Get sales planning right to improve performance and shorten sales cycles

No matter how mature your sales organisation is, effective sales planning is key to converting leads and winning opportunities consistently, month after month.

It doesn’t just improve performance across the board, it also takes the pressure off your sellers. Instead of scrambling to know what to say, your sales reps will have all the support they need to nail the messaging every time, no matter what objections prospects throw at them.

But what precisely is sales planning? Keep reading to learn about key elements in a sales plan, the benefits of having one, and how you can build one to supercharge your sales.

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan is a path that a sales team, from sellers to leaders to enablement, can follow to reach your sales targets. The clearer the plan, the more easily your team will hit their targets.

It all starts with a goal or set of goals. Maybe you want to boost your sales by 30% in the next year, or reach a particular sales target in the next quarter. You might even have a certain client you’re determined to win.

Once you know what you want, you can start thinking about how you can get it. There are some core questions that influence this process, such as:

• Which prospects are you trying to sell to?

• What channels are at your disposal?

• What campaigns have worked for you before?

• What is the average contract value you’re targeting?

• How long is your sales cycle?

Your answers to these questions will provide the groundwork for your plan. Based on them, you should be able to establish a strategy that offers a clear path to success.

The importance of sales planning

Sales planning is a crucial process that helps businesses set clear objectives, allocate resources effectively, and create a roadmap for sustainable growth. Without a well-defined sales plan, teams may struggle with inconsistent messaging, inefficient workflows, and missed revenue opportunities. Here are just some of the reasons why sales planning is so crucial:

It clarifies sales goals and objectives

A well-crafted sales plan provides clarity around specific goals and objectives and ensures everyone on the sales team understands what they are working toward.

By defining these goals and key performance indicators, whether it's revenue targets, new customer acquisition, or market expansion, a sales plan eliminates ambiguity and gives the team a clear sense of purpose.

This helps sellers prioritise their activities, ensuring that efforts are aligned with broader business objectives. Clear goals also help businesses assess the effectiveness of their sales strategies, making it easier to pivot when needed.

It offers strategic direction and guidance for sellers

On a related note, sales planning also provides a strategic framework that guides teams in their approach to reaching goals.

It helps sales teams identify the right strategies for acquiring customers, retaining existing clients, and expanding their market share. With a clear plan in place, sellers can focus their efforts on high-impact activities, rather than wasting time on tactics that don't align with overall objectives.

From a strategic perspective, a sales plan helps sales leaders make data-driven decisions and drive sales performance using tactics that are informed by market trends, customer insights, and performance data. This not only minimises risk, but also ensures that sales activities are efficient and targeted.

It defines responsibilities and roles clearly

One of the key benefits of sales planning is that it establishes clear roles and responsibilities within the team.

When everyone knows their specific role and what is expected of them, there is less confusion and overlap, which leads to greater efficiency—especially in more complex deals.

Whether it's defining who is responsible for prospecting, closing deals, or managing accounts, a sales plan ensures that each team member can focus on their strengths. This structure promotes accountability and avoids bottlenecks, as team members understand how their individual contributions impact the overall success of the sales process.

It provides targets and motivation

Sales planning helps create tangible targets that motivate sales representatives to perform at their best. Setting specific, measurable goals gives the team something to strive for, whether it’s a certain revenue milestone, the number of new leads generated, or the number of deals closed within a given timeframe.

These targets not only provide motivation but also foster a sense of achievement when milestones are reached. Additionally, with clearly defined metrics for success, salespeople can track their own progress, which helps them stay on top of their performance and make the necessary adjustments.

It helps managers track progress and performance more effectively

A sales plan provides managers with the tools they need to track performance and ensure that the team stays on track to meet its goals.

Through regular monitoring of KPIs such as sales pipeline progress, conversion rates, and revenue growth, managers can quickly identify areas where the team may be struggling and intervene with corrective actions or coaching when needed.

Sales planning also allows for more accurate forecasting, making it easier for managers to shorten sales cycles, predict future revenue, and allocate resources. With this level of insight, managers can provide timely feedback, adjust strategies as needed, and keep the team motivated by celebrating successes along the way.

What should go in a sales plan template?

Before creating any sales plans, you’ll need a template to follow. Sales plan templates provide format and structure to ensure you include everything important—without going overboard.

Here are the key sections every sales plan template should include:

Executive summary

As the name suggests, an executive summary is aimed squarely at the C-suite level. The point is to quickly cover the key points of the sales plan so those with minimal time (and possibly even no sales experience) can quickly get up to speed.

An executive summary should include a succinct explanation of what the rest of the sales plan expands upon.

Industry and market conditions

For a sales strategy to be effective, it must factor in the context surrounding the business—most notably considering industry shifts and what your competitors are doing.

If a rival has recently announced a cutting-edge solution, for example, then building your sales activity around an innovation-centric message will set you up for failure. If you raise your prices while others are cutting theirs, your sales will likely suffer.

This section should include a broad assessment of notable competitors and general industry developments, and should be updated as frequently as needed.

Target customers

Buyer personas—descriptions of your archetypal customers—are staples in sales planning for a good reason. Working on sales tactics with your best customers’ traits and preferences in mind can yield much stronger results.

At a minimum, this section should contain one fleshed-out persona representing your ideal prospects: the buyers you’re most likely to target and reach. What do they care about? What budgets are they working with? Where can you find them?

Revenue goals

How much money does your business stand to make if nothing changes? How much does it need to make to remain operational? How much do you think it can make if you get an excellent sales plan in place?

This section should contain a straightforward explanation of realistic revenue goals, bringing them all back to key metrics. They can be ambitious, of course, but achievable.

And if there are too many unknowns to be confident about the figures, you can use ranges to account for different scenarios. Show the baseline you need to hit, the outer limit of what’s possible, and some points between that represent different tactics or levels of investment.

Strategies and tactics

When choosing your sales methodologies and strategies, it's essential to align them with your revenue goals while considering the unique needs of your business and target market.

The strategies you implement should be designed to maximise your revenue potential and guide your sales team toward achieving the desired outcomes. This requires an understanding of what your customers value, how they make purchasing decisions, and what kind of selling approach will resonate best with them.

For example, you might use a mix of inbound and outbound strategies. Inbound strategies could involve content marketing, SEO, and lead nurturing through email campaigns to attract qualified leads, while outbound tactics might include cold calling, direct outreach, and partnerships to expand your reach. Both approaches should be tailored to meet your sales targets by engaging customers at the right stage of their buying journey.

Resources

This section should contain a full account of relevant resources, such as tools and content, available to your sales team and where they can be found. If you have battlecards, positioning and messaging docs, and ICP (ideal customer profile) materials, this is where they should be listed.

There are also Ai coaching and agent assist tools that provide real-time guidance, analyse conversations, and offer actionable feedback to sales reps to help them refine their pitches and increase their chances of closing deals more effectively.

For example, Dialpad Sell’s Ai Playbooks can provide real-time guidance during sales calls to help reps adhere to their sales methodology, while Ai Scorecards analyses sales calls to help managers gauge rep performance based on preset criteria.

Pricing and promotions

Though sales reps often have some degree of freedom to offer cut rates, prices and promotions generally need to be approved beforehand. Even a short-term discount can hugely impact overall revenue.

This section should feature a breakdown of product and/or service pricing, ideally including the associated overheads for gauging profitability. Having signed-off promotions from the outset will make it easier for sales reps to effectively respond to market and competitor pressure.

Time frames, deadlines, and responsibilities

This section should cover all the practical requirements for launching the sales plan, encompassing however many sales cycles it was written to govern.

Note that these things can be malleable. A time frame, for instance, might shift due to unexpected industry-wide events. Responsibilities may change due to sales leaders leaving or joining the business.

So that’s the basic structure, but what is an effective sales planning strategy once you’ve added the detail?

Here’s a template table with some sample data to give you an idea (if you have the time, look up some sales plan examples for more guidance):

How to create a sales plan: Step-by-step guide to effective sales planning

You may now feel ready to start working on a sales plan. But how do you get it right? Here are a few sales planning tips.

1. Gather data and derive insights

Look at records of your sales history. KPIs, budgets, tactics, and roles. Next, map out trends within your industry. What big shifts have you spotted, and what changes loom just over the horizon? Historical data is also valuable here, especially if you weren’t involved in previous sales efforts and thus lack awareness of how industry conditions impacted them.

Using all of this information, you can assess what you’ve done before and where you currently stand. It may help to produce a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) of your business.

2. Set clear objectives

These objectives should be aligned with your overall business goals, such as increasing revenue or entering new markets. Make sure these objectives are measurable, so you can track progress and determine when they’ve been achieved. For instance, instead of a vague goal like "increase sales," set a specific target such as "increase net new revenue by 15% in the next quarter."

Once you’ve defined your objectives, break them down into smaller, actionable steps. This makes them less overwhelming and provides clear direction for sellers. Establish timelines, benchmarks, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you gauge success and keep the team aligned.

3. Identify the strategies and methodologies to meet those objectives

Start by selecting specific sales methodologies based on your business needs. For instance, if you're focused on penetrating a new enterprise market, consider using Account-Based Selling (ABS) to target high-value accounts with personalised outreach. Align your methodology with sales tactics like social selling or cold calling depending on your target audience's behaviour and preferences.

Next, refine your strategies by incorporating data analytics and sales Ai to optimise every step of your sales process. Conversational Ai tools, for example, can analyse past sales calls and identify trends. (Like which competitors are coming up often?)

Dialpad Sell, for example, can do this thanks to the Custom Moments feature, which tracks how frequently certain keywords or phrases are spoken.

4. Decide an appropriate budget

Start by evaluating past performance—look at the cost of acquisition for different customer segments, the efficiency of various sales channels, and historical ROI from marketing campaigns.

With this data, you can allocate budget across critical areas such as lead generation, sales technology (CRM, automation tools), sales training, and compensation. For instance, if your goal is to drive more inbound leads, allocate more to content creation, SEO, and paid media, whereas if you're focusing on expanding outbound efforts, increase investment in prospecting tools and hiring additional SDRs.

Once you've established a baseline budget, layer in flexibility for unexpected opportunities or changes. This means setting aside a portion of the budget for experimentation—whether that’s testing new sales tools, piloting a new outreach tactic, or investing in advanced Ai solutions to support your team. The key is to balance short-term investments with long-term goals and regularly assess the impact of your spending to ensure you're getting the best return.

5. Define your metrics to measure performance

Establish your leading indicators, such as the number of qualified leads generated, the conversion rate from cold outreach to meetings, and the average deal size. These metrics will give you early insights into the effectiveness of your strategies and allow you to course-correct before you hit the later stages of the sales cycle. For example, if your conversion rate is lower than expected, you can assess whether the issue lies in lead quality, messaging, or follow-up times.

In addition to leading indicators, track lagging metrics such as total revenue, quota attainment, and sales cycle length. These will tell you whether your sales efforts are successful in meeting your goals.

Other sales planning techniques and tips

Following the template above will help you start building a sales plan, but that’s just the beginning.

Here are a few ways to optimise and improve your sales planning process over time:

Understand the evolving challenges your sales team faces

Every sales team faces a distinct set of challenges, not all of which are obviously from the outside.

For example, your sales reps may struggle with cold calling software that makes them constantly click back and forth between their CRM to look up prospects’ information. They may find it difficult to find their sales enablement materials easily when they’re live on a sales call.

As your sales org and business grow, the unique challenges that sellers face will change. From tactics, to tools, to strategy—these elements of your sales plan should all adapt and evolve as you scale up.

Give your teams the tools they need to succeed

Good sales tools should empower your sellers to stay organised and close deals consistently. For example, successful sales call planning requires a CRM that ideally integrates with other systems your sales team uses, such as email, calendar, cold calling, and internal communication apps:

This could help them save hours of manual data entry—and let them focus on nurturing and closing prospects.

You might also consider a sales enablement platform that provides easy access to the latest content, presentations, and case studies that can be quickly shared during live conversations.

Take sales call planning, for instance. If you do away with the practice of relying on ad-hoc decisions, you can give your sales reps a level of information and insight that can drastically improve their chances of success.

And if you provide a platform for managing pre-call discussions, you can assist collaboration.

By investing in the right software solutions, you can help your top performers hit even more ambitious targets while empowering new reps to learn the ropes much more quickly.

Encourage inter-departmental collaboration

The sales team operates at the end of a lengthy funnel. There are many other teams contributing to deals, such as design, product/development, finance, and more. It’s a big reason why we’re seeing more and more “revenue” and “go-to-market” teams—sales is truly a full-team effort.

For example, marketing can provide valuable insights into buyer personas, industry trends, and effective messaging that can enhance a sales rep's outreach. At the same time, product teams can help sales understand the nuances of new features or updates, which helps them better present solutions to potential clients. Even customer service teams can share insights about common customer pain points or feedback that can be used to tailor sales pitches or refine offerings.

Have regular meetings or cross-departmental workshops where these teams can align on key initiatives and share best practices. This will help break down silos, encourage collaboration, and create an environment where information flows freely—which ultimately enables all teams to work together towards driving revenue.

Continually track performance and iterate your plans

To ensure your sales plan continues to be effective, it's crucial to consistently track performance and make adjustments based on data.

Use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, average deal size, sales cycle length, and win rates to assess progress. These metrics can provide valuable insights into areas that may need attention, whether it's additional training, better lead generation tactics, or more advanced sales tools.

Effective sales planning can keep you a step ahead

Effective sales planning is a dynamic and ongoing process that requires a deep understanding of both your sellers’ challenges and the evolving market landscape. By giving your sales team the right tools and regularly tracking performance, you can build a foundation for sustainable growth and success.

Learn more about how sales organisations are using Dialpad Sell’s unique Ai features to uncover conversational insights during the sales planning process, coach reps in real time, and more!