An effective sales plan is a critical tool for any business looking to boost revenue, acquire new customers, and ultimately accelerate growth. But far too often, sales plans collect dust on a shelf rather than driving tangible business outcomes.
The key is to create a living, breathing sales plan that provides clarity, focus, and a real path to achieving your growth objectives. That’s why using a template can provide a jumpstart.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore 11 outstanding sales plan templates to fit any business need. For each option, we’ll overview:
- Key features and capabilities
- Ideal use cases
- Benefits and value provided
- Pricing and plans
- How to get started
We’ll also discuss sales plan best practices when it comes to setting goals, tracking performance, customization, and more.
Let’s dive in!
What Exactly is a Sales Plan?
Before exploring the templates, let’s level set on what a sales plan actually entails.
A sales plan is a strategic document that clearly outlines the objectives, strategies, tools, metrics, and steps required to hit your revenue goals. It acts as an actionable blueprint for your sales organization to execute on growth initiatives.
More specifically, an effective sales plan includes:
Revenue Goals: The specific sales revenue target you are aiming to hit for a defined period of time – typically annually and quarterly. Having a quantitative top-line goal provides focus.
Target Audience: Clearly defining your ideal customer personas and target market that your sales organization will focus its efforts on.
Value Proposition: Articulating what core value you provide target customers and why they should buy from you.
Metrics/KPIs: Outlining the key quantifiable metrics for tracking performance and progress towards goals. Common examples include sales revenue, deals closed, deal size average, sales cycle length, churn rate.
Tactics/Strategies: The specific strategies, campaigns, and actions your team will execute to acquire new customers and drive sales.
Tools/Resources: The technology, tools, data, support, and marketing resources needed for sales success.
Team Structure: Defining sales roles & responsibilities across the organization needed to support growth initiatives.
Now let’s check out 11 sales plan template options to simplify creating this strategic document for your business!
1. Template Lab – Simple & Free Sales Plan Templates
TemplateLab offers free, professionally designed PowerPoint templates to support creating basic sales plans.
Key Features:
- Simple, customizable templates
- Sales KPI tables to track progress
- Charts & graphs to visualize goals
- Sections for goals, strategies, risks, tools
Use Case: TemplateLab templates provide a good starting point for businesses looking to create their first sales plan. The slide-based format simplifies organizing key information.
Benefits:
- Completely free to use
- Easy customization
- Visual reporting elements
- Downloadable as PowerPoint or PDF
Pricing: Free
Let’s check out another sales plan template option…
2. Smartsheet – Robust Online Sales Planning Platform
Smartsheet offers a powerful work execution platform to streamline creating, managing, automating and reporting on sales plans.
Key Features:
- Centralized dashboard to manage sales plans
- Custom fields & forms to capture information
- Multi-dimensional reporting & analysis
- Workflow automation for notifications & approvals
- Robust API integrations with CRM & marketing platforms
- Gantt chart view of sales stages
Use Case: Smartsheet provides advanced capabilities for larger companies to track detailed sales plans, metrics, and pipeline data in a collaborative workspace.
Benefits:
- Manage company-wide sales initiatives, metrics, pipeline deals in one dashboard
- Automate status reporting & notifications
- Gain real-time visibility into sales performance
- Scale plans across large teams & organizations
Pricing: $25+/month per user
Next up let’s explore how Monday.com provides compelling sales management capabilities.
3. Monday.com – Sales-Focused Project Management Software
Monday.com offer a number of sales plan templates tailored to specific business functions:
Key Features:
- Sales team activity dashboard
- Custom boards to track goals, deals, tasks
- Pipeline analysis & forecasting
- Lead/client management tools
- Sales report automation
- Calendar, file storage, & communication tools
Use Case: The modular Monday.com platform provides an intuitive workspace for sales teams to manage pipelines, forecast revenue, track tasks, report key metrics and facilitate collaboration.
Benefits:
- Complete visibility into the sales pipeline & activity
- Configure custom processes for sales prospecting, management & reporting
- Centralized knowledge base for sales collateral, training materials, & SOPs
- Streamline communication between sales & other departments
- Mobile access to manage initiatives on the go
Pricing: $8+/month per user
Up next we have a presentation-based sales planning template from Office Timeline…
4. Office Timeline – Visually Build Sales Plans
Office Timeline is a top-rated Microsoft PowerPoint add-on for visually mapping plans over time. Sales teams can easily create presentation-ready sales plans.
Key Features:
- Intuitive PowerPoint-based templates
- Import data from Excel or Smartsheets
- Customizable sales process roadmap
- Visually track sales targets, activities, & milestones
- Eye-catching sales Gantt chart views
- Localization support for global sales organizations
- Easy collaboration via PowerPoint file
Use Case: If your sales organization loves PowerPoint, Office Timeline makes visually defining and socializing sales plans across the team turnkey.
Benefits:
- Align distributed sales organizations around a common visual plan
- Create polished, presentation-ready sales plans
- Visually track sales goals, pipeline activities, and projections
- Streamlined data import eliminates manual charting
Pricing: $7+/month per user
Now let’s check out how you can create powerful sales plans right within Hubspot…
5. HubSpot CRM – Mature Sales Planning Software
As a market leader, HubSpot offers mature sales planning capabilities alongside complete CRM and sales enablement features.
Key Features:
- Sales dashboard trackingpipelines, activities, projections
- Customized sales process workflows
- CRM to capture leads, manage deals & pipeline
- AI-driven predictions & recommendations
- Integrations with email, chat, analytics, payments tools
- Robust APIs to connect other platforms & data sources
Use Case: Mid-market and enterprise companies who want an end-to-end sales platform with baked-in sales planning.
Benefits:
- Complete suite for sales execution beyond just planning
- Leverage real-time CRM data within plans
- Gain actionable insights from sales analytics
- Unify sales tools to eliminate siloes & streamline management
Pricing: $50+/month per user
If beautiful graphical sales plans are what you’re after, check out Venngage next…
6. Venngage Sales Plan Infographic Templates
Venngage allows anyone to create sleek visual infographics, presenting sales plans beautifully.
Key Features:
- Professional graphic design templates
- Drag & drop visuals, icons, images
- Illustrate sales process, workflow, projections
- Customizable layouts, color schemes, themes
- Charts to visualize sales data beautifully
Use Case: Want to create eye-catching sales plans to present to executives and key stakeholders? Venngage makes it achievable for anyone without design expertise.
Benefits:
- Make boring sales plans shine with engaging graphics
- Design infographics in minutes without creative skills
- Share visually impressive plans on screens or printed
- Collaborate with remote teams in real-time
Pricing: $19+/month per user
Up next, ACT provides their own take on sales plan templates…
7. Act! – CRM & Marketing Automation Sales Plans
Act! offers an integrated workspace combining CRM, marketing automation, email, and sales planning capabilities.
Key Features:
- Unified view of pipeline within Act! CRM
- Custom sales fields & opportunity scoring
- Custom sales process automation & workflows
- Call scripts, email templates & training content
- Team collaboration around sales collateral
Use Case: SMBs who want an integrated sales workspace under one platform not just standalone sales plan templates.
Benefits:
- Align people, processes, and sales collateral
- Configure the platform based on your sales process
- Access sales insights to inform planning
- Equip your team with sales best practices
Pricing: $40+/month per user
If you want sales plan inspiration, check out the visual Smartsheets from Slidebean next…
8. Slidebean – Beautifully Designed Sales Plan Presentation Templates
Leverage Slidebean’s professionally designed sales planning presentation templates as inspiration to align around goals visually.
Key Features:
- Graphically stunning presentation templates
- Sales planning frameworks & models
- Timelines, process flows, & roadmaps
- Data visualizations & charts
- Modern color schemes & fonts
Use Case: Want visually impressive sales plans to present strategies and goals to executives and investors? Slidebean can help non-designers create boardroom-worthy presentations.
Benefits:
- Inspire your team with professionally designed presentations templates
- Accelerate creating impressive, cohesive visual sales plans
- Present growth plans professionally to secure investment
- Store and collaborate on presentations in the cloud
Pricing: $12+/month per user
Best Templates offers a broad library of plug-and-play sales documents. Let‘s check them out next!
9. Best Templates – Professional Ready-to-Use Sales Plans
Sign up for Best Templates to access thousands of ready-made sales templates & documents to customize.
Key Features:
- 5,000+ business plan templates covering sales
- Custom sales plan templates for strategy, compensation, operations
- Edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint templates
- Frameworks, examples, and best practices
- Lifetime license and updates
Use Case: Want professionally crafted sales templates spanning plans, agreements, calculations, frameworks and presentations? Best Templates offers an unparalleled breadth pre-built & proven.
Benefits:
- Massive collection of templates covering all sales needs
- Develop best practice sales documents fast
- Mix-and-match content across various templates
- Expert frameworks field tested for different sales models
Pricing: $1-50 per sales template
If you want a sample sales plan Word doc to use as a starter, we have you covered next with Sample Templates.
10. Sample Templates – Editable MS Word Sales Plans
Sample Templates offers 23 free sales plan templates for Word, Excel, Google Docs and PowerPoint in various categories:
Key Features:
- Broad template selection
- Customize in Word, Docs etc
- Cover letters, email templates
- Usage rights for clients
Use Case: Need a simple, free sales plan template doc to customize for your small business? Sample Templates offers a variety of formats to choose from.
Benefits:
- Completely free sales plan examples
- Blank templates make customization easy
- Available multiple file formats – Word, Excel, PDF
- Documents cover sales projects to annual plans
Pricing: Free
The last option we’ll cover is Qvidian’s offering focused specifically around sales methodology.
11. Qvidian – Customizable Sales Methodology Templates
Qvidian provides advanced sales planning software centered around codifying and executing on proven selling methodologies.
Key Features:
- Configure selling methodology framework
- Build guided selling sequences for each customer stage
- Customizable probability models
- Activity tracking and projections reporting
- Integrates proposals, quotes and other sales documents
Use Case: Enterprises with complex sales processes that want to systemize and scale selling methodologies across sales reps. Help onboard new reps faster.
Benefits:
- Configure a repeatable sales process
- Create guided workflows for sales activities
- Gain critical visibility into pipeline health
- Continually optimize selling methodologies
Pricing: Custom Quote
There you have it! The 11 best sales plan templates spanning needs from solo business owners to enterprises.
Now that we‘ve covered the top templates available, let‘s switch gears to sales planning best practices.
Sales Plan Best Practices
While having a template can provide an essential jumpstart, you need more than just a static document to achieve sales growth.
Here are 5 best practices to drive continual optimization and results from your sales plan:
Set Quantitative Goals – Rather than vague objectives, define specific and measurable revenue targets. Quantify lead gen, customer acquisition, retention and cross-sell/up-sell metrics as well.
Revisit & Revise Frequently – Set aside time every quarter to revisit your sales plan. Update strategies and resource allocation based on latest market trends, competitive dynamics, product updates and sales outcomes.
Instrument Tracking & Reporting – Using KPI dashboards, leaderboards, volume trend reports and win/loss analysis – continually monitor sales activities against goals. Automate where possible.
Learn & Improve – Leverage insights from your sales data, rep feedback and customer research to continually refine strategies, messaging, offers and selling processes that convert.
Communicate & Celebrate – Openly share goals, progress and outcomes across your sales team. Celebrate wins collectively and revisit hurdles collaboratively.
Executing on these best practices turns your static sales template into an engine driving continual optimization, growth and excellence.
Now let‘s recap the key takeaways from this guide:
Recap & Next Steps
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An effective sales plan template provides a blueprint for goals, strategies, execution tracking and optimization.
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We covered 11 outstanding template options for any business type or budget. From Office Timeline to HubSpot, Monday.com to Qvidian.
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Beyond a template, implementing sales planning best practices turns static documents into continual optimization flywheels.
As next steps, consider which 1-2 templates best meet your current business and budget needs. Prioritize simplicity initially while focusing more on execution tracking and strategy optimization over time.
Here‘s to leveraging sales plan templates accelerating your revenue growth and overall success! Please reach out with any other questions.
