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Creating a sales plan is one of the most important parts of any company’s business model. You should know what your goals are and how you want to achieve them. In this blog post, we’ll go over the 7 steps needed to create a successful sales plan for your startup or small business.
A sales plan is a document that is used to set sales goals and devise tactics to attain them. Typically, this document lays out a revenue growth strategy as well as other success indicators. Goals are outlined, essential consumer traits are identified, and required methods, tools, KPIs, and expected expenditures are included in parts of sales plans.
Free sales plan template
Sales strategies don’t have to be difficult to understand. They do, however, need that you consider various factors of your organization. We’ve produced a free printable sales strategy template with seven common parts to assist you. Create your own sales strategy based on the requirements of your company using this sales plan template and the information below.
There are several crucial aspects you should include whether you use our template or create your own. Here are the seven stages you’ll need to establish your sales strategy:
Outline Your Mission & Objectives
Begin by writing your company’s purpose statement, as well as your sales growth goals. This section will outline your unique selling proposition and act as the cornerstone of your sales strategy. As a consequence, it’s crucial to the success of your strategy since it’ll direct your future sales efforts.
Define Your Goals
Make sure your mission statement, which is a formal declaration defining what your company stands for and what it wants to accomplish, is well-defined. The underpinning for all strategic planning and a cornerstone of your sales management techniques should be a mission statement. The following is an example of a fantastic mission statement:
“At a profit to our shareholders, we deliver cutting-edge digital marketing solutions with best-in-class technical assistance to our clients.”
Determine your sales goals.
Sales objectives are goals that promote a company’s current and future development, and they often involve revenue, market share, or profit margin. They are connected to your purpose because they assist you in carrying it out and making it a reality. By defining these sales objectives, you’ll be able to clearly define what success looks like while also providing a rallying point for your staff.
Thinking about sales goals in terms of the S.M.A.R.T. framework might be beneficial:
Create one to three SMART targets for the first year of your strategy. SMART objectives are beneficial because they ensure that everyone understands what the goal comprises, how it will be assessed, if it is possible, how it relates to the purpose, and when it should be completed.
Describe Your Sales Team’s Roles & Responsibilities
Your strategy as a sales leader should include the tasks of your sales staff, as well as any independent marketing and agency assistance. Summarize each role’s duties and intended contribution to the sales process as follows:
- List the names of the individuals who work in those sales positions on your team.
- Identifying their key performance indicators. (KPIs)
- Defining explicit performance objectives and detailing how they will be held responsible
Create a customer persona
A customer persona is a made-up character who represents your ideal customer. It creates a story that outlines your target audience’s pain areas, demographics, and wants, all while highlighting the greatest solution you have to offer.
Consider appropriate job titles, important tasks, memberships and clubs, and the communication channels they utilize, for example, if you’re employing a business-to-business B2B sales strategy. If you mainly sell to consumers (B2C), on the other hand, your ideal client profile would comprise characteristics like gender, age, family life, homeownership status, income, education, hobbies, and accessible sales channels.
Recognize Customer Purchasing Patterns
Consider your clients’ purchasing habits. If you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) swimsuit apparel firm, for example, your summer sales strategy will be more aggressive, with greater revenue objectives, and you’ll want to concentrate on clearance sales in the autumn and winter. In B2B sales, you’ll pay attention to things like firm size, yearly revenue, quarterly budgets, and industry trends.
Establish a Sales Territory
Define the sales areas where you anticipate discovering your target client for both B2B and B2C enterprises. This should include a description of the geographic area in which you will operate and why you feel it will help you achieve your sales objectives.
Establish Your Strategies & Tactics
The longer-term plans and day-to-day approaches you’ll employ to gain new business and expand the company with current clients are defined in this area of your sales plan template. These are the tasks that your team will do in order to carry out your sales strategy and anticipate future sales.
List techniques for attracting new customers or prospects who suit your ideal customer profile in your sales strategy. Then, define at least two tasks that members of the sales team will complete on a daily or weekly basis to assist them in meeting their sales quota.
Here are three fresh client acquisition tactics you may apply in a sales strategy template:
Expectations Clarification
- Make at least 60 introduction calls to new prospects each week.
- Each week, make at least 10 face-to-face interactions with fresh prospects.
- Each week, make at least five sales pitch presentations.
Increase Awareness for Products, Services & Solutions
- Every year, I join at least three professional organizations where my greatest prospects and clients are members.
- Attend all of my top prospects’ and customers’ trade fairs and conferences.
- Purchase these organizations’ mailing lists and send a letter of introduction.
Get New Customers to Refer You
- I will contact each of my new clients within 30 days after providing my product or service to guarantee that they are happy.
- If they are dissatisfied, I will work to rectify the situation so that I may seek customer recommendations at a later time.
- I’ll ask them to give at least three customer references if they’re delighted with their purchase.
This part of your sales strategy should detail the sales enablement tools you’ll utilize to help your team execute each of your initiatives effectively. This will guarantee that your sales process is well-managed and that tasks are carried out in the most efficient manner possible.
The following are three popular sorts of tools that may assist you in developing a sales strategy:
Software for Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM software helps you to monitor sales activities in real-time, track performance, rapidly access information and make modifications even while you’re not at the office thanks to comprehensive mobile applications. Without having to produce new sales reports, certain CRMs enable you to arrange your sales funnel into logical phases and measure every component of your strategy as you execute it.
A CRM tailored for small firms may assist expedite your sales process by centralizing key contact information such as title, relationship details, and call notes. Freshsales, for example, is a simple-to-use yet effective solution that organizes all of your pertinent data and can be accessed on the move through a mobile app.
Software for Video Conferencing
While some meetings take place in person, as our society becomes more digital, video meetings are increasingly convenient, helping your team engage with prospects. There are many affordable software for Video Conferencing choices available, such as Zoom, which offers a free version for meetings up to 40 minutes and has affordable plans for longer meetings.
Software for Scheduling
When you’re dealing with several possibilities, manually scheduling meetings might be a nuisance. There are tools that can automate the procedure, removing the need to go back and forth to establish a suitable meeting time. Calendly, for example, may sync with your calendar to let prospects know when you’re available to meet. You email them your unique Calendly link, and they choose a time to meet, which is then instantly added to both of your calendars.
Assign Metrics to Your Sales Plan
Once you’ve settled on your sales goals, you’ll need to figure out how to track your sales success in order to keep track of how well your sales strategy is working and how well you’re hitting your sales targets. Establishing a sales process, identifying the important stages at each stage, and characterizing success in terms of conversion rates and resource time or process flow can help you achieve this.
For example, you may track the following metrics on a monthly or quarterly basis:
- Revenue growth year over year (YOY): How do your sales this year compare to the previous year at the same time?
- New business revenue: Keep track of new account revenue on a monthly and quarterly basis.
- Individual sales rep performance: Keep track of each sales rep’s monthly, quarterly, and year-over-year sales objectives.
- Revenue from current accounts (recurring revenue): Keep track of how much money comes in from current accounts (loyal customers).
- Customer turnover: On a regular basis, keep track of how many clients you’re losing to churn. If your churn increases considerably, you’ll need to investigate the causes and devise a win-back strategy.
Make a budget for your sales plan.
A sales strategy that costs more than your company expects to earn will not help you accomplish your sales goals. You may calculate the projected return on your investment by itemizing predicted expenses. Because not all expenses are recurrent, it’s a good idea to divide your budget into one-time and continuing charges.
The following are some examples of key budget items to include:
- Salaries for salespeople
- Bonuses and commissions
- Service subscription costs like CRM, Software for Video Conferencing, task management tools, internet, and telephone subscriptions
- Prospect lists may be purchased.
- Expenses for travel
Conclusion
For startups and small organizations, having an efficient sales strategy is a vital component of a sales culture. While this is occasionally included in the overall company strategy, it is far more practical to keep your sales plan distinct. It should be the lifeblood of any small company sales process, whether you develop your own or utilize the sales plan template we’ve supplied.
Having a CRM to assist you to maintain your sales strategy after it’s in place may make all the difference in whether or not your team is successful in acquiring new clients. Freshsales makes it easy to keep organized and track your progress toward your sales goals. They have a free plan that lasts indefinitely and premium options that start at $15 per user, each month.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I make a sales plan template?
A: The first step is to identify what you want your sales and revenue targets to be. You can then use this information, along with other variables such as cost of goods sold, the average amount spent per customer, etc., in order to develop a rough estimate for finding the total number of customers. From there it’s just a matter of using formulas that have been developed by others or even some simple math on your own (or both), and deciding how much profit you need in order for each product or service offered by the business.
How do you create an individual sales plan?
First, you need to know what the sales objectives are for that specific store. Sales objectives can vary from store to store. For example, in a general retail environment like Best Buy or Target, sales objectives might be an annual goal for revenue growth of 2%. In other words, they want their gross margin percentage to increase by 2% annually so that each dollar spent at the retailer yields $1 in profit.
