A Guide to Writing a Sales Plan that Wins Revenue (+Free Template)

Win Revenue With Our Updated Sales Plan (+ Free Template)

13 September 2021
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“I love writing sales plan templates!”…said no one ever. 

If writing a sales plan makes you want to pull your hair out, then I've got great news. It doesn't have to be complicated. 

Writing a B2B sales plan is simple when you use a sales plan template. 

If you’re struggling to write a productive B2B sales plan (or one doesn't put your salespeople to sleep 💤), you’re in the right place. 

I’m going to walk through what a B2B sales plan template is, why using one makes your life better, and how to create your own. 

I'll also share a few sales plan template examples to ensure you're on the right track. 

Even better, you can access the B2B sales plan template that the Leadfeeder sales team uses below. 

Note: Spend less time prospecting and more time selling with Leadfeeder. Leadfeeder identifies the companies visiting your site, how they got there, and what they did. Sign up for a free 14-day trial with Leadfeeder to start winning more revenue.

Free sales plan template

A B2B sales plan is more than a list of corporate goals your team barely glances at while entering the office.

It’s a detailed, custom playbook for sales success.

It unites your team, resources, and efforts under realistic objectives.

It creates the magic behind successful businesses: sales and revenue.

If you’re serious about generating leads and sales, invest the time into creating one. To help get you started, I made this sales plan template for you.

leadfeeder sales plan template

What is a sales plan?

A sales plan is a strategic document that outlines specific steps for increasing sales. But, it's more than a collection of sales goals and shallow steps.

b2b sales plan template

Get your B2B Sales Plan Template

A detailed action plan to help you achieve your business goals by crafting a perfect sales strategy

DOWNLOAD

It lists your sales strategy’s “who, what, where, and why” and explains who handles certain operations at different milestones. 

When done right, it’s the path to a well-oiled B2B sales machine that generates revenue.

So, where does a B2B sales plan template come into play? 

A sales plan template provides an outline for a sales plan. It makes it easier to describe your sales objectives, target audience, and specific steps, strategies, and tactics your business will use to hit sales and revenue goals.

Why do I need a B2B sales plan template?

A sales template makes it easier to create an effective sales template — which makes driving revenue attainable.

Here are a few additional reasons why creating a killer sales plan template is crucial to business growth.

A B2B sales plan helps highlight potential problems

Writing your B2B sales plan ensures your goals are realistic and achievable, and it helps you objectively compare your resources to the targets you’re trying to hit.

Identifying a problem allows you to adjust your strategy and goals accordingly.

Let’s say your top priority is landing 50 percent more enterprise leads by next year’s 2nd quarter. 

How do you do this? 

You might decide to ramp up your account-based marketing (ABM) game.

However, after reviewing your B2B sales plan, you realize that you don’t have the employee bandwidth or budget to focus on ABM.

Instead, you opt to focus on scoring and qualifying leads to improve lead quality. 

You’ve now saved your company precious time and money — and found an alternate way to reach the same goal.

A B2B sales plan increases motivation

Who knew that creating a sales plan could increase motivation?

According to a 2018 Forbes study, people who describe their goals are up to 1.4 times more likely to reach them

Writing and visualizing goals boosts motivation to take action by helping store them in our long-term memory. 

This means something as simple as keeping your sales plan in plain sight can breathe a sense of purpose into your team’s daily activities.

Your new office decor:

sales plan sticky notes on a laptop

A B2B sales plan unites your team

A study of sales and marketing employees found that the biggest threat to productivity is a misalignment between sales and marketing goals.

Not only is it demotivating, but it also forces sales reps to work harder and offer extra incentives (they otherwise wouldn’t need to provide) to close deals. 

Then, in turn, extra incentives are a marketing nightmare — the circle of misalignment continues.

Sales and marketing are notorious for their adversarial relationship. And no, a sales plan won’t qualm the beef between the two teams — not by itself anyway.

Working on project management together, let's say for a sales and digital marketing campaign, is a start for both teams to get good visibility of what is being planned. Getting everyone on the same page and being transparent can help unite them towards a common goal.

Examples of sales plan templates

In the next section, we'll cover how to create a functional sales template. But first, let's look at a few sales template examples. You might notice common themes you'll want to use on your own.

The one-page sales plan

Your sales plan doesn’t need to delve into exhaustive detail. If you’re an agile small business, a one-page sales plan template will help you hit the ground running and lead your small team.

the one page sales plan template

A one-page template can cover any range of time, but consider a weekly sales plan template if you have a shorter, transactional sales cycle. Plus, a shorter length could help motivate your team if you’re just starting out with sales plans — meeting goals quickly leads to positive sentiment.

The 30-60-90 day sales plan template

The 30-60-90 day template is a standard choice for most teams. It helps you write a sales plan that covers short, medium, and long-term goals.

a 30-60-90 day sales plan template

The 90-day sales plan template

If you have a product that requires demos, meetings, and runs through multiple decision-makers, using a 90-day sales plan for your long sales cycles is a good idea.  

a 90-day sales plan template

How to write a B2B sales plan template that drives revenue

Your main goal should be to distill your overall business goals into actionable sales objectives, milestones, strategies, and tactics.

This means your B2B sales plan template should — at the very least — include:

  • Target customers and ideal customer profiles

  • Role and responsibilities in your team

  • Revenue goals and sales objectives

  • Budget and resources

  • Challenges and obstacles

  • Pricing

  • Promotions

  • Key strategies and tactics

  • Deadlines, milestones, and review periods

To turn that information into a powerful B2B sales plan, follow these steps. 

Step 1. Outline specific revenue and sales goals

In this step, having a birds-eye view of the sales plan is key. Within the revenue and sales goals, you should think about the conversion points along the sales funnel.

Making note of the points within the funnel that transition the potential customer from phase to phase down the funnel is useful as those will be focus points in the overall sales plan. If you’re aware of the conversion points, finding bottlenecks and optimizing the process is easier.

A Leadfeeder example of noting conversion points within the funnel would be:

  1. Touched

  2. Connected

  3. Demo booked

  4. Demo completed

  5. Offer sent

  6. Purchased

If the Leadfeeder sales team was having issues closing meeting their targets, they would not only take a look at their revenue and sales goals, but they would also check on each conversion point to see where the disconnect was happening.

On a granular level, B2B sales goals should be anchored to revenue or volume targets. 

For example, your goal might be a revenue target of $30k in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the final quarter.

Using a volume target might mean 18 new customers per month or 200 sales by the final quarter.

When creating a strong B2B sales plan, you'll want to use both. That gives you more data to play with. 

If you have to pick one metric in your sales plan over another, consider your:

  • Available resources (staff, budget, data)

  • Market

  • Priorities

  • Product type (SaaS, agency, physical retailer, etc.)

It’s easy to succumb to wishful thinking at this step. So review your goals against your resources to ensure they’re realistic. 

Setting goals you’re sure to miss isn’t fun for anyone on the team and creates a crying wolf situation over time.

Step 2. Outline your mission and B2B sales plan objectives

Hopefully, you already have your mission and vision statements on paper. If so, grab them. (If not, now is the time!) 

Then write down what you aim to achieve with the sales plan.

It doesn’t have to be lengthy Shakespearean prose that draws applause. This is just a summary of what’s ahead and why it’s included in your sales plan; that’s it.

Include a brief history of the business, too, if possible. This provides context as the plan matures in detail and complexity.

For example: 

Leadfeeder's mission is to help marketing and sales professionals identify site visitors, transform their traffic into qualified leads, and connect to key decision-makers. 

Our goals are to obtain 18 new customers per month, 200 sales by the final quarter, with a final revenue increase of 30 percent. 

This sales strategy plan will cover how we plan to increase salesperson efficiency and test new marketing strategies. 

Step 3. Map out key sales plan milestones, deadlines, and review periods

This is where we get into the details. Deadlines, milestones, and review periods are a key part of your sales plan template.

Your third step is to tie sales and revenue targets to 30-60-90 day goals and set a schedule to review performance with your team.

This gives your plan teeth and signals when you’re falling behind quota so you can stay on track. 

b2b sales plan template

Get your B2B Sales Plan Template

A detailed action plan to help you achieve your business goals by crafting a perfect sales strategy

DOWNLOAD

Step 4. Add an ideal client profile to your B2B sales plan

An ICP is a strict definition of an ideal customer.

Including your ICP in your sales plan helps align sales and marketing strategy. It gives insight into what lead generation approach to use.

Let’s say you’re a SaaS company that offers analytical tools to digital marketers. And some of your customers are freelancers and in-house teams.

But, large 50+ employee agencies who buy premium subscriptions are your ideal clients.

And, according to your historical sales data, the best way to reach them is through account-based marketing.

You can now invest in ABM tools like Leadfeeder and training for reps without wondering if it will generate a return. 

Here’s proof — AlertOps uses Leadfeeder to automatically qualify website visitors with over 100 employees. Then, Leadfeeder sends those leads to Pipedrive and the AlertOps reps call on every potential customer.

Within just 30 days of using Leadfeeder with the Pipedrive integration, AlertOps was able to increase their sales demo rate by 700 percent. BAM. 💥

Try it for yourself — sign-up for Leadfeeder in less than 5 minutes with these simple steps:

Step 1: Begin a free 14-day trial by signing up here.

Leadfeeder sign up step 1

STEP 2: Fill in your company name, website address, name, and contact information. We don't sell it, we just want to know who you are. :)

Leadfeeder sign up step 2 Leadfeeder sign up step 2.5

STEP 3: Tell us about your role on your team. This gives us a way to help customize Leadfeeder to your needs.

Leadfeeder sign up step 3

STEP 4: Select the CRM you use, if we have an integration for it we can let you know how to connect it. You don't need a CRM or any of the ones listed to use Leadfeeder.

Leadfeeder sign up step 4

STEP 5: Select your marketing tool! If we have an integration we will let you know! If not, we will see what you use and update you on any future integrations!

Leadfeeder sign up step 5

STEP 6: Tell us about your sales team. This will help us customize your training and support!

Leadfeeder sign up step 6

STEP 7: Let us know what your main goals are with Leadfeeder. We share this with the team to make sure we can help you attain them.

Leadfeeder sign up step 7

STEP 8: Get your Leadfeeder Tracker script and install it on your site. You can do this yourself, or select Send to a colleague if someone else on your team will be installing it. This article: How to install Leadfeeder Tracker can help with installation.

Leadfeeder sign up step 8

STEP 9: Give Leadfeeder Tracker an hour or so to begin reporting - and be sure to take the in-app tour! Once Tracker starts collecting you'll see leads listed like below.

Leadfeeder sign up step 9

NOTE: If Tracker isn't installed, won't be able to see any leads until the script is on your site! Until you have Leadfeeder Tracker installed you won't have new leads, so make sure you add it to your site as soon as possible when you sign up!

After the Leadfeeder Tracker script is installed properly, it takes about an hour to see the Leads funnel to your Leadfeeder dashboard. If you aren’t sure if it is ‘working’ check out this article for tips on how to verify or reach out to support!

Step 5. Take stock of your sales CRM, tools, and budget

Ever try shoveling snow with a garden spade? (I hope not.) 

The point is, using the wrong tool just makes your life harder. 

If you're attempting to close deals without the right tools and resources for the job, you will get frustrated and, possibly, fail. 

That’s why a summary of your main CRM software, sales tools, budget, and any other predictable expense should be included in your sales plan. 

This will include things like:

  • Budget allocation

  • Specific tools and resources

  • What CRM will be used

  • Salary, commission, and incentives

  • Training

Make sure your team has access to the tools it needs to reach your goals. 

Step 6. Delegate roles and responsibilities

So now you know what you want to do, you've mapped out a specific sales strategy plan, and you've made sure you have the tools to get the job done. 

But who is going to do what? 

Next, list the members of your team and the roles they will play in reaching your goals.

Think about:

  • Who is responsible for prospecting or warming leads up?

  • Who will handle meetings and appointments?

  • Who will be presenting product demos/training?

Then, add those answers to deadlines, milestones, and KPIs.

If your sales strategy requires indirect sales activities — like creating content or developing sales material — write that into your sales plan template, too.7. Bring your sales plan template to life with an action plan

The final step is a goal-based action plan.

Carrying the weight of previous steps in your sales plan template, the action plan is where the rubber hits the road.

It brings your sales plan to life by explaining exactly how you’ll meet your objectives.

For example, if your objective is:

Objective: Increase premium subscriptions by 20 percent this quarter, and raise monthly recurring revenue by 2 percent.

Your sales plan will look like this:

  • Create 3 case studies that convey the benefits of a premium subscription.

  • Use paid ads and content marketing to promote premium subscriptions.

  • Create a lead scoring system to focus on leads with high purchase-intent.

  • Bump referral discounts to premium subscriptions up by 10 percent.

b2b sales plan template

Get your B2B Sales Plan Template

A detailed action plan to help you achieve your business goals by crafting a perfect sales strategy

DOWNLOAD

7. Bring your B2B sales plan template to life with an action plan

This is where the rubber meets the road. 

Creating an action plan brings your sales plan to life by explaining exactly how you’ll meet your objectives.

For example, if your objective is:

Increase premium subscriptions by 20 percent this quarter, and raise monthly recurring revenue by 2 percent.

Your plan might look like this:

  • Create 3 case studies that convey the benefits of a premium subscription.

  • Use paid ads and content marketing to promote premium subscriptions.

  • Create a lead scoring system to focus on leads with high purchase intent.

  • Bump referral discounts to premium subscriptions up by 10 percent.

Make sure to link these action points to resources, deadlines, and milestones. 

Who is going to do what? Who will be responsible for managing each project? 

Make this part as detailed as possible so you know exactly how to move forward. 

Your sales plan template

Be sure to use our free sales plan template to create a sales plan. Make the template your own and even test our different versions.

You'll be closing deals in no time.

Note: If your sales plan counts on quality leads, look no further than Leadfeeder. Sign up for a 14-day free Leadfeeder trial today.  

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