How to Create a Sales Plan: Template + Examples

This blog article is in Bryant Pro Regular. The title is in medium. Do you have a sales plan? Entrepreneurs, sales executives, and sales managers all benefit from writing sales plans — whether for their business, department, or team. You must know where you’re going before you can hit your key targets, and from there, you must break down the strategies and tactics you’ll use to do it.

All of this information can be included in a sales plan (and more). Read on to learn how you can draft a sales plan that’s right for your organization.

A sales plan lays out your objectives, high-level tactics, target audience, and potential obstacles. It’s like a traditional business plan but focuses specifically on your sales strategy. A business plan lays out your goals — a sales plan describes exactly how you’ll make those happen.

Sales plans often include information about the business’ target customers, revenue goals, team structure, and the strategies and resources necessary for achieving its targets.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that sales planning doesn’t just encompass the creation of a sales plan document. In order for that document to be more than something that gathers dust on the bookshelf, a high-level strategy is required.

One thing to keep in mind is that sales planning shouldn’t end with the creation of the document.

You’ll want to reiterate this process every year to maintain your organization’s sales excellence.

Now that you’re committed to the sales planning process, let’s dive into the written execution component of sales planning.

As you can see, objectives can be uniquely tailored to fit each departments’ needs, and allow for a large amount of autonomy. By instilling clear and firm company goals, you can feel confident that your employees are all working in the same direction, but taking largely different steps (e.g. objectives) to end up at the same finish line.

An objective is a measurable, specific action an employee or team needs to take to meet the needs of a larger company goal. A strategy, on the other hand, defines how each employee or team will accomplish the objective. A strategy can change throughout the course of a campaign, while an objective should remain the same. For instance, perhaps your objective is to increase website traffic by 10%. A strategy to ensure success could be to focus heavily on SEO efforts, re-design the website, or put more money behind your paid advertising approach.

There’s one more term differentiation you need to know — objectives versus strategy.

Referencing our example above, let’s say your social media marketing manager decides one of her objectives will be “an increase in engagement from Spanish-speaking Facebook fans by 5%”.

This is aligned with your company’s goal to increase international brand awareness.

A strategy, then, tells your employee or team how she can accomplish her objectives. For instance, your social media marketing manager might decide to focus her paid efforts on Spanish-speaking countries, using Facebook’s location targeting features. Alternatively, maybe she decides to cultivate partnerships with international companies and posts videos in Spanish on Facebook specifically highlighting the work of those international organizations.

Both of these options are examples of strategies.

Her strategy might change over time. She might decide her paid efforts aren’t working, and try something else. Ultimately, however, her objective (increase engagement from Spanish-speaking Facebook fans by 5%) should remain the same.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating goals. There are many things businesses want to measure, especially from a marketing perspective, so it’s important to have several types of goals to choose from when setting the course for the year ahead.

Time-Based Goals

The first type of goal that businesses use to set a strategic direction is the time-based goal. This goal type provides a high-level explanation for what teams or individuals should be striving toward within a certain timeframe. Time-based goals can be short-term or long-term depending on the needs of your organization.

Time-based goals help teams and individuals plan and execute urgent tasks. Some goals are time-sensitive and the primary outcome of achieving these types of goals is that they’re completed on time.

An example of a time-based goal might be “Increase revenue by 10% to qualify for the best-in-class awards ceremony in August.” Because the award’s ceremony has a fixed date and the action stated in the goal is a requirement of the ceremony, this goal should be time-bound to increase the likelihood of reaching it.

Outcome-Oriented Goals

Outcome-oriented goals are independent of a specific timeframe and typically outline what the business is aiming to achieve at some point in the future. The objectives for outcome-oriented goals provide more context around when this goal should be completed and how to measure the success of the goal.

For big picture changes, leadership transitions, and other types of major business milestones, outcome-oriented goals are used to communicate a new vision and era within a company. Objectives for this type of goal communicate actionable changes for employees, and therefore, pair well with process-oriented goals which we talk about next.