What Is Sales Planning? A Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

Sales planning is a crucial part of the business-to-business (B2B) sales process. It determines your sales goals, how to achieve them, whether or not you can achieve them during a set timeframe, and which customers to target.

Sales planning differs from general business planning, as it focuses specifically on sales strategies rather than the broader operational aspects of a business.

This article contains a beginner’s step-by-step guide for creating a sales plan.

Step-By-Step Guide For Creating A Sales Plan

Analyse market trends and previous sales data

The first step in sales planning is analysing market trends, identifying customer needs, and assessing competitors. For example, a service provider selling fitness plans might analyse current health and fitness trends, identify the growing demand for home workouts, and assess competitors’ services and marketing strategies.

In addition, you need to analyse your business’ previous sales data. Take a look at your sales in previous years and analyse any spikes or drops, as this will help your business set realistic sales goals.

Define your goals

The next step is defining clear sales goals that benefit both your business and your customers. These should be smart, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based (SMART) goals.

(Image Source: Indeed)

Your sales goals could aim to increase sales, brand awareness, profit margins, and monthly or annual revenue, as well as boost customer value and leads.

Develop a strategy

Once you have defined your sales goals, the next step is developing strategies to achieve each of them. This could involve diversifying your products or services, reaching new customers, or enhancing and targeting your marketing campaigns.

For example, brands such as Hello Bello and Once Upon A Farm might aim to increase their subscription sales by 30% in the next year by aiming their marketing campaigns towards parents of young children.

Allocate your resources

When developing a sales plan, you must correctly allocate your resources, including your budget, team members, and tools. Remember to consider what tools will be necessary for your sales team to do their job well and which responsibilities your team members should take on based on their strengths and abilities. For example, ask the team member with the most experience in social media marketing to oversee that sales channel.

Also, define a budget for your sales strategies so you can outline how and when revenue is spent or generated. Allocating a budget and adhering to it allows sales teams to use resources effectively while keeping the business within its financial constraints. For example, a small business looking to build brand awareness might allocate most of its budget to digital marketing campaigns that target local consumers.

Establish performance metrics and KPIs

You need to establish a set of performance metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to measure the progress and success of your sales plan. Performance metrics quantify the result of work done for specific strategies, whilst KPIs are tied to how successful you are at achieving your sales objectives.

Some key sales metrics include monthly revenue, number of closed deals, number of customers, number of sales qualified leads, average order value, number of new contracts signed, and customer retention rates. For example, if your goal is to build a loyal customer base that is more likely to make repeat purchases, you can measure its success by tracking customer retention rates.

Review your strategy and adapt accordingly

Finally, when your sales plan is in place, you must review it regularly and adapt it to ensure it remains practical and relevant for your business. By continuously adapting your plan, you can ensure your business responds to sales trigger events and generates revenue more effectively.

For example, if you find that a particular product is underperforming and not bringing in much revenue, you should revise your sales strategy for that product.

Ready To Create A Sales Plan?

Sales planning is an essential aspect of business that identifies a lack of sales and seeks to develop strategies to improve this issue. The only way you can go wrong is by writing your sales plan at the start of the year and never touching it again.

There’s no one-size-fits-all sales plan. However, by following these six simple steps, businesses can create a robust sales plan that suits their goals and objectives.

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