Sales Planning: What is it and how to create it? A complete review

Sales planning is crucial for any organization’s success. A well-structured sales plan guides your team toward meeting targets and driving business growth. In fact, companies with a solid sales plan are 33% more likely to achieve their sales targets. 

This guide will break down the key steps to create an effective sales plan and show how it can boost your business outcomes. 

No matter if you’re new to sales or have been doing it for a long time, knowing how to plan for sales is really important. By the end, you’ll know simple ways to make a plan that matches your business goals and helps you sell better.

Let’s get started!🚀

🔑Key Highlights

• Sales planning is the process of setting sales goals, identifying sales strategies, and allocating resources to achieve these objectives.
• A structured sales plan provides clear goals, efficient resource use, improved team morale, predictable revenue, and continuous improvement through regular performance reviews.
• Use industry trends, track progress with tools, tailor team strategies, collaborate with marketing, and analyze competitors to create an effective sales plan.
• Types of sales plans include marketing-focused, business growth, 30-60-90-day, new product, and market expansion plans, each designed for different goals.

What is sales planning? 

Sales experts say that “Sales planning is a smart way of setting a business’s sales goals and figuring out how to reach them. It includes finding the right customers, deciding on sales targets, and making clear plans to achieve those targets.”

To create a sales plan, follow these steps:

• Set realistic sales goals based on market data.
• Develop sales strategies tailored to your target customers.
• Allocate resources effectively to maximize efficiency.
• Regularly track and assess your sales metrics.

How to Create an Effective Sales Planning Process?

The sales planning process is more than just the document that results from it. It helps businesses set clear goals and strategies to achieve better results. To be truly valuable, the sales plan example should be the outcome of a detailed, well-informed, and strategic approach.

From my experience, there are several key steps to include when planning sales:

• Collecting sales data and identifying patterns.
• Setting clear goals.
• Define key success metrics
• Evaluating the current status
• Initiating sales predictions
• Recognizing gaps.
• Ideate new initiatives
• Involve stakeholders
• Outline action items

To ensure accuracy, I consulted with Zach Drollinger, Senior Director of Sales at Coursedog, to validate the examples and methods described below.

Step 1: Collect Sales Data and Identifying Patterns

To plan effectively, it’s essential to reflect on past sales data. Looking at historical sales over the past year or even the past five years gives you a sense of trends that can guide your future decisions.

How to Collect Sales Data?

Let’s say I’m the newly appointed sales director for a software company that provides cloud-based HR solutions. My target market is medium-sized businesses in the tech sector on the West Coast. 

Before I set any sales goals, I’d look at the past sales performance for this market. I would examine key questions such as:

• How much revenue did we generate from the tech sector over the last five years?
• What was the churn rate for existing clients?
• How did sales growth in this sector compare to other sectors?

Learning about these parts helps me understand customers better, their needs, and any problems that might come up.

Step 2: Setting Clear Goals.

How can you measure your business’s success without clear goals and objectives? Once you’ve outlined them, you can begin to take actionable steps toward achieving them.

How to Set Sales Goals?

Let’s say I’m working with a software company that provides tools to small businesses. After doing research on market trends and what customers need, I would set big sales goals, like getting more people to use the product.

To make the goal clearer, I would create specific tasks, such as reaching out to 50 small business owners in my target market, setting up 20 product demos, and turning at least 10 of those businesses into paying customers within three months.

Additionally, to measure success, I could create SMART objectives such as:

• Increase product demos by 25% this quarter
• Generate 100 new leads per month
• Close 15 deals within the next 6 weeks

These objectives would help ensure that the sales team is focused on measurable actions that contribute directly to achieving the broader revenue growth goal.

Step 3: Define Key Success Metrics

Every business has its unique traits, but all share a common need for effective metrics and KPIs to evaluate success.

How will you measure success in your business? Metrics can change based on your business, but some common KPIs are things like profit margins, return on investment (ROI), website visits, and conversion rates.

KPIs for Sales Reps vs. Sales Managers

Sales Rep KPIs

For sales reps, KPIs focus on day-to-day performance and productivity, such as:

• Calls Made: Ensures reps maintain consistent outreach and high activity levels.
• Conversion Rate: Measures the number of prospects converted to customers, reflecting sales effectiveness.
• Average Deal Size: Monitors the revenue from each deal, motivating reps to secure larger sales.
• Sales Cycle Duration: Tracks the time taken to close deals, helping reps streamline their approach.

Sales Manager KPIs

For sales managers, KPIs give a broader view of team performance, like:

• Total Revenue: Tracks overall team revenue, monitoring progress toward sales goals.
• Pipeline Value: Estimates the value of deals in progress, predicting future revenue.
• Win Rate: The percentage of successfully closed deals, pinpointing areas for improvement.
• Employee Retention Rate: Focuses on team stability, which is crucial for long-term success.
• Training Progress: Evaluate the effectiveness of training programs to ensure ongoing skill development.

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How to Identify the Right Sales Metrics?

Sales metrics are numbers that measure how well your sales team is doing. They help you understand what’s working and what’s not so you can improve.

Key examples:

• Revenue: How much money you made.
• Deals closed: How many sales have you made?
• Conversion rates: How many leads turned into customers?
• Customer lifetime value: How much money each customer spends over time.

By tracking these, you can see where to focus your efforts for better results.

Step 4: Evaluate the Present Situation

How is your business performing at this moment? This analysis is essential for understanding how your current position compares to the goals and targets you set earlier. What challenges are you facing? What advantages do you have?

Make a list of the barriers preventing success, and pinpoint the resources or strengths you can leverage. These insights will help shape and refine your sales strategy moving forward.

How to Evaluate Current Business Standing?

As the new sales director for a software company that offers cloud-based HR solutions to medium-sized tech businesses on the West Coast, I’d look at past sales data and my goals to understand where I stand right now.

For example, if my goal is to increase revenue by 20% Y/Y, I would start by analyzing the company’s current retention rates. This would help me determine if customer retention is a major area needing improvement.

Next, I’d dig into the sales trends for the tech businesses we’ve already closed deals with. Are there any recurring pain points that we consistently address? I’d also review our demo process to see if we’re missing key aspects of our value proposition. I may leverage conversation intelligence to gain insights into how our reps are engaging with potential clients.

In the end, I’d want to understand how well we’re doing, find any problems in our strategy, and improve our plan so my team can sell better and meet our revenue target.

Step 5: Start Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is about guessing future sales to help with decisions like budgeting, hiring, and setting goals. Accurate forecasts make it easier to plan and use resources in the best way.

How to Forecast Sales?

• Gather data: Collect past sales data, market trends, and customer information.
• Choose methods: Select suitable forecasting techniques (e.g., moving averages, regression analysis).
• Build models: Develop and test forecasting models using statistical software.
• Generate forecasts: Create projections for different time periods.
• Monitor and adjust: Regularly track actual sales, analyze deviations, and refine your forecasts.

Step 6: Recognizing Gaps

To spot gaps in your business, assess both your current and future needs. Start by determining the skills required for your team to achieve the set goals. Then, evaluate the skills of your existing employees.

After gathering this information, provide training to your current team or consider hiring new talent to address these gaps.

How to Recognize Selling Gaps?

In our software company example, let’s say my sales forecast shows results that don’t match the goals I’ve set for the team. To fix this, I would look at the whole sales process, operations, and resources to find areas that need improvement.

I might find that our sales materials are outdated and don’t show the latest features of our cloud-based HR solutions. Also, our sales reps could be booking demos but not converting them because they lack proper training and aren’t delivering a clear message.

In the end, I might notice that the sales and marketing teams aren’t fully on the same page, which leads to prospects expecting things that we can’t deliver. Once I spot these issues, I’ll work on updating sales materials, giving better training to the team, and making sure sales and marketing work better together to hit our goals.

Step 7: Ideate New Initiatives

Many trends in the industry come and go. When you create your sales plan, consider new ideas that may have been missed before.

For example, if your business has mainly relied on word-of-mouth and social media marketing, now might be the perfect time to try out webinars or special promotions.

How to Ideate New Sales Initiatives?

In our software company example, I would come up with new initiatives based on the gaps I discovered earlier. One of these might include updating our sales content and marketing materials to showcase the latest features of our cloud-based HR solutions.

Next, I’d roll out new training programs to help our team conduct better demos. Finally, I’d collaborate with the marketing team to align our messaging, ensuring prospects have clear and realistic expectations about what we offer.

The goal is to turn the identified gaps into real, actionable plans. Simply saying, “We need to do better with demos,” won’t cut it — that’s just a thought, not a clear plan for driving sales.

Step 8: Involve Key Stakeholders

Stakeholders are people or groups who care about your business. They could be investors, employees, or customers, and they often help make important decisions.

At the end of your sales planning process, it’s important to involve the people from departments that directly affect your sales, like marketing or product teams. This collaboration helps create a clear and effective sales plan.

How to Involve Stakeholders

Once I have identified the key barriers impacting my software company’s sales team, it’s time to engage the relevant stakeholders.

First, I’ll connect with those managing sales content and marketing collateral. They are responsible for producing targeted case studies and whitepapers tailored to our ideal customers in the tech sector.

Next, I’ll involve middle management to review the performance of the sales team. I may suggest extra coaching for sales reps or consulting with external experts to enhance demo effectiveness and training.

Finally, I’ll collaborate with the marketing leadership to fine-tune our messaging. Aligning the product’s benefits and outcomes will ensure that our potential clients have clear, realistic expectations of what we offer.

Step 9: Outline Action Items

Once you’ve established your sales planning process, the final step is to outline the action items that will guide your team through the sales cycle. This ensures that every department is aligned and knows exactly what to do at each stage.

Use your company’s capacity and quota numbers to create a list of specific action steps. Think about things like drafting a sales call script, analyzing competitors, or planning new incentives to drive sales.

How to Create a Sales Action Plan?

Let’s say I’m the newly appointed sales director for a software company offering cloud-based HR solutions. Here are some key action items I would focus on:

• Revise our prospecting strategy by providing more coaching and refining our sales messages to better reach medium-sized tech companies.
• Rework our buyer personas for key decision-makers like HR managers to better reflect the needs of our target customers.
• Conduct new training on how to demo our software effectively for potential clients in the tech sector.
• Implement our updated prospecting strategy from ideation to execution, ensuring the team follows through.
• Collaborate with sales enablement stakeholders to create relevant case studies and whitepapers for the tech sector.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, these are the essential steps that will help us build a more effective and strategic sales plan, improving our outcomes and setting a path to better performance.

Sales planning should not just end with creating a document. I suggest repeating this process every year to keep your team aligned and focused on growth.

Additionally, setting up a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the sales planning process will save time and maintain consistency across your organization, making it easier to adjust your plan year after year.

Importance of Sales Planning Process

While relying on intuition in sales strategies can sometimes yield results, it often lacks the consistency and scalability needed for long-term success. A well-structured sales planning process, however, ensures that your entire team works toward unified goals, fostering better collaboration and efficiency.

I recall a situation where a client’s sales numbers were consistently falling short of expectations, and team morale was at an all-time low. 

After a deep dive into their approach, the sales manager discovered that the company lacked a clear sales plan. They implemented a well-defined sales planning process that focused on:

• Setting achievable sales goals
• Identifying high-value prospects
• Conducting regular performance evaluations

The outcome was impressive—within just six months, they saw a 27% increase in sales, and the team was more engaged and motivated than ever.

Here are some importance of having a structured sales planning process:

1. Clear Direction and Focus

Having a defined sales plan gives your team a roadmap with clear goals and milestones. This clarity allows you to focus on the right leads and reduce the stress of last-minute scrambling to meet sales targets. Without a plan, it’s easy to lose direction and fall behind.

2. Efficient Use of Resources

A sales plan helps you make smarter decisions about where to allocate resources—whether it’s your team, budget, or time. In my client’s case, they were once spread too thin, targeting too many prospects. After implementing their plan, they focused on the best opportunities, leading to better conversions and higher revenue.

3. Improved Team Performance and Morale

For my client, morale improved once their sales team had clear, attainable goals. By implementing a structured sales plan, the team gained focus and motivation, which resulted in better performance and job satisfaction. When your team understands the overall goal, they work more effectively and together.

4. Predictable Revenue Streams

A good sales plan gives you the advantage of predictable revenue, which is key for better budgeting and strategic growth. In fact, a Logility report found that businesses with effective sales planning saw a 31% improvement in forecast accuracy, leading to more strategic decisions.

5. Ongoing Improvement

A well-defined sales plan sets benchmarks and performance metrics to help monitor progress. I always recommend holding monthly reviews to assess how well the team is meeting its sales goals. These reviews help you find ways to improve, spot top performers, and make quick changes.

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Tips for Creating an Effective Sales Plan

We’ve discussed the key components of a sales plan, including examples and templates.

Now, let’s dive into some actionable tips to help you create a plan that not only meets your targets but also impresses your superiors.

• Leverage industry trends to enhance your plan: When presenting to stakeholders, using market insights and trends can show why your approach will be successful.
• Identify the tools you’ll use to track progress: Whether it’s CRM systems or dashboard software, be clear about the technologies that will help measure and track your sales success.
• Back your budget proposal with data: If your sales plan includes a budget, support it with historical performance data and reliable sales forecasts to make your proposal more convincing.
• Create tailored plans for each sales team: Different teams, like business development, inbound sales, or field sales, may have unique goals. Customizing the plan for each team will allow for more targeted strategies and KPIs.
• Collaborate with your marketing team: Sales and marketing alignment is crucial. By involving marketing in the planning process, you can better align your strategies for lead generation, finding, and building relationships.
• Talk to your sales reps. Understand their daily challenges to ensure your plan is practical and achievable. Their insights will help fine-tune your approach and avoid unrealistic expectations.
• Conduct a competitive analysis. To stay ahead, it’s essential to know your competitor’s strengths. This knowledge will guide your plan to position your company more effectively in the market.

What are the different types of sales plans?

There are several types of sales plans you can create to suit your organization’s goals. Below are some examples to help you find the best fit for your needs.

1. Marketing- Alignment Sales Plan

While many traditional sales plans already integrated marketing, you might want to develop a marketing-integrated sales plan if your company hasn’t yet aligned these two functions. 

This plan focuses on crafting ideal customer profiles, refining buyer personas, and syncing marketing communications with sales messaging.

Effective integration makes sure that everyone is on the same page, reducing the risk of miscommunication and improving overall performance.

2. Business Development Strategic Sales Plan

A strategic sales plan for business growth centers on bringing in new clients through networking, partnering with other businesses, sponsoring events, and engaging in outreach. It’s important to select the appropriate KPIs that accurately measure the success of these outreach methods.

From my experience, business development is crucial for sustained success, as it allows your organization to gain a deeper understanding of the competitive environment in your industry and develop strategies to differentiate itself. 

Moreover, it aligns your entire team toward a unified goal, ensuring a collective focus on growth.

3. 30-60-90-Day Sales Plan

This sales strategy is structured around a timeline with objectives set for 30, 60, and 90-day intervals. You may focus on goals like achieving sales targets or decreasing customer turnover. 

It’s perfect for someone new to a position, allowing them to monitor their progress during the first three months. It also works well for a startup that is still defining its sales objectives.

Peggy Ratcliff McKee, an executive career coach, refers to the 90-day plan as an excellent starting point, allowing you to adjust goals as per the company’s specific needs.

4. New Product Sales Plan 

When launching a new product, it’s important to develop a sales plan focused on driving revenue from the introduction.

From my experience, conducting a competitive analysis, establishing a clear sales approach, enhancing your brand identity, and securing distribution partners are essential, especially if you’re transitioning to a channel sales strategy.

5. Market Expansion Plan

A market expansion plan is a strategic approach that outlines the steps and objectives when launching into a new region or market. It primarily focuses on reaching the target audience in an untapped geographic area.

This plan usually includes checking the costs for distribution, looking at time zone differences between your sales team and potential customers, and preparing for other challenges that may come up.

Common Sales Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Here are the common sales planning mistakes to avoid:

• Lack of Clear Goals and Objectives: Setting vague or unrealistic goals.
• Insufficient Market Research: Not understanding your target audience, competitors, and market trends.
• Ignoring Customer Needs: Focusing too much on product features instead of the benefits for customers.
• Poor Lead Qualification: Chasing every lead without proper qualification.
• Lack of a Sales Pipeline: Not tracking the progress of leads through the sales funnel.
• Inadequate Sales Forecasting: Failing to predict future sales accurately.
• Neglecting Sales Training: Not providing adequate training to your sales team.
• Overlooking Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Not using a CRM system to manage customer interactions and data.
• Failing to Adapt to Change: Sticking to a rigid sales plan without considering market changes or customer feedback.
• Neglecting Sales Metrics: Not tracking key sales metrics to measure performance.

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Final Words 

A solid sales plan isn’t just a document—it’s the backbone of your success. By following a structured process, setting clear goals, and regularly adjusting your approach, you can boost your sales performance, motivate your team, and drive real business growth. 

Whether you’re refining your current strategy or starting fresh, this plan will be your roadmap to success. Take action today, and watch your sales soar!

FAQs

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan outlines your objectives, key strategies, target audience, and potential challenges. While it resembles a traditional business plan, it focuses specifically on your sales approach. A business plan sets out your overall goals, whereas a sales plan details how you will achieve those goals.

What is the 3-2-1 strategy?

The 3-2-1 strategy is a time management technique that helps you prioritize your tasks. It involves identifying:

• 3 Must-Do Tasks: These are the most critical tasks that absolutely need to be completed.
• 2 Should-Do Tasks: These are important tasks that would be beneficial to complete, but they are not as urgent as the must-do tasks.
• 1 Nice-to-Do Task: This is a task that would be pleasant or enjoyable to complete, but it is not essential.

By tackling the most important tasks first, you make sure the key work gets done, while still leaving room for flexibility and fun in your day.

What is the 30-60-90 rule in sales?

A 30-60-90 day plan is a structured approach for new sales managers. First 30 Days: Focus on understanding your team and how the sales process works. 

Next 60 Days: Apply your knowledge to enhance sales strategies and support your team’s growth. Last 30 Days: Ensure progress is being made towards meeting sales goals and adjust where needed.

What are the key elements of a sales plan?

The key elements of a sales plan typically include:

• Executive summary
• Sales goals and objectives
• Target market and customer analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Sales strategies and tactics
• Sales forecast and budget
• Sales team structure and roles
• Sales tools and technologies
• Performance metrics and tracking
• Sales training and development
• Contingency planning

What goes in a sales plan template?

A sales plan template has sections for setting goals, defining the target audience, planning the sales strategy, listing tactics, tracking KPIs, and outlining how resources and the budget will be used. It helps keep everything organized and focused on achieving sales objectives.

What do sales planners do?

Sales planners create and use strategies to achieve your sales goals. They look at market trends, figure out who the target audience is, use resources wisely, and check how things are going to make sure the sales plan is working and staying on track.

What are the 7 steps in the sales process example?

 The 7 steps in the sales process example are:

• Prospecting: Identifying and researching potential customers.
• Preparation: Planning and preparing for initial contact with the prospect.
• Approach: Making initial contact with the prospect and building rapport.
• Presentation: Presenting the product or service and its value proposition to the prospect.
• Handling objections: Addressing any concerns or objections raised by the prospect.
• Closing: Asking for the sale and securing the deal.
• Follow-up: Building a good relationship with customers after the sale.