Strategic sales action plan templates

A strategic plan can also be used on a smaller scale, such as crafting a marketing plan or developing strategy for the goals of one department within a business or organization.

It is important to note that strategy is distinct from planning: While strategy looks at why certain steps should be taken, a plan outlines how to enact those steps. The purpose of strategic planning is to provide a thoughtful, deliberate approach to reaching objectives based on an in-depth analysis of both internal and external factors affecting an organization.

A strategic plan often covers multiple years, addressing both short- and long-term goals. It also provides a way of tracking progress and measuring success. Depending on the scope of your plan, you may be working with a team of multiple stakeholders during the strategic planning process.

To keep the process running smoothly, make roles and responsibilities clear. Different parties may be responsible for providing data, reviewing the plan, or authorizing strategic decisions. One way to think about strategic planning is that it identifies any gaps between a current state and desired future state, and then dictates how to close those gaps — how you get from where you are to where you want to be. To that end, various factors are taken into consideration in order to formulate an effective plan.

Here are some of the elements often included in a strategic plan. No matter what type of strategic plan you are working on, using a template provides a simple and quick outline to organize your process. Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform that allows teams and organizations to plan, manage, and report on projects, helping you move faster and achieve more. See Smartsheet in action. Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change.

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. Try Smartsheet for free, today. In This Article. Strategic Business Plan Template.

See how Smartsheet can help you be more effective. Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template. One way to establish your ideal customer is by creating a series of unique customer profiles.

Each profile specifies key demographics, behaviors, interests, job positions, and geographic information about one of your ideal buyer types.

Based on your customer profiles, you can then develop more effective targeted marketing and advertising strategies for lead generation and nurturing to move leads through the sales process more efficiently and close more deals. A sales strategy explains how you plan to outsell your competitors and accomplish your sales goals. Sales strategies define specific, detailed tactics you and your team will use to pursue those strategies, such as using Google Ads, cold calling, and drip email marketing campaigns as part of a lead generation strategy.

Strategies and tactics should be personalized for your ideal customers based on their unique interests, behaviors, and the best ways to connect with them. For example, if a customer profile shows your ideal buyer generally only makes purchases based on trusted referrals, you could implement a referral strategy that offers incentives as a tactic to generate more referrals from customers.

Plus, different sales strategies will be needed to acquire new business vs keeping existing customers. When selling to existing customers, for example, your strategy could include cross-selling tactics where additional products are recommended based on prior purchases. The short-term tactics for cross-selling could be requiring customer service reps to send 30 emails per week recommending a complementary product to existing customers. For a new business strategy, then, sales reps might rely on emotional selling methods when using cold calling as a tactic.

Instead of product features, cold calling scripts would be geared to evoke feelings that lead to buying decisions. Pro tip: Ensuring that your strategies are properly executed requires excellent sales leadership and a healthy environment for sales reps to operate in.

Our how-to guide for building a positive sales culture shows you how to create an environment that promotes high job satisfaction, low employee turnover, and profitability. Implement Sales Tools Your sales plan should reference the software, hardware, and materials you use to manage the sales operation and make each team member more efficient. One of the most notable tools to include is the customer relationship management CRM system your team uses to organize contact information, streamline sales tasks, and facilitate communication with customers and leads.

HubSpot , for instance, makes it easy to organize information about leads, contacts, and deal opportunities. Additionally, from a HubSpot lead profile, you can initiate a conversation with that contact by calling, emailing, or scheduling an appointment. HubSpot lead profile Source: HubSpot.

CRMs are also used to monitor and report sales progress. For example, many have dashboards and functionality, such as alerts, which make it easy to identify where your team may be underperforming or which leads are most likely to convert and should be focused on.

Sales information such as deals closed, revenue generated, and leads created can be presented in a detailed report. Pipedrive is an example of a CRM that has a customizable dashboard that displays both activity information like emails sent, received, and outstanding tasks to be completed as well as performance-based data like deals lost or average value of won deals.

Pipedrive Sales Dashboard. Source: Pipedrive. Pipedrive Sales Report. Other sales enablement tools that can make your sales team more effective include voice-over-internet-protocol VoIP phone systems, lead generation platforms, email campaign tools, content creation platforms, and task automation software. These elements are usually found in a sales strategy template that you can get online.

By the end, your sales team and you would be able to generate clear priorities, strong guidelines, and measurable outcomes that everyone understands and are fully-equipped to implement. With your sales documents organized, you can launch sales campaigns with ease. Using a CRM software, you can design a workflow that lets you execute certain steps based on predetermined conditions. For example, you can put together a series of emails that you want to send to a prospect according to a predefined timeline or customer behavior.

Then, you can create steps such as email reminders or call reminders at an interval of three or four days, so you will never miss a follow-up with a prospect. You can program these instructions ahead of time and watch your CRM take you one step closer to making a sale or closing a deal.

It is in human nature to set goals and sprint towards them. The same applies for sales as well. Without a clear goal in mind, sales teams are likely to lose momentum and motivation. A CRM software, being the single source of truth regarding all your prospects and sales activities, allows you to set goals for individuals and sales teams. You can set a deals goal, revenue goal, or both, and watch your sales teams grow your business like never before. Tracking the performance of your sales strategy is no easy feat, especially if this is something that you have to do manually.

It consumes time that could have been spent nurturing or closing a lead. You can easily automate this part of your operations with the help of a CRM software. With a wealth of data at your fingertips, you can identify problem areas and make adjustments in your sales strategy. You can create custom reports on key sales metrics such as conversion rate, email open rate, and time to contact a lead.

The CRM also generates sales cycle and velocity reports. This feature enables business owners and sales managers to determine the sales stage where you struggle the most so you can come up with an informed action plan.

With the help of a CRM system , you can put your efforts and resources into leads who are very likely to buy from your business. Get lead information from web forms, emails, and chat sans the manual work. Your sales scripts, email messages, and objection management templates should be accessible to your sales team. Even better if these documents are stored in one place and can be retrieved on mobile devices.

The best CRMs in the market offer these features. They enable you to create, save, and access sales templates using desktop and mobile devices. We use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience, analyse site traffic, personalize content, and serve targeted advertisements. Read about how we use cookies in our Privacy Notice. Our Cookie Policy provides information about managing cookie settings.

Creating a Winning Sales Strategy - What, Why, and How with Examples A sales strategy is a concrete, step-by-step plan formulated to position and sell a product or service to generate on-going and incremental revenue. Free Sales Strategy Template. In this page, we explore everything you need to know about a sales strategy, including: What is a sales strategy Why do you need a sales strategy Types of sales strategy Keys to developing a sales strategy.

How to build a sales strategy Best practices for a sturdy sales strategy Optimizing sales strategies with CRM.

What is a sales strategy? Why is it important to have a sales strategy? Types of sales strategies An organization may adopt two types of sales strategies—inbound sales, and outbound sales.

Inbound sales strategies Inbound methods involve attracting prospects to your website. Outbound sales strategies While inbound sales strategies attract the right customers interested in your product, these might not always bring enough to increase your revenue.

Read on as we discuss how to build a sales strategy in detail. Related Article: Lead Generation Learn what lead generation is all about, how you can apply it, and where lead management fits in Learn more.

Keys to developing a sales strategy plan Every business is unique. Revenue goals Your revenue goals must be aligned with your company vision.

Ideal customer profile Gone are the days when you can identify your customers through demographics, interests, associations, and so on. Budget Sales strategy involves various activities such as the tools and software for salespeople and the training they would need to be able to sell more and efficiently.

Here is a 7-step process to build a successful sales strategy: 1. Highlight risks and opportunities Next, analyze the situation of your current position.

Download our sales strategy template With a sales strategy in place, you are now ready to break down your plan into bite-size steps. This enables you and your sales team to execute and move forward every single day. Download template Hey there! Just fill in your email address below and unlock our sales strategy template.

Align sales with marketing Once you know your current position, align the sales and marketing functions to work side by side. Define a sales process A sales process is a structured set of repeatable actions that sales teams follow to convert prospects to paying customers.

It is crucial to understand how this is different from the sales strategy. The sales funnel is a visual representation of the average conversion rate of potential customers and qualified leads move through the sales process. Sales teams can use the sales funnel to help understand the volume of sales, as well as the percentage of each sale that has passed through each sales process stage.

The sales pipeline represents what the seller is doing during the sales process; the sales funnel shows the sales process conversion rates. The sales funnel feeds the sales pipeline; once a lead is converted into a prospect, they move into the sales pipeline. A high-quality sales plan is one of the key parts of the sales forecasting process as well as the operational plan and the marketing strategy. When done right, a sales plan can provide the following benefits:.

While creating the sales plan, take the following steps in order to create a quality and realistic plan:. The sales plan contains numerous sections that provide information to readers, and help guide decisions that will contribute to meeting sales goals.

Sales planning is an activitiy to gain and retain customers, meet changing market demands, and ultimately, ensure business success. While premade templates can help you get started developing your plan, you need a tool to manage all of your sales processes and operations that is accessible to your team in real time and allows you to collaborate and track sales activity across multiple reps.

Smartsheet is a work execution platform that enables enterprises and teams to get from idea to impact - fast. Top performing sales organizations rely on Smartsheet to stay on top of leads, accelerate productivity, and exceed every quota.

Use Smartsheet to build a strong opportunity pipeline, reduce risks and identify blockers, and refine your sales forecast. Improve transparency to process and procedure, optimize operations with cross-department collaboration, and accelerate team output. Try Smartsheet for Sales. Learn the basics of sales operations and how roles are evolving.

Hear from the pros and find tips to remedy sales ops headaches. Get a Free Smartsheet Demo. In This Article. Sales Plan Template. Keep deals moving forward with sales pipeline management in Smartsheet. Sales Leads Template.

Sales Tracker Template. Sales Pipeline Template. Sales and Marketing Plan Template. Sales Funnel Template. Sales Report Template. Sales Action Plan Template. Using a Sales Plan Template Finding the right sales template provides easy organization and efficiency, which frees up resources and time that can go toward reaching business goals.

The Basics of a Sales Plan A sales plan outlines sale goals for a cycle, as well as the steps you will take to hit those targets. What Is a Sales Pipeline? The prospect purchases a product or service and thereby becomes a customer.