Success seldom happens by chance, and certainly not in the sales process

We hit sales objectives through careful strategizing, thoughtful resource allocation, and clear goal-setting — a sales plan, if you will.

Sales planning is a critical exercise that can make or break your team's performance.

But how can you create a sales plan that doesn't just look good on paper, but drives strategic goals?

We’ve got you covered. Keep reading for an in-depth look at the art and science of sales planning.

What is Sales Planning?

Sales planning can be boiled down to charting a course for your sales team's success.

During the sales planning process, you:

• Set sales goals and objectives;
• Start strategy development;
• Line up and allocate resources you need to hit your targets.

To nail your sales plan, you need to look both inward and outward.

Internally, you're fine-tuning your team's skills, streamlining processes, and making sure you've got the right sales tools for the job.

Externally, you're keeping tabs on market trends, evolving customer needs, and the competitive landscape.

The goal? To equip your sales org with strategic direction, so they’re prepared for the expected while staying nimble enough to handle curveballs.

Sales Planning vs. Business Planning

While they're related, business planning and sales planning aren’t identical twins; they're more like cousins with distinct personalities.

• Business planning is the big-picture view — setting the broad company objectives, touching on everything from product development to marketing strategies, financial goals, and strategic direction. It's the blueprint for entire business strategy.
• Sales planning, on the other hand, is like designing one crucial room in that blueprint. It zeroes in on how your sales team will hit revenue targets to support those broader business goals and objectives.

As a sales leader, you're the bridge between these two worlds.

Your job is to translate that broad company objective into an action plan for your sales team.

You need to consider the practical realities to implement sales planning — things like sales cycles, territory mapping, and quota setting — while ensuring your plan aligns with the company's strategic direction.

Why Sales Planning is Critical for Sales Leaders

Flying by the seat of your pants might work once in a blue moon, but it's not a strategy for long-term success.

Even the most proficient in the art of “wingin’ it” eventually find themselves in need of a plan.

Steering the Ship in the Right Direction

With a solid sales plan in place, your sales reps aren’t just chasing any lead that comes their way.

Instead, they strategically focus their efforts sales activities that best align with the company's goals.

Maybe that's breaking into a new market, prioritizing only qualified leads, or deepening relationships with existing customers.

Whatever it is, your sales plan keeps the sales org zeroed in on whatmatters.

Making the Most of What You've Got

In an ideal world, you'd have an unlimited sales budget and an army of top-notch sales reps. But in reality, you're probably working with finite resources.

Map out your sales strategy to manage resource allocation more effectively. This helps you decide where to place individual reps, which territories require a collaborative effort, and what sales tools lead to closing deals.

Empowering Your Team

A well-thought-out sales plan clarifies expectations, revenue goals, and priorities, giving your team the confidence that comes from knowing they're part of a larger sales strategy.

When your sales reps understand how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture, it boosts motivation and engagement.

Along with closing deals, they're playing a crucial role in the company's success story.

Breaking Down Silos (Or, Why Your Sales Plan Takes a Village)

The sales organization doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It's a collaborative effort.

To create a sales plan that drives growth and supports long-term goals and objectives, you need to work closely with other teams.

This is how sales teams align strategies, optimize resources are optimize resources, and work toward the same goals and objectives.

Marketing

The marketing team knows your ICP well—customer needs, problems, and buying habits.

Your sales reps need this knowledge to tailor their approach, sales messages, and product positioning so that those deals keep on closing.

The marketing team also monitors market trends and the competitive landscape. They can alert you to new products, campaigns, or shifts that might affect sales.

Aligning your plan with marketing resources and efforts creates a smoother customer journey and builds on their marketing strategy.

Customer Success

These folks are your eyes and ears on the ground after the sale is made.

Want to know keeps or loses customer interest? CS insights can fine-tune your sales approach.

The customer success team often identifies customer needs, providing excellent intel for planning your bottom-up sales planning and cross-sell strategies.

And let's not forget the real-world feedback  can provide.

Nothing beats the insights from people who  manage customer engagement day in and day out. Use their feedback to improve your pitches and address common pain points.

Finance

Finance helps ground your ambitious sales targets in fiscal reality. They provide the context you need to target achievable sales metrics that are in line with the company's financial health and business objectives.

It's not just about revenue targets, either. Financial leaders can help you build a prospect strategy based on the most profitable customer base.

This lets sales leaders focus the team's efforts where they'll have the biggest impact.

And when you need to make a case for more headcount or a new sales tool? Finance is your go-to for building a bulletproof business case.

People Operations

People Ops (or HR) are your allies when it comes to building and maintaining a top-notch team structure.

Work with them to define the skills and qualities you need in your sales team, and lean on their expertise in talent acquisition to plan for growth.

As your sales strategy evolves, so should your team's skills.

People Ops can help you plan and implement training programs that keep your team sharp and ready for new challenges. They can also collaborate on creating performance metrics that align with your sales goals.

Revenue Operations (RevOps)

RevOps analyzes performance metrics across the entire customer journey. This insight helps you identify bottlenecks, opportunities, and trends you might otherwise miss.

With their input, you can make data-driven decisions about territory planning, quota setting, and resource allocation.

These oft-unsung heroes are the go-to for streamlining your tech stack. They ensure your CRM and other tools support your sales strategy and can set up automation and workflows that make your team more efficient.

RevOps also helps you standardize processes. They create playbooks and best practices that can be scaled across your sales org, a level of consistency that improves sales forecasting accuracy and makes it easier to onboard new team members.

Leadership

While executives might not be involved in the day-to-day operations of sales, you need leadership’s input to align your sales plan with the company's broader vision. Involving them in the sales planning process creates a two-way street where your ground-level insights inform company strategy, and the company's vision guides your sales approach.

The leadership team can also help break down silos between departments, fostering the kind of cross-team collaboration we've been talking about.

7 Steps to Build a Winning Sales Plan

Building a winning sales plan calls for a flexible roadmap that accounts for your team’s strengths, market conditions, and company objectives.

[CTA: Download our complete guide to successful sales and compensation planning]

Step 1: Lay the Foundation with Clean Data

Your sales plan is only as good as the data it’s built on. Clean, accurate data is the backbone of every successful sales strategy, enabling you to:

• Track key performance indicators;
• Conduct accurate sales forecasting;
• Spot trends and follow information;
• Make informed decisions.

Before you do anything else, check if your plan data is reliable by:

• Centralizing information: Use a robust CRM system to store all of your sales data in one place. It reduces the risk of errors and data silos, helping your team stay organized.
• Automating data entry: Manual data entry can lead to errors (because humans are human, and they make mistakes). Wherever possible, automate collection and data analysis to improve accuracy and save your team time.
• Conducting regular audits: Review and clean your data regularly to maintain accuracy. Clean data means better forecasts and a clearer picture of your opportunities and bottlenecks.

Once your new and historical data is in order, you can confidently begin to build your sales plan.

Step 2: Look In The Rearview Mirror

To know where you're going, you need to understand where you’ve been. Performance monitoring over the last few quarters helps you identify gaps and patterns that inform your sales plan for next year.

Analyze the following historical performance:

• Pipeline performance: Where are deals getting stuck? Are there pain points in certain sales stages?  
• Win-loss analysis: What patterns can you spot in the deals you’ve won or lost? If you understand why deals are won, whether it’s pricing, product features, or systematic approach, you can refine your sales strategy to focus on what works.
• Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC). Landing new customers is great, but not if you're spending a fortune to get them through the door. Take a hard look at your CAC. If it's creeping up quickly, it might be time to refine your targeting or streamline your sales process.
• Churn Rates. Keeping existing customers is just as important as landing new ones. If you're losing customers quickly, investigate why they're leaving.

Step 3: Chart Your Strategy and Initiatives

With your data clean and historical performance analyzed, it’s time for sales strategy development.

Start by aligning your sales goals with the company’s broader objectives. This involves close collaboration with financial leaders to ensure that your revenue targets support the company’s growth and financial goals.

You need to have your finger on the pulse in your target market. How might industry trends, technologies, or the competitive landscape affect your sales plan? Marketing can provide valuable insights into shifting customer behaviors, emerging markets, and competitor strategies. Together, you can identify where the biggest opportunities lie and what adjustments need to be made to the sales approach.

As part of your strategy development, work with Finance for a top-down view of next year’s revenue and booking targets. Additionally, collaborate with People Ops to understand hiring goals—whether you’ll need more reps or additional training for your existing team to hit your targets.

Once you’ve aligned your strategy with company goals, identify key initiatives that will drive growth.

What are the big moves you need to make to hit sales targets? Choose a few key initiatives that will move the needle — remember, if everything's a priority, nothing is.

Step 4: Assess Your Team’s Skills and Capacity

After setting your strategy, you need to determine whether your team structure has the capacity to achieve your goals.

First, conduct an assessment of each sales rep’s capacity based on their past sales performance. This will give you a realistic understanding of how much each rep can contribute in the coming year.

Next, map these individual capacities against an assessment of your revenue goals. Make sure your team has the bandwidth to handle the projected workload, and work with Financial leaders and People Ops to determine whether you’ll need to hire additional reps or invest in training and development.

Additionally, consider whether new tools or technology could help increase efficiency and capacity.

Sales enablement software, for example, can streamline ongoing processes and give your team more time to focus on selling.

Step 5: Map Out Your Territory Assignments

When carving up your sales territory map, you want each slice of the pie to be fair, but not necessarily equal.

Effective territory assignments can make or break your sales plan, so get it right:

• Start with data (yes, again): Use your clean, reliable data to inform your territory decisions. Look at historical sales data, market potential, and customer segments.
• Aim for equity, not equality: The goal is for each rep to have a fair opportunity to meet their quota. Some territories might have fewer key accounts but higher potential value.
• Account for rep strengths: Got an individual rep who's a wizard with tech startups? Another who speaks fluent enterprise? Consider that when assigning territories, as playing to your team's strengths and weaknesses will boost overall performance.
• Build in growth potential: Leave room for expansion in each territory. If a rep maxes out their potential too quickly, you'll be back at the drawing board before you know it.
• Plan for overlap and collaboration: Sometimes, especially with large accounts, theres a benefit to having multiple reps involved. Plan for these scenarios and establish clear rules of engagement to avoid turf wars.

Step 6: Build Your Quotas

It's time to set the dreaded quotas. Once again, your first step will be to analyze data.

Specifically, past performance data. Look at what your top performers achieved and where middle-tier reps performed, and use this as a baseline for growth.

Incorporate assumptions based on expected changes in your market, sales processes, and product offerings. Are there any shifts in market conditions, like increased demand or new competitors? Are you improving the sales process with new technology or automation? Will there be new products or features launching that could impact your revenue streams?

Consider the types of sales quotas that best fit your team and goals.

For example, a(n):

• Revenue or volume quota works well for account executives (AEs);
• Profit quota focuses on margins. Activity quotas may be more appropriate for sales development reps (SDRs);
• Forecast sales quotas challenge reps to improve their performance based on historical data.

You should also incorporate ramp time into your calculations. For new reps, set ramp-up quotas that allow for realistic performance expectations while they get up to speed.

Finally, perform a bottoms-up capacity assessment for each rep, and ensure that these individual targets align with your top-down revenue goals.

Balance your quotas by factoring in each rep’s strengths and any risks within the plan to ensure they are challenging but achievable.

Step 7: Align Your Compensation Model

A well-designed compensation plan motivates your team and aligns their efforts with company goals.

To develop an effective compensation model:

• Audit historical compensation data to see how much was paid out in commissions and bonuses relative to revenue. This helps you understand the cost-effectiveness of your current plan.
• Work with Finance, Marketing, and leadership to ensure your incentives align with overall business objectives. Consider different types of commission structures, such as tiered commissions that reward reps for reaching higher sales levels, or profit-based commissions that align compensation with profitability.
• Build in flexibility by reviewing the plan regularly and adjusting incentives if market conditions change or if reps’ performance exceeds expectations.

CaptivateIQ: Your Answer To Streamlined Sales Planning

As sales operations grow more complex, many organizations struggle with outdated tools and siloed processes. That's why we rolled out CaptivateIQ Planning, a purpose-built solution that goes beyond traditional spreadsheets and rigid systems.

Our new platform allows you to connect data from any source, build optimized territory and quota plans, and align your teams from a centralized platform. In conjunction with CaptivateIQ Incentives, Planning ensures your territories, quotas, and incentives work in harmony to drive consistent, focused execution.

Learn more about CaptivateIQ Planning or book a demo with our team!

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