Sales plan is your “sales roadmap”, the guiding document that will help you keep focus on main objectives, and understand your time limits and obstacles you may face on your path to your sales targets.
Sales plan is a broad term, and for each unit of your company it will be different, and contain different goals, obstacles, and issues - for an entrepreneur, the sales plan means one thing, while for his leading sales manager, it will work differently. The sales plan is also closely related to your revenue plan, as what would have generated your revenue if not sales?
Nonetheless, let’s move closer to the topic. To create a sales plan you have to not only write down your expected number of deals and revenue generated from them, but many and many paragraphs should be included, and many things should be taken into account.
So, what is sales planning? What are the best samples of sales plan? How to create a sales plan? Are marketing and sales planning similar? What does sales plan template look like? Where to get a sales planning sample?
We are going to answer all of these questions, and also we will provide you with relevant free sales planning templates for you to use. Well, let’s begin.
What is sales plan?
Sales plan is a roadmap for reaching your sales goals and objectives within pre-set time frames. A sales plan works a bit differently than a business plan because the business plan is more focused on describing your material objectives - like how much you want to sell till the exact date, or what you would like your revenue to be within those time frames. Unlike a business plan, a sales plan describes your path from defining your objectives to their achievement - how will you sell goods and services, what are the threats and potential issues, what are the sales tactics and techniques you are going to use, what are your target audiences, what are your competitors and how will you tackle them in competition.
In other words, a sales plan is what we do mean under the word “plan” - it is also sometimes called a sales route plan. By following it, in perfect conditions, you will be able to achieve your goals in set terms.
What are the goals to define in your sales plan?
Well, all plans are about reaching your goals, and sales plan doesn’t make any exclusions.
What you do have to define in your sales plan includes:
- Sales goals for the pre-set time frame - under sales goals, we mean the number of sales you want to complete within this time frame. If you have a few products, it will be perfect if you will segment your sales goals by your products as it is clear that there is always one product that sells better than the other.
- Revenue targets - revenue targets are closely tied to your sales objectives, and any sales plan template should still include them both. Revenue targets should define how much are you going to learn within the term you have set for your sales plan.
- Main mission - besides sales goals and revenue targets, any sales plan template should include also a main mission statement that will be defined apart from the matter of your income statement. This can be your expected market share, growth of the company, measurable company status, and so on. The only parameter your mission statement in your sales plan should meet is that it has to be measurable.
- Market analysis - this includes your current and potential competitors, their key products, current market structure, main tendencies that will influence the industry within the terms of your sales plan, target audiences you are focusing on, and so on.
- Strategic sales planning - this means you have to define how will the customer journey of your prospective customers look like, what are the pain points of your prospects, what are the touchpoints for your sales managers to catch customer attention, etc. There are no sales strategies template you can use, but only rely on your own market analysis to succeed.
- Required resources and tools - to reach the goals defined in the sales plan, you will definitely need some resources and tools. It is better to define needed resources and tools in the sales plan template at the early beginning of a sales plan process, at least because it will free your from unexpected additional costs and issues in the future.
- Roles and responsibilities for the sales teams - your sales teams will be the ones who will make your sales plan successful, so there should ebe synergy and clear understanding of how do they should work together. This is also important because you have to understand how many specialists will you need for every stage of you sales plan.
- Sales KPIs and sales metrics to use - as with any other strategic planning process, you will have to measure and evaluate the implemenatition of your sales plan. Strategic sales plans need a correct number of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and metrics to use for measuring the success of your strategic planning, sales performance and team productivity.
- Potential obstacles and problems - no sales planning strategy will ever be successful without defining threats to its implementation. You have to understand what you should be aware of, and this includes market changes, your competitors strategies, changes in customer demand, technological challenges, supply chain threats, and so on.
.png)
How to create a sales plan?
1. Collect and analyze sales data you have
No sales plan examples will ever include this important part that is perhaps the key feature of your sales plan. If you are just starting your business, you have to look for open data for the industry, including such data that relates to your closest competitors. This includes target audience, average bill price, average ROI, average customer lifetime value, common customer journey map for your niche, and so on. All this data will help you to understand what are your standing on. In the case when you are a current entrepreneur and have some relevant experience in sales, you have to gather data for last one to five years to learn it and understand how was it working during these years and what are the key tendencies.
2. Analyze key trends and tendencies
Every single industry has its trends, and some trends even work across industries - like switch to remote workforce management model in 2020 after pandemic. If you are not on the same wave as others in the industry, you will not be able to keep the pace of the competition. Your sales plan should include key trends for your business, and it is another issue free sales plan examples won’t help you to deal with. For instance, in the case of customer service, AI platforms implementation is the main trend by far, and this means you should pay attention to it if you want to compete in the field of customer service. What has it to do with sales? Well, good customer service means more sales - another hint to learn.
3. Define accessible objectives and metrics to measure them
That’s what we have already mentioned, but let’s come back to it again - you have to define your sales targets and revenue objectives and the time frame for their achievement to make your sales plan really a plan. You can even create different levels for your sales goals, like those for the ideal scenario, the average scenario, and the worst-case scenario.
Another part of this stage is that you have to define metrics that will be used to measure whether your goals are achieved or not, and if not, what is the progress on the path to achieving them.
4. Do sales forecasting
Sales forecasting is perhaps the most important part of the sales process, as it is the only way to plan sales strategy and do sales planning. Sales forecasting is a process of conducting reports about current sales performance and potential development of the sales plan in the near future based on data you have collected and analyzed. In other words, sales forecasts determine what will your sales managers do for the next week, month, or quarter - depending on what kind of sales forecast you use, if not all at the same time.
Sales forecasting deserves a separate article to describe how it works and why you should do sales forecasting, but let’s put it shortly - sales forecasting is a must, and it should be done on a regular basis.
Let’s learn one of the easiest ways to do sales forecasting - the opportunity stage forecasting method. This method works simply: you define the likelihood of successful deal closing for each stage of a sales pipeline, and just multiply the potential value of a deal on this possibility.
For instance, if for a product trial, the likelihood of successful deal closing is 50%, and the deal value is likely to be 2000$, you will get 1000$ of income - and you can put it in your forecast. This is extremely important to forecast the possibility of your sales teams reaching the sales quotas set in the sales plan.
5. Identify needs
You have to identify what you lack to make your sales plan successful. All sales plan examples, and your sales plan template as well should pay very close attention to this part - as in sales planning nothing is more important than the resources you need to reach the goal. This doesn’t relate to material resources only, such as tools or budgets, but also about your human resources, especially about skills and qualifications your sales managers have or yet don’t have. If you understand that some of your sales reps lack some vital skills you think are needed to achieve your sales plan goals, you have to create conditions for them to gain those skills as soon as possible.
6. Define the team structure
You have to define your team structure as well, as it is very important for achieving the sales planning goals. Under team structure, we mean you have to deliver roles and responsibilities to your team members and create a hierarchy to make reporting effective and ensure that the internal communication between team members will be productive and everyone will be doing what they are supposed to.
It is critical to avoid duplicating responsibilities between different departments and positions, as well as you should establish effective communication between those departments and employees to make sure that there will be no delays in sharing information and data your specialists need to complete a sales plan.
7. Sale and marketing plan works together
This relates to your pricing strategy and your marketing plan as well. Under marketing planning, we mean that you have to define the main channels you will use to generate leads and prospective customers, as well as the main methods you are going to use to convert those leads into sales.
This includes referral programs, customer loyalty programs, discounts, sales pitches you are going to use to overcome competitors, strategies for direct marketing and indirect marketing, your marketing budgets, marketing metrics you will use to measure the success of your marketing plan, and so on.
8. Identify your buyer personas and target audiences
If you want to sell as much as you want to, you have to understand what is your perfect buyer persona - what are the pain points of your potential customers, what are their preferences, values, budgets, preferred communication channels, and so on.
Under target audiences, we mean you should understand what demographics are the most likely to become your target audience, what is their social status, where do they live, what do they love to do, and what are triggers for them. Surely, you can have multiple target audiences - and this is great because since you have segmented them, you can design a sales plan and marketing strategy that will suit each single target audience perfectly.
What does the sales plan template look like?
|
Goals |
Target audience |
Revenue goals |
Tactics and methods |
Pricing |
Deadlines |
Team structure |
Resources |
Market conditions |
This is the simplest sales plan template to use for creating sales plan. There are sales plan examples that are more advanced than this one, and we’ll provide such a sales plans example later. Though, this one includes:
Target audience - the part of your sales plan template where you define who you are focusing on;
Revenue goals - this stage of your sales plan template defines how much income are you going to generate with this sales plan;
Tactics and methods - this is the most vital part of your sales plan template as it determines what sales tactics you will use to make it work;
Pricing - the part of the sales plan template that defines your pricing policy and discounting strategy;
Deadlines - time frames for each stage of your sales plan template;
Team structure - hierarchy of your team members, their roles, and responsibilities for reaching the sales plan template goals;
Resources - resources you need to reach the objectives set in your sales plan template;
Market conditions - vital conditions of the market that may affect your sales plan template implementation.
Best tips to create a sales plan
To develop a sales plan, you have to understand some vital tips about sales planning. In other words, even though sales planning can look easy to do, it isn’t. The better your sales plan is, the more deep you do your sales planning the higher the chance that you will be able to reach your sales planning goals. Before we will provide you with a sales plan template, let’s first look at these sales planning tips.
1. Always research open data before putting something in your sales plan template
This relates to trends, tendencies, and key tactics for your industry, as well as to marketing research that points to customer expectations, customer demand, and customer preferences. You have to understand not only the current way of how the industry works, but the dynamic of its changes - what has changed, why, and when.
2. Collect all data you can
When your sales plan is in charge, and you start its implementation, you have to make sure that all data about customer interactions and customer behavior is collected - all this data can be used for further analysis and decision-making.
3. Rely on technology
CRM software, help desk solutions, contact center software - all these tools can significantly boost your conversion rates and customer retention rates, which means you will not only acquire new customers, but retain current customers, and this will make your revenue grow faster.
4. Segment sales plans for different teams
You have to understand that there is no universally accepted sales plan for all units of your organization - for instance, if you have an inbound sales team and an outbound sales team, there will be two different sales plans for both these teams. Segmentation regarding to sales plan is the thing that will help you keep processes under control.
5. Communicate with your employees
To make sure that your sales plan objectives are going to be met, you have to be in constant communication with your employees. A sales plan is achieved with the work of your sales reps, so there is no way they can do it without your help and without clear communication between them.
6. Try to analyze sales plans of different businesses
If you have an opportunity to look at a sales plan created by another company, use this opportunity properly. A sales plan isn’t worth anything until it starts being processed and the goals aligned in this sales plan are being met. But if you have a sample of sales plan that is successfully implemented, you can learn something from it for your business - in fact, that is how things work - we all learn from each other.
