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6 Steps to Create a Successful Sales Business Plan

Written By Michelle Richardson

Michelle Richardson

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Mastering Sales Planning: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Managers

Casey O'Connor

What is Sales Planning?

Understanding your market, setting realistic sales goals, creating an effective sales strategy, building a high-performing sales team, utilizing sales technology, developing a sales forecast, monitoring and analyzing performance, effective communication within the sales team, adapting to market changes.

Most sales managers know that, without sales planning , their team is unlikely to be successful in the long term. 

Strong data backs this up: 79% of top-performing teams rely on formal sales processes to guide them. There’s no question that proper planning leads to strong performance. 

Still, sales planning isn’t always an easy or straightforward process. It requires a methodical approach that ensures the plans you create give each member of your team clarity, direction, and confidence throughout the sales process. 

Small and medium-sized businesses, in particular, can sometimes be prone to neglecting careful and routine sales planning in favor of rapid growth and forward momentum. But teams of all sizes and experience levels, and sales professionals in all roles will benefit from having a dynamic sales plan that can guide them toward their sales goals. 

In this article, we’ll go over everything sales managers need to know about sales planning from top to bottom. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

A sales plan delineates your goals, top-level strategies, target audience, and potential challenges. 

Most sales plans resemble a conventional business plan, but sales plans are dedicated specifically to outlining your sales strategy . A business plan defines your objectives, while a sales plan provides a detailed roadmap on precisely how you intend to achieve them.

Most sales plans include information about the following:

• Target market/customers
• Revenue targets
• Sales strategies
• Pricing plans and upcoming promotions
• Deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs)
• Org chart/team structure
• Available resources (including the sales budget )
• Market trends and conditions

But the exact focus(es) of your sales planning process will vary depending on the unique needs of your team.

Sales Planning Goals

Ideally, your sales planning process should address both short-term and long-term sales goals, objectives, required resources, etc. 

The primary goals of sales planning are to:

• Clearly outline sales goals and objectives so that everyone on the team has a common understanding.
• Guide the members of your sales team through both the high-level sales strategy and sales methodology, as well as in-the-field sales tactics they will use to meet sales targets.
• Describe, in detail, the roles and responsibilities of everyone on the sales team.
• Track and monitor the effectiveness of your sales team.
• Help predict whether individual sales reps, as well as the sales team as a whole, will meet their sales targets.

Good sales planning is an ongoing, never-ending process. It should involve routine data tracking and analysis to continuously improve sales performance . 

It’s okay to be a stickler about this, no matter how tedious the process may feel at first. The truth is, more than half of reps are missing their quotas. 

On the other hand, top-performing teams more consistently rely on the kind of structure that sales planning provides than their lower-performing counterparts. 

Sales planning may take time and collaboration, but the data speaks for itself: if you want your team to be high-performing, it’s worth it to invest the time into the planning process. 

It’s difficult to conduct effective sales planning without a thorough understanding of your market. 

This means a few different things. 

First, sales managers need to ensure that their team has a collective, detailed understanding of the target audience, as well as any buyer personas they may be likely to encounter throughout the sales process. 

Sales managers need to ensure that they and their team have a continuously up-to-date understanding of their market in order to complete the sales planning process productively. 

One of the main purposes of sales planning is to clearly define sales goals for your team. 

Setting sales goals is one of the most consequential parts of the sales planning process. Sales goals that are too easy won’t push your team to reach their full potential, but targets and objectives that are too challenging can end up being counterproductive.

Sales reps also need to be crystal clear on what’s expected of them in order to reach those goals. Miscommunication, even minor, is one of the fastest ways to derail forward progress.

To mitigate these issues and help define other parameters around the goal-setting process, most successful goal-setters use some variation of the SMART goal framework to help them create objectives that motivate the team and generate results.

Remember to also check in with your C-suite about their overarching business goals and objectives, as sales goals should always align with and contribute to them. 

A big bulk of sales planning is creating effective sales strategies. 

Sales strategy provides direction and helps determine the actionable steps your team needs to take to meet its targets. The sales strategies you choose for your team to implement throughout the sales process will determine how productive your sales funnel becomes over time. 

Sales managers can also leverage sales planning to help them develop a powerhouse sales team.

The way that you compensate and incentivize your team will go a long way in retaining them and motivating them to succeed.

Be sure to include details about compensation and commission structures in your sales planning process.

Ongoing sales coaching is also a highly effective way to improve the individual and team-wide performance of your sales team. 

Having access to capable sales technology can make sales planning significantly more efficient and effective. 

Yesware , for example, helps sales teams perform personalized, data-driven outreach at scale. 

With features like multi-channel campaigns, attachment tracking, and analytics and reporting, sales reps always have access to up-to-the-minute information about what their buyers are doing and how to best connect with them. 

Depending on your team’s size, level of experience, and operating needs, your tech stack may include different tools and capabilities. 

Teams of all sizes, even SMBs, need to have access to a functional customer relationship management (CRM) system, an email service provider, and a couple of other basic platforms. From there, teams may also consider systems like sales forecasting software, lead generation platforms, and more. 

To learn more about what to consider for your tech stack, including Yesware’s 3-phase blueprint for scaling at each stage of growth, check out our implementation guide here: 

Creating accurate sales forecasts is one of the most important responsibilities of a sales manager. 

Sales planning is intrinsically intertwined with sales forecasting. Both processes help sales teams focus on meeting revenue targets with intentional sales strategies and tactics that generate results. 

Sales forecasting may seem tedious, but studies show that 97% of organizations that implement a sales forecasting process meet their quotas. On the contrary, only a little more than half (55%) of those companies that don’t forecast are able to meet quota. 

Sales planning is time wasted if there aren’t steps in place to collect data and measure your team’s performance. 

As you go through the sales planning process, be sure to note which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll be looking at to measure success. 

Remember, too, that tracking and analyzing data is only the first step. Great sales managers know how to turn data-driven insights into actionable feedback (via training and coaching, for example) that can help reps tangibly improve their performance. 

To that end, make sure you’re scheduling regular performance reviews and coaching sessions with each member of your team. 

Sales planning also gives sales teams a big advantage when it comes to communication. The better your sales planning, the more streamlined your inter-team communication and collaboration will be. 

This may seem secondary to “big ticket” things like revenue generation and sales forecasting, but the way a sales team communicates can make or break their success and scalability over time. 

Part of your sales planning process should be to outline all deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs), as well as any details they need to know regarding data collection, reporting, and other accountability. This improves transparency and accountability. 

To note, the goal here isn’t to micromanage, but rather to streamline communication and expectations. 

Sales planning also helps sales managers more quickly identify when and where communication issues arise, if they ever do. 

Some sales teams, for example, fall into the trap of working in silos and neglecting collaboration. With effective sales planning, sales managers can build in time for cross-team meetings and open channels of communication. 

Sales planning can help sales managers guide their teams through just about any condition in a dynamic and often unpredictable market. 

This is one of the areas where continuous, ongoing sales planning is very important. Sales managers need to regularly survey what’s trending in the market, how the target audience is responding to their campaigns, and how the organization is measuring up against the competition. 

Many sales teams find that when they consistently focus on adding value to the buyer throughout the sales process , they can achieve success through just about most market trends and shifts. 

Overall, the more connected sales reps stay with the needs of their target market, the better they can handle any potential disruptions or changes in the market. 

Sales planning is one of the foundational parts of a sales manager’s job. The way a manager approaches this responsibility can dictate the difference between mediocre performance (or, in some cases, failure) and long-term sales success. 

Though it may be a time-consuming and laborious process, the benefits of doing it right are numerous and both tangible and profound. The more methodical and purposeful they can be around the sales planning process, the better their results will be. 

The right sales tools can make all the difference for managers who want to add automation and data-driven insights to their planning. 

With Yesware’s suite of easy-to-use features like multi-channel campaigns, email templates, an enriched database of over 100+ million prospects, and sophisticated analytics, sales managers can keep all their bases covered and plans in place. 

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Sales | How To

How to Create a Sales Plan in 10 Steps (+ Free Template)

Published March 9, 2023

Published Mar 9, 2023

REVIEWED BY: Jess Pingrey

WRITTEN BY: Jillian Ilao

This article is part of a larger series on Sales Management .

• 1 Establish Your Mission Statement
• 2 Set Sales Goals & Objectives
• 3 Determine Your Ideal Customer
• 4 Set Your Sales Budget
• 5 Develop Sales Strategies & Tactics
• 6 Implement Sales Tools
• 7 Develop Your Sales Funnel
• 8 Create Your Sales Pipeline
• 9 Assign Roles & Responsibilities
• 10 Monitor Progress & Adjust Accordingly
• 11 Examples of Other Free Small Business Sales Plan Templates
• 12 Sales Planning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• 13 Bottom Line

Sales plans enable businesses to set measurable goals, identify resources, budget for sales activities, forecast sales, and monitor business progress. These all contribute to guiding the sales team toward the company’s overall strategy and goals. In this article, we explore how to create a sales plan, including details on creating an action plan for sales, understanding the purpose of your business, and identifying your ideal customers.

What Is a Sales Plan? A sales plan outlines the strategies, objectives, tools, processes, and metrics to hit your business’ sales goals. It entails establishing your mission statement, setting goals and objectives, determining your ideal customer, and developing your sales strategy and sales funnel. To effectively execute your sales plan, assign roles and responsibilities within your sales team and have metrics to measure your outcomes versus your goals and objectives.

Ten steps to creating an effective sales plan

Download and customize our free sales planning template and follow our steps to learn how to create a sales plan to reach your company’s revenue goals.

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Free Sales Plan Template

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💡 Quick Tip:

Once you’ve created a sales plan, give your sales team the tools to execute it effectively with robust customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Use a CRM like HubSpot CRM to help your sales team collaborate on deals, develop sales reports, track deals, and create custom sales dashboards

1. Establish Your Mission Statement

A mission statement summarizing why you’re in business should be part of your action plan for sales. It should include a broad overview of your business’ products or services and your brand’s unique selling proposition. For example, you wouldn’t say, “We provide customers with insurance policies.” Instead, you might frame it as “We provide customers with cost-effective financial risk management solutions.”

It’s essential to fully understand your unique selling proposition before creating a mission statement. This allows you to learn why you’re different from competitors in your industry. It also helps you determine how your unique proposition suits a niche market better.

Steps on how to create a unique selling proposition

For instance, using the same insurance example above, you may realize specific markets are easier to sell based on that selling proposition. Therefore, it’s a good idea to narrow in on your mission statement by saying, “We provide startup businesses with cost-effective risk management solutions.”

2. Set Sales Goals & Objectives

Once you have summarized why you’re in business in a mission statement, begin setting sales goals . Typically, business goals will include one year, but may also include three- or five-year projections.

Steps on how to set sales goals

Here are a few options for how to set sales revenue goals for your business:

• Set sales amount: You may have a specific amount in mind for a sales goal. For instance, you may determine that $200,000 is a reasonable sales goal based on prior sales and your company’s ability to generate new business.
• Desired profitability: First, calculate the total anticipated expenses for the set time period to find the break-even point. From there, you can calculate how much revenue your team needs to bring in to make a certain profit margin. For example, if annual operating costs are expected to be $100,000, and you want to make a 30% profit, your sales goal is $130,000.
• Projected sales forecast: Based on an industry-standard or estimates you attained by running a sales forecast, you may find it’s better to use a projected sales forecast as your sales goal.

Pro tip: Projecting sales can be challenging without a suitable sales forecasting model. Our free sales forecast templates help you create simple, long-term, budget-based, multi-product, subscription-based, and month-to-month business sales forecasts. Some customer relationship managers (CRMs) like Freshsales have sales goal-tracking functionalities that allow you to set and assign sales goals for your team.

Five-year sales forecast template example (Source: Fit Small Business )

Sales goal tracking in Freshsales (Source: Freshsales )

Sales goals must reflect new business revenue and sales from existing or recurring customers. Then, you must add specific sales objectives that identify and prioritize the sales activities your team needs to complete to meet sales goals. This creates an objective way to measure success in hitting goals at all levels: organizational, sales department, team, and individual sales rep, which is an essential part of sales management .

For example, imagine your total revenue goal is $200,000 in year two and $300,000 in year three. You then add an objective, such as stating you want your business’ revenue from existing customers to grow 15% in year three. This can be measured by evaluating your percentage of revenue from existing customers in year three compared to year two.

3. Determine Your Ideal Customer

Determining the ideal customer or target market is the next step of your business plan for sales reps. It may have been accomplished when you developed your mission statement, but also when you set your sales goals and discovered how broad your market needs to be to reach them. Describing your ideal customer helps dictate who you’re selling to and your selling approach.

One way to establish your ideal customer is by creating a series of unique customer profiles . Each profile specifies key demographics, behaviors, interests, job positions, and geographic information about one of your ideal buyer types. Based on your customer profiles, you can then develop more targeted marketing strategies for lead generation and nurturing to move leads through the sales process more efficiently and close more deals.

Pro tip: Making a customer persona can be challenging, especially if it is based on the wrong data or if you just focus on the demographics. Check out our article on creating a customer persona to help you define your company’s ideal buyer types and guide your lead generation and marketing activities.

4. Set Your Sales Budget

After establishing your objectives and identifying your ideal customer personas—and before developing your actual strategies and tactics—you must identify a sales budget to work with. It should include estimated expenses for salaries, travel expenses, and the cost of any software tools or service providers used to help with sales and marketing. While these are meant to be estimates, research and due diligence should be done to avoid financial errors.

One way to set your sales budget, particularly for software tools and services you may be interested in, is to create and issue a request for proposal (RFP). Issuing an RFP allows you to post a summary of your needs to solicit proposals on potential solutions. In addition to providing accurate budget estimates from various qualified vendors and contractors, it may also help you discover cost-effective or high-performing options you were previously unaware of.

5. Develop Sales Strategies & Tactics

A sales strategy explains how you plan to outsell your competitors and accomplish your sales goals. It defines specific, detailed tactics your team will use to pursue your sales goals. These may involve using Google Ads, cold calling, and drip email marketing campaigns as part of a lead generation strategy. Available strategies differ depending on your company’s resources, skill sets, sales operation, and product or service offerings.

Strategies and tactics should be personalized for your ideal customers based on their unique interests, behaviors, and the best ways to connect with them. For example, some customer profiles show your ideal buyer generally only makes purchases based on trusted referrals. In this case, you could implement a referral strategy that provides incentives to generate more customer referrals .

Plus, different sales strategies will be needed to acquire new business vs keeping existing customers. When selling to existing customers, for example, your strategy could include cross-selling tactics where additional products are recommended based on prior purchases. The short-term cross-selling tactics could require customer service reps to send 30 emails per week recommending a complementary product to existing customers.

For a new business strategy, sales reps might rely on emotional selling methods when using cold calling as a tactic. Instead of product features, cold calling scripts would be geared to evoke feelings that lead to buying decisions. Tactics could reflect the objective of having reps make 15 cold calls each week. They could use a script that opens with a story about how a purchase made a customer feel or how someone felt because they didn’t purchase the product.

Pro tip: Ensuring your strategies are properly executed requires excellent sales leadership and a healthy environment for sales reps to operate in. Our how-to guide for building a positive sales culture shows you how to create an environment that promotes high job satisfaction, low employee turnover, and profitability.

6. Implement Sales Tools

Your sales strategy template should reference the software, hardware, and materials you use to manage the sales operation and make each team member more efficient. One of the most notable tools to include is the customer relationship management (CRM) system . It allows your team to organize contact information, streamline sales tasks, and facilitate communication with customers and leads.

HubSpot CRM , for instance, makes it easy to organize information about leads, contacts, and deal opportunities. Additionally, from a HubSpot CRM lead profile, you can initiate a conversation with that contact by calling, emailing, or scheduling an appointment.

HubSpot CRM contact profile (Source: HubSpot )

CRMs are also used to monitor and report sales progress. For example, many have dashboards and functionality, such as alerts, which make it easy to identify where your team may be underperforming. These could also tell you which leads are most likely to convert and should be focused on. Sales information such as deals closed, revenue generated, and leads created can be presented in a detailed report .

These types of insights can also be shown on the CRM’s system dashboard . Pipedrive is an example of a CRM that has a customizable dashboard that displays both activity information and performance-based data. Activity data include emails sent, received, and outstanding tasks to be completed. Performance-based data, on the other hand, have deals lost or the average value of won deals.

Pipedrive’s customizable dashboard (Source: Pipedrive )

Other sales enablement tools can make your sales team more effective. These include voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone systems , lead generation platforms, email campaign tools, content creation platforms, and task automation software. These tools can be found within CRM software or through CRM integrations and standalone applications.

In addition to technology tools, sales and marketing templates should be used to streamline outreach initiatives. Scenario-based, premade sales email templates , for instance, allow salespeople to have an email already crafted for their specific situation.

Creating and storing business proposal templates in your CRM also streamlines the contact procurement and business proposal generation process . This way, whenever a prospect says they’d like to receive a quote or you’re responding to a request for a proposal, you already have a customizable template ready to go.

Pro tip: Effective cold calling scripts sales reps can use as a guide when placing calls to new leads is a tremendous sales tool to include in your action plan for sales. Get started using our guide for writing a cold calling script , which includes examples and free templates.

7. Develop Your Sales Funnel

Setting up a sales funnel within your sales strategy template lets you visualize the stages of the customer journey, from becoming aware of your business to buying from it. By creating and understanding the different statuses of your leads, you can track progress and determine how effective you are at converting leads to the next stages in the funnel.

Using a sales funnel with conversion rates also makes it easier for you to adjust your sales strategies and tactics based on how effectively you’re getting leads through the funnel. For instance, let’s say you have 100 leads in the awareness stage of the funnel. You decide to cold call 50 of them and write a sales email to the other 50 to qualify leads by setting up a product demonstration.

After each campaign, you find you were able to qualify seven of the leads that were cold-called and only two of the leads you had emailed. Based on these funnel conversion rates of 14% (7/50) from cold calling and 4% (2/50) from emailing, you would likely adjust your tactics to focus more on calling instead of emailing.

Do you need help creating a sales funnel for your business? Our guide to creating a sales funnel explains the step-by-step sales funnel creation process and provides free templates and specific examples.

8. Create Your Sales Pipeline

Once your sales process’ sales funnel stages are identified, develop the sales pipeline stages . These stages include your team’s sales activities to move leads through the funnel. For example, you need to get a lead from the sales funnel stage of brand awareness to show interest in learning more about one of your services. To do this, you could add a sales pipeline activity like setting up a demo or presentation appointment through a cold call.

Adding your sales pipeline to your sales strategy is essential because it describes all the activities your sales reps need to do to close a sales deal. CRM systems like Freshsales allow you to create and track the pipeline stages for each lead or deal within the lead record.

Funnel view of Freshsales’ deal pipeline (Source: Freshsales )

Listing each pipeline stage also helps you identify tools and resources needed to perform the activities for each stage. For example, if you use phone calls to initiate contact with or introduce a product to a lead, you could develop outbound sales call scripts for your team.

After the initial contact by phone, you may use email to follow up after a call and then nurture leads throughout the sales process. As part of your follow-up, create and automate a sales follow-up email template to get them to the next pipeline stage.

The sales funnel shows where a lead is in the sales process. The sales pipeline, on the other hand, lists activities needed to drive leads to the next stage in the sales funnel. Both should be used in your sales strategy when defining the repeatable steps required to generate leads and close deals. Check out our article to learn how to create a winning sales process with insights on both creating a sales process and measuring its success.

9. Assign Roles & Responsibilities

Regardless of the size of your business or sales operation, your business plan for sales reps should include the role and responsibility of each person in the sales team. Each role should have a name, such as someone being a sales development representative (SDR). There should also be a summary of their responsibilities, such as “the SDR is responsible for setting up sales appointments using the activities listed in the sales pipeline.”

Measuring the performance of any sales position is simple through key performance indicators (KPIs). Specific KPIs should be used to measure performance for each role and should be included in your plan. Below are some examples of KPIs that can be used by the members of the sales team and their respective responsibility:

• Sales development representative: Responsible for introducing products and services, qualifying leads, and setting up appointments for the account executive. Performance is measured by calls placed, emails sent, and appointments generated.
• Account executive: Responsible for nurturing qualified leads, delivering the sales pitch , sending quotes, and closing deals. Performance is measured by business proposals sent, the average time in the proposal consideration stage, deals closed, and deal closing rate.
• Customer service representative: Responsible for managing customer needs, handling billing, and managing service tickets by assisting customers. Performance is measured by customer satisfaction, retention rates, and total tickets resolved.
• Sales manager: Responsible for the entire sales operation or team for a specific region or product/service line. Performance is measured by job satisfaction rates of sales reps, pipeline and funnel conversion rates, team sales deals closed, and team revenue growth.

While assigning roles in your plan, a sales rep’s territory could be based on geography, industry, potential deal size, or product/service line, creating more specialization for better results. Our six-step process on proper sales territory management is an excellent resource for segmenting, creating, and assigning sales territories.

This section of the business plan is also a prime spot for individually setting sales quotas for each rep or team needed to hit your organizational sales goals. Sales quotas should be a specific KPI for that sales role and be set based on the experience, skill level, and resources of that individual or team. These quotas should also be based on your organizational, department, and team goals and objectives.

10. Monitor Progress & Adjust Accordingly

Once the strategic business plan is in motion, monitor its progress to make any required adjustments. For instance, while your sales operation is running, you may find certain sales tactics are working better than expected, and vice versa. Your sales goal template should account for using that tactic more, as well as any new sales tools, budgetary changes, new roles, and possibly even a new sales goal.

As in the earlier example, if you found that cold calling was significantly more effective than emailing, reduce or abandon the email method in favor of cold calling. You could also invest in sales tools especially useful for cold calling, such as power dialing using a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone system, or hire additional staff to place calls. All of these will be part of your updated business plan.

Pro tip: Focusing on the big picture by creating, executing, and adjusting a strategic business plan is one of the most critical traits of an effective sales leader. For more insights on what it means to be a sales leader and how to become one, check out our ultimate guide to sales leadership .

Examples of Other Free Small Business Sales Plan Templates

Apart from our free downloadable sales strategy template, other providers have shared their version of a free strategic sales plan examples. Click on our picks below to see if these templates fit your business process better:

HubSpot’s free sales planning template helps users outline their company’s sales strategy. It contains sections found in most sales plans, as well as prompts for you to fill out your company’s tactics and information. These include company history and mission, team structure, target market, tools and software used, positioning, market strategy, action plan, goals, and budget.

HubSpot sales strategy template (Source: HubSpot )

HubSpot’s sales goals template with the mission, vision, and story of the company (Source: HubSpot )

Visit HubSpot

Asana’s free sales plan template helps organizations analyze their current sales process, establish their sales objectives, identify success metrics, and plan actionable steps. The sales business plan template is embedded within Asana’s platform, automatically integrating aspects such as goals and measuring them against results or sales performance.

Asana sales plan example (Source: Asana )

Visit Asana

Sales Planning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is sales planning.

Sales planning is creating a document that outlines your sales strategy, objectives, target audience, potential obstacles, and tools to achieve goals within a specified period. This may include your daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and long-term revenue objectives.

What is included in a sales plan?

A sales strategy plan template typically includes the following key elements:

• Target customers, accounts, or verticals
• Stock-keeping units (SKUs)
• Revenue targets or forecasts
• Strategies and tactics
• Pricing and promotions
• Deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs)
• Team structure and coordination
• Market conditions

What are the different types of strategic sales planning?

The type of strategic planning for sales that you choose for your team ultimately depends on different factors. These include your revenue goals, available resources, the ability and bandwidth of your sales team, and your personal commitment to your plans. Once you have determined the details of these factors, you can choose from these types of strategic sales planning:

• Revenue-based sales action plan template: This is ideal for teams aiming for a specific revenue goal. It focuses on in-depth sales forecasting, improvement of conversion rates, and closing more deals.
• Sales business plan based on the target market: This plan is best for businesses that cater to several markets that are different from each other. In this situation, you must create separate sales goal templates for enterprise companies and small businesses.
• Sales goals plan: This focuses on other goals such as hiring, onboarding, sales training plans, or sales activity implementation.
• New product sales business plan: This plan is developed for the launch and continued promotion of a new product.

Bottom Line

While any business can set bold sales goals, creating a sales plan outlines how your team will achieve them. By following the best practices and 10-step process laid out above, your sales goal template defines what your sales process will look like. It will help establish baselines for accountability and identify optimal strategies, tactics, and the tools needed to make your team as efficient as possible.

About the Author

Jillian Ilao

Jill is a sales and customer service expert at Fit Small Business. Prior to joining the company, she has worked and produced marketing content for various small businesses and entrepreneurs from different markets, including Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore. She has extensive writing experience and has covered topics on business, lifestyle, finance, education, and technology.

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10 Free Sales Plan Templates for an Effective Sales Strategy

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 15, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Sales Plan and Why Create One?

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

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

A good sales plan sets out your sales goals , objectives, and sales activities. It considers your target audience, brand, products, services, and needs—and covers which sales tactics and strategies you’ll use to close deals, as well as which metrics you’ll use to measure success. 

Your sales plan is a practical plan that outlines who’s responsible for what, the resources you’ll need, and the overall goals you’re working toward. Without one, your sales team will feel lost and struggle to connect with your customer base.

With a strategic sales plan, though, the sales manager and the entire team will know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and the steps needed to get there. 📚

How to choose the best sales plan template

There are so many different sales plan templates out there. Some are designed for specific niche audiences, while others are more generic and easier to customize. How do you know which is the right template for you?

When you’re thinking about using a sales plan template, consider the following: 

• Ease of use: Is the template easy to use? Will everyone in the team structure and sales planning process be able to understand it fully?
• Customization: Can I personalize the template to match my sales goals?

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

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

10 Sales Plan Templates to Help You Close Your Next Deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This sales KPI template includes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reach Sales Goals With Free Sales Plan Templates

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

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

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Sales Managers: How To Build A Sales Plan

Nov 13, 2023 | Business Growth , Sales Strategy , Sales Training

A well-crafted sales plan highlights the importance of defining key goals, selecting target verticals, and identifying strategic accounts. This article shares insights to guide sales managers and sales professionals in leveraging intelligence, creating decision-maker personas, and building partnerships, while also emphasizing the significance of a personalized marketing plan to enhance their brand and drive long-term success.

When I think of a day in the life of a top sales manager , there’s a common theme. They invest their time in the right sales activities for their team. This focus becomes even more important, because many times they are balancing business development and sales management along with client delivery.

How can you know what steps will move you forward faster, help you build strategic relationships , and accelerate sales results? Having the right sales plan will help you get there.

Key Goals and Milestones to Include in a Sales Plan

The first step I always advise during sales consulting on sales plans is to start by developing a list of your key business goals and milestones. Some specific categories can help keep you focused on what you want to accomplish this year and beyond, including:

• New Client Growth
• Current Client Growth
• Game Changer Goal

Think about what you want your team to accomplish for the year and write it down in three or four sentences. What does your book of business or territory look like at the end of the year? What are a few of the things that you want to accomplish? What are your revenue goals in these key verticals, service lines, and product categories?

Lastly, what’s your game changer goal that stretches you, one that can make a huge difference in your sales team’s success this year? Putting all this on paper will provide the strategic snapshot of what you want your book of business or territory to look like at year end.

Select Verticals to Target

Selecting focus verticals can help accelerate revenue growth. Think of it as selecting a major and then some minors. Verticalization offers significant benefits, even if you have a predefined territory, a predefined book of business, or a predefined service line.

The requirements of business development and client service can be better balanced, especially for those of us that are selling or developing business as we’re doing delivery, if we can hone in on a major and a minor vertical. Just getting traction in one vertical could be your runway to spin off into other verticals if you choose.

Some questions sales managers need to ask themselves when targeting verticals:

• (Example: healthcare may be your major; home health or nursing facilities may be your minors.)
• In which verticals have you already established expertise?
• What verticals do you have a passion for or an interest in going deeper into?
• What verticals will have the greatest opportunities over the next 1 – 3 years?

Identify Target Accounts

What are the top 20 accounts or clients per vertical that you want to build relationships in? Ideally, this is also tracked in your CRM.

Target accounts per major and minor.

Using myself as an example, professional services is my major, and I have three minors– public accounting, insurance, and technology.

Intelligence Verticals

Intelligence is the deep information that we gather through research on our top prospects and clients, and also within our verticals.

• Leadership Vision
• Key Initiatives
• Fiscal Year Goals

What are the trends that will be affecting your majors and minors over the next year or the next three years that you need to pay attention to? What are some of the challenges that this vertical is going to come up against? How can you help your clients and prospects solve those problems with the services and solutions that you provide?

This list is something you can adapt at the account level to help you gather intelligence in a single place. It helps you think strategically as a sales manager and understand how you can help your sales reps move prospects business forward.

A modern seller or a modern sales manager is someone who’s recognized as a differentiator in their prospects’ or clients’ business, and the value of what they sell isn’t recognized without them as part of the equation.

You and your team’s expertise are a significant part of the sales and business development. Investing time in these questions at the vertical level and then at the account level is going to help elevate you in the eyes of your prospects or clients.

Create Decision Maker Personas

For each major and minor, you may have unique decision-maker personas. The next step in your planning process is to compile and analyze them.

• What is the decision maker measured on?
• What are the key challenges facing this decision maker?
• What is happening inside his/her firm / company?
• What will make change difficult?
• What motivates this decision maker?

Do you have captured in a single place the personas of all of your decision makers? I like to think of it as creative writing, but it is truth telling about what is on the mind of your key decision makers. It helps you envision them, empathize with them and ultimately align your expertise to the challenges they’re trying to solve.

Form Partnerships/Alliances

What are your key partnerships and key alliances that you need to build to accelerate growth in each major or minor?

These may be through industry associations, business partners, centers of influence, research organizations, and more. The key is to determine the partnerships and alliances that are the best fit for your plan. Then ascertain where you can commit to an investment, whether that investment is financial or time or a combination of both.

Personal High-level Marketing Plan

Your firm or company may have a marketing strategy, but do you have a sales manager strategy that goes along with it? In my book, The Modern Seller , I talk quite a bit about ambassadors . One of the things that make ambassadors stand out is building longer term loyalty and lifetime value.

To be able to rise above and have a personal brand that’s unique. Having your own personal leadership brand can tie to your verticals and help elevate how well known you are in the marketplace.

What I have here are key areas for you to consider in your personal marketing plan. Choose the ones that align best with your natural skills.

• Social Media
• Events/Forums
• Thought Leadership Content
• Website Blogging & Guest Blogging
• Guest Podcasting

For a deeper dive on how to build your sales manager plan, watch my webinar with The Sales Experts Channel . It’s available on demand.

Create Stronger Sales Plans

Don’t let your competition get an advantage. My sales consulting and sales advisory programs can help. If you want to know how to create a sales plan that truly ignites sales, let’s talk.  Contact me to schedule time for a discovery conversation.

• Board Directorship
• Business Growth
• Guest Posts/In the News
• Personal Growth
• Sales Leadership
• Sales Strategy
• Sales Training
• Team & Awards
• The Modern Seller Show
• The Sales Experts Channel

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Your sales growth is only as strong as your strategy.

Download Amy's Sales Strategy Index now and receive the top 10 growth factors every sales strategy needs. 

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The Best Free Business Plan Template For Individual Sales Reps

Published: August 14, 2023

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

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

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

Sales Business Plan Layout

Free business plan template, the sales plan.

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

Fill out this form to access your template.

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

The essential document for starting a business -- custom built for your needs.

• Outline your idea.
• Pitch to investors.
• Secure funding.
• Get to work!

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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

Be more specific. What do you want to achieve?

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

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

2. High-Level Review

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

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

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

3. A Strategy

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

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

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

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

4. Tactics and Actions

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

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

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

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

5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

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

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

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

6. Sales and Marketing Alignment

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Obstacles to Success

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

Think carefully: What obstacles will keep you from succeeding?

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

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

8. Personal and Professional Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start building your business plan with this free template.

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

Click Here to Download the Template

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

Business Plan Sections Explained

1. the business opportunity.

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

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

2. Company Description

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

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

3. Company Purpose

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

4. Mission Statement

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

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

5. Core Values

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

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

6. Product & Service Lines

This section will include:

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

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

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

8. Industry Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

9. Target Market

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

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

Consider consolidating this information and creating dedicated buyer personas .

10. Buyer Personas

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

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

11. Location Analysis

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

Here’s a template you can use:

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

This might manifest as something like:

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

12. Implementation Timeline

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

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

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

13. Marketing Plan

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

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

Positioning Strategy

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

Acquisition Channels

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

Tools and Technology

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

14. Financial Considerations and Funding Required

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

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

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

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

Sales Methodology

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

Sales Organization Structure

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

Sales Channels

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

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

Individual Business Plan Examples for Sales Reps

1. individual development plan.

Image Source

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

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

2. Medical Sales Business Plan

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

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

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

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

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

4. Territory Business Plan

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

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

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

5. Quarterly Business Plan

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

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

Crush Your Sales Goals with a Business and Sales Plan

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

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

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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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The 4 Roles of Area Sales Managers and How To Implement Them

The role of area sales managers more or less toes the line with their traditional counterparts; they are often the one person exerting the greatest influence over sales revenue and productivity, commanding a great deal of respect throughout their respective organization.

The biggest difference between an “area sales manager” and a “sales manager” is the  responsibility for a specific sales territory , region or “area,” hence the title.  

Yet despite this difference, the role of area sales managers can be built around the same 4 key principles, with a slight twist:

• Implementing a successful field sales process
• Sales force enablement
• Sales reporting
• Field sales rep development

For those wanting to know how to be a better sales manager , this blog post will explore these 4 main roles and responsibilities of area sales managers , what the position entails, the common problems faced and how they can be overcome them through the implementation of sales processes, sales team enablement and technology.

Role of Area Sales Manager #1 – Implementing a Sales Process

It’s rare that field sales representatives are responsible for selling to one, single account. It’s far more likely they have a large database of leads, opportunities and clients they visit on a routine basis.

All these clients and prospects will be segmented by geography or what we commonly refer to as a sales territory . The field sales rep job is therefore to extract as much revenue from this given territory or area as possible.

However, as any field sales rep will tell you it’s almost impossible to fully serve the needs of every single opportunity within their territory as there simply isn’t enough time.

That’s where you step in.

Arguably the most important (and definitely the first) role of area sales managers is to implement a sales management process that guides their team’s decision on how to effectively manage this time and decide who to spend it with.

Or in other words, the identification and prioritization of your key prospects and clients.

How to implement an area sales management process

Effective area sales management is all about efficiency; getting your field teams spending the maximum amount of face-to-face time possible with qualified leads or customers.

That’s why I recommend following the following area sales management process I first came across in Jason Jordan’s Cracking the Sales Management Code ; a fantastic read if you get the chance.

He breaks it down into the following four phases:

Identify your customer

As we previously mentioned, the first part of the area sales management process is to identify your ideal customer .

This can be done buy borrowing a little activity more commonly practiced by marketing teams; building a buyer persona .

For those who haven’t come across the term before, a buyer persona is a fictional character who represents your company’s ideal customer .

The reason for creating your buyer persona is to make it 100% clear to the whole sales team who you’re selling to. This way your outreach is aligned not only with the marketing team, but across the sales team too.

Most buyer personas are built by profiling real customers or through extensive market research. A combination of the two usually yields the best results.

It’s important to note that you can have more than one buyer persona. Your product or service maybe a good fit for more than a single “group” of consumers, so you’ll need to create matching persona’s to help align your communication and selling approach.

Prioritize your consumers

Once you’ve identified your ideal customer its now the area manager’s responsibility to help your team prioritize who they spend their time with.

Without a clearly defined hierarchy everyone looks the same to your team. But, as we determined earlier they only have so many hours a day to call and get in front of customers, so we must make sure they use it wisely.

So how do we do that?

Prioritization should be determined by the specific objectives you set your team for that particular quarter.

For example, say you are in the medical device industry and have decided you want to target newly opened hospitals, as research from Q3 and Q4 from the previous year determined them to be more profitable.

You would therefore want your sales team spending more time targeting doctors and practitioners from newly opened hospitals in their territory over those that have been established for a long time.

Of course, if your objectives happen to change for the following quarter (maybe newly opened hospitals weren’t so profitable after all) then so should your group of priority customers.

Visit frequency

Area and regional sales managers must design and develop a customer visit frequency plan for their field reps to follow. It’s the tactical aspect of area sales management which determines how often a certain type of customer is to be visited by one of your team.

Using our previous example of newly opened hospitals, our call frequency plan might direct our field reps to make 70% of their quarterly visits to this priority customer type. The remaining 30% of visits are to be directed towards existing customers within their territory.

Again, if your objectives happen to change then your call frequency plan should mirror that adjustment.  

The fourth and final stage of the process is call execution.

This is essentially using the live, real-time data located in your CRM to ensure your plan is being executed upon.

An unguided, ill-disciplined sales force will only hit objectives by pure chance. Aligning your team to specific targets and enforcing a plan that guides them to them will transform your team into the fluid, flexible, almighty revenue-generating machine you always knew it always could be.

Role of Area Sales Manager #2 – Sales Enablement

Sales success is determined by the prompt execution of specific sales activities. These activities, however, are performed by individual people (your field sales reps) and their ability to perform their role has a large hand in the execution of their activities.

Therefore, the second key role of area sales managers is to invest in their field sales teams (we wrote a piece on some specific sales training ideas ) and improve their capabilities to execute their tasks, a process commonly referred to as sales enablement.

Sales enablement is often confused as simply the “skill” of a given sales team, but the truth is it incorporates much more than that.

It’s about the sales management system as a whole; the strategies regional sales managers put in play, the processes they implement, the training they provide and the technology given to help salespeople out on the road.

But, seeing as this post focuses specifically on the role and responsibilities of an area sales manager , I’m going to focus on the two factors I consider the most crucial: product training and mobile sales technology .

Product training

If you’re selling a product or service face-to-face in the field then its paramount the salespeople are well versed in its use. If not, they’ll be quickly found out by the buyer (which is embarrassing for them and even more so for the company they represent).

So to avoid that, area sales managers must make sure their team has the appropriate training and knowledge of the product or service they are selling.

I find monthly or bi-quarterly training sessions a good benchmark to aim for as, 1) I don’t need to unnecessarily call the entire field team back to HQ and 2) I still get a good look at exactly how they are approaching, pitching and selling our product to clients.

Alternatively you could join them out on a random call so as not to disrupt the rest of the team’s schedule. It’s your call, as both options are equally feasible.  

Also, if your typical sell requires outside or expert knowledge then it’s the area manager’s responsibility to make sure their team has access to engineers or specialists in that field. This coordination of internal and external resources is particularly necessary in complex sales cycles.

Mobile sales technology

Your second responsibility as an area sales manager is to provide the mobile sales technology needed to support your team with their daily sales activities.

This means giving them access to information such as previous sales visits; what was discussed, with who, the terms set and agreed upon next steps straight from their mobile devices.

Being fully prepared for a visit not only increases the rapport a rep is able to have with a customer but also avoids them coming across as disinterested or worse, unprofessional.

It’s also helpful they have access to any digital documentation they might need, such as product brochures, sales presentations, order forms and proposal templates. All this helps them work more efficiently and execute on their sales activities.

Role of Area Sales Manager #3 – Sales Reporting

The third key role of area sales managers is learning how to conduct efficient sales reporting.

An accurate, concise weekly sales report allows you to extract insights on your team’s current performance. These insights then guide your tactical decision-making process regarding the allocation of resources and sales pipeline management .

However, with that being said I want to show how to put a sales report together. From personal experience area sales managers tend to overload their reports with just about every data point they can get their hands on.

What they end up with are pages and pages of graphs, data charts and other kinds of fancy tables without any particular focus . It therefore makes extracting information efficiently for immediate insights a bit of a challenge.

So to make sure you apply focus, ONLY include the data on the sales activities directly related to a specific sales process (see figure 1.1).

This way a sales reps performance is measured against efforts that directly affect your business objectives (and stops you including a ton of graphs that have nothing do with their performance).

Let’s use our medical devices example to highlight which activities could be included in your sales report.

As you can see, from this example there are a maximum of 6 (not 60) sales activities you could include in you weekly sales report that directly affect the performance of your quarterly objective – to increase revenue from new hospitals .

Keeping it tight and compact makes it a hell of a lot easier to digest, extract insight and make the best possible decisions regarding your team’s performance..

Role of Area Sales Manager #4 – Field Sales Representative Development

The fourth and final key role of area sales managers is the development of your sales team.  

Most business have finally come around to the fact that salespeople are not a disposable commodity to be discarded at will and have done away with the “revolving door policy”.

As we discussed earlier when looking at sales enablement, the activities that directly affect business objectives and results are all performed by people .

So their ability to perform their role suddenly becomes a key responsibility of area sales managers . The better trained they are and aligned to the processes of the overall sales team, the better they’ll perform.

Measuring and improving sales rep performance

This is where your accurate, concise sales manager reports come in handy.

If you’ve got your reporting aligned to your sales processes you should be able to find any weak spots or kinks in your team’s performance.

For example, say you set your reps a call frequency target of 10 new face to face visits with newly opened hospitals within their territory. Glancing through your report you notice that Steve (field rep) only made 3 last quarter.

So you call him to see what’s going on:

AREA SALES MANAGER : Hey Steve it’s me, how is everything going?

STEVE : Hey! Good thanks, how are things yourself?

AREA SALES MANAGER : Good thanks, listen the reason I’m calling is I’ve just gone through your latest weekly report and noticed you only recorded 3 face-to-face visits. Is there a reason why the numbers are a little low?

STEVE : To be honest I’ve found it difficult managing time between my established accounts and new business visits. After finishing my routine face-to-face calls there’s just been so little left to do anything else.

AREA SALES MANAGER : OK, now worries Steve. Let’s put some time in my calendar and see if there’s a way we can help you manage your time more efficiently.

STEVE : Will do, thanks.

As we’ve just seen from this quick call with Steve, the reason for his low call frequency numbers appears to be due to him spending too much time with his current accounts, and not enough time prospecting new hospitals.

Now clearly Steve can’t abandon these accounts (as they are paying customers) but perhaps he could reduce the time he spends with each one and in some cases, perhaps a phone call might suffice.

Whatever route you decide to go down to help Steve with his time management , there are several sales training topics you could explore to help him.

To conclude, the role of area sales managers is to extract the best performance from their regional sales teams as possible. To do this they must first set up a clear sales process aligned with the specific objectives for that quarter and, once that’s been established, they are then able to measure and improve their rep’s capabilities through enablement, coaching and the deployment of mobile sales technology.

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Area Sales Manager Skills

Learn about the skills that will be most essential for Area Sales Managers in 2024.

Getting Started as a Area Sales Manager

• What is a Area Sales Manager
• How To Become
• Certifications
• Tools & Software
• LinkedIn Guide
• Interview Questions
• Work-Life Balance
• Professional Goals
• Resume Examples
• Cover Letter Examples

What Skills Does a Area Sales Manager Need?

Find the important skills for any job.

Types of Skills for Area Sales Managers

Sales expertise and product knowledge, strategic planning and market analysis, leadership and team development, customer relationship management, analytics and performance measurement, adaptability and problem-solving, top hard skills for area sales managers.

Empowering sales success through expert analysis, strategic foresight, and mastery of CRM, financial, and team leadership competencies.

• Sales Forecasting and Revenue Planning
• CRM Software Proficiency
• Data-Driven Sales Analysis
• Strategic Planning and Execution
• Financial Acumen and Pricing Strategy
• Customer Segmentation and Targeting
• Contract Negotiation and Closing Techniques
• Product Knowledge and Demonstration Skills
• Lead Generation and Prospecting Tools
• Team Leadership and Performance Management

Top Soft Skills for Area Sales Managers

Empowering teams with empathy and resilience, Area Sales Managers excel through superior communication, strategic negotiation, and dynamic leadership.

• Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
• Leadership and Team Motivation
• Communication and Active Listening
• Negotiation and Persuasion
• Adaptability and Flexibility
• Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking
• Time Management and Prioritization
• Conflict Resolution and Mediation
• Resilience and Stress Management

Most Important Area Sales Manager Skills in 2024

Strategic sales planning, team leadership and development, digital proficiency and e-commerce strategy, negotiation and persuasion techniques, financial acumen, adaptive sales techniques, cross-cultural competence.

Show the Right Skills in Every Application

Area sales manager skills by experience level, important skills for entry-level area sales managers, important skills for mid-level area sales managers, important skills for senior area sales managers, most underrated skills for area sales managers, 1. cultural intelligence, 2. active listening, 3. resilience, how to demonstrate your skills as a area sales manager in 2024, how you can upskill as a area sales manager.

• Master Data Analysis Tools: Develop proficiency in CRM and sales analytics platforms to better understand customer behavior, sales trends, and team performance.
• Adopt Advanced Sales Techniques: Stay ahead of the curve by learning and implementing cutting-edge sales methodologies that focus on consultative selling and value-based approaches.
• Expand Digital Marketing Knowledge: Gain insights into digital marketing strategies to align sales efforts with online campaigns and enhance lead generation.
• Enhance Team Leadership Abilities: Take leadership training to improve your ability to motivate, inspire, and manage diverse sales teams effectively.
• Embrace Social Selling: Leverage social media platforms to build relationships with prospects and customers, and to increase your personal brand and sales reach.
• Network at Sales Events: Attend sales conferences and seminars to network with peers, learn from industry leaders, and discover new sales tools and technologies.
• Focus on Customer Success: Learn about customer success strategies to ensure long-term customer satisfaction and repeat business.
• Practice Negotiation and Conflict Resolution: Refine your negotiation skills and learn how to manage conflicts to close deals more effectively and maintain positive customer relationships.
• Stay Informed on Industry Trends: Regularly read industry publications and reports to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in your market.
• Invest in Personal Development: Engage in activities that boost your resilience, adaptability, and stress management to maintain peak performance in a high-pressure environment.

Skill FAQs for Area Sales Managers

What are the emerging skills for area sales managers today, how can area sales managers effectivley develop their soft skills, how important is technical expertise for area sales managers.

Area Sales Manager Education

More Skills for Related Roles

Driving sales growth in diverse regions, leading teams to exceed revenue goals

Driving nationwide sales growth, forging strategic relationships, and exceeding targets

Driving revenue growth, forging key relationships, and leading high-performing sales teams

Driving strategic partnerships and market opportunities for business growth and expansion

Driving sales growth in designated regions, mastering market trends and client relations

Driving business growth and revenue through strategic sales leadership and client relationships

Start Your Area Sales Manager Career with Teal

• Job Descriptions
• Sales Job Descriptions

Area Sales Manager Job Description

Area sales managers are employed by companies to generate revenue from an assigned geographical location by implementing and executing strategies to achieve sales targets. They manage and lead Field Sales Representatives, conduct sales territory analyses, and close sales.

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Area Sales Manager Job Description Template

We are looking to employ a driven and experienced area sales manager to increase sales within an assigned geographical area and guide a team of field sales representatives. The area sales manager's responsibilities include delivering presentations to potential and existing customers, evaluating the performance of the sales team, and preparing concise sales reports. You should also be able to develop as well as modify customer frequency plans as needed.

To be successful as an area sales manager, you should be committed to driving sales and adept at managing a sales team. Ultimately, an outstanding area sales manager should demonstrate exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and customer service skills at all times.

Area Sales Manager Responsibilities:

• Managing, training, and providing overall guidance to the sales team of an assigned territory.
• Setting reasonable sales targets to be achieved by the sales team.
• Monitoring the performance of the sales team and motivating members to meet or exceed sales targets.
• Collecting customer feedback and providing updates to senior management.
• Traveling to potential and existing customers within an assigned sales area to present company offerings and build brand awareness.
• Utilizing outbound telephone calls, email communications, and face-to-face meetings with customers to close sales.
• Developing and sustaining long-term relationships with customers.
• Implementing a sales management process to assist the sales team in identifying and prioritizing key customers and prospects.

Area Sales Manager Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, business management, or related field is preferred.
• Proven sales experience; sector-specific sales experience is preferred.
• Proven track record of meeting sales quotas.
• Proficient in all Microsoft Office applications.
• Excellent management, leadership, and organizational skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Outstanding negotiation and consultative sales skills.
• Effective communication skills.
• Exceptional customer service skills.

Related Articles:

Sales manager job description, territory sales manager job description, field sales manager job description, regional sales manager job description, sales manager interview questions, territory sales manager interview questions, field sales manager interview questions.

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