Sales Plan Part-2: Different Types of Sales Plans (Templates + Examples)

7 minutes read

Welcome to the second part of the sales plan blog series. In the part-1 of this series, we have explained,

What is a Sales Plan?
What are the benefits of a sales plan?
What goes into a sales plan?
And how do you go about writing a sales plan?

If you haven’t read the first part yet, here is the link to it.

Tip: In order to get your basics right about the sales plan, we suggest that you first go through the first part and then come back to read this second part.

In this second part, we are going to look at different types of sales plans and some online tools that you can use to easily and quickly create your sales plans

Types of sales plans

When you think about a sales plan what probably comes to your mind is an annual sales plan. A lengthy document containing a wide spectrum of aspects pertaining to sales.

While every sales department needs to have this common, broad sales plan, you can also have various other sales plans that may address short-term and specific sales scenarios.

Here we’ll go over a few sales plans:

1. 30-60-90 days Sales Plan

This 30-60-90 day sales plan is defined by the time frame. Here you need to create three goals based on timelines.

One for the 30-day mark
Another for the 60-day mark
And the last one for the 90-day mark

You can choose to focus this plan on various sales targets like,

Achieving quotas
Reducing customer churn by a certain percentage
Tracking the progress of your new hires in their first 90 days

To understand this better, let’s look at an example. Let’s say you have a new salesperson or sales manager and you want to get her up to speed quickly in the first quarter of their job. How can you build a plan for this?

Here’s how you create the 30-60-90 days new hire ramp-up plan that includes milestones they’d need to achieve.

Day 1 to 30:

Make them understand and learn everything about your company from the processes, customers, products, and procedures.

Day 31 to 60:

Make them practice what they have learned through video coaching sessions, role-play sessions, mock sales calls, mock sales pitches, etc

Day 61 to 90:

Initiate an action plan and let your new hires practice their selling skills in the real sales world, with real customers. Analyze their progress consistently and make changes if necessary.

2. Sales plan for specific sales

In sales, we use different tactics to approach and convert a prospect into a paying customer. And you can create various sales plans focused specifically on various sales tactics like,

Call sequences
Email follow-up frequency,
Meeting appointments

This type of sales plan is usually short term like weekly or monthly or quarterly. And it focuses on measuring and improving results for just one goal or task.

3. Territory Sales Plan

Sales managers who oversee a geo-location or region often use territory sales plans to give sales directors and VPs more visibility into their sales efforts.

This is a workable plan used to target the right customers in the territory and implement goals to increase sales and revenue in that territory over time.

A good territory sales plan will:

Provide details on market trends in that territory, relevant customer personas, compliances, and policies
Make your team more productive
Reduce operational costs
Increase the number of sales generated
Improve your customer coverage
Improve working relationships between the clients and the sales reps

Note: It is essential to work on your territory sales plan and avoid making constant changes. Unnecessary changes can tamper with your productivity and your ‘territory’ in general.

4. Market Expansion Plan

A market expansion plan typically lays out the strategy for you to enter into new target markets. It outlines a task list and target metrics that salespeople need to follow to successfully expand the business into a new market.

While drafting this plan you need to take into account

The distribution costs (if applicable)
Time zone differences between your sales reps and target buyers
Compliances and policies in that industry
And other logistical factors

5. New Product Sales Plan

You can create this sales plan when you are going to launch a new product. This plan helps you to create a roadmap for making the new product a success in the market. And successfully generate revenue from it.

This plan helps you to,

Carry out competitive analysis
Strategize new product marketing and brand positioning
Determine a new product sales strategy
Secure channel partners if you’re shifting to a channel sales model

6. Sales Training Plan

A sales training plan is generally created and used by the sales enablement team.

In this plan, you need to lay out the roadmap for different sales training programs that you are going to conduct for your sales reps.

This plan should include,

Sales training programs for different sales roles
Training schedule
Sales training resources and tools that need to be used
Methods and metrics that will be used to measure the knowledge retention
The training contests and incentives for the contest winners

7. Sales Budget Plan

A sales budget plan provides all the details related to the sales budget and estimation of revenue generation. It covers the cost of,

The staff
The tools
Marketing campaigns
And other resources needed to generate the target revenue.

A good sales budget plan should include the following:

Sales forecasting:

An estimate of future sales (in terms of revenue) by predicting how much each salesperson or team can sell over a certain period, (i.e. week, month, year, etc).

Anticipated expenses:

Include the number of costs your team is likely going to incur. Remember to have even the smallest expenses included.

Expect the unexpected:

Always leave room for unforeseen circumstances in your sales budget. For example, new packaging expenses, new competitive market strategies, etc.

Tools that you can use to create a sales plan

Here are some best online tools that you can use to easily and quickly put together a sales plan:

1. BestTemplates

Best Templates provides numerous sales plan templates. These templates are short, crisp, and are consolidated into just one or two pages.

The templates include sections like,

Sales channel
Expected costs and sales revenue
Distribution strategy
And key performance indicators in an easy-to-read grid layout

If you are creating a sales plan for the first time then this is a great tool for you to get started with

2. Venngage

Venngage’s interface lets you choose a design that fits your needs and create a sales plan that includes custom charts, stock photos, and illustrations. You’ll have a number of visually interesting options, all available in just a single tool.

3. FitSmallBusiness

This tool works best for small businesses that do not have a fully stacked sales team yet. This tool lets you create a simple and strong sales strategy upon which you can make further developments as you hire an additional workforce. This plan relies on several standard sections to draw up your plan, with boxes that can be easily filled out using Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

4. Creately

If you’re more of a visual person, creating visuals for your sales strategy can be helpful. Use Creately to create an attractive sales strategy, breaking the action plan and targets down by category.

5. Template.net

This is another great tool that allows you to break your sales plan down into phases, tasks, and key questions for your sales goals. You will also find numerous other important planning templates which can be downloaded in the form of Microsoft Word/ Google doc and edited easily.

HubSpot

Hubspot’s free sales plan template outlines the key elements of the sales plan for you. This template will walk you through each of the steps to writing an effective sales plan.