Is your sales team ready to tackle a new fiscal year? Follow The Startup Seller's guide to Sales Planning to ensure you're ready to hit the ground running next year!
2. Sales Planning is the annual process through which companies assess the future market
potential and make sales investments to maximize revenue gains
What is Sales Planning?
2
Main Components of Sales Planning
Sales Strategy Sales Structure Sales Execution
Management Tip: All of these components should be considered during sales planning exercises;
each one plays an integral role in enabling revenue growth and should not be overlooked!
Buyer Profiling
Account Segmentation
Route to Market Design
Sales Process Design
Customer Coverage
Headcount Sizing
Territory Design
Quota Deployment
Sales Compensation Design
Sales Enablement
Sales CommunicationsOrg Design
3. Sales Strategy components are designed to target ideal buyers and carve up market
opportunity into like-buying customers for coverage
1. Sales Strategy
3
Management Tip: It’s never too early to segment your accounts; even for acquisition accounts, it’s
important to determine where reps should spend their time to maximize revenue potential
Account Segmentation Triangle
Buyer Profiling
Account
Segmentation
Route to Market
Design
Sales Process Design
Buyer profiling identifies ideal customers and their motivations for
purchasing; this activity gives sales and marketing the information both need
to organize resources to influence budget holders to purchase
Segmentation creates groups of like-minded customers (verticals) and runs
analytics to stack rank accounts based on opportunity/sales potential for
coverage and additional sales/marketing investment needs
RTM design is an initial coverage decision where companies determine which
customers will be covered by direct sales, partners, or additional channels
and how, at a high level, these resources work together to close deals
Sales process design defines the steps required to sell customer and
support them through implementation, which can then be used for coverage
and headcount sizing
4. Sales Structure includes components designed to maximize time reps spend in front of
the customer to increase sales output in a cost-effective way
2. Sales Structure
4
Management Tip: Customer coverage is about engaged selling time; look at how your primary
quota carriers are spending their time to determine where you should invest in new sales roles
Customer Coverage
Headcount Sizing
Territory Design
Coverage assigns responsibilities in the sales process to different sales roles;
typically, companies try to optimize coverage to maximize primary quota
carriers’ engaged selling time with customers
Sizing is where account segmentation, coverage, and financial budgeting
converge to determine how sales resources will be deployed to meet
business targets within a defined cost envelope
Once headcount sizing has determined the number of roles to be deployed
(and territories to be created), accounts are grouped together to create
territories for reps - focusing on workload balance among like sales roles
Org Design
Org design creates the lines of reporting and hierarchies in the sales
organization, ensuring that management both understand their overlay
sales targets and have a reasonable span of control to manage rep behavior
Access Persuade Fulfill
StrategicMid-MarketSMB
Sample Coverage Model
SDR
Account
Executive
Customer
Success
Manager
Account Executive
Partner
Manager
CustomerSegment
5. Sales Execution brings sales strategy and structure to life for your reps; these programs
enable reps and create tangible rewards for effectively supporting company goals
3. Sales Execution
5
Management Tip: Create an end-to-end story when communicating to reps; they want to
understand how quota/compensation decisions were made and how they align to overall
strategy
Quota Deployment
Sales Compensation
Design
Sales Enablement
Sales
Communications
Quota deployment involves two critical workstreams: quota setting - the
uplifting of financial targets to quota, and quota deployment - the process
through which quota targets are distributed to sales reps
Compensation design translates strategic sales imperatives into measurable
behaviors that reps are then rewarded for successfully executing against
Sales enablement are all of the tools, training, and collateral designed to
best equip your sales reps to position products/solutions with customers,
overcome objections, and manage their time to maximize production
Often overlooked, sales communications are critical messages that explain
not just what reps are expected to do in the next fiscal year, but also why
those behaviors are important and how they will benefit the company
Total Revenue Pay Curve
% to Goal
%ofTIEarned
Sample Sales Compensation Pay Curve
6. 6
Sales Strategy & Operations Consulting
thestartupseller.com I San Francisco, CA I (978) 831-2400
