Development: $1,500
• Legal and Licensing Fees: $500
• Total: $5,500

B) Revenue Projections:

• Year 1: $50,000
• Year 2: $75,000
• Year 3: $100,000

C) Break-Even Analysis:

• Monthly Fixed Costs: $2,000
• Variable Costs per Job: $50
• Average Revenue per Job: $150
• Break-Even Point: 14 jobs per month

D)) Funding Requirements:

Seeking $5,500 in startup funding, which will be used to cover initial costs and establish the business.

• Legal Documents: Business license, insurance, contracts.
• Sample Cleaning Checklist: Detailed checklist for standard and deep cleaning services.
• Client Testimonials: Positive reviews from early clients to build credibility.

This house cleaning business plan template outlines the key steps and strategies for launching and growing [Your Business Name], positioning it as a trusted and reliable cleaning service provider in [City/Region]. With a focus on quality, customer satisfaction, and eco-friendly practices, we aim to build a loyal client base and achieve sustainable growth.

Once you’ve used the cleaning business plan template above to start your company, it’s time to grow it fast. Start by breaking up with bad customers. See our article on how to grow a cleaning business for more tips.

Grow your company with cleaning business software

To grow, you need an efficient system to schedule cleanings, plan your routes so you don’t spend all your time driving from place to place, and create fast quotes and invoices. So — 

Use a cleaning business CRM like GorillaDesk to handle it all for you. GorillaDesk is a full-featured field service software tool to trim your workload, tame your schedule, and handle your invoicing.

GorillaDesk is the highest-rated cleaning company software on top review sites like Capterra for good reason. Our exemplary customer service chats with you in three minutes on average, and our interface is legendary for its ease of use and full-featured power. Call for a free demo today.

★★★★★ “Man am I so glad I went with GorillaDesk. Can’t wait to see what this year holds for our company after seeing what the program did for us last year.” -Tawndra F., Business Owner

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How to Write a Winning Sales Proposal (With Sales Proposal Templates and Examples)

Table of contents

What is a Sales Proposal?

Why do sales proposals matter, example of a sales proposal, key components of a sales proposal, how to create a sales proposal, tips to write a sales proposal, what is a sales proposal template, business sales proposal templates, create winning sales proposals with goodmeetings.

The sales process can be long—from the cold calling to closing the deal, there are many steps in between. 

One key step is presenting all the important details about your products and services. This can take a lot of time for both you and your prospect. So, how do you share this information? 

With a winning sales proposal!

A great sales proposal can be the final push to close the deal. It needs to be clear, concise, and convincing. But creating one can be tricky. 

Data shows that – the average sales proposal win rate is only 43% .

That’s why we have prepared this guide. We’ll show you how to create a winning proposal and even share effective sales proposal templates and examples with you. 

Source: Goodmeetings

A sales proposal is a document that outlines the details of a product or service you are offering to a potential client. It explains how your product or service can solve the client’s problems or meet their needs. 

The proposal usually includes information about the – 

• Terms and conditions

It is designed to persuade the client to choose your product or service over others. A well-written sales proposal helps to build trust and shows that you understand the client’s needs, making it easier to close the deal.

Related: Creating a Winning Sales Deck in 2024: A Step-by-Step Guide

Did you know? 30% of sales managers think that the number of proposals sent is the most important measure of productivity.

Here’s why sales proposals matter:

• Clear communication: They explain your product or service in detail – helping clients understand what you offer.
• Build trust: A well-written proposal shows professionalism and that you understand the client’s needs.
• Competitive edge: They highlight what makes your product or service better than others.
• Saves time: They provide all necessary information at once, saving time for both you and the client.
• Close deals: A strong proposal can convince clients to choose your product or service – leading to more sales.
• Professional image: They present your business in a professional manner – improving your brand image.

To put it simply – a sales proposal helps you to convince your prospect that you offer the best solution and inspire them to take action. 

Related: Sales Pitch 101: How to Create a Perfect Sales Pitch

Here is a simple and short example of a sales proposal to give you a rough idea:

Title Page:

Company Name: XYZ Solutions

Client Name: ABC Corp

Date: July 24, 2024

Introduction:

Hi ABC Corp,

We’re XYZ Solutions, and we’re excited to help you enhance your customer service with our innovative software.

Client’s Needs:

We understand that ABC Corp needs a better way to manage customer inquiries and improve response times.

Proposed Solution:

We offer a customer service software that includes:

• 24/7 Support: Our team is available anytime to assist.
• Easy Integration: Seamlessly connects with your current systems.
• Custom Reports: Track performance with tailored reports.
• Basic Plan: $500/month
• Premium Plan: $800/month

Implementation Plan:

• Setup: Install the software within 1 week.
• Training: Provide training for your team over 2 days.
• Go Live: Start using the software and monitor performance.

Terms and Conditions:

• Payment: Due within 30 days of invoice.
• Cancellation: 30-day notice required.

Call to Action:

Let’s schedule a call to discuss how our solution can meet your needs. Please contact us at (123) 456-xxxx or email us at [email protected] .

This written sales proposal example covers the key parts – making it clear and straightforward for the client.

Related: How to Increase SaaS Sales – The Ultimate Guide

Sales proposals vary based on company size, product type, deal size, and buyer type. However, all proposals include a few key components. 

So, no matter the type of sales proposal – you should include:

• Introduction: Briefly introduce your company and the purpose of the proposal.
• Client’s needs: Explain the client’s problem or need that your product or service will address.
• Proposed solution: Describe your product or service and how it solves the client’s problem.
• Benefits: Highlight the key benefits and advantages of your solution.
• Pricing: Provide clear and detailed pricing information.
• Implementation plan: Outline the steps for delivering the product or service.
• Timeline: Provide a timeline for the project or delivery.
• Case studies or testimonials: Include success stories or testimonials from previous clients.
• Terms and conditions: Include any terms, conditions, or legal details.
• Call to action: Encourage the client to take the next step – such as contacting you or signing the agreement.

You don’t have to necessarily include all these things in your sales proposal. Simply pick a good template and customize it as per your requirements. 

Related: 15 Best Sales Methodologies You Need to Know

Now that we know the basic elements of a sales proposal – let’s learn how to create one. While sales proposals are all about providing information – how you gather and present that information can make a big difference in how your proposal is received. 

Here are the steps you need to follow to create a winning proposal:

• Understand the client’s needs

Research: Start by gathering information about your client’s business, their challenges, and their goals. This helps you tailor your proposal to their specific needs. Did you know? Top sales reps spend 6 hours a week looking into their sales accounts.

Ask questions: If possible, talk to the client directly to understand their pain points and what they are looking for in a solution.

Related: How Does Emotional Intelligence Help in Closing More Deals?

• Create a strong introduction

Introduce yourself: Begin with a brief overview of your company and what you do. Make it clear who you are and why you are the right choice.

State the purpose: Explain the reason for the proposal and what you hope to achieve together with the client.

• Outline the client’s problem or need

Clearly describe the problem or need the client has as you understand it. This shows you are on the same page and highlights why your solution is relevant.

• Present your solution

Detail your offer: Describe your product or service in a clear and simple way. Explain how it addresses the client’s problem or meets their needs.

Show benefits: Highlight the key benefits of your solution, such as how it will save time, reduce costs, or improve efficiency.

• Provide a clear pricing structure

Break down costs: List the costs associated with your solution. Include details like one-time fees, ongoing costs, or any optional extras.

Explain value: Make sure the pricing reflects the value your solution provides, and explain why it is a good investment.

Related: 12 Best Sales Analytics Software To Measure Sales Performance

• Outline the implementation plan

Detail the steps: Provide a step-by-step plan of how you will deliver the solution. Include timelines, milestones, and key deliverables.

Assign responsibilities: Clarify who will be responsible for each part of the project, both on your side and the client’s side.

• Set a timeline

Provide a timeline for when the project will start and finish. Include important dates and deadlines to keep everything on track.

• Include case studies or testimonials

Share success stories: Include examples of similar projects you’ve successfully completed. This builds credibility and shows the client that you can deliver results.

Add testimonials: Include quotes or feedback from previous clients who were satisfied with your work.

• Define terms and conditions

Include any terms, conditions, or legal requirements related to the project. This might cover payment terms, warranties, or cancellation policies.

• Add a call to action

Finish with a clear call to action, such as scheduling a meeting, signing the agreement, or contacting you for more information. Make it easy for the client to take the next step.

• Review and edit

Check for errors: Proofread the proposal to make sure there are no mistakes or unclear sections. A polished, error-free document shows professionalism.

Get feedback: If possible, have someone else review the proposal for clarity and effectiveness.

By following these steps, you’ll create a detailed and effective sales proposal that meets the client’s needs and increases your chances of closing the deal.

Related: How to Be a Good Salesperson: Tips & Strategies for Success

Here are some tips you can follow when writing a sales proposal to make it more effective:

• Use a sales proposal template

Templates help you get started quickly and ensure you include all the necessary parts. They help keep your proposals consistent in style and format, which looks professional.

• Be clear and concise

Use simple language to make your proposal easy to understand. Keep your content focused and avoid unnecessary details.

• Tailor your proposal

Customize the proposal to fit the specific needs and goals of the client. Show how your solution specifically addresses their problems or needs.

Related: What is a Sales Discovery Call? – Questions, Process and Template

• Use visuals

Visual elements like charts and graphs can help illustrate your points and make the proposal more engaging. Use visuals to clarify information, not to overwhelm the reader.

• Focus on benefits, not features

Emphasize how your product or service will benefit the client rather than just listing features. Connect the benefits directly to the client’s specific challenges or goals.

• Include a compelling executive summary

Provide a brief overview of the main benefits and value of your proposal. Make sure this section captures the client’s interest and sets a positive tone.

• Be transparent about costs

Clearly outline all costs involved, including any additional fees or optional extras. Make sure the client understands the value they are getting for the price.

After sending the proposal, follow up with the client to answer any questions and discuss the next steps. Keep communication open to show your continued interest and support.

These tips will help you create a more effective and persuasive sales proposal, increasing your chances of success.

Related: 12 SaaS Sales Metrics You Should Care About in 2024

A sales proposal template is a pre-designed document that helps you create a sales proposal quickly and easily. It includes sections and headings for key information, such as company details, client needs, and pricing. Using a template ensures you include all important parts and maintain a professional look.

Benefits of Using a Sales Proposal Template

Here are a few benefits of using a sales proposal template:

• Saves time: Templates provide a ready-made structure, so you don’t have to start from scratch. This helps you create proposals faster.
• Maintains consistency: Using the same template for all proposals keeps your documents uniform in style and format – giving a professional impression.
• Includes key sections: Templates usually include all the essential sections so you don’t miss any important details like pricing or terms.
• Improves quality: Well-designed templates often include best practices for proposal writing. This helps you produce high-quality documents.
• Easy to customize: Templates can be easily adjusted to fit different clients and needs – making it simple to personalize each proposal.
• Reduces errors: By following a structured template, you’re less likely to overlook critical information or make mistakes in the proposal.

Fun Fact: Around 49% of companies use sales proposal software to create proposals. 

Related: Sales Conversion Rate 101: How To Measure and Improve Yours

Wondering how to write a sales proposal template? Here are two simple templates you can use to get started:

Template 1: Proposal for Product Sale Template

Company Name: [Your Company Name]

Client Name: [Client’s Name]

Date: [Date]

Hello [Client’s Name],

We’re [Your Company Name], and we’re pleased to present our product that can help [briefly state how it helps].

We understand that you’re looking for [describe the need or problem].

Proposed Product:

Our [Product Name] includes:

• Feature 1: [Briefly describe]
• Feature 2: [Briefly describe]
• Feature 3: [Briefly describe]
• Standard Package: $[Price]
• Premium Package: $[Price]

Delivery Plan:

• Order Confirmation: Within 2 days of placing the order.
• Shipping: Delivered within [X] days.
• Support: Ongoing support for [X] months.
• Payment: Due within 30 days.
• Returns: [State return policy]

Contact us at [Your Phone Number] or [Your Email Address] to place your order or ask any questions.

Related: What is Ideal Customer Profile in Sales – Framework to ICP

Template 2: Proposal for Service Sale Template

Hi [Client’s Name],

We’re [Your Company Name], and we’re excited to offer our services to help [briefly state how it helps].

We know you need [describe the need or problem].

Proposed Service:

Our [Service Name] includes:

• Service 1: [Briefly describe]
• Service 2: [Briefly describe]
• Service 3: [Briefly describe]
• Basic Service Package: $[Price]
• Full Service Package: $[Price]
• Initial Meeting: Schedule within 1 week of agreement.
• Service Start: Begin within [X] days.
• Progress Reviews: Monthly check-ins to ensure satisfaction.
• Cancellation: [State cancellation policy]

Reach out to us at [Your Phone Number] or [Your Email Address] to get started or ask any questions.

You can customize and use this sales proposal template free of cost when offering services to clients. 

Template 3: One-Page Sales Proposal Template

Template 4: Detailed Sales Proposal Template

Related: How to Use Generative AI for Sales Success

Creating effective sales proposals involves collecting the right information at the right time. The best way to stay organized is by using a powerful AI-powered sales tools like Goodmeetings .

It helps you to automatically record, transcribe, summarize, and analyze every online sales conversation – thereby eliminating manual note-taking and creating a database of every client call. You can also integrate it with popular CRMs.

This way – you will have all the insights at your fingertips to create a winning sales proposal. You can simply use the search option to pull up specific client conversations and use the data (summary and analysis) to create tailored sales proposals for clients.Plus, Goodmeetings provides valuable insights into your prospects’ needs and pain points – with the help of sentiment and Screenshare analytics. This helps you close every deal at record speed.

Want to see how well your proposals are performing? Goodmeetings analytics will show you what’s working and what needs improvement.Request a free demo of Goodmeetings today and start creating proposals that your prospects will love.

Boost Your Sales Proposal Win Rate With Goodmeetings!

What is a request for proposal (rfp).

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document that a company or organization sends out when it wants to invite vendors or suppliers to submit a proposal for a specific project or service. 

It outlines the project requirements, goals, and evaluation criteria. The RFP helps the organization compare different proposals and choose the best option.

Related: 12 Sales Dashboard – Examples and Templates

Who creates sales proposals?

Sales proposals are typically created by sales representatives, account managers, or business development professionals within a company. 

What happens after you send your proposal?

After sending your proposal, there can be three possible outcomes:

• Accepted: The client agrees with your proposal and wants to move forward with the deal.
• Rejected: The client decides not to proceed with your proposal, and you might receive feedback.
• No Response: The client does not reply, which could mean they are still considering their options or have chosen another path.

What to do after sending a sales proposal?

After sending a sales proposal, follow up with the client to confirm receipt and address any questions they might have. Be prepared to discuss details, negotiate terms, or provide additional information. 

What is the typical sales proposal template word count?

The typical sales proposal template word count varies depending on the complexity of the proposal, but it usually ranges between 500 and 1,500 words. 

How do I use a sales proposal letter example?

To use a “sales proposal letter example,” start by reviewing the sample to understand its structure and content. Customize it with details specific to your product or service and your client’s needs. Adjust the language and pricing as needed to fit your situation.

Wrapping Up

That’s how you create a winning sales proposal.

It involves clear organization, understanding client needs, and presenting solutions effectively. By using the right sales proposal templates and following best practices – you can create proposals that stand out and win clients. To streamline your proposal process and gain valuable sales insights, try Goodmeetings . Request a demo today and boost your sales

Create Sales Proposals Your Prospects with Love

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3 Best Sales CRM Templates to Manage Your Sales Campaigns

• Updated on August 19, 2024

In any industry, sales involve a systematic approach to converting potential customers into loyal clients and maintaining strong relationships with them. The sales process begins with identifying potential leads through market research and targeted advertising (lead generation). Once these leads are identified, the next step is to engage with them to understand their preferences and needs (prospecting).

At this stage, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plays a pivotal role in this process by managing and analysing these leads throughout their lifecycle. CRM systems help track interactions with leads, store valuable data on their preferences and behaviours, and facilitate personalised communication. This enables businesses to nurture leads more effectively, tailor their approach based on insights, and streamline the transition from prospect to customer.

The process continues with presenting relevant offerings and special promotions (pitching), negotiating and securing purchases (deal closure), and providing exceptional customer service and follow-up to ensure satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty (post-sale follow-up).

By integrating CRM into the sales process, businesses can enhance lead management, optimise sales strategies, and build stronger, more profitable relationships. This connection between leads and CRM is crucial for driving revenue growth, improving customer retention, and maintaining a competitive edge in the market. Following the introduction discussing the impact on business, let’s delve deeper and summarise the major importance on the business: 

Importance of Sales and CRM for Businesses

1. Driving Growth : Effective sales strategies and CRM systems enable businesses to identify potential customers, nurture leads, and close deals more efficiently. This leads to increased revenue and business growth.

2. Customer Satisfaction : By using CRM, businesses can provide personalized experiences, address customer needs promptly, and build loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers and refer the business to others.

3. Improving Cash Flow : Timely and efficient sales processes ensure that revenue is generated consistently. CRM systems help in tracking payment cycles, managing invoices, and reducing the time between sales and cash receipts.

4. Enhancing Topline : Effective sales strategies and CRM tools help in maximizing sales opportunities. They provide insights into customer preferences and market trends, enabling businesses to tailor their offerings and marketing efforts. This can lead to increased sales volume and higher topline revenue.

5. Data-Driven Decisions : CRM systems collect and analyze customer data, providing valuable insights into customer behavior, sales performance, and market trends. This information helps businesses make informed decisions, optimize their sales strategies, and allocate resources more effectively.

In summary, robust sales and CRM processes are vital for any business aiming to thrive in today’s competitive market. They not only drive growth and enhance customer satisfaction but also improve financial health by boosting cash flow and topline revenue. To navigate this complex terrain, having the right tools and strategies in place is essential.

Nimble introduces a suite of meticulously crafted templates designed to streamline your sales and CRM workflows. These templates serve as your roadmap to enhancing efficiency, improving communication, and ultimately, boosting your bottom line. Whether you’re managing contacts, ensuring smooth post-sales transitions, or tracking your sales pipeline, Nimble’s templates are here to support you every step of the way.

Let’s check out these templates:

1. Sales Contacts Management Template : Organise and maintain detailed records of your contacts, ensuring you have all the information you need to build strong, personalized relationships.

2. Post-Sales Handoff : Facilitate seamless transitions from sales to customer service, ensuring your customers receive consistent and attentive care.

3. Sales Pipeline : Track and manage your sales process from initial contact to closing the deal, allowing you to identify opportunities and address challenges proactively.

By strategically employing expertly crafted templates, you can significantly elevate your sales and customer relationship management processes. These indispensable tools empower businesses to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

3 Best Sales CRM Templates

1. sales contacts management template.

Dealing with scattered contacts and a confusing sales pipeline has always been a hassle. Nimble addresses these challenges with its meticulously designed template. It offers a comprehensive solution, providing clear visibility, streamlined contact management, and data integrity throughout the sales cycle. Let us explore the features in detail.

☑ Centralized Contacts : Maintain an organized and secure database of all your sales contacts – leads, customers, and partners. Ensure every team member has access to the information they need to build strong relationships and close deals effectively.

☑ Data Security : You can be assured that your valuable customer data is safeguarded by top-tier security measures. Nimble is compliant with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, and GDPR standards, providing you with peace of mind regarding data protection.

☑ Insightful Dashboard : Access real-time insights into your entire sales pipeline with an easy-to-use dashboard . Visualise upcoming interactions, identify potential roadblocks and ensure you never miss a critical sales opportunity – all under your complete control.

These features empower your team to build stronger relationships, close deals effectively, and maintain a high level of operational control.

2. Post Sales Handoff Template

Once sales agreements are signed, if you encounter challenges with managing customer transitions, consider using Nimble’s template. This template ensures smooth handovers from Sales to Customer Success, facilitates easy onboarding and enhances customer satisfaction. It guarantees a seamless experience for every customer from the outset and maintains their satisfaction throughout their journey through the below-listed features.

☑ Smooth Handover : Create an easy transition from Sales to Customer Success. Our platform helps with clear communication , assigns the right people, and ensures a smooth onboarding for every customer.

☑ Onboarding Insights : Get valuable information about the onboarding process. Track important metrics like customer satisfaction and costs, so you can find areas to improve and make the customer journey better.

☑ Flexible Platform : Adapt the platform to fit your needs. Customize the handover process to match your workflow and ensure everyone knows their role for a successful transition.

Try the template today and enjoy smooth transitions, happy customers, and a clear path to long-term success.

3. Sales Pipeline Template

Efficiently manage your sales process with our Sales Pipeline Template. Track opportunities as they move through each stage of the pipeline, visualize progress, and keep a close eye on your sales funnel and overall pipeline value to ensure you’re on the path to hitting your targets.

• Clear Pipeline View : See your entire sales pipeline clearly. Track every opportunity, watch their progress, and spot potential problems early.
• Team Collaboration : Promote transparency and teamwork in your sales team. The visual pipeline helps everyone stay informed, track progress , and work together to close deals faster.
• Data-Driven Insights : Use the built-in dashboard to monitor important metrics like pipeline value and sales cycle time. Get valuable insights and make decisions based on data to improve your sales strategy.
• Increased Accountability : The Sales Navigator assigns clear ownership for each pipeline stage, ensuring no opportunity is missed and everyone stays accountable.

Avoid the challenges of handovers and create a seamless customer experience. Focus on smooth transitions and long-term success.

Integrating these templates into your operations will significantly enhance organization, streamline communication, and boost overall efficiency. They are designed to optimize contact management, streamline post-sales activities, and provide a comprehensive overview of your sales pipeline.

These templates empower your team to effectively nurture leads, convert prospects, and cultivate lasting customer relationships. They go beyond task management, unlocking your team’s potential to achieve higher performance and drive sustainable business growth.

Leverage these templates now to witness a transformation in your sales and CRM processes, empowering your team to excel and elevate your business to new heights. Sign up for a  Free trial of Nimble and experience these read-to-use templates firsthand.

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