how to create a business plan for a sales rep

Business Plan Template for Sales Rep

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Creating a successful sales strategy can be a daunting task for any sales representative. That's why ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Sales Rep is here to simplify the process and help you achieve your sales goals effortlessly.

With our template, you'll be able to:

• Outline your sales strategies and objectives with clarity and precision
• Identify your target markets and analyze your competition effectively
• Develop accurate sales forecasts and track your key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Communicate your sales approach confidently to management and stakeholders

Don't let the complexity of sales planning hold you back. Get started with ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Sales Rep today and take your sales game to the next level!

Business Plan Template for Sales Rep Benefits

A Business Plan Template for Sales Rep can provide numerous benefits to sales teams and representatives, including:

• Streamlining the sales planning process by providing a structured framework to follow
• Setting clear sales objectives and defining strategies to achieve them
• Conducting a comprehensive analysis of target markets and competitors to identify opportunities and challenges
• Creating realistic sales forecasts and tracking progress against sales targets
• Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of sales efforts
• Facilitating effective communication of the sales approach to management and stakeholders
• Enabling sales reps to align their individual goals with the overall sales strategy
• Ensuring consistency and standardization in sales planning across the team
• Providing a reference document for ongoing evaluation and adjustment of sales strategies

Main Elements of Sales Rep Business Plan Template

To help sales reps stay organized and focused, ClickUp offers a comprehensive Business Plan Template specifically designed for sales teams, featuring:

• Custom Statuses: Easily track the progress of your business plan with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do, ensuring clear visibility of each task's status.
• Custom Fields: Utilize custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add specific details and categorize your business plan, allowing for easy organization and filtering.
• Multiple Views: Choose from five different views to gain unique insights into your business plan, including Topics, which allows you to break down your plan by different topics, Status, which provides a clear overview of task statuses, Timeline, which visualizes your plan on a timeline, Business Plan, which provides a comprehensive view of your plan in a list format, and a Getting Started Guide to help you quickly get up and running with your business plan.

With ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Sales Reps, you can effectively plan, track, and communicate your sales strategies, ensuring alignment and success for your team.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Sales Rep

Creating a business plan for sales reps can help guide their efforts and set them up for success. Here are four steps to effectively use the Business Plan Template for Sales Reps in ClickUp:

1. Define your sales goals

Start by clearly defining your sales goals. Determine what you want to achieve, whether it's increasing revenue, acquiring new clients, or launching a new product. Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals will help you stay focused and motivated.

Use the Goals feature in ClickUp to create and track your sales goals. Set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress and success.

2. Identify your target market

Next, identify your target market. Determine who your ideal customers are based on demographics, psychographics, and buying behaviors. Understanding your target market will help you tailor your sales strategies and approaches to effectively reach and engage potential customers.

Use the Board view in ClickUp to create lists and cards for different customer segments. Add relevant information and notes to each card to guide your sales efforts.

3. Develop your sales strategies and tactics

Once you know your goals and target market, it's time to develop your sales strategies and tactics. Outline the steps you will take to reach your sales goals, such as prospecting, lead generation, networking, cold calling, email marketing, or attending industry events.

Use the task feature in ClickUp to create a checklist of sales strategies and tactics. Assign tasks to team members and set due dates to ensure accountability and progress.

4. Track your progress and make adjustments

Track your sales activities and results regularly to measure your progress and identify areas for improvement. Monitor key metrics such as conversion rates, average deal size, and sales pipeline velocity. Analyze the data to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.

Use the Dashboards feature in ClickUp to create visual reports and charts that display your sales performance metrics. Customize your dashboard to show the most relevant data for your business.

By following these steps and utilizing the Business Plan Template for Sales Reps in ClickUp, you can create a comprehensive and actionable plan to drive your sales success.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Sales Rep

Sales reps can use this Business Plan Template to create a comprehensive sales strategy and track their progress towards their sales goals.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a winning sales plan:

• Use the Topics View to outline the different sections of your business plan, such as objectives, target markets, competitive analysis, and sales forecasts
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section, with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do
• The Timeline View allows you to set deadlines and visualize the timeline of your sales plan
• Use the Business Plan View to get a holistic view of your entire sales strategy and easily navigate between different sections
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to use the template effectively
• Customize the template by adding custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to provide additional context and organization to your business plan
• Monitor and analyze your progress using the different views to ensure you're on track to meet your sales goals.
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How to Write a Sales Plan

This guide explains the purpose of a sales plan, what it contains and how to write one that works for your business. It also includes a free template for your own sales plan.

Table of Contents

Every business needs a business plan as well as more detailed road maps that offer guidance to each department working toward that common goal. As the revenue-generating engine of your company, the sales department should be a top priority for this type of document, aptly named the “sales plan.” This guide introduces the concept of a sales plan and gives you all the guidance you need to create a sales plan that works for your business.

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan details the overall sales strategy of a business, including the revenue objectives of the company and how the sales department will meet those goals. This may also include revenue goals, the target audience and tools the team will use in their day-to-day. In addition, the sales plan should include examples of the hurdles and pain points the team might encounter, as well as contingency plans to overcome them.

“[A sales plan] is essential to support the growth of an organization,” said Bill Santos, vice president of the ITsavvy Advanced Solutions Group. “A sales plan helps individual reps understand the priorities of the business as well as the measurements by which they will be evaluated.”

Business plans vs. sales plans

Business plans and sales plans are closely linked. A sales plan, though, should outline the actions that the sales department will take to achieve the company’s broader goals. A sales plan differs from a business plan, though both work toward the same end.

“A business plan is a ‘what’ [and] a sales plan is a ‘how,'” said James R. Bailey , professor of management and Hochberg Professional Fellow of Leadership Development at the George Washington University School of Business. “Business plans are where a firm wants to go. A sales plan is a part of how they can achieve that. A business plan is direction; a sales plan is execution.”

For example, a software company that developed a new mobile application might state in its business plan that the app will be installed by 1 million users within a year of launch, while the sales plan describes how that will actually be achieved.

How to write a sales plan

Every sales plan should suit the individual needs of a different company, so they come in all shapes and sizes. There is no one-size-fits-all sales plan; the one you create will be unique to your business. With careful planning, you’ll have a much clearer vision of what you need to accomplish and a road map for how to get there. 

Chris Gibbs, vice president of global sales at Centripetal Networks, named some additional items that every sales plan should include.

• Targeted accounts: Assign each salesperson a few key accounts to focus on, and grow from that base.
• Targeted verticals: Sales teams might focus on specific market segments or verticals, such as a particular industry.
• SKUs: Salespeople should emphasize certain SKUs or inventory items rather than get lost in a broad catalog of merchandise to sell.
• Sales and marketing coordination: Sales and marketing teams should work together to create promotions to help generate sales.
• Product road maps: Every company has a road map, and each product should have a road map that shows the plan and direction for a product offering over time to chart out when a product will launch and when it might sunset or be replaced by a newer model.
• Forecasts: Sales forecasting is projecting sales volumes and expectations by comparing them historically to sales of previous years, and then conducting market comparison to determine where sales will fall against the competition.

“Sales plans are extremely important to ensure there is cohesiveness between product teams, sales and marketing,” Gibbs said. “In addition, they’re important for ensuring that timing of new products and/or new version releases coincide with sales objectives and forecasts.”

What are the steps to create a sales plan?

A sales plan is necessary for businesses of every size, from an individual entrepreneur to a Fortune 500 company. When you’re ready to actually write your sales plan, follow these steps:

1. Define the objectives. 

Clearly outlining your goals and stating your objectives should always be the first step in creating a sales plan or any other business venture. You should include the expected sales volume and any markets or territories you expect to reach. 

For example, let’s say you own a retail store selling household goods and electronics. If your purpose is to establish yourself as a trusted local retailer, ask yourself the following questions:

• If so, are they purchasing anything or just browsing?
• Was it word of mouth?
• Was it through marketing efforts, such as email marketing, direct mail or social media?
• How many are new customers?
• How many are repeat customers?
• Where do you want your sales to come from? 
• What are some external and internal factors that could impact your sales? These include industry trends and economic conditions.

When you can precisely state your key objectives, you are setting yourself up to plan later steps around achieving your goals.

2. Assess the current situation.

The next step is to create an honest overview of your business situation in relation to the goal you set in the first step. 

Review your strengths and assets. Take a look at your resources and how you can apply them to your goal. This can include personal relationships and competitive advantages like new products or services.

For example, if your goal is to enhance your relationship with your customers, you’d need to ask yourself some questions to examine your current situation:

• What is your current relationship with your customers?
• Where did most of your sales come from?
• Where would you like to expand your sales?

3. Determine and outline the sales strategies. 

Sales strategies are the actual tactics your team will use to reach customers. They can include marketing channels as well as procedures for lead generation and client outreach employed by your salespeople.

Here are two examples of potential sales strategies: 

• Use your POS system to retain customer information so you can track current and new customers.
• Employ email marketing, text message marketing , social media, outbound call center services and direct mail marketing campaigns.

4. Define roles for the sales team. 

Each member of the sales team should be assigned clear roles, whether they vary from person to person or everyone performs the same functions.

Defining the sales direction of the team is crucial, as it shows the focus of the company and helps the team target and execute sales most effectively.

The plan of attack for the sales team should be communicated clearly by leadership, whether it is from team leaders or the CEO.  

5. Inform other departments of sales objectives.

A sales plan shouldn’t just update a company president or C-suite; it should inform the whole organization of the sales team’s objectives. 

Clearly outline your plan for the rest of the company to help them understand the goals and procedures of the sales team. Other departments become more efficient when interacting with the sales team and clients. This also conveys a certain level of quality and professionalism to the clients about the company.

6. Provide tools for the sales team.

Provide the tools each member of the sales team needs to achieve the stated goals, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software. The best CRM software is customizable to meet a company’s needs, making it much easier for your team to use the software and work efficiently.

7. Detail how the department will track progress. 

Offer strategic direction and insight on how progress will be monitored. Having a quarterly review to assess whether the company is on target is just as important as the plan itself.

Markets change, and so should your sales plan. Keeping it up to date will help you capitalize on the market and achieve your goals. Tracking progress is made easier by the tools you use to collect data. That data will then have to be analyzed and presented in a way which all departments can understand and use for future growth. 

Key elements of a sales plan

Every sales plan should also include the following elements.

Realistic goals

You need to set achievable goals . Challenge your sales team, but don’t push too hard. Bailey said that these “deliverables” are among the key points to include in a sales business plan. 

“Deliverables need to be as specific as possible and moderately difficult to achieve – specific inasmuch as being measurable in a manner that is uncontested [and] moderately difficult inasmuch as making sales goals too difficult can lead to failure and discouragement.”

Midpoint goals also help build morale and keep the team working toward a larger goal. Instead of having one giant goal, creating smaller goals to achieve along the way will keep your team focused.

Sales tools

Tracking sales throughout the term is helpful, and you can employ tools to keep track of each team member as well as the department overall. It also helps establish a culture of accountability among salespeople.

“Tools can help, especially project management and CRM software,” Santos said. “Having a weekly cadence of update and review is also important, as it sends a message that ownership and updates are important.”

Clear expectations and a defined commission structure

Assign goals and responsibilities to each team member to make expectations clear. This is true whether or not each team member has the same goals.

“We meet with each individual to come up with a plan that works for them so that they can reach their goals,” said Leah Adams, director of client success at Point3 Security. “We measure results based on numbers. Each team member has his own plan and how they’re going to get there.”

It’s also necessary to spell out the commission structure in full detail.

“The only real difference is how sales count,” Bailey said. “In petroleum-based products … a few big clients are necessary. Compensation needs to be structured not just in contract value, but in graduated terms: Above $1 million, commissions move from 5% to 9%, and so forth. In smaller-volume enterprises, commissions might be front-loaded with higher percentages early, then graduated down. You have to reward what you want.”

Training programs

Along the way, some training might be necessary to maintain the momentum.

“What’s important to us is that we’re teaching these individuals to be the best salesperson they can be,” Adams said. “We help them do that by constantly training them and giving them knowledge of what’s going on in our industry. Everything stays on track because each member of the team knows their individual goal; though each person has a number, they also know the ultimate goal is for the entire team to hit.”

Adams said that an effective CRM keeps things organized and helps delegate tasks and responsibilities on a schedule that uses the company’s lead information.

Key steps to follow when devising a sales plan

Here are some best practices for creating a sales plan:

• Refer to the business plan. The sales plan should directly address the objectives of the business plan and how those objectives can be achieved.
• Advance clear objectives. The clearer the objectives are, the easier it will be to reach your goals.
• Reference prior sales data. Chart sales over the previous few terms, and project the trend for the current term. New businesses can create sales projections based on expectations.
• Outline the commission structure. This will help motivate your team and help you calculate anticipated costs.
• Be clear about how progress is measured. There should be no dispute about this. If larger clients carry more weight than lower-volume buyers, that should be stated upfront.

The benefits of a sales plan

A sales plan keeps the sales department on track, considering the details of how they must operate to hit their targets and achieve company objectives. Because the sales team is the primary driver of revenue, it is an incredibly important document. [Related article: Adopting a CRM? How to Get Buy-in From Your Sales Department ]

“It’s extremely important to have a sales plan in place, almost a must,” Adams said. “Without this plan, it’s almost impossible to get through the year and hit the company’s sales goals.”

It’s not uncommon to encounter obstacles along the way, however. A good sales plan accounts for that.

“Almost always, you’ll run into the speed bumps along the way, but with a plan in place, it makes it a whole lot easier to navigate through it all,” Adams said. “The sales plan allows you to adjust when necessary so the goal can still be hit. I strongly believe a plan allows you to stay in control and reduce the risk while being able to measure the team’s results along the way to that finish line.”

Sales plan templates

Sales templates are helpful in that many of them are based on tried-and-true formats that have been used by businesses across several industries. They can also provide structure so that it is clear to each employee what their role and responsibilities are. 

“A template helps plan each individual’s daily activities in a structured way,” Adams said. “If you know what each person is doing daily, it’s easier to help correct what’s going wrong. It helps with things like conversion rates, etc. Yes, these templates can be customized in any way a team’s manager sees fit, based on how he believes the team will perform better.”

Sales plans should be unique to the company; however, there are key components they should always include. Because there is somewhat of a formula, you can use a template.

Templates are extremely helpful, Gibbs said. “It creates uniformity for the team, as well as a yearly or quarterly sales plan to present to senior management.”

Gibbs added that templates can easily be customized to meet the needs of a particular business or sales team.

Keeping your team on track with a sales plan

Planning is vital for any business, especially when dealing with sales targets. Before selling your product or service, you must outline your goals and ways to execute them. Essentially, a sales plan enables you to mitigate problems and risks. When there is a clear plan of action, you will know how to proceed in order to attain your goals. 

Enid Burns contributed to the writing and reporting in this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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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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About the Author

Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com

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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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.

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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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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.

GET THE SALES SUCCESS KIT →

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Best Practices for 30-60-90 day sales plan

A new sales rep needs time to adjust to a new role, company or industry. Factoring in this period of change is crucial for a seamless transition. A 30-60-90-day sales plan provides structure and guidance when building a sales team .

In this article, we’ll define a 30-60-90-day sales plan and identify why it’s important. We’ll then discuss the benefits and when and how to use the sales plan. We’ll finish with examples and cover post-plan steps.

What is a 30-60-90 day sales plan and why is it important?

A 30-60-90 day sales plan is a three-month strategy designed to onboard new sales team members or sales managers. You can also use it to help guide reps in expanding to new territories or implementing new tools or processes.

The distinguishing feature of the 30-60-90 day plan for sales lies in the name. Each 30-day chunk represents a new area of focus:

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Days 1–30, Learning. Reserve the first month for learning. New hires should learn about the company’s products and services, sales process , geographical area and demographics. This builds a comprehensive picture of the company and the industry.

Days 31–60, Implementing. Design the second month around implementation. Integrate learning as you start tracking sales and performance.

Days 61–90, Improving. Focus the third month on analyzing the actions and outcomes of the previous 30 days. Identify strengths and weaknesses and set goals and plans for improvement.

Why focus is essential in sales and 5 steps to achieve it

Benefits of a 30-60-90 day sales plan

Whether using a 30-60-90 day sales plan to bring on a new hire or to make a great interview impression, an in-depth plan has a range of benefits.

Reduces the pressure of onboarding . A three-month plan clarifies expectations for a new employee. It helps them hit the ground running to ramp up productivity. It also lets them know where to focus their time and energy, minimizing the risk of burnout.

Offers clear goals for sales managers to monitor. When you set goals with measurable outcomes, you help sales leadership track progress. The goals provide a baseline for measuring success and help managers ensure the sales rep’s work aligns with company objectives.

Improves time management. Whether you’re a new manager, embarking on a new sales job or entering new sales territory , getting up to speed quickly can be a challenge. A 30-60-90 day sales plan encourages realistic time management.

Builds trust in a new work environment. A plan encourages conversations with managers and coworkers. It helps create a collaborative environment, building connections and, more importantly, trust in the work environment.

Develops a framework for continuous improvement. A 30-60-90 day sales plan template is a foundation for fast improvement. It also offers a framework for ongoing growth. Leaders can use the sections on implementing and improving as a template for development efforts going forward.

Makes a lasting impression (in the interview process ). Creating a 30-60-90 day sales plan for an interview shows initiative. It can help job seekers stand out in a sea of candidates.

Sales Motivation: 18 Tips to Keep Your Salespeople Happy

When to use a 30-60-90 day sales plan

A 30-60-90 day plan is most effective during career transition periods. The “learning, implementing and analyzing” structure is perfect for onboarding. It’s also helpful for continual improvement. Some of the most popular times to use 30-60-90 sales plans include:

Interviewing for a new sales position. Presenting an action plan shows hiring managers a candidate has done their research. It can also provide a great structure for onboarding if they get the job.

In the first week of a new job . A sales manager may provide a 30-60-90 day sales plan within the first week of a new hire’s start date. If a sales plan isn’t part of the standard company onboarding process, new employees may find it beneficial to draft their own.

As a new sales manager . A sales plan can help newly promoted leaders get up to speed so they know how to help their team accomplish company objectives. It can develop great sales managers by helping them make changes and implement feedback without disrupting processes that work.

When improving sales skills. If you’re looking to secure a promotion or boost company sales, a 30-60-90 day plan can help. It lets you create actionable steps with measurable outcomes to improve sales skills .

During times of change. Whether it’s starting in a new territory or switching to new processes or technology, a 30-60-90 day sales plan can help sales reps get up to speed quickly.

How to create a 30-60-90 day sales plan

A 30-60-90 day sales plan should be simple, concise and easy to follow.

It can be much easier to visualize a personal plan by using a template for reference. If you have a connection with a mentor or trusted peer, ask if they are willing to share their 30-60-90 day plan for sales.

What to include in a 30-60-90 day sales plan

While every sales plan will be different depending on intent, there are some basic elements common to all plans.

A focus for each time frame. As mentioned above, each month of the plan serves a different purpose. It may vary from plan to plan, but generally, the focus for each will be along the following lines.

Days 1–30: Learning, where the user spends time getting up to speed with the company and their role in it

Days 31–60: Implementing, where the user begins setting and working toward goals

Days 60–90: Improving, where the user and their manager evaluate performance and make changes

Company values and objectives. The plan should share the company mission and overall sales objectives . This will help the rep or manager align their efforts and keep the company on track.

Clear and measurable goals . Each phase of the plan should outline specific goals. These include learning goals, performance goals and personal goals. They should also be SMART goals – each should be specific, have a timeline to follow and include a way to measure progress and success.

Metrics. You need to know how you’ll determine the success of each phase. Your plan should break goals into activities with set metrics. For example, the goal “Learn about the company’s services” is vital but hard to measure. You can make it easier by breaking it down into achievable chunks with a clear metric:

Study company services for 30 minutes daily

Read a minimum of 30 customer reviews each week

Chat with a minimum of 1 colleague about company services daily

Metric: Able to discuss services on a customer call for 10 minutes without referring to company material

All these elements will help ensure your plan is useful and covers the basics. You can see a sample of specifics you might include in the sales 30-60-90 day plan examples below.

How long should a 30-60-90 day sales plan be?

The length of a 30-60-90 day sales plan depends on the purpose of the plan.

In an interview scenario, for example, a shorter sales plan is a wise choice. It’s meant just as an overview of the candidate’s approach. It won’t go into the same detail as an action plan produced by the company.

Similarly, an internal employee who’s been promoted to a sales manager role might not need as much detail as an external hire. A longer, in-depth plan that tackles goals on a weekly/daily basis may be beneficial for a new role.

The sales plan should only be as long as it needs to be to cover all the elements listed above. If the plan meets the user’s needs, it is successful.

Sales 30-60-90 day plan examples

A 30-60-90 day plan template can make building a sales plan much easier. Here are examples of plans for new sales reps/job candidates and sales managers.

30-60-90 day plan: New sales reps/job candidate example

A 30-60-90 day sales plan created for a job interview contains much of the same DNA as a plan for a new hire.

Though plans created for the interview process may be shorter and less detailed, both share the same information. We’ve combined the two below to create a comprehensive plan for new hires.

Phase 1 (Days 1–30)

Complete all company sales training and onboarding tasks

Learn the company’s mission values and goals

Learn the names and roles of people within the team/company

Familiarize yourself with all company products/services

Research company target markets

Generate ideal customer profiles

Become familiar with the company’s competition/rivals

Phase 2 (Days 31–60)

Shadow a different member of the sales team each week

Mock selling calls with colleagues and managers

Communicate with leads to gain sales experience

Record all sales activities

Set sales goals

Create a customer list and begin optimizing

Phase 3 (Days 61–90)

Review your sales record and identify both strong and weak areas

Create sales goals for the upcoming month

Repeat and optimize strong sales areas

Trial new techniques and strategies for weak sales areas

Create a daily structure to maximize productivity

Set up meetings/calls with regional managers to discuss progress

30-60-90 day plan: Manager example

Although the plan follows a similar format, a 30-60-90 day plan for a manager is different from a new sales rep plan. It focuses more on building the team and understanding/improving processes. The goal is to improve at managing a sales team .

View each phase of the plan in detail below.

Complete all company training and onboarding tasks

Get to know each of your direct reports

Create connections within the company

Observe current workflows and document inefficiencies

Identify any sales management tools you may need (e.g., a CRM)

Familiarize yourself with team structure and individual strengths/weaknesses

Research your company’s competitors

Request company/managerial feedback from employees

Make one minor feedback-focused change

Request feedback from initial minor change

Identify gaps in the team (skillset, software, etc.)

Build data-driven reports for sales data

Create report-based sales goals for the month ahead

Make a minimum of one feedback-focused change

Request feedback on further changes

Set up meetings/calls with sales team members to discuss progress

Using the customer journey to achieve sales success

Best practices: Use software to create and track a 30-60-90 day plan

Building a sales plan takes time. The right tools can make planning and tracking goals much more efficient.

A solution like customer relationship management (CRM) software has a range of sales reporting and analytics tools that can help you determine goals and measure success, all under the same digital roof.

Here are some of the features to look for and how they can help:

Dashboards . Visual data representation can show you where performance is on track and where there may be room for improvement. Customize and share dashboards with others in the company to keep sales leadership and team members in the loop.

Customizable activities and goals . A CRM allows you to create goals based on deals or activities. Tracking these activities helps you know your reps have everything they need to do their jobs.

A good CRM will let you set goals and watch your team’s performance. You’ll see when a new hire is succeeding or is falling short of the mark. This will enable you to step in and make adjustments, like offering tailored training or extra coaching.

Sales forecasting . Forecasting can also help you set useful milestones. Users can create a clear sales forecast, view projected revenues and put numbers to the goals. Knowing what to expect can help you understand which deals and activities your reps should focus on to reach your sales targets .

Reports and insights . A CRM solution will generate reports that help you set and measure goals. Customize the metrics to measure a new hire’s progress on targeted KPIs.

For instance, generate reports that tell you which accounts bring in the most revenue. Get a clear understanding of progress by viewing reports on individual and team performance. See how many opportunities reps win or lose and understand why.

What next? How to follow up on a 30-60-90 day plan

The rigid structure of a 30-60-90 day plan provides a safety net for those in a transition period. It can also support ongoing growth as you continue the process beyond day 90.

You can repeat the two later phases of the plan (days 31 to 90) to put new goals into practice and evaluate as necessary.

Managers or new hires can modify the model to keep implementing and improving in 30-day cycles.

Final thoughts

From the interview process to the third month on the job. The 30-60-90 day sales plan is one of the most valuable tools for salespeople .

Whether you’re new to the industry, changing companies or refocusing a territory, a clever sales plan can make for a painless transition. Use software to keep track of your goals with data-driven visuals and make smart decisions faster with trackable metrics.

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6 Steps to Create a Successful Sales Business Plan

Step 1: Take Measure of the Sales Target

Before your rep can begin creating an effective business plan, they need to be comfortable with the  sales target  you’ve set for them.

As a sales manager, you should examine each reps’ performance data for the past six to twelve months, and identify key numbers including gross sales, profits, win/loss ratio, deal size, and other KPIs that are important for your organization.

If available, include weekly, daily, and monthly activity numbers such as calls, meetings, and emails.

Based on this data, your company’s overall sales projections, and your corporate strategy, determine the sales target for each of your reps. Then, meet individually with each salesperson to review their previous performance data, and present them with their new sales quotas.

This will help your reps see where they need to be, in relation to where they were in the past.

Step 2: Break the Numbers Down

As the sales manager, coach your reps to break their targets into “chunks” that they can organize and attack more effectively.

For example, a $5,150,000 sales target broken down might look like this:

$3,500,000 Existing Maintenance Accounts

$500,000 New Product or Service Sales from Existing Accounts

$300,000 New Accounts with Existing Opportunities

$250,000 Brand New Accounts from Marketing Leads

$500,000 New Opportunities from Dormant Accounts

$100,000 Brand New Accounts from Prospecting

Looking at the target this way makes it more manageable, and easier to develop a detailed plan around.

Step 3: Identify Obstacles

Salespeople who understand the obstacles they are likely to face can be prepared to overcome them. As part of the planning process, have your reps brainstorm what might get in the way of achieving their goals, as well as tactics for overcoming those obstacles.

Obstacles might be external, such as a disruption in your industry or a contact within an account leaving. They can also be internal, such as failure to align your company’s marketing strategy with your sales strategy, resulting in poor quality leads.

Identifying and addressing obstacles early on gives your team a greater chance for success.

Step 4: Establish an Action Plan

Once your sales reps understand what numbers need to be met and where the opportunities and obstacles lie, they can work to identify an action plan.

Have your reps identify specific strategies or projects they can execute to move them towards their goals. Then, be sure they list out the high-gain activities involved in the strategy that they can execute on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to get them where they need to be.

For example:

• Your rep may have the  GOAL  to increase sales of a specific product with current customers by nurturing relationships.
• One  STRATEGY  to achieve that goal could be to join the professional networking groups those clients are members of, and attend upcoming conferences.
• They can then list out the  ACTIVITIES  they’ll need to complete in order to execute the strategy. For instance, requesting approval to join the professional networking group, sending notes to their clients who are members telling them they look forward to seeing them at the next conference, etc.

This top-down approach will help keep your sales reps organized and manage their time better on a day-to-day basis. It will also give them a clear path to reaching their sales goals.

Step 5: Collaborate with Marketing

Sales and marketing  alignment  is key, and can really give your organization a competitive advantage.

Suggest that each of your salespeople meet with the marketing team to discuss their one-page business plan.

When the marketing department understands your team’s sales strategy, they can create a marketing plan to support the sales team and drive quality leads.

Step 6: Execute the Sales Business Plan

The final and most important step of the business plan is execution. Urge your salespeople to keep their sales action plan where they can see it each day, and have them schedule the activities they committed to on their personal calendars.

By prioritizing and carving out the necessary time, your sales team will have no excuses when it comes to execution –and they’ll be well on their way to success.

The exercise of creating a business plan helps your sales team manage their daily activities in a way that moves them towards achieving their long-term goals.

Alan Lakein, says “ Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

The summer season is a great time to give your sales reps the skills needed to build their own sales plans, and overcome any other challenges they’re up against.

The Brooks Group can help your team stay efficient and upgrade their sales performance this summer with targeted skills training customized to your unique needs.

In a world where time is a precious commodity, you can’t afford to let these summer months go to waste. Learn more  here .

Have a question? Submit it to The Brooks Group Help Desk and an expert will get back to you within 24 hours.  [email protected]

Watch the video below to learn more about Sales Territory Planning

Written By Michelle Richardson

Michelle Richardson

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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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Sales Representative Business Plan [Sample Template]

By: Author Tony Martins Ajaero

Home » Business Plans » Advertising & Marketing

Are you about starting a sales representative company? If YES, here is a complete sample sales representative business plan template & feasibility report you can use for FREE .

A sales rep is a sales professional who work independently, outside of and separate from any associated business offices. A Sales rep often sells a number of product lines, from a number of different businesses.

Starting this business is not an easy task, but to start; you need to become self-employed, which will give you the chance to every aspect of both sales and business operations, which may involve marketing, customer service, order processing and accounting.

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A Sample Sales Representative Business Plan Template

1. industry overview.

Sales Representative is also known as Manufacturers Representatives or plain Rep. A successful sales representative represents eight to 10 complementary products that are not direct threats or competitors.

It is now becoming an obligation for manufacturers both inside and outside the united states to make use of outside sales forces in place of employing in-house sales personnel, because using a rep workforce can be or rather is more efficient and better cost-effective way to sell products.

Notwithstanding that the demand in this industry is always on the high aspect, getting into this industry is not a child’s play. It is well noted in the industry that it will take you nothing less than one to two years to build a stock of enough products to represent that will make you a good living.

The cost of starting this business is not as high as one may expect, but you should note that having an equipped home office and a good vehicle are all that you need to start. But like many salespeople, the potential earnings are good.

Sales reps of our modern age are doing more than selling than the ones of the past years, which is why experience is very paramount. Some reps also train Agency workforce in the use of the products they sell, offsetting a cost their customers would otherwise carry.

Some reps who sell to wholesalers make joint sales calls with the wholesaler’s in-house sales personnel, training them to sell the rep’s products.

Also many sales reps sell industrial products to manufacturers and end users such as processing plants, HMOs and government agencies. Getting products to market can be done by working trade shows for your industry where both manufacturers and customers can be found.

2. Executive Summary

The name of our business is Lego Sales Consult. We at Lego Sales Consultant, hope to provide representative services to targeted business environments in Atlanta, Georgia.

We believe that writing down our business plan will help us organise our business and also seek to generate a significant increase in Agency sales and profits from the delivery of product marketing, product advertising, retainer consulting, project consulting, market research and industrial analysis, feasibility studies, and strategic analysis and reporting services.

We believe that we have the potential to become the lead figure in the industry, and there is also a probability that our target customer will completely reject the Advertising and marketing but we understand that it is part of the industry and only consistency can make us successful.

With our adequate research and understanding of the industry, we have created effective strategies that will ensure that our agency will reach the greatest number of potential customers and serve our clients properly. We will also design, build, test and deploy the methods we deem for or necessary in other to market the products of our clients.

We also hope to keep our clients in the known by reporting the progress of the campaign in real-time to provide our customers maximum flexibility. We will also take note of all necessary actions and corrections after every exercise in order to grow our business.

Our business plan has been created on the basis of three years of market research. All the data concludes the size and growth of the market and geographical segments, customer needs, perception, and buying behaviour trends have been on the upswing, and are expected to continue in this trend for the next three years.

We at Lego Sales Consultant’s believe that we are well prepared to fill the vacuum in the marketing niche, and will be the very best in the industry.

We at Lego Sales Consultants hope to specialize in successful sales and marketing campaigns.  The owners of Lego Sales Consultants, Nathaniel Clayton and Ephraim Joseph have over 12 years of experience as sales agent between them.

Nathaniel Clayton use to be a senior sales consultant at Promerit Advertising agency. Ephraim Joseph was a sales and marketing director for Liberty Business LLC. Both have been friends for a very long time and they share the same vision and goals.

3. Our Products and Services

We at Lego Sales Consultant’s plan to offer expertise in the services we plan to provide to the businesses in Atlanta, Georgia.

We believe that with the much experience we have in this field. Lego Sales Consultants will be able to sell and package its services in various ways that will give our prospective clients the opportunity to decide the sort of services they want from us. These include:

• Product Marketing
• Product distribution
• Agency advertising
• Retainer Consulting
• Project Consulting
• Market Research and Industry Sectors Analysis
• Feasibility Studies
• Strategic Analysis and Reports

4. Our Mission and Vision Statement

• Our vision at Lego Sales Consultants is to become the leading agency in the sales representative market and also in all Atlanta, Georgia within the first three year of operation.
• Our mission at Lego Sales Consultants is to offer our clients the best methods and tools in organising and implementing a successful sales and marketing campaign. We believe that our business will cut through the mumbo jumbo of pure awareness, mass marketing, increase sales, and improve client satisfaction with the agency.
• We believe that our agency will grab clients and products immediately and drive home the right message to the right audience.  Lego Sales Consultants will exceed our customers’ expectations in the industry.

Our Business Structure

We believe that our founding workforce will depend solely on our founders themselves, with little back-up from a team of six, but as the business grows, Lego Sales Consultants will employ a team that includes15workers that will work under a president and two vice-presidents.

Our management philosophy at Lego Sales Consultants will be solely based on responsibility and mutual respect. We believe that individuals who will work at Lego Sales Consultants will choose to stay with us due to our business environment that encourages “C4A,” which is:

• Competencies
• Connections
• Achievement

The three main management divisions at Lego Sales Consultants are Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Internal Business Management. We believe that the departments managed by the Sales and Marketing division will be: marketing, sales, products and services, research and development, and public relations operations.

The departments taken care of by the Internal Business Management division are: accounting, administration, and human resources development. Here are the workforces we hope to start with;

Agency President

Vice president

Sales Manager/Supervisor

Admin and HR Manager

Marketing and Sales Executive

Front Desk Officer

5. Job Roles and Responsibilities

• Increases management’s effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training, coaching, counselling, and disciplining managers; communicating values, strategies, and objectives; assigning accountabilities; planning, monitoring, and appraising job results; developing incentives; developing a climate for offering information and opinions; providing educational opportunities.
• In charge of providing direction for the business
• Creates, communicates and implements the organization’s vision, mission, and overall direction – i.e. leading the development and implementation of the overall organization’s strategy.
• In charge of signing checks and documents on behalf of the company
• Evaluates the success of the organization
• Communicate Agency strategy to board of directors.
• Attends board meetings.
• Oversees revenue generation.
• Presides over operations.
• Identifies ways to maximize revenue.
• Works with audit committee to prepare budgets.
• Analyses financial reports.
• Ensures Agency policies and procedures are followed by each department.
• Attracts, retains and motivates staff.
• Reports and shares information with the board to ensure they are kept fully informed on the condition of the Agency and important factors influencing it.
• Identifies and leads new business opportunities.
• Ensures highly productive relationships and partnerships for the benefit of the organization.
• Sets goal, monitor work, and evaluate results to ensure that departmental and organizational objectives and operating requirements are met and are in line with the needs and mission of the organization.
• Works alongside community leaders, executive directors, major donors/funders, government officials, and senior staff/board members.
• Participates in and nurtures broad networks of alliances with others to exchanges knowledge and information about learning and change in support of change initiatives.
• In charge of managing the daily running of the agency, including sourcing equipment, effective resource planning and implementing agency strategies and operations;
• Carries out needs assessments, performance reviews and cost/benefit analyses;
• In charge of setting and meeting performance targets for speed, efficiency, sales and quality;
• Ensures all relevant communications, records and data are updated and recorded;
• Advises clients on products and services available;
• Liaising with supervisors, team leaders, operatives and third parties to gather information and resolve issues;
• Maintains up-to-date knowledge of industry developments and involvement in networks;
• Monitors random calls to improve quality, minimize errors and track operative performance;
• Coordinates staff recruitment, including writing vacancy advertisements and liaising with HR staff;
• Reviews the performance of staff, identifying training needs and planning training sessions;
• Records statistics, user rates and the performance levels of the centre and preparing reports;
• Handles the most complex customer complaints or enquiries;
• In charge of organizing staffing, including shift patterns and the number of staff required to meet demand;
• In charge of coaching, motivating and retaining staff and coordinating bonus, reward and incentive schemes;
• In charge of forecasting and analysing data against budget figures on a weekly and/or monthly basis.
• In charge of overseeing the smooth running of HR and administrative tasks for the organization
• Maintains office supplies by checking stocks; placing and expediting orders; evaluating new products.
• Ensures operation of studio equipment by completing preventive maintenance requirements; calling for repairs.
• Defines job positions for recruitment and managing interviewing process
• Carries out staff induction for new team members
• In charge of training, evaluation and assessment of employees
• In charge of arranging travel, meetings and appointments
• Designs job descriptions with KPI to drive performance management for clients
• Regularly hold meetings with key stakeholders to review the effectiveness of HR Policies, Procedures and Processes
• Facilitates and coordinate strategic sessions.
• Works directly with clients in a non-advising capacity, such as answering questions, scheduling appointments and making sure all training concerns are properly taken care off
• Oversees the smooth running of the daily office activities.
• Identifies, prioritizes, and reaches out to new partners, and business opportunities et al
• Identifies business opportunities; follows up on development leads and contacts; participates in the structuring and financing of projects; assures the completion of music projects.
• In charge of supervising implementation, advocate for the customer’s needs, and communicate with clients and music artists
• Develops, executes and evaluates new plans for expanding increase sales
• Documents all customer contact and information
• Represents the Agency in strategic meetings
• Helps to increase sales and growth for the company
• In charge of preparing financial reports, budgets, and financial statements for the organization
• Provides managements with financial analyses, development budgets, and accounting reports; analyses financial feasibility for the most complex proposed projects; conducts market research to forecast trends and business conditions.
• In charge of financial forecasting and risks analysis.
• Performs cash management, general ledger accounting, and financial reporting for one or more properties.
• In charge of developing and managing financial systems and policies
• In charge of administering payrolls
• Ensures compliance with taxation legislation
• Handles all financial transactions for the company
• Serves as internal auditor for the company
• Services existing accounts, obtains orders, and establishes new accounts by planning and organizing daily work schedule to call on existing or potential sales outlets and other trade factors.
• Adjusts content of sales presentations by studying the type of sales outlet or trade factor.
• Focuses sales efforts by studying existing and potential volume of dealers.
• Submits orders by referring to price lists and product literature.
• Keeps management informed by submitting activity and results reports, such as daily call reports, weekly work plans, and monthly and annual territory analyses.
• Monitors competition by gathering current marketplace information on pricing, products, new products, delivery schedules, merchandising techniques, etc.
• Recommends changes in products, service, and policy by evaluating results and competitive developments.
• Resolves customer complaints by investigating problems; developing solutions; preparing reports; making recommendations to management.
• Maintains professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops; reviewing professional publications; establishing personal networks; participating in professional societies.
• Provides historical records by maintaining records on area and customer sales.
• Contributes to team effort by accomplishing related results as needed.
• Receives Visitors / clients on behalf of the organization
• Receives parcels / documents for the company
• Handles enquiries via e-mail and phone calls for the organization
• Distributes mails in the organization
• Handles any other duties as assigned my the line manager

6. SWOT Analysis

We at Lego Sales Consultants are taking our time to make sure we cover all aspects of preparation even before we open our doors. We understand the need for a SWOT Analysis. SWOT analysis is a process that identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization.

Specifically, SWOT is a basic, analytical framework that assesses what an organization can and cannot do, as well as its potential opportunities and threats. A SWOT analysis takes information from an environmental analysis and separates it into internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats. So it is plain why we need to do this, that’s if we want to be successful.

We employed the services of a well known firm known for its unadulterated analysis and results, and we believe they did all necessary research to come up with the analysis presented to us. Outlined below is the summary of the analysis done for us;

Our SWOT Analysis, which was very extensive and detailed analysed that our strength as a sales representative agency lies with the following factors: our selling and marketing power, our Excellence in fulfilling the promise, our goal of developing visibility to generate new business leads, our ability to create multiple opportunities from a single line of expertise, high quality service and customer satisfaction, and our awesome management team.

Our SWOT Analysis also noted that our weaknesses will come from the fact that being a new agency; we will find it hard to get manufacturers or businesses to give us the job of representing them. Also customers might find it hard to trust our sales persons. We do not see all this as weaknesses but as a chance to create a better business.

• Opportunities

Just like we must have explained earlier, businesses are now into employing external sales reps to help them market their products. They believe and it is true that these processes are more cost effective and more reliant than having in house sales and marketing department. We believe this and more is the more reason why the industry is very lucrative and massive.

Our SWOT Analysis noted that the threats we are likely to face may include unfavourable government policies, global economic downturn, new competitors, getting products and networking. We believe that Lego Sales Consultants is very much prepared and ready to take anything thrown to it from both external and internal forces.

7. MARKET ANALYSIS

• Market Trend

It cannot be denied those customers’ needs are becoming more diverse and often change from day to day, pushing heavily on the resources and capabilities of sales organizations. Some of these businesses depend on low-cost sales channels, such as online and telesales, for smaller customers and on high-cost channels, such as face-to-face sales, for key accounts.

But that doesn’t mean that customers increasingly do not want simple, fast, and inexpensive transactions, on the one hand, and highly complex solutions designed by experienced (and often global) teams, on the other.

It is also important to note that before the drastic recession, many businesses in many industries were constructing new channels to reduce the price of servicing smaller customers. Remote interactions, however, have stayed rare for bigger managed accounts, whose need for “face time” was always beyond challenge.

But cost pressures coming from the recession have moved many B2B vendors to re-evaluate that stance, with surprising results. Patrons of businesses are becoming much more comfortable acquiring the information they need from sales resources over the telephone or through Web conferences and video conferences.

Also, the classic use of granular customer data and predictive analytics is no more the domain solely of B2C sellers such as Amazon.com. B2B sales teams now believe that the uncontrolled adoption of these techniques has raised the volume and quality of sales leads and improved conversion rates.

8. Our Target Market

We at Lego Sales Consultants believe we have unique offering of services that will appeal to a large customer base. We at Lego Sales Consultants hope to concentrate on big corporations because we believe that they provide the maximum profit potential. The groups of potential clients and patrons for Lego Sales Consultants are, in order of importance:

• Big Corporations
• Medium Companies
• Small Businesses
• Regional (Provincial) Government Offices
• Individual Customers

Our competitive advantage

Within our business niche at Lego Sales Consultants, we believe that we do not have any competitors, but instead prospective business partners. This we are confident about because the agency will give its patrons solutions as well as value creations.

We also know and understand that our services have been and will always be looked for by companies ranging from high-level management firms to international market research companies. Businesses who want to market their products, boost their brand awareness, create a corporate identity, business development, channel development, and in-house market research will come knocking at our door to deliver the following value creations:

Consulting/Market Researchers/Traders/Suppliers

• Improved communication
• Access to new markets
• Broader products offering
• Lower cost of doing business
• New ways of adding value

Technology Providers/Manufacturers:

• Lower cost of sales
• Access to niche markets
• Better cost of identification

New business models (outsourcing alliances)

• Individual Clients:
• Shopping convenience
• Immediate delivery
• More frequent updates
• Access to more products and services
• Better pricing

9. SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY

• Sources of Income

We at Lego Sales Consultants plan to offer expertise in the services we provide to our patrons. With much experience in our field, we believe that Lego Sales Consultants will be able to sell and package our services in various ways that allows our prospective clients to choose their preferred benefit(s).

Our key fulfillment and delivery at Lego Sales Consultants will be provided by the principals of the business. Our core value is professional expertise provided by a combination of experience, smart and hard work, discipline, improvements, and education (in that order). We plan to gain income by offering the following services;

10. Sales Forecast

Our strategy at Lego Sales Consultants will focus first on maintaining the identity of the high-end buyer who appreciates quality service, but is also very demanding regarding value creations. We at Lego Sales Consultants will customize our services for each specific client. This approach we believe is called “individual sales strategy” because customization permits clients to participate in producing exactly what they want.

Our sales forecast at Lego Sales Consultants assumes that the yearly change in costs or prices will average 20%, which is a reasonable assumption for a new successful business. We at Lego Sales Consultants are expecting to increase sales modestly in 2017 and 2018, with sales growth accelerating in 2019-2022.

It is our expectation that the agency will double its starting sales within five years. Outlined below is our sales forecast for three, and it is worthwhile to note that these projections was done based on what is obtainable in the industry.

• First Fiscal Year-: $750,000
• Second Fiscal Year-: $1.4 million
• Third Fiscal Year-: $3.2 million
• Marketing Strategy and Sales strategy

We at Lego Sales Consultants believe that our marketing strategies will rely on the same basic principles as consumer marketing, but will surely be executed in a unique way. While consumers choose products based not only on price but on popularity, status, and other emotional triggers, we believe that our patrons will make decisions on price and profit potential alone.

We also understand that discovering new ways to build relationships through social media is currently a hot topic in the B2B marketing world. It is also well known that social media platforms have opened up two way conversations between businesses. We at Lego Sales Consultants believe that B2B marketing involves building valuable relationships to guarantee lasting customers — an important goal for any company,

We all know that the business to business market is the largest of all the markets, and exceeds the consumer market in dollar value. It is also very common that B2B marketing is largely employed by companies that make products consumers have no practical use for, such as steel.

However, it is also used by companies selling products and services bought by consumers and other businesses alike. We hope to market Lego Sales Consultants as huge business with a direct goal to take over the industry. We hope to do the following;

• We plan to introduce Lego Sales Consultants by sending introductory letters with our business brochure to individuals, households, corporate organizations, schools, players in the real estate sector, and all the people of Alexandria.
• We also plan to advertise Lego Sales Consultants in important financial and business related magazines, newspapers, TV stations, and radio station.
• We also plan to advertise Lego Sales Consultants on yellow pages ads (local directories)
• We also plan to attend important international and local real estate , finance and business expos, seminars, and business fairs et al
• We also hope to Create different packages for different category of clients (individuals, start – ups and established corporate organizations) in order to work with their budgets
• We also plan to make use the internet to promote our business
• We hope to encourage word of mouth marketing from loyal and satisfied clients

11. Publicity and Advertising Strategy

We at Lego Sales Consultants understand our clients’ needs even before we decide to implement any marketing or advertising tactic. We understand that in consumer marketing, an effective advertisement can be blasted out over wide channels, and a percentage of consumers will be driven to buy the product.

But since B2B marketing is so much more specialized, we understand that many businesses run the risk of alienating their specific prospective candidates if they do not pay close attention to their needs before tailoring their services to those needs.

This is why we understand that our marketing plan must be focused in delivery and broad in application. This means that while consumer marketing can advertise very specifically ( one mass-consumed product advertised through print, television commercials and the Internet ) to a wide audience, our marketing plan at Lego Sales Consultants cannot.

Instead, we need to brand Lego Sales Consultants very broadly ( through email, corporate image and technical specifications ) to a very specific customer. We plan to promote our business through the following ways;

• We hope to place adverts on both print ( community based newspapers and magazines ) and electronic media platforms; we will also advertise Lego Sales Consultants  on financial magazines, real estate and other relevant financial programs on radio and TV
• Lego Sales Consultants will also sponsor relevant community based events / programs
• We also plan to make use of various online platforms to promote the business. This will make it easier for people to enter our website with just a click of the mouse. We will take advantage of the internet and social media platforms such as; Instagram, Facebook , twitter, YouTube, Google + et al to promote our brand
• We also plan to mount our Bill Boards on strategic locations all around Albany – New York.
• We at Lego Sales Consultants also plan to engage in road show from time to time
• We also plan to distribute our fliers and handbills in target areas all around Alexandria
• We plan to make sure that all our workers wear our branded shirts and all our official vehicles are well branded with our company’s logo et al.

12. Our Pricing Strategy

Our major plan at Lego Sales Consultants is to make use of the extensive network of contacts both Nathaniel and Ephraim have with businesses all around United States.  We plan to make use of our internal expertise to launch an astounding strategy directed at a select group of its target customers. We at Lego Sales Consultants have close and effective relationships with our end-users, vendors (suppliers and sub-contractors), and even competitors.

We at Lego Sales Consultants hope to keep the prices of our services and commissions below the average market rate for our clients for the main time. We also hope to provide them with loans coupled with low interest rates that will bring them closer to the firm, and we hope to move our prices a little higher when we have achieved a substantial corporate identity in the micro lending and mortgage industry.

• Payment options

We plan to provide various a wide varieties of payment options to suit our clients at Lego Sales Consultants. We understand the need and the diverse countenances of people, and the way they understand and process things differently, and we tend to provide a suitable platform that will suit all and sundry equally. Listed below are the payment options that we will make available to Lego Sales Consultants.

• Payment through bank transfer
• Payment through online bank transfer
• Payment with check
• Payment with bank draft
• Cash payment

With reference to the above platforms, we have chosen a well renowned bank in the United States to aid in our business. We have chosen and opened a corporate current account with Capital one financial Corporation. Our bank account numbers will be made available in website and promotional materials to clients who may want to make cash deposit and it will also be given explicitly to clients on request.

13. Startup Expenditure (Budget)

The founders of Lego Sales Consultants use to be well known sales agents for large multinational businesses, procurement, and construction contracting services and, at the same time, are experienced market researchers in global markets. They both decided after extensive research to start Lego Sales Consultants. Outlined below is the cost analysis of starting Lego Sales Consultants;

• The Total Fee for incorporating the Business in Atlanta, Georgia – $750.
• The budget for Liability insurance, permits and license – $25,000
• The Amount needed to acquire a suitable Office facility with enough space for standard sales agency in a business district 6 months (Re – Construction of the facility inclusive) – $250,000.
• The Cost for equipping the agency (printers, fax machines, furniture, telephones, filing cabins, safety gadgets and electronics et al) – $100,000
• The Cost of Launching our official Website – $600
• Budget for paying at least 7 employees for 3 months and utility bills – $200,000
• Additional Expenditure (Business cards, Signage, Adverts and Promotions et al) – $50,000
• Miscellaneous – $1,000

From the detailed cost analysis above, we need $627,350 to start Lego Sales Consultants. We have put plans together to raise all necessary funds for Lego Sales Consultants.

Generating Funding / Start-up Capital for Lego Sales Consultants

Lego Sales Consultants is a well licensed and registered sales agency which is capitalized by two principal investors, Nathaniel and Ephraim. They are the founders and financiers of the business and hope to remain so for now, with hope to accept partners at a very ripe and mature stage in the business. Due to less constraint in financing Lego Sales Consultants, we have outlined the few ways we can acknowledge funding and start up capital. These was may include;

• Generate part of the start up capital from the two principal investors
• Accept soft loans from family members and friends
• Agreeing to angel investors
• Apply for business loan from my Bank (if need be)

Note : We at Lego Sales Consultants have been able to generate an enormous $700,000 from our two principal investors, who aligned and individually prune out $350,000 each. We believe that the amount is substantially enough to run the business for the first three months, which by then we expect to sustain the business by the cash and incentives generated from our business proceedings.

14. Sustainability and Expansion Strategy

We at Lego Sales Consultants plan to combine unparalleled quality with a cost-effective package to create a consulting and sales service with many competitive advantages. We also know that our seasoned management are qualified for multiple services, such as: business development, market development, market intelligence, industrial sectors analysis, and channel development.

We at Lego Sales Consultants hope to provide a large range of services to anyone from a high-level marketing firm to a home-based business owner; clients can always count on quick, accurate services from Lego Sales Consultants.

We are Lego Sales Consultants will design, build, test and deploy all possible strategies to achieve our aim and create profits for our clients.  We also plan to report the progress of the campaign in real-time to provide our customers maximum flexibility.

We at Lego Sales Consultants understand that consultant costs (in US$/man-hour) in Atlanta. It is worthwhile to note that this analysis is based on the assumptions that the local senior consultants’ and senior engineers’ salaries have increased by 70%.

This is because the United States skilled manpower market offers one biggest man-hour cost in the world, even with the estimated average increasing 20% per year. To take advantage of this situation, Lego Sales Consultants plan to make use of United States resources for serving both global and regional markets. We also plan to make our employees comfortable and always keep our clients in the known.

Checklist/Milestone

• Business Name Availability Check: Completed
• Business Incorporation: Completed
• Opening of Corporate Bank Accounts various banks in the United States: Completed
• Opening Online Payment Platforms: Completed
• Application and Obtaining Tax Payer’s ID: In Progress
• Application for business license and permit: Completed
• Purchase of All form of Insurance for the Business: Completed
• Conducting Feasibility Studies: Completed
• Leasing, renovating and equipping our facility: Completed
• Generating part of the start – up capital from the founder: Completed
• Applications for Loan from our Bankers: In Progress
• Writing of Business Plan: Completed
• Drafting of Employee’s Handbook: Completed
• Drafting of Contract Documents: In Progress
• Design of The Company’s Logo: Completed
• Graphic Designs and Printing of Packaging Marketing / Promotional Materials: Completed
• Recruitment of employees: In Progress
• Purchase of the Needed software applications, furniture, office equipment, electronic appliances and facility facelift: In progress
• Creating Official Website for the Company: In Progress
• Creating Awareness for the business (Business PR): In Progress
• Health and Safety and Fire Safety Arrangement: In Progress
• Establishing business relationship with banks, financial lending institutions, vendors and key players in the industry: In Progress

How to Become a Sales Rep [+Tips for First-Time Selling]

Published: October 15, 2021

There’s no such thing as a born salesperson. Great sales reps make it look easy, but superior performance usually indicates that a salesperson has taken the time to hone their skills and is constantly iterating to better help prospects.

Whether you’re new to the field or looking to simply improve your skills, read on to discover expert advice on becoming a sales rep and how to be a good one.

How to Become a Sales Rep

The great thing about a sales career is that you can start as a green pea and grow into a top-tier performer. Of course, virtually no one begins a career in sales with all of the required skills — but everyone has to start somewhere .

As sales is a fast-paced field, it can be intimidating to figure out where to start or even how to start. Not to fear, though — we asked seasoned salespeople for their best tips on how to become a sales rep and compiled their advice below.

Free Sales Training Template

Use this template to set up a 30/60/90 day sales training and onboarding plan.

• 30/60/90 Day Goals
• People to Meet
• Feedback/Review Process

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1. Figure out your life goals and determine if a sales career can help you get there.

Jill Fratianne , a Partner Channel Manager at HubSpot, recalls her first realization of what she wanted to do with her life: “I remember when I graduated music school I didn’t know squat about anything, I just knew after my last concert on stage at Symphony Center in Chicago that I wanted to be one of the donors looking down at someone like me that sponsored my full scholarship.”

Fifteen years later, after a hearty sales career that helped her perfect her craft, Fratianne is helping renovate an opera house and coming full circle on her post-music-school goals.

2. Read sales books.

Reading books is an especially valuable tip for aspiring sales professionals. There are many sales books available on a wide range of topics, from developing an entrepreneurial mindset and the psychological and behavioral aspects that affect sales success. Pick what best suits your needs, and read on to learn from experienced professionals about how to grow your skills and leverage the ones you already have.

If you’re unsure where to start, To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink and Inbound Selling by Brian Signorelli are high-quality options.

3. Get inbound sales certified.

Kyle Jepson , Senior Professor for HubSpot Academy, says, “ The Inbound Sales Certification is designed specifically for new sales reps. It gives actionable tips and strategies that salespeople can implement on their next call or in their next meeting, regardless of what industry they’re in.

There are other sales training programs that are worth considering that range from entirely online, on-site, or a hybrid model, so you can best incorporate your new course into your schedule.

4. Take introductory courses.

If you’re hoping for a more traditional sales training program, take introductory sales courses at a local university or community college. Many educational institutions offer business classes in sales development, and you can learn from experienced professionals to begin growing your skills.

5. Sell for a non-profit organization.

Selling for a non-profit organization allows you to test your networking and connection abilities, problem-solving, and closing skills in a low-stress environment while still obtaining on-the-job sales experience.

You’ll gain an overall understanding of what you do well and what needs to be improved upon, helping you become more focused on your development.

6. Follow the HubSpot Sales Blog.

Following the HubSpot Sales Blog will help you become familiar with cadence, terms, and sales subject matter. Reading about vocabulary, processes, and knowledge can prepare you for your first sales role, especially when you leverage tips from experienced salespeople and the expert insight they contribute to different pieces.

7. Talk with reps in your network to understand how sales jobs work.

Working in sales is different from virtually any other profession. You have to constantly learn new skills while chasing monthly quotas and targets, which can be stressful. Talk with sales reps in your network to understand how their positions work so you can get a sense of general day-to-day and the skills you should focus on developing to be successful.

If you’ve taken sales programs or university courses, talk to the teachers to see if they have specific advice for you or areas you should focus on developing based on their experience instructing you. This can also be helpful for networking, as you can let them know that you’re open to and interested in future opportunities.

Once you’ve gained experience in sales and you’re interested in moving up, independent sales may be on your radar. Read on to discover how to become an independent sales rep and how it’s different from regular sales positions.

How to Become an Independent Sales Rep

As the title suggests, an independent sales rep works for a company but is independently in charge of their operations (marketing, customer service, bookkeeping, etc.) and how they conduct business. Independent reps sometimes contract for multiple companies at once.

One of the most critical factors to becoming an independent sales rep is having sales experience, preferably in-house. It will be challenging to succeed in the role if you don’t understand how the sales process works, so developing the background is essential before embarking on a more independent journey.

In addition, having in-house sales experience before going off on your own helps you develop a network of contacts and relationships that can help you when you’re working independently, whether it be by introducing you to potential clients or becoming clients of yours themselves.

It’s also important to be a self-starter; that you’re comfortable working for yourself and able to work for yourself. This means that you don’t struggle if there isn’t anyone standing over your shoulder monitoring your progress because you can monitor your own progress and get your work done. It’s important to note, though, that you still have to report back to the business you work for; they’re just likely not monitoring your everyday progress.

Whether you’re an in-house or independent rep, you likely want to be good at your job. Below we’ll discuss this.

How to Be a Good Sales Rep

• Identify your goals.
• Recognize that sales is a process.
• Identify business pains.
• Measure every step.
• Sell to the right people.
• Embrace team selling.
• Conduct call reviews.
• Shadow your peers.
• Find a mentor.
• Ask the right questions.
• Build a personal development plan.
• Start a film club.

1. Start with your goals.

If you’re learning to sell, start from the end and work backward. Knowing your goals and measuring your performance against them (more on that later) is the most important place to start.

How many customers do you or your company need, and in what time frame? How many leads do you need to close that many customers? How many connections do you need to generate that many opportunities? And so on. Multiply your customer goal by the average sale price of your company’s product to get the amount of revenue you should be aiming for.

Make sure you set personal sales goals as well. You can always tell when a salesperson is in the top 2% of their organization. They command attention, work at their craft, provide a consistent experience, and execute. These behaviors and actions typically precede results.

Aim to be in the top 2% of your organization. Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow, and it won’t be easy, but always strive for the top.

2. Recognize that sales is a process.

Sales is not an art. Sales is a science and a technology.

Pete Caputa, CEO of Databox and former VP of Sales at HubSpot, and Harvard Business School professor and former HubSpot CRO Mark Roberge are some of the most successful sales executives I know. They’re scientists, and they excel at making the classic sales process scalable. If you’re not looking at sales as a process, you’re missing the boat.

Sales is changing rapidly, but some things will always be the same. To get customers, you’ll have to establish their needs and interest in your product, address inertia in their business, and determine a timeline to sell.

The way your company moves through the funnel, however, will be unique. If you treat every sales process the same, you could easily miss something. Understand that every business has its own playbook for a reason. So before you ever get on the phone with a prospect, sit with your managers to thoroughly understand your company’s process.

This will include learning how to position your product, gaining strategies for speaking with prospects, understanding your key value propositions, and discovering what your ideal customer looks like, just to name a few factors of any successful sales process.

3. Identify business pains.

You must be able to identify your prospects’ business pain and distinguish it from their run-of-the-mill business problems. If a step of their process is a slight annoyance, who cares?

Pain isn’t getting a cut on your arm — pain is your leg falling off. A true business pain is discussed every day in the executive office and the boardroom. Someone has probably set aside a budget to solve it. If it’s a critical factor to their business’ success, you’ve discovered a real business pain.

As a sales rep, you need to build trust with your prospects. Buyers need confidence that you understand their problem and have the resources to solve it. But your relationship doesn’t end after the sale — you are ethically required to live up to your promise. Prepare your prospects for the transition to your product and give them all the help they need, and you’ll have a happy customer on your hands.

4. Measure every step.

Anything worth doing is worth measuring, and anything that can be measured can be improved.

Remember when you set your goals? Be fanatical about measuring your performance against them. At the rate you’re selling today, will you hit your numbers by the end of the month? Are your closing strategies converting prospects to customers? If not, change something up.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to reach your numbers this month. If you measure everything you do, you’ll be able to solve problems as they arise.

In this day and age, there are boatloads of coaching resources. A simple Google search for an area in which you’re struggling will return a huge amount of material that can help you. Your managers will be more than happy to help you as well, especially if you’re asking for assistance before it’s too late.

5. Sell to the right people.

This principle is at the heart of the inbound sales methodology.

In the early days of my career, I spent a lot of time reaching out to people who didn’t want to talk to me. But for the last seven years, I’ve spent more time connecting with people who want to hear what I have to say.

That’s the power of inbound marketing. By creating or curating high-quality and helpful content and letting prospects come to you, you’ll save time and increase your probability of closing sales.

6. Embrace team selling.

When you're starting out in sales, you want to make a name for yourself. Many reps think the fastest way to do this is by blowing away the competition by themselves.

That approach can be isolating — and you miss out on a lot. Modern reps, no matter their experience level, should embrace team selling.

For example, if you're unsuccessfully trying to speak with the CEO of a large company, ask a sales leader if they can get you in the door by leveraging their seniority and making that first call.

I do this all the time for reps. Since I've been selling for 30 years, I have connections and clout a new rep simply hasn't built yet. All I ask is that the rep does the research and puts together a one-pager for me prior to the call.

Use the expertise on your team to close more deals. You'll learn valuable skills along the way, and you'll blow your quota out of the water.

7. Conduct call reviews.

Your team manager probably already conducts regularly scheduled call reviews, but sometimes that's not enough.

Identify salespeople within your organization who excel at different things. Know a rep who's great at closing difficult prospects? Sit in on a few of her calls, and have her review your most recent meeting with a tough prospect.

Admire a rep who's great at negotiating? Ask him to review a recent negotiation you conducted. Zoom in on different aspects of your calls and meetings, and get granular about improving each part.

8. Shadow your peers.

Along those same lines, you can learn a lot about excelling in sales by listening to the best — your peers and teammates alongside you.

Take some time each week, or each month, to listen to how your teammates conduct successful sales calls. Whether you're listening live or listening to recordings, you can pick up key phrases, rapport-building techniques, and closing strategies that you can personalize on your own calls.

9. Find a mentor.

It's important to check in with your peers to hone your selling skills and day-to-day workflows. But it's crucial to pair with a mentor who can help you plan and grow your career. This person should help you visualize where you see yourself one, five, and ten years down the road.

Identify a mentor who:

• Has found success in the career you aspire to
• Has accomplished certain achievements or milestones you admire
• Has experience that's applicable to your own career path

Once you've identified someone who has the experience and availability to be your mentor, set up monthly or quarterly meetings with them. And discuss how you both anticipate spending that time so that it's beneficial.

10. Ask the right questions.

This section should be broken into two distinct buckets:

• Ask the right questions of your manager: " Am I meeting expectations? " " How can I exceed expectations? " " What feedback do have for me about my performance? " These questions demonstrate that you're hungry for professional development. They're what will help you grow — and that's what a good salesperson needs to move their career forward.
• Ask the right questions of your prospect: Question-asking is an art form that is practiced and optimized over time. Work with successful reps on your team to find out which questions prove most beneficial when speaking with their prospects. And build your own library of probing questions .

11. Build a personal development plan.

Every salesperson has strengths and weaknesses. It is important for new reps to understand the things they do well and the skills they need to improve. Assessing the areas of the sales process that you do well, such as building rapport or asking good questions, is essential — you want to build upon a solid foundation of your strengths.

When you start out you are unconsciously incompetent – you don’t know what you don’t know. Then you become consciously incompetent – you do know what you don’t know, and you can make a plan to continue learning and filling in skill gaps. From there, you become consciously competent — you have the qualities you need to do the job well.

To facilitate this process, I like to ask new reps to assess their new skills and then create a personal development plan (PDP). This can be a simple document that defines the two to three things per month that a new rep should work on to improve their skills.

The rep should revisit this document with their manager or mentor on a regular basis to ensure they are on track with their learning. All salespeople should have a PDP, but it is especially helpful for new reps to build confidence in their skills.

12. Start a film club.

Professional athletes watch a lot of film and footage of their not only their own performance but of the competition as well. Salespeople can benefit from the same approach.

I recommend new salespeople build a film club to accommodate different learning styles with a handful of their peers who are also trying to improve their skills. Here’s how a sales film club can work:

• Set aside an hour, and have one person bring a recorded call and a standard evaluation template.
• Have the group listen to the call and take notes on what they hear.
• Beginning with the person who recorded the call, have participants provide feedback on what worked and what could be improved upon.

This group dynamic helps new salespeople work together to reduce their anxiety and learn together to improve their sales skills in a safe environment.

The most important piece of advice I could give you is to learn from your team today, tomorrow, and 10 years down the road. That's what makes you a great rep. And that's what makes sales a great career.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May, 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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How To Start A Consulting Business In 2024

Published: Aug 22, 2024, 5:34pm

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Table of Contents

1. outline your plan, 2. register your consulting business, 3. determine services and pricing, 4. build your website, 5. market your consulting business.

Those with a high degree of expertise in a particular field can leverage their knowledge to build a profitable consulting business. Whether you’re in between jobs or looking to make a change, learning how to start a consulting business is the first step to making great use of your skills. In return, you can create a lucrative business and can charge upwards of around INR 25,000 per hour–all for sharing your expertise with others. Here’s everything you need to know.

To get started, you’ll want to put together a strong business plan . While you don’t have to stick to every single thing, it’s a good idea to have guidance for your business.

The first choice to make is your business name. Since you’re starting an individual consulting business, your business name can be your personal name as a trade name or a business name. If you have a name that you want to use that feels more recognizable and eye-catching, make sure you factor the registration costs into your original budget.

If you need to design a logo, you can do that yourself or reach out to designers. The logo will help you start marketing to your target audience, whether that’s business owners or companies or individuals. If you want to consult in a certain industry, you should start building a list of contacts to reach out to when you’re ready to launch and take on new clients.

With all of this information ready to go, you can start on the administrative side of your business.

Before you start doing official business, you’ll need to register with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs as a sole proprietorship or as an LLC. You should also check to see if there are other legal requirements for small businesses in your state. If you are planning to grow the business, registering as an LLC will make it easier to track your business expenses for taxes. It can cost about INR 3,000 to INR 10,000 to register your business online, depending on the state.

If you’re starting a consulting business as a side hustle, it might be worth it to invest in a business to register your LLC for you.

Determining your rates also means determining what kind of services you want to offer. Consultants offer a variety of services. You can offer a wide range of support for a business, but do less of a deep dive. Alternatively, you can be hyper-specific in your expertise and go deep on a certain aspect of a company’s business. For example, if you’re an HR consultant, you can take a larger view of a company’s HR operations, or focus on their hiring practices for a specific department.

You should also consider if you want to take on short-term or long-term clients. Doing one-off consulting sessions is still a lot of work, even compared to long-term consulting. Your pricing strategy should reflect the amount of preparation you have to do. It also may depend on your industry to decide how you want to price your services: either a one-time payment, hourly rate or monthly retainer.

A consulting business needs a website so clients can find you easily. If a business is doing research into finding a consultant in your industry, you want your website to pop up for them. If you are familiar with SEO best practices , you can do this yourself, or hire someone to optimize your website.

Here are the best platforms for building a professional website:

• Squarespace : This platform is very user-friendly and has plenty of award-winning templates. In addition to great designs, it’s also affordable with all-inclusive plans starting at around INR 1,355 per month. However, it does lack more robust customization options for more experienced coders.
• Wix : This all-in-one website builder offers a drag-and-drop site editor, making web design both easy and highly flexible. However, it’s a bit more expensive than Squarespace with plans starting at around INR 1,355 per month.
• WordPress : The world’s most popular content management system, WordPress, is not the most user-friendly, though it is one of the most customizable and affordable options (as you only have to pay for web hosting for around INR 150 to INR 1,000 per month). It’s the best option for those who have very unique website needs or experience with the CMS.

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Building a website can seem intimidating, but many of the best website builders make it easy for beginners to create a site without any experience or coding knowledge. However, keep in mind that websites do require ongoing maintenance, so you might want to hire a virtual assistant or work some time into your calendar to do regular website maintenance and updating.

Marketing a new business can be difficult, but being diligent about finding new marketing channels and leveraging connections will make it a lot easier. Try these simple and low-cost solutions to start marketing.

• Search engine optimization to rank on Google
• Online business directories, such as Google My Business, Yelp or Yellow Pages
• Pay-per-click advertising, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads or YouTube Ads
• Subreddits for entrepreneurs or your industry
• Slack groups for freelancers
• Find local networking groups, such as local business associations
• Participate in industry networking events

Working on this yourself, in the beginning, will require a fair amount of time, but when your business grows, you might be able to hire a social media strategist or partner to work on finding business leads.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can a consulting business get clients using fiverr.

Fiverr allows anyone to sign up and sell their services as a freelancer. A lot of companies looking for freelance writing, design or marketing work use Fiverr, so it would be a good place to do consulting for content strategy.

Is it possible to start a consulting business on the side?

If you are comfortable with working with a smaller number of clients and are realistic about your time, you can easily run a consulting business on the side. It’s important to be open with your clients about your time constraints to build trust.

What are some good fields to start a consulting business in?

The consulting business you start is going to be based on your strengths and skills, but some of the potential fields where you might enjoy some of the most success include public relations, publishing, human resources (HR) marketing, computer programming, career consulting, advertising and accounting .

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9 freelance business ideas to start today, how to sell clothes online in 2024, remote work statistics and trends in 2024, how to start an online boutique (2024 guide), how to start a t-shirt business (2024 guide), three ways to get a free business email address.

Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she manages a column at Inc. Magazine.

Rob is an SMB writer and editor based in New Jersey. Before joining Forbes Advisor, he was a content producer at Fit Small Business. In that role, he was responsible for writing, editing, and strategizing content geared toward small business owners. Before that, he worked at PCMag as a business analyst.

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Financial experts reveal how Americans can prepare for the possibility of a recession

Reviewing expenses, creating a budget and having a contingency plan are advised.

We need more incentives for housing production: Jim Tobin

National Association of Home Builders CEO Jim Tobin discusses Vice President Kamala Harris pushing a tax incentive to build homes on ‘Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street.’

Financial experts are revealing how Americans can prepare for the possibility of a recession with concerns about the economy.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday indicated that interest rate cuts could come soon, telling Kansas City Fed's symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., "The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks." 

Chris Markowski, of Markowski Investments, told Fox News Digital that Americans should not buy into the hype or "fear" of recessions. Instead, they should look at it as a "housecleaning" opportunity where they can make necessary cutbacks and come out stronger than before. 

"I think many Americans right now feel that they're in a recession already," Markowski said. "Their buying power has been, in essence — it's gone away, based upon inflation and money and what it can buy them, what they're paying for groceries or what they're paying for cars and what they're paying for the bare necessities of life." 

US PRODUCER PRICES RISE LESS THAN EXPECTED IN JULY  

 In this photo illustration, one and five dollar bills seen on display.  (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Imagehoto Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Markowski advised investors not to panic when it comes to their portfolios and avoid attempting to time the market. When Americans hit slow times, they can cut back on what they do not need and come out stronger due to their new efficiencies. 

David Peters, from Peters Tax Preparation & Consulting PC, said Americans must look at their spending to prepare for a potential recession , must not stop saving for retirement, and try not to take out large loans. 

"Where is your money going?" he asked. "Are there places where you need to tighten your belt? You should take a look at your budget and figure out how to still make room in it for savings — even in the midst of rising costs. Make sure that you have an emergency account that is funded (three months of expenses is ideal)." 

"As I have told many clients, the most important thing is to have perspective," Peters added. "We have been through economic ups and downs in the past (and a pandemic most recently). We just need to cut spending where we can and continue to save. These hard times will pass too." 

Al Lord, of Lexerd Capital Management, encouraged Americans "looking to buy a home or continue renting" to "prioritize maintaining stable employment and ensure that housing costs stay below 30% of their monthly income." 

"It's important to review expenses, create a realistic budget, and have a contingency plan in place in case job security becomes uncertain," he said. 

Andrew Van Alstyne, from Fiduciary Financial Advisors, told Fox News Digital that ideally Americans would want to increase their liquidity amid the uncertainty. 

Priceline CEO: I wouldn’t call it a slowdown, but there is a 'softness' in consumer spending

Priceline CEO Brett Keller breaks down leisure spending in the United States on 'The Claman Countdown.'

"That means ensuring you're able to cover anywhere from six to 12 months of expenses without changing your lifestyle," Van Alstyne said. "The first source of funds should be in an emergency fund sitting savings account (usually three to six months of expenses). The next source of funds would be in a brokerage account (non-retirement investment account) and would draw down on cash, then investments that are easily traded (liquid). Do not take loans or cash-out retirement accounts unless it's RMDs or a previously established withdrawal strategy in retirement. Lastly, cut back (not necessarily eliminate) unnecessary expenses until the economy balances out and we know what best next steps are." 

Self-made multi-millionaire John Cerasani, who built his company during a recession, told Fox News Digital that "there are opportunities for entrepreneurs to emerge in recession-proof industries." 

"Focusing on services related to higher education institutions is an example of an industry that typically thrives during a recession," he explained.  

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Guild Investment Management’s Tony Danaher advised Americans to "hold off on high-ticket purchases, lock down and extend employment contracts (or make yourself invaluable) and save."  

"Consider less market and economic sensitive investments," Danaher added. "If needed, put off retiring if worried about income ." 

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What We Know About Kamala Harris’s $5 Trillion Tax Plan So Far

The vice president supports the tax increases proposed by the Biden White House, according to her campaign.

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By Andrew Duehren

Reporting from Washington

In a campaign otherwise light on policy specifics, Vice President Kamala Harris this week quietly rolled out her most detailed, far-ranging proposal yet: nearly $5 trillion in tax increases over a decade.

That’s how much more revenue the federal government would raise if it adopted a number of tax increases that President Biden proposed in the spring . Ms. Harris’s campaign said this week that she supported those tax hikes, which were thoroughly laid out in the most recent federal budget plan prepared by the Biden administration.

No one making less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes go up under the plan. Instead, Ms. Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations. Congress has previously rejected many of these tax ideas, even when Democrats controlled both chambers.

While tax policy is right now a subplot in a turbulent presidential campaign, it will be a primary policy issue in Washington next year. The next president will have to work with Congress to address the tax cuts Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017. Many of those tax cuts expire after 2025, meaning millions of Americans will see their taxes go up if lawmakers don’t reach a deal next year.

Here’s an overview of what we now know — and still don’t know — about the Democratic nominee’s views on taxes.

Higher taxes on corporations

The most recent White House budget includes several proposals that would raise taxes on large corporations . Chief among them is raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, a step that the Treasury Department estimated could bring in $1.3 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years.

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What is Sales Planning? How to Create a Sales Plan

Write a sales plan that can adjust to change, and zero in on the actions that will hit your goals.

By: Scott Leese CEO & Founder, Scott Leese Consulting May 1, 2024 | 14 min read

There is a world where sales planning happens once a year. You draw it up in January — “Whew, I’m glad that’s done!” — and everything goes as you planned. You hit your goals.

Meanwhile, on Earth, you create a plan, start to act on it, and everything hits the fan. A competitor launches a new product, an analyst switches up their report, and your best sales rep quits.

Below we share tips for how to create a sales plan that can bend, not break. You’ll learn why a plan is so important, see examples of the different types, and discover how to create one that brings you closer to your big, hairy revenue goals while also driving down costs.

What you’ll learn:

• What is a sales plan?
• Why is a sales plan important?
• Sales plan process
• Sales plan types and examples

How to create a sales plan

5 tips for optimising your sales plan.

Sales planning can be delightful. No, really.

Our Sales Planning solution keeps sellers on track with easy-to-build and easy-to-optimise sales plans.

What is a Sales Plan?

A sales plan articulates your objectives, strategic approaches, target demographic, and potential challenges. It serves as a specialised counterpart to a traditional business plan, honing in specifically on your sales strategy. While a business plan outlines your objectives, a sales plan details the precise methods through which you will achieve them.

Why is a Sales Plan Important?

Sales planning provides clear goals and a way to achieve them. Without it, a business likely doesn’t what their revenue targets are or how they’re going to grow. But these are only some of the advantages of an effective sales plan. Here are a few other key ones:

Determines actions required to achieve goals

Sales planning lets you test and measure how different actions will affect your numbers, so you can choose the right path forward to hit your goal. You begin by adding up the numbers you know — how much your team will likely sell (based on past performance) and how much it will cost (based on your current resources). You’ll arrive at a prediction of the numbers you’ll hit.

If the prediction falls short of your targets, a plan helps you test different scenarios, so you can find the action that allows you to hit your target number in the most cost-effective way.

What if you hire more people? Increase your quotas? Level up your enablement program to increase win rates (the number of deals that close)? Sales planning gives you the framework to crunch the numbers until you find the reality that matches your dream.

Increases engagement

With a plan, your sales team has the support needed to meet both their personal goals and the company’s goals. When a new representative joins the team, for example, the plan tells them the daily activities they need to complete to help meet their sales goals. If an established sales representative begins struggling to hit their goals, the plan provides the resources to grow their customer base.

This level of support creates a more engaged sales team, which often means a higher-performing team. When the sales team has the support they need, the company has a better retention rate because the sales team is successful. The business also earns a reputation for having clear goals that help lead to success, making it easier to hire new sales representatives.

Increases revenue and reduces expenses

Simply put, a plan helps the business allocate resources correctly, which saves money. For example, leaders aren’t hiring too many sales representatives for one territory while hiring too few reps in others, which means money burned and opportunities wasted.

What are the benefits of creating a sales plan?

Let’s take a closer look.

Emphasising the importance of marketing and sales alignment is crucial for improving revenue generation, customer experience, productivity, and post-sale growth. This alignment ensures consistent messaging, a better customer journey, and the development of data-driven plans using marketing and sales automation software.

Finding the actions to achieve your goals

A free sales plan template lets you test and measure how different actions will affect your numbers, allowing you to choose the right path forward to achieve your goal.

You begin by adding up the numbers you know — how much your team will likely sell (based on past performance) and how much it will cost (based on your current resources). You’ll arrive at a prediction of the numbers you’ll hit.

If the prediction falls short of your targets, a sales plan helps you test different scenarios to find the action that forces the equation to spit out your next sales target or number in the most cost-effective way.

What if you hire more people? Increase your quotas? Level up your enablement program to increase win rates (the number of close deals). A sales plan gives you the framework to crunch the numbers until you find the reality that matches your dream.

Your business is more resilient to change

The traditional sales plan template is something you create once a year. You revisit, test, and adjust an agile sales plan continually. The benefit is that even as market conditions change or surprises happen within your company, you can study the impacts of those changes and adapt to stay on track.

The path to agility is to eliminate your disconnected tools and bring all of your sales plan data into the same system—your customer relationship management (CRM) system—where you sell. With this in place, changes in the real world show up as threats to your target within your sales plan templates, too. You can react in real-time by studying the data, testing different scenarios, and adjusting your sales plan to get back on track.

Sales Plan Process

Many organisations think of sales planning as happening in the fall in preparation for the upcoming calendar year. While this may work for an established company, it’s not a realistic or sound approach for most companies.

Businesses should conduct a formal sales planning process annually, and then regularly review that plan throughout the year to make sure it still makes sense. Otherwise, the organisation may miss out on new opportunities to grow revenue and make changes that can reduce losses.

The frequency with which companies should review their plan depends on the stability of the business, market changes, and the complexity of the plans. Startups and new companies should review their plan at least every quarter. Established companies launching new products should review the plans for the new product lines at least every quarter, and perhaps monthly in the early days after launch.

Sales Plan Types

The different types of plans are meant to bring together your company’s long-term vision, short-term tactics, and everything in between. Leaders set a five-year vision for where the company is heading. Then, sales managers step into a new time frame — the year ahead — and build sales forecasts and territory plans that help sellers hit their numbers. They come up with capacity plans to make sure teams are running lean and mean. Finally, sellers create account plans for every deal.

Let’s take a closer look at these different types of plans with the examples below.

Long-range plan

This is where leadership — the CEO, chief revenue officer, CFO, and VP of sales — comes together and sets the long-term path for the company. They’re thinking about where the opportunities are and how to seize them. For example, they might decide to grow annual contract value (ACV) by $30 million in the next five years while also slowing the rate of hiring — because they want to make existing sellers more productive instead.

Annual plan

The sales manager creates an annual plan to set more immediate targets that will help the company get closer to the goals established in the long-range plan. This plan begins with an understanding of the team’s capacity, or how much revenue they’re likely to produce. From there, territories, quotas, and compensation plans are set to ensure that sellers hit their numbers.

Let’s say the long-range plan is to achieve $30 million in ACV over the next five years while also making sellers more productive. In that case, a sales manager might set targets of $4 million in ACV in the first year and increase the quotas that sellers carry to achieve that goal rather than hire more people.

Territory plan

Account plan.

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To create your annual plan for the year and make sure it can adapt to change, gather all your sales data into one place. Then, study how much your people can sell (based on historical data) and set targets (and incentives) that will make your goal a reality. Use technology that can update all your plan data in real-time, so you can measure the impact of change and adjust to stay on track.

Ready to create your plan? Here’s how to take it one step at a time.

1. Connect plan data with your CRM

It’s important to build your plan in customer relationship management (CRM) software. When you have all your sales data in one place, updated in real-time, you have visibility into changes that put your targets at risk.

It’s also a time-saver. Without this single source of truth, you’d be spending weeks manually pulling in data from different systems to understand what went wrong. With every passing day, the gap between your plan and your reality would widen.

Imagine that you begin an enterprise sales push with 50 sellers in January, but two quit in March. A CRM can send you an alert that you’re under target. That real-time data is critical if you want to adjust your plan quickly to stay on track.

If your organisation does not currently have a CRM, look for one that uses AI , pulls in data from any source, integrates with your other systems, and helps automate repeatable business functions. If you already use a CRM, take a comprehensive look at your sales efforts by ensuring all sales and customer data is connected.

2. Understand your team’s capacity (how much they can sell)

Using the example above, you might determine that based on the previous year’s performance, each seller, on average, can bring in $120,000 worth of revenue. However, now that you’re down two sellers, you’re short $240,000 in your capacity.

3. Work with stakeholders across the organisation

A sales plan drives the direction of the entire organisation, so it should represent the goals and input of all stakeholders. In addition to sales and finance, customer success, product teams, finance, and marketing should also be included in the process. If only the sales department is included in crafting the draft, then you run the risk of the CFO showing up with a half-billion-dollar plan, the CEO a billion-dollar plan, and the head of sales with a quarter-billion-dollar plan.

4. Measure the gap between your reality and your dream

Now that you understand the reality of who’s under your roof — and how much you think your team can sell — determine the gap between your revenue predictions and your revenue targets.

For example, imagine your target from the long-range plan is to hit $6 million in ACV this year. With a $240,000 drop in your capacity, as we showed above, you’ll need to figure out how you can still meet the goal.

5. Find the actions to fill the gap and reach your goal

It’s time to write your plan to achieve your targets. Begin with the backbone — your team — and outline what’s expected (quotas), what the rewards are (compensation), how to organise customers (segments), and how to assign the reps (territories).

Then, to close the gap and hit your targets, create “what if” scenarios to test the impact of different possible actions. The guideposts here should be cost savings and efficiency — how to hit your target by making the most of what you have. What if you hire two more people? (Straightforward, sure, but hardly cost-effective.) What if you assign your highest performers to more lucrative territories? What if you create an enablement program that trains your sellers in a strategic industry?

In the example above, you’re trying to find a way to add $240,000 to your capacity without adding cost. One of the scenarios you tested shows that a new enablement program might do the trick because training your sellers to sell more effectively can help you close more and bigger deals. This can be your Plan A. But since it will require investing in a new enablement program, you might want to come up with a Plan B as well that doesn’t require additional budget. For example, you might propose increasing each seller’s quota.

6. Present your proposed actions to leadership and execute

Make your case to leadership to gain approval on your proposed best action. Show them the data in your plan to demonstrate why your proposed solution will hit your targets and be cost-effective at the same time.

You might make the case for Plan A: investing in a new enablement program. If leadership balks because of cost, then it’s time to roll out Plan B: increase each seller’s quota instead. Sales reps might protest at first, but you can reframe it as an opportunity to make more money.

You’re in sales, remember? Finding the positive spin is what you do.

7. Keep adjusting and stay on target even as market conditions change

Change will come — whether from outside forces (a disruption in your customer base) or inside forces (a pivot in your product roadmap). The mindset shift is to take your plan down from the shelf, dust it off, and reimagine it as a living, breathing thing. It’s something you adjust continually throughout the year — with your sights pinned to your goal.

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Sales plan examples

While plans can be exceptionally detailed, the following examples show the basic structure of two types of plans.

Basic annual plan

Goal: Increase sales by 15% to reach 10.5 million in 2025

Sales cycle: January 2025 to December 2025 Target average contract value: $100,000 Target close rate: 20%

Metrics to track:

• Conversations

Resources required to implement plan:

• 1 new entry-level sales representative
• 1 part-time admin support role
• Training for all representatives on new product launching in late 2024

Territory plan:

Territory: In 2025, The Widget Co is adding a healthcare vertical. While they currently have some healthcare customers, this new territory will be an area of growth.

Goal: Healthcare clients accounted for $100,000 in sales in 2024 Q1. Goal is 300K in sales in 2025 Q2.

Resources required:

• Shift 1 sales representative from government vertical (phasing out) to healthcare
• Dedicate part-time admin support to healthcare
• Allocate $50,000 in marketing budget for healthcare sponsorship

Sales planning only delivers the desired success if companies come up with the right plan for their specific business and goals. Without a plan that works for your specific organisation, you are not likely to see the expected results. Organisations that take the time to optimise their plan are more likely to enjoy better results.

Here are five tips for optimising your plan:

1. Collaborate early and often across the organisation

The most accurate plans are created when all departments work together. To ensure a cohesive plan, the needs of the entire organisation should be included in the very first draft — and as revisions are made. This ensures that the sales team has the right products to sell, and all leaders have skin in the game.

2. Include relevant details to help achieve the goals

While it’s tempting to include only the desired results, the most useful and accurate plans provide a roadmap for how to get to the destination.

The specific metrics you monitor should relate to goals that align with your specific sales plan. For example, if headcount is a current issue in your sales department, then tracking employee retention rates is important.

At the minimum, it’s recommended you track the following metrics to ensure sales efficiency:

• Average contract value
• Sales cycle

As noted above, consider adding other metrics that align with top-level goals. Think first about what the linchpin of the goal is (e.g. employees for retention goals) then identify all metrics related to it you should keep an eye on.

3. Consider the seasonality of your business

For example, December has 15 to 17 effective selling days compared to 23 in other months due to the holidays and many customers taking time off the last week of the year. For that reason, most sales representatives are not going to close as many deals in December as they would in May.

4. Make goals based on the experience level of the team

While looking at the historical performance of the sales team is a good starting point, be sure to consider your current team, too. It takes a new sales representative time to build up their customer base and hit sales goals . Even with significant experience at other organisations, a new sales representative will not perform like a veteran in their first month. Create lower quotas for newer representatives as they ramp up, and your plan will be easier to execute.

5. Use AI insights to build your plan

Historical data gives you a starting point for understanding your team is capabilities. AI tools can, however, factor in additional variables, such as new sales representatives, new products, and even new competitors. By using technology such as sales planning software, you can keep sellers on track, configure plans easily, optimise in real-time, and improve operational flexibility.

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