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How to create a sales territory plan: A step-by-step guide

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Copper Staff

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An effective sales territory plan can make your team more productive, improve customer coverage, increase overall sales, and reduce costs.

On the other hand, unbalanced territory plans and constant changes in territory division can hurt productivity as well as working relationships between clients and account managers.

That’s why it’s so important to work on your territory management strategy, whether you’re just starting one, or updating an existing plan.

In this post, we'll go through how to create a sales territory plan step by step:

• Define your market, analyze, and segment existing customers.
• Conduct a SWOT analysis.
• Set goals and create targets.
• Develop strategies.
• Review and track your results.

What is a sales territory plan?

A sales territory plan is a workable plan for targeting the right customers and implementing goals for income and consistent sales growth over time.

Traditionally, sales territories were created by geographical location. However, these days it’s been extended to include different industries, customer types and other segments.

Follow these steps to create a sales territory plan:

The best way to start a sales territory plan is to first look at your customers, leads and prospects.

1. Define your market, analyze, and segment existing customers.

You should split up your customers into segments based on various characteristics such as: industry, location, purchase history and whatever else is relevant to the organization.

Ask yourself, “Who are the top customers, prospects and leads?” Categorize your customers into three groups.

• The first group should be your best customers , or the ones who require little effort.
• This is followed by the second group of customers: the ones who require a bit more work , but only those you are confident have potential revenue gain that justifies the extra work required by sales reps.
• The third group should be customers who require a lot of work .

With these groups formed, you can decide how to best use your resources.

To discover what key trends are in your geography or market, look over the sales data that’s already been collected. Analyze the data to find which territories show signs of growth and then assign them to the sales reps who would be most successful based on their strengths (more on that below).

Pro-tip: Learn about the best territory mapping software out there.

You can also use existing sales data from previous years to better understand buying patterns, but you'll have to do some additional research to learn why they are purchasing (or not), when they purchase, what drives the sale to go through and what the conversion rates are.

From this, you’ll learn how and when to reach out to your customers based on when they're likely ready to buy again, and how to really drive that sale home.

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2. Conduct a SWOT analysis.

Next, you should identify your sales team’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats with what is known as a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis is a process that identifies internal and external factors that can affect the organization’s performance. When you have a better understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, you can develop a stronger sales territory plan.

Everyone brings different talent and skills to the job, so it’s important to have a good understanding of what your team has to offer to help them excel and reach your goals. What strengths will you build on? What is your team good at? Where do they excel?

Consider them as a team, but also think about sales reps' individual strengths. After all, strengths aren’t just confined to team members; they reflect the organization as a whole too.

Knowing everybody’s strengths will help you decide which sales reps to assign to which territory.

Potential strengths might include:

• A diverse customer base
• An established distribution base
• An excellent service team

Which weaknesses do you need to respond to? Think about weaknesses amongst your team, but also in the sales process.

• A very large geographic area
• A lack of time to develop understanding of the products, markets and selling process
• Not understanding your customers' real needs

Opportunities

Are there any opportunities in your marketplace you can take advantage of? This data can also be discovered using CRM software.

• Untapped markets
• Under-served territories
• Growing demand for product or service

Take a look at the biggest threats in each territory and consider what threats in your selling environment you'll defend against.

Some threats you may discover include:

• Competitors fighting for the same market share
• Changes in technology
• New industry and regulatory standards

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3. set goals and create targets..

In order to make a successful sales territory plan, you must create clear parameters and realistic goals for the team as well as individual sales reps’ territories.

To do this, consolidate the trends you’ve discovered above to come up with S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based) goals and realistic targets.

Here are some questions you may ask:

How many new opportunities do you need to meet quota?

Having sales quotas are a great way to motivate sales reps, but if you find you're not meeting those quotas, you have a problem. There could be weaknesses in the sales pipeline, or you may need to seek new opportunities. In order to set goals and benchmarks for the team, consider using the top-down approach .

Using the top-down approach to sales quotas (where you set a goal for the period and then assign sales quotas to support this goal), you can go over the data from previous periods to get an idea of what your team was able to accomplish in the past and what a realistic goal for the future is. This can help you decide how many new opportunities you'll need to pursue in order to meet that goal.

Where do most of your leads come from? Which geographical regions should you concentrate on?

There are a number of ways to review customizable data using CRM software to discover where your leads are coming from. This can help you target areas of interest.

Which products or services are most profitable? Who is purchasing them?

Again, CRM software can automatically capture sales data and put it to work.

Which opportunities should we focus on?

With a CRM, you can quickly identify opportunities to help your sales team decide where to dedicate their time and resources. For example, Copper allows you to see past opportunities that are open, abandoned, lost or won in a Sales Performance report.

After learning what it is you want to achieve, you can give your team clear objectives for each territory.

4. Develop strategies to accomplish your goals.

With clear customer segments and goals in place, it’s time to create strategies to succeed.

Using the information collected so far, you can now work out an even distribution of specific regions or markets among individual reps.

The SWOT analysis mentioned above gives you a better idea of how to best assign your team members’ skills and talents to a territory.

The customer segments will help you figure out how often different accounts should be contacted and how to contact them.

Consider the following questions when creating your strategy:

• How will you go through current accounts?
• How can you leverage current successes?
• How will you generate new leads?
• Where do you need to improve?
• What does your team need in order to reach their goals and targets?

In addition, consider your resources:

• What resources do your sales reps need in order to manage their accounts?
• Which sales reps have the skills or connections you need?
• Are there any external resources you can use to help?

When creating your action plan, don’t forget to look at what your high-leverage actions are, what resources are needed, due dates and key milestones.

5. Review and track your results.

The final step for a sales territory plan is to take the time to review and track the results to optimize territory division. This is important for measuring progress to see how the plan is impacting sales.

You should use your plan as a guide to produce intended results and fine-tune it on a regular basis when needed.

Things to look for as you track your sales territory plan results:

• Have sales increased or decreased in a specific region or market?
• Are there any disparities between sales in different territories?
• What are the costs associated with each territory?
• Are any sales reps struggling to keep up with their leads?
• Are all sales reps meeting their quotas?
• Are any markets under-served and in need of more assigned sales reps?

Use a CRM to help create a killer sales territory plan.

Many organizations use CRM software to better gather data without depleting resources. CRMs allow sales reps to access insights into your pipelines, revenue forecasts , sales goals and progress and much more.

The best part: all of this data can be automatically compiled into reports used to create your sales territory plan, freeing up more time for your sales team to focus on building long-lasting relationships within their territories.

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How to create an effective sales territory plan in 6 steps

Some experts say that the secret to sales success is a combination of skill, perseverance, and a good sales conversation starter . And they’re right—those are all important attributes for salespeople. But it overlooks what is possibly the most important factor in sales success—which happens before a meeting is even booked: your sales territory plan. 

If you’re running a small business , you may wonder why you need a sales territory plan. After all, it sounds complicated—something for bigger, more sophisticated organizations.

But think of that plan as the important strategic groundwork that’s going to help you reach your sales goals. The good news is that yours doesn’t need to be complicated. And we’re here to help you create one, headache-free, for your small business or team.  

Let’s break it down. In this post we’ll cover: 

• What a sales territory plan is
• 4 reasons why you need one

How to create a sales territory plan in 6 steps

• Essential tools for creating the plan

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What is a sales territory plan?

Basically, it’s your strategy for how your team will target and approach prospects, leads, and existing customers to close more deals. Before you jump into your fancy sales territory mapping software , you need a battle plan:

An example of a sales territory plan from Adaptive Insights that shows things like which sales reps (and how many reps) you need, how many accounts you want to win per year, and more.

Traditionally—and as its name tells you—the sales territory plan was defined by geography. Salespeople would focus on prospects within a specific area only. 

Today’s level of connectivity has changed that. You can now optimize your sales territory plan and target your leads by industry, business size, deal potential, and role too. Which, as you might guess, is much more effective than using geography alone. 

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4 reasons why even small businesses need a sales territory plan

You’d never walk into a sales meeting with a prospect without having done a decent amount of prep work. Creating a sales territory plan should be no different. Here’s why. 

1. It helps you target specific industries, regions, opportunities, and customers

Instead of targeting customers geographically, you can now segment opportunities by industry, opportunity, role, business size, business type, and others. This allows you to focus on meeting specific customer needs and target prospects that are most likely to buy, rather than simply playing a numbers game by trying to cover the most ground. 

2. It aligns your sales team with your prospects

Every salesperson on your team will have a different set of strengths based on their experience—and effective teamwork is the key to making this work. For example, some reps may have lots of experience selling to a specific demographic, whereas others are experts in certain industries or types of products. Being able to align their efforts with a customer’s industry or specific needs means they’re going to close more deals than taking the spray-and-pray approach.

3. It empowers you to set realistic goals, track progress, and optimize your strategy

Having the latest Bluetooth headset and sales software is great and all, but setting goals are a must in sales. Having a way to track them helps you see what’s working, what isn’t, and why—and it’s essential to your success. With the ability to track your progress, you can replicate successes and easily make adjustments to areas that need work. 

4. It lets you spend more time selling

Having a plan in place and a path forward means you and your team can focus on actually selling to customers that are the most likely to buy. You know who your happy customers are, you understand their challenges, and you know how to help them reach their goals. And that means more deals closed. 

Having a plan in place can help reps focus on their role, save time, and close more deals.

Now that you know what a sales territory plan is, let’s dive into how to write one in five basic steps. 

1. Define your larger sales goals

Before you have a plan, you need a goal (or goals). And there are many different approaches you can take to determine sales goals. But we want to keep it simple, realistic, and easy to do without needing a 10,000-cell spreadsheet. Start with the big sales numbers and then work your way downwards. First, determine what your annual goal is, then break that into quarters, months, and even weeks. 

For example, if your annual sales goal is $500K, then your quarterly goals will be $125K, and your monthly targets will be $41.7K.

If you’re not sure what your annual goal should be, last year’s sales numbers plus ten percent is a good place to start. (Of course, if things are going really well and you want to be more ambitious, you can adjust this number—and vice versa.)

Keep in mind that these numbers are just preliminary. You can adjust them later when you’ve completed the other steps and accounted for outside factors like economic conditions, seasonality, existing pipeline, and even current customers.

2. Define your market 

What does your piece of the pie look like? Your market encompasses everyone you sell to. 

Make a list of all the different people or industries you target. For business-to-business sales, this could be business type and size, departmental function, or roles within the organization. For business-to-consumer sales, you can segment based on demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic information. 

Ultimately, you’ll need to determine how to segment your customers based on the what’s relevant to your business or product. 

An example of how to segment B2C customers

Defining your market lets you paint a clear picture of who your customers are. It allows your sales team to play to their strengths and address specific needs, goals, and pain points, which will differ between these different segments. 

3. Assess prospect and account quality

Some customers will see tons of value in your product. The benefits are clear and it solves a big headache for them. They’re happy to buy a lot of what you’re selling, and often.

But, others may not have the same need. 

Review which customers have traditionally been easy to sell to and/or seen high levels of success with your product. Then prioritize those leads and similar accounts. 

4. Start mapping out the strengths and weaknesses of your reps

Some reps have a great understanding of the ins and outs of how enterprise organizations buy products and take on new vendors. Others will specialize in selling to people within a specific role, regardless of the size of the business. List all of the strengths and weaknesses of each sales rep so you have a better idea of the type of prospects they should target.

Keep in mind that it’s not about ranking them from best to worst—many sales reps who start out weak can finish strong with coaching and experience. It’s about aligning their skills and experience to where they’ll make the biggest impact and achieve the most success.  

5. Assign leads

Armed with the knowledge of where your reps shine, you can now start assigning accounts. Start with the most obvious, high-value pairings where the rep has a lot of experience selling to that industry or type of individual. For example, reps who are good at closing large deals with educational institutions would be assigned leads in the educational space. 

Next, assign leads to target roles. Reps who have experience working with or selling to IT managers would be assigned leads with similar titles. 

Apply the same process to company size, deal size, location, and any other way you segmented your market. 

How you organize this information is up to you. Some people use spreadsheets. Some use text documents. Others use illustrations and graphs. A mix of charts, maps, and tables will give you a pretty comprehensive and easy-to-absorb view of your territory plan:

6. Look for ways to improve your plan

Congrats—your sales territory plan is just about done. Your goals are more than just numbers on a page. And you can see a path to how you’re going to achieve them. But you may notice that it’s a bit lopsided. Perhaps some of your reps are carrying too much of the workload or the quotas don’t seem realistic. 

The truth is, you may go through several iterations of your plan. You’ll have to move leads around to different reps. For example, giving your stronger reps leads that will be harder to close, and newer reps lower value deals where there’s less at stake. Ultimately, the numbers should be achievable for every rep. So take a step back and look at your plan objectively to make sure it makes sense.  

Essential tools for building your sales territory plan

With your plan in hand and a clear path to success, you’re going to need a few tools to put things into action.  

Office software

Whether you’re a visual person who prefers to map out your territory plan using images and graphs or you’re the type that likes to dive into every row and column of a spreadsheet, you’re going to need office software to turn your plan into a document. Office software usually includes apps for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation decks, and email. The two most popular options available right now are probably Microsoft 365  and Google Workspace .

What’s the difference? Without diving into a feature-by-feature comparison , Google Workspace is often better for small- and medium-sized businesses who are looking for a simple, elegant solution. Microsoft 365 has more robust, enterprise-grade features that can be used for more complex businesses. 

An all-in-one communications tool designed for sales teams

This may seem like a no-brainer—if you’re selling, of course you need to have a phone, email address, maybe even business SMS and fax (if you’re selling in industries like insurance). 

But if your reps spend any time traveling to meetings and working on the go, a traditional office phone setup isn’t going to support them very well. You’ll also be missing out on a few key features that are made specifically for helping sales teams. 

Ideally, you should have a sales app that lets you make voice calls and video calls (especially useful if you do a lot of sales demos ), send instant messages to your team, and basically communicate through any channel you need. Here are a few features to look for: 

Cloud support : Having a phone system or communications app that works on the cloud is much better than just using a cell phone. Why? Because your reps can receive inbound calls and make calls from their laptops or their own personal phones (without using their personal numbers)—without needing additional hardware. Plus, that same app lets you have video calls and send instant messages to your team:

Call monitoring : Ramping up new sales reps can take time and a lot of coaching. What if you could monitor your team’s sales calls quietly and listen in to what they’re saying to prospects? This way, you can help get them up to speed and get them booking meetings, pitching better, and closing deals faster. 

Call recording : Every now and then, you’ll want to make an example of your agents (in the best way possible, of course). Call recording lets you capture their best calls and share them with the team, making it easier to replicate success. It’s also a good way to find opportunities for coaching. Sometimes, you’re also just required by law to keep records of calls with customers, so this feature might even be a must-have. 

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform 

Your team will be making calls, booking meetings, and taking notes all day long. A CRM makes it a whole lot easier to remember and track all the key details about their calls and prospects, so they can close more deals. 

To make things even easier, many CRMs integrate with communications tools to keep your calls and key customer details in one, well-organized place. 

Ready to start building a sales territory plan?

Making a sales territory plan may seem complicated. And in some cases, it is—whether you’re a large business with territories all over the world or a smaller business that’s just started branching out into new regions. 

The key is to not overthink things. Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to identify your goals, better understand your market, know your customers—and target them without breaking (too much of) a sweat.

Originally published Mar 01, 2020, updated Nov 17, 2021

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Strategic Sales Plan Examples: 13 Sales Plan Templates

Casey O'Connor

What Is a Strategic Sales Plan?

When you should implement a strategic sales plan, what to include in your sales plan, 13 sales plan template examples, put your sales plan into action with yesware.

A strategic sales plan is a must-have for any business looking to increase their sales, amp up their revenue, bring a new product to market, or branch into a new territory.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about strategic sales plans: what they are, when to create one, and exactly what they need to include. We’ll also show you a handful of real-life, tangible sales plan template examples and tips for implementation. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• When You Should Implement a Strategic Sales Plan 

A strategic sales plan is designed to guide a sales organization through their overarching sales strategy. It provides them with access to the resources needed to prospect, pitch to, and close new accounts.

Strategic sales plans can include any combination of the following:

• Ideas: If you utilize a certain sales methodology — consultative selling or target account selling , for example — you might outline its key principles and a few tactical examples of it in action in your strategic sales plan. Your strategic sales plan should also include an overview of your target customer.
• Processes: In order for your sales team to reach maximum productivity, it’s important that your sales processes are clearly defined and standardized. Your sales team — both new hires and seasoned vets alike — should be able to refer to your sales plan for a repeatable, scalable process that’s backed by solid metrics. The processes should provide direction to sales reps that allow them to contribute to the company’s goals.
• Tools & Tactics: The best strategic sales plans are more than just high-level strategy and goals. They also include specific, step-by-step strategies that sales reps can implement in sales conversations, as well as the specific tools and content that reps need to close more deals.

Sales plans also typically spell out the organization’s revenue and overall business goals, as well as the KPIs and benchmarks that sales managers and other stakeholders will monitor to determine whether or not those goals are being met.

They should also outline management’s strategic territory design and quota expectations, with specific indicators and data to back those decisions. 

Finally, these sales plans should take into account your current team’s sales capacity and specifically address the acquisition plan for any resources that are not yet available but may be necessary for future growth.

If your sales team doesn’t already have a strategic sales plan in place — that is, one that’s referenced and updated regularly and the product of careful data analysis and inter-team collaboration — you may want to consider creating one. 

Research shows that the majority of the highest-performing sales teams operate under a formalized, closely monitored sales structure. 

On the other hand, most underperforming sales teams lack this structure. 

It’s clear that a well-defined sales plan is one of the prerequisites to optimized sales productivity and success; every salesforce should strive to create and adopt one if they want to meet their sales goals more efficiently.

That being said, there are a few key indicators that signal a need for more urgency in putting a strategic sales plan in place. 

You’re Trying to Increase Sales

A strategic sales plan will help your sales and marketing teams align their processes so that your outreach efforts are tailored to your target audience. 

You’re Looking to Amp Up Your Revenue

For startups and small businesses, attaining as many new customers as possible is usually the name of the game.

For larger or more established businesses, however, the business plan may instead emphasize revenue goals. In other words, the deal size starts to matter much more than deal volume. 

A sales strategy plan can help salespeople target and nurture higher-value accounts. Sales planning can also boost your revenue by illuminating untapped potentials for revenue growth within your existing customer base through cross-selling, upselling , and referrals .

You’re Gearing Up to Launch a New Product

A sales strategy plan is crucial for businesses that are preparing to bring a new product to market.

One last note: for businesses that already use strategic business planning (or for those on their way after reading this article), be sure to update your plan at least yearly. Many businesses at least review their plan, if not update it more formally, on a quarterly basis.

Ultimately, your strategic sales plan will be unique to your company and its specific goals.

Consider including the following components in your strategic business plan. 

Mission Statement

Industry & Market Conditions

Great sales planning cannot be performed in isolation. Your plan must take into account the current market conditions, including any challenges, recent disruptions, or upcoming notable events.

Organization Chart

A sales org chart can range in scope from very simple, like the one above, to more complicated. Some go as far as naming individual employees and outlining their specific responsibilities. 

A detailed org chart is especially helpful for efficiently onboarding new hires.

Product Info & Pricing

No sales plan would be complete without a one-sheet that outlines the features, benefits, and value proposition of your product or service.

It’s also helpful to include information about pricing tiers, as well as any discounts or promotions available for leverage at a sales rep’s discretion.

Compensation Plan

While we have no doubt that you’ve hired only the most intrinsically motivated salespeople, remember the bottom line: cash is king.

Money is the primary motivator for most salespeople, regardless of how truly loyal and hard-working they may be.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to include your company’s compensation plan and commission structure in your sales plan. This is a surefire way to motivate your team to continuously improve their sales performance. 

Target Market & Customer

Sales Enablement

With the tremendous rise in content marketing, it can be challenging for salespeople to keep track of the various materials available for generating new business.

Branding & Positioning

The strategic sales plan should offer at least a high-level overview of your brand and messaging specifics, including social media presence. Take the time to optimize your company’s LinkedIn presence — it’s a goldmine of new business opportunities.

Marketing Strategy

In today’s day and age, it’s unlikely that your sales and marketing team are working in isolation from one another. At a certain point, sales and marketing strategies start to flow together until they (ideally) perform in harmony.

Still, it’s important to outline the perspective of the marketing team within your strategic sales plan. This will help your salespeople fine-tune their sales pitch and speak more meaningfully to the needs of the customer. 

Prospecting Strategy

Most salespeople report that their number one challenge in lead generation is attracting qualified leads. 

Prospecting can certainly be daunting, but it’s worth the effort to get it right. Tweak and fine-tune the process until you’re sure it’s as efficient as possible. Make sure it’s repeatable and scalable, and map it out within your sales plan. 

Action Plan

Any good strategic sales plan will also include a step-by-step section, much like a playbook. Here, you’ll outline the specific tactics and processes — including scripts, demos, and email templates — that have been proven to move prospects through the sales funnel . 

Be as specific as possible here. This will act as a blueprint for the day-to-day sales activities for your team.

It can be tempting to leave the numbers with the finance department, but financial transparency can go a long way in creating a culture of trust among your sales team.

You don’t need to go through every line item in the spreadsheet, but it’s not a bad idea to include a high-level look at where the dollars are flowing. 

KPIs, Metrics, and Benchmarks

Be sure to give your team a snapshot of how they’re currently performing, with real numbers to back it up.

By doing so, you help them self-initiate regular SWOT analysis of their own sales actions and processes. This will give them an opportunity to right the course if things aren’t going according to plan. 

Tip: Looking to fuel your sales plan with data-backed findings? Grab our free ebook below.

Remember that your company’s strategic sales plan will be highly unique. It may take some time and tweaking to find the components and format that best meet the needs of your business.

Here are 13 sales plan templates to help you get started.

1. Product Launch Plan Template

Sales and marketing teams create a product launch plan when they’re preparing to launch a new product. 

A product launch plan should include your product’s positioning statement , a SWOT competitive analysis, detailed market analysis, sales strategies and tactics, and details about the target market. 

2. Ideal Customer Profile Template

One way to avoid wasting time on unproductive leads is to include an ideal customer profile (ICP) in your sales plan. Here’s a sample : 

This will help ensure your prospecting campaigns are targeted and attract only the most qualified leads from the get-go. 

3. Microsoft Word Sales Plan Template

Here’s a great example of a sales plan goals template , easily accessible through Microsoft Word. 

4. 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan Template

5. Buyer’s Guide Template

A buyer’s guide is a short, simple information sheet that describes your product or service, its features and benefits, and its use. Below is an example of a buyer’s guide from Wayfair . 

In many cases, this document is as useful internally as it is for the customer. 

6. Marketing Alignment Sales Plan Template

If your company hasn’t already formally aligned sales and marketing, start with this type of sales plan template (basic example below), as most traditional sales plans already assume that these two teams collaborate regularly. 

One key component of a marketing alignment sales plan template is the presence of an ideal customer profile and buyer personas. 

The marketing alignment sales plan template should also focus on cohesive, on-brand messaging between marketing campaigns and sales conversations . 

This type of sales plan template helps keep everyone on the same page, increases efficiency, and improves sales effectiveness. 

7. Battle Card Template

8. Territory Design Template

Well-designed sales territories see a 10% – 20% increase in sales productivity. Be low is a basic example of a territory design map.

9. Market Expansion Plan Template

A market expansion plan outlines the strategies, tactics, metrics, resources, and more that teams will use when expanding into a new market or (more commonly) a new geographical territory. 

Market expansion plans also need to include details about distribution expenses and timelines, time zone variations, industry notes or important compliance information, local/cultural expectations and laws, and sometimes more. 

10. Compensation Plan Template

Your compensation plan (including a specific commission structure) is one way to motivate your sales reps.

While it may seem controversial or sensitive, the compensation plan is an important component of a strategic sale plan.

11. Sales Funnel Template

The sales funnel is a visual representation of the sales process. 

12. Marketing Plan Template

Your salespeople should be extremely familiar with the marketing strategies your company is using to attract new leads. Here’s a great example of a template you can use in your sales plan that outlines the different campaigns at work.

This kind of resource will help your reps know who to contact, when, and with what kind of content throughout the sales cycle .

13. B2B Sales Strategy Template

A B2B sales strategy template helps sales teams outline their goals, as well as the specific methodologies and tactics they will use to achieve them. Here’s an example :

The B2B sales strategy plan will vary widely depending on your team’s specific goals and strategies, but most teams include at least the categories highlighted in the template above. 

Yesware is the all-in-one sales toolkit that helps you win more business. It can be an invaluable resource for putting your sales plan into action in a way that’s streamlined, productive, and intuitive.

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Yesware’s meeting scheduler tool helps you skip the back-and-forth when scheduling meetings.

Meeting Scheduler integrates with your Outlook or Gmail calendar and helps your clients automatically schedule meetings with you during times of availability. New events will automatically sync to your calendar. 

​ It can also create meeting types for common calls, like a 30-minute intro call or a 60-minute demo call. These templates can be automatically saved and generated with custom descriptions and agendas so everyone can come prepared. 

Prospecting

One of Yesware’s most popular features is its prospecting campaigns .

This feature enables salespeople to create automated, personalized campaigns with multi-channel touches. 

The tool tracks communication and engagement throughout the process and helps move prospects through the pipeline with little administrative effort from the sales team.

Yesware’s attachment tracking feature helps you find your winning content by tracking which attachments are most often opened and read by your prospects.

You can use these insights to sharpen your content and increase your engagement.

The reporting and analytics tools are also extremely valuable in optimizing your sales plan.  These reports enable salespeople to use data to win more business. The feature generates daily activity, engagement data, and outcomes to show you what is/isn’t working across the board.

Try Yesware for free to see how it can help your team carry out your sales plan today.

This guide was updated on March 6, 2024.

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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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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

RECENT POSTS

• Video: Leverage as a Sales Strategy
• The Woodard Report Podcast: Why Don’t Accountants Love Selling
• Closing the Sale: Sales Closing Strategies That Work
• Video: The Smart Sales Closing Technique You’ve Been Overlooking
• Sales Training: Elite Sellers And Leaders Blend Outside Perspective With Self-coaching

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. 

Congratulations! Here is your Sales Strategy Index.

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Regional Sales Manager Business Plan

I. executive summary.

This strategic sales plan outlines [Your Company Name] 's objectives, strategies, and actions for achieving sales targets in the Midwest region. It encompasses market analysis, sales forecasts, resource allocation, and tactics tailored to the region's unique characteristics.

II. Sales Goals

A. revenue goals.

Achieve a total revenue of $10 million by the end of 2024.

Increase monthly sales by 15% compared to the previous year.

B. Market Penetration Goals

Attain a 10% market share in the Midwest region.

Convert 200 new clients each quarter.

III. Market Analysis

A. market overview.

Analyze the current market trends, the competitive landscape, and the economic environment of the Midwest region. Identify opportunities and challenges that may affect the sales strategy.

B. Target Customer Analysis

Define and profile the ideal customers within the region, considering demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors.

C. Competitor Analysis

Evaluate the key competitors in the region, their strengths, weaknesses, and market positions.

IV. Strategic Approaches

A. product strategy.

Outline the product offerings, unique selling points, and how they will meet the needs of the target customers in the region.

B. Pricing Strategy

Define the pricing structure and any promotional pricing strategies that will be implemented to attract and retain customers.

C. Sales Channel Strategy

Identify the various sales channels (direct, indirect, online, retail, etc.) to be utilized in the region.

V. Tactical Plan

A. sales activities.

Detail the planned sales activities, including lead generation, customer relationship management, and closing techniques. Include schedules and sequences of these activities.

B. Marketing Support

Define the marketing initiatives that will support the sales activities, such as advertising campaigns, content marketing, and events.

VI. Sales Team Structure

Define the sales team structure within the region, including roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines.

VII. Performance Metrics

Monthly Revenue Growth (Past Year)

A. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Monthly Revenue

Number of New Clients

Conversion Rates

Customer Retention Rates

B. Monitoring and Reporting

Outline how performance will be monitored and reported, including the frequency and tools used for tracking performance.

VIII. Adaptability Strategies

Describe the strategies for adapting the sales plan in response to market changes, competitive actions, or unexpected challenges in the region.

IX. Resource Allocation

Present a realistic resource allocation plan including budget, personnel, technology, and other resources necessary for executing the sales plan effectively.

X. Conclusion

[Your Company Name] strategic sales plan for the Midwest region lays a robust foundation for achieving ambitious revenue goals and market expansion. Through market analysis, innovative product strategies, and tactical execution, [Your Company Name] is poised to capitalize on opportunities and overcome challenges. With a focus on adaptability and resource optimization, [Your Company Name] is well-positioned to emerge as a leader in the Midwest market.

Sales Plan Templates @ Template.net

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

Be more specific. What do you want to achieve?

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

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

2. High-Level Review

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

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

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

3. A Strategy

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

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

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

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

4. Tactics and Actions

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

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

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

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

5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

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

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

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

6. Sales and Marketing Alignment

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Obstacles to Success

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

Think carefully: What obstacles will keep you from succeeding?

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

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

8. Personal and Professional Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start building your business plan with this free template.

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

Click Here to Download the Template

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

Business Plan Sections Explained

1. the business opportunity.

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

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

2. Company Description

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

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

3. Company Purpose

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

4. Mission Statement

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

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

5. Core Values

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

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

6. Product & Service Lines

This section will include:

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

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

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

8. Industry Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

9. Target Market

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

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

Consider consolidating this information and creating dedicated buyer personas .

10. Buyer Personas

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

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

11. Location Analysis

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

Here’s a template you can use:

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

This might manifest as something like:

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

12. Implementation Timeline

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

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

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

13. Marketing Plan

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

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

Positioning Strategy

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

Acquisition Channels

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

Tools and Technology

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

14. Financial Considerations and Funding Required

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

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

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

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

Sales Methodology

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

Sales Organization Structure

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

Sales Channels

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

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

Individual Business Plan Examples for Sales Reps

1. individual development plan.

Image Source

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

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

2. Medical Sales Business Plan

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

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

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

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

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

4. Territory Business Plan

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

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

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

5. Quarterly Business Plan

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

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

Crush Your Sales Goals with a Business and Sales Plan

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

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

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Regional Business Strategy Plan Template

What is a Regional Business Strategy Plan?

A regional business strategy plan outlines a business's objectives and strategies for a specific region. It takes into account local market dynamics, cultural nuances, and regulatory requirements, and provides a roadmap for how to best position and operate a business in a particular region. This plan provides a framework for businesses to set objectives, set measurable targets (KPIs), implement related projects, and track progress towards their goals.

What's included in this Regional Business Strategy Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Regional Business Strategy Plan template for?

This regional business strategy plan template is designed to help businesses create a comprehensive plan that takes into account local market dynamics, cultural nuances, and regulatory requirements. It is ideal for businesses that operate in multiple regions or countries and need to develop a strategy plan that is tailored to the conditions of each region.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

When creating a regional business strategy plan, it is important to start by defining your focus areas. Focus areas are the overarching goals of the plan and should be specific, measurable, and achievable. Examples of strategic focus areas that could fall under a Regional Business Strategy Plan could be: Optimize Regional Market Outreach, Improve Regional Customer Service, and Enhance Regional Regulatory Compliance.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Under each focus area, think about the objectives that need to be accomplished in order to achieve the focus area goal. Objectives are specific, measurable, and achievable goals that are related to the focus area. Examples of some objectives for the focus area of Optimize Regional Market Outreach could be: Increase Regional Presence, and Increase Regional Brand Awareness.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

Once objectives have been set, measurable targets (KPIs) should be established to track progress towards achieving the objectives. KPIs are measurable values that can be tracked and monitored over time. Examples of KPIs include the number of visits to a regional website, brand awareness in a target region, resolution time for customer issues, and number of customers attending events.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Once objectives and KPIs have been identified, related projects should be implemented to achieve the KPIs. Projects are specific actions that can be taken to meet the objectives of the plan. Examples of projects include launching a regional website, launching a regional social media campaign, establishing a regional customer service center, and hosting regional customer appreciation events.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

The Cascade Strategy Execution Platform is an effective tool for businesses to use to implement, monitor, and track progress on their regional business strategy plan. It provides easy-to-use templates, customizable dashboards, streamlined collaboration, and automated reporting to help businesses evaluate and adjust their strategy plans quickly and effectively.

Regional Sales Manager Professional Goals

Getting started as a regional sales manager.

• What is a Regional Sales Manager
• How to Become a Regional Sales Manager
• Certifications
• Tools & Software
• LinkedIn Guide
• Interview Questions
• Similar Job Titles
• Work-Life Balance
• Professional Goals
• Regional Sales Manager Resume Examples
• Regional Sales Manager Cover Letter Examples

Track Your Goals with Teal

Log your goals and career aspirations on an ongoing basis to keep career groth front of mind with Teal.

Why Every Regional Sales Manager Should Have Goals

Different types of career goals for regional sales managers, revenue growth and market expansion goals, team development and performance goals, customer relationship and satisfaction goals, personal branding and network expansion goals, operational efficiency and innovation goals, what makes a good career goal for a regional sales manager , career goal criteria for regional sales managers, revenue-driven objectives.

• Set Quarterly Sales Goals
• Identify Key Growth Markets
• Track Customer Retention Rates

Leadership and Team Development

• Implement Leadership Training
• Build Team Success Plans
• Promote Sales Innovation

Market Expertise and Adaptation

• Monitor Regional Market Trends
• Analyze Competitor Sales Strategies
• Identify Emerging Customer Needs

Strategic Relationship Building

• Identify Key Decision Makers
• Develop Tailored Value Propositions
• Implement a Client Retention Strategy

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12 Professional Goal Examples for Regional Sales Managers

Expand regional market share, develop high-performing sales teams, strengthen key account relationships, enhance sales process efficiency, lead a successful product launch, master data-driven sales strategies, achieve advanced sales certification, cultivate a culture of continuous learning, drive revenue growth, improve customer retention rates, elevate your leadership skills, expand your professional network, career goals for regional sales managers at difference levels, setting career goals as an entry-level regional sales manager, setting career goals as a mid-level regional sales manager, setting career goals as a senior-level regional sales manager, leverage feedback to refine your professional goals, utilizing constructive criticism to sharpen leadership skills, capitalizing on customer insights for strategic goal setting, leveraging performance reviews for career progression, goal faqs for regional sales managers, how frequently should regional sales managers revisit and adjust their professional goals, can professional goals for regional sales managers include soft skill development, how do regional sales managers balance long-term career goals with immediate project deadlines, how can regional sales managers ensure their goals align with their company's vision and objectives.

What is a Regional Sales Manager?

More Professional Goals for Related Roles

Driving regional sales success, fostering team growth and exceeding 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 sales growth in designated regions, mastering market trends and client relations

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

Driving strategic partnerships and market opportunities for business growth and expansion