Sales Strategy

A sales strategy empowers you to accomplish two important

objectives: Translate company goals into sales and align your
sales team’s day-to-day actions with the company’s priorities.

However, developing a sales strategy can be confusing and

frustrating, especially since there are no one-size-fits-all
solutions. Use this template to create a custom, scalable sales
strategy.

Develop S.M.A.R.T. goals

A successful sales strategy begins with solid goals. Goals should be Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (i.e. deadline-based).

Bad goal: “To grow sales.”

Good goal: “Hit $100k in revenue by the end of the 1st quarter.”

☐ Write your organization’s or team’s goals down.

☐ Each goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.








 Create an ideal customer profile

An ideal customer profile describes an organization which receives value from

your solution & provides value to your company. Read How to create your ideal
customer profile for more tips.

☐ Contact 10 customers for whom the value of your solution outweighs the
cost.

☐ Identify the traits those 10 customers share.

☐ Write a description of your ideal customer based upon the traits they
share, which may include:

☐ Their industry

☐ Their location

☐ Their job title or responsibilities

☐ Their pain points

☐ Their buying process

Study the competition and create a value proposition

How does your product create value for customers, especially compared to your
competitors’ products?

☐ Identify your top competitors.

☐ For each competitor, compare your product and their product’s features,
prices, and ability to solve customers’ pain points.

 ☐ Identify how your product uniquely solves customers’ pain points or

provides value.

Create your minimum viable sales documentation

Establishing & improving upon a sales strategy means documenting your process.
These documents aren’t meant to be perfect; they’re meant to get your team
selling ASAP. Read Minimum viable sales documentation for more tips.

Gather your entire sales team and spend an hour at max on writing:

☐ A sales phone script

☐ Email templates

☐ An objection management document

☐ Each week or month, the sales team updates each document with any
new insights.

Hire, onboard, and organize salespeople

Invest in hiring and training the right people. Read The ultimate sales hiring guide
for B2B startup founders! for more tips.

☐ Establish hiring criteria for sales reps

☐ Create an ideal sales rep profile, or list of traits and attributes

your sales reps must have to succeed.

☐ Develop a process to assess candidates’ traits and skills.

 ☐ Grade each candidate on how well they match the ideal sales rep
profile.

☐ When to hire sales reps

☐ Download the Sales hiring checklist.

☐ Use the Sales hiring checklist to determine how many/which sales

reps should be hired at the different stages of growing a sales
team.

☐ Onboard sales reps

A structured onboarding process is the difference between a successful

and unsuccessful sales team. Read How to onboard a sales team in 4
weeks for more tips.

☐ Assign sales managers to oversee the onboarding process.

☐ Outline the skills and knowledge sales reps need in order to

successfully sell.

☐ Establish a timeline for training sales reps.

☐ Create a daily schedule, broken down by the hour, that details

what reps will learn.

☐ Distribute the minimum viable sales documents to each sales rep.

☐ Establish regular benchmarks to assess sales reps’ skills and

readiness.

☐ Develop guidelines on when and how to provide additional

support or fire struggling reps.

 ☐ Organize sales reps

There’s no right or wrong way to organize teams. What works best

depends on the nature of your product, team, and sales process. Read 3
models of effective sales team organization for more tips. Select one of
the following options:

☐ The island: Individual reps work alone.

☐ Assembly line: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role such

as lead generation,
SDR (qualifier), Account Executive (closer), or Customer Success
(farmer).

☐ Pods: Each sales rep is assigned a specialized role in a pod, or

group, that’s responsible for the entire journey of specific
customers.

Establish benchmarks

Ensure the company, sales team, and individual sales reps are aligned.

☐ Company-level: Determine how much revenue the company needs in the

form of:

☐ New business

☐ Upselling customers

☐ Cross-selling customers

 ☐ Team-level: Determine how much revenue the sales team must bring in
each month, quarter, and year to meet the company-level benchmark,
broken down by:

☐ New business

☐ Upselling customers

☐ Cross-selling customers

☐ Individual-level: Determine how much revenue each rep must bring in

each month, quarter, and year to meet the team-level benchmark, broken
down by:

☐ New business

☐ Upselling customers

☐ Cross-selling customers

Create a compensation structure for sales reps

A good compensation structure aligns sales reps’ interests and activities with the
company’s goals. Read Startups: This is how you design a winning sales
commission structure for more tips.

☐ Research compensation for salespeople in your industry.

☐ Establish a base salary (if applicable).

☐ Establish how much input salespeople will have over developing a

commission structure.

 ☐ Create a commission structure. Select the factor(s) salespeople will be

rewarded on:

☐ New business

☐ Upselling customers

☐ Cross-selling customers

☐ Low customer churn

Decide upon a lead generation method/s

Where are your ideal customers? How do they prefer to be communicated with?
What are your available resources?

Use these questions to decide whether to use outbound lead generation,

inbound lead generation, or a combination of both. Read Inbound or outbound
sales—which one should you focus on? & B2B lead generation basics for startups
for more tips.

☐ Outbound sales

☐ Buy lead lists

☐ Use web scraping

☐ Hire an outsourced lead generation team

☐ Advertising

☐ Other:

☐ Inbound sales

 ☐ Company blog

☐ Social media

☐ Email campaign

☐ Customer referrals

☐ Other:

Distribute leads to reps

☐ Decide how many leads each rep will receive per day, week, or month.

How will leads be assigned? Select an option:

☐ By customer type

☐ By geographic region

☐ By deal size

☐ Randomly

Track sales data

Tracking sales data for each rep helps you create accurate benchmarks and sales
forecasts. Focus on three simple metrics. Read Data-driven sales: The 3 cold
calling and emailing metrics that matter for more tips.

☐ Track activity

☐ How many emails were sent

 ☐ How many calls were made

☐ How many in-person visits were made

☐ Track quality

☐ How many decision makers were reached

☐ How many decision makers were qualified

☐ Track conversions

☐ How many decision makers moved on to the next step in the sales
process

☐ How many decision makers were closed

Collect leads and sales activity data in one place

Leads and sales activity data should be easy to input and access for the best
results. Select one of the options:

☐ For early-stage sales: A spreadsheet, whiteboard, or Trello

☐ For later-stage sales: A CRM

Contact leads

Experiment to see which contact methods work for your team. Read Follow up
like a champ for more tips.

☐ Decide which contact method(s) reps will use:

☐ Email

 ☐ Phone

☐ In person

☐ Other:

☐ Provide each rep with a sales script and/or email templates.

☐ Develop a schedule of how often prospects should be followed up with.

Qualify leads

Qualifying is the difference between selling to the right customers or wasting

time on the wrong ones. Read How to qualify prospects & leads for more tips.

At the end of a qualifying conversation, reps should know the following about
prospects:

☐ Whether they’re qualified, based on how well they match your ideal
customer profile

☐ What their deal-breakers and nice-to-haves are (prioritize meeting deal-

breakers)

☐ Who the decision makers are

☐ Their decision making process and timeline

☐ Other solutions they are evaluating

Ask for the close

 There is no “perfect moment” to close prospects — as soon as a lead is qualified,

reps should ask for the deal. Read How to close a deal & 13 killer B2B sales
questions for more tips.

☐ Establish guidelines on when reps should attempt to close the deal.

☐ Provide each rep a list of closing techniques.

Manage objections

Manage objections as early as possible. Read 10 objection handling techniques

for more tips.

☐ Provide each rep with an objection management document.

Deliver the sales presentation (if applicable)

Based upon your team’s sales style, decide which sales presentation(s) is needed
to move the deal forward:

☐ Product demo (Read How to give product demos that sell for more info.)

☐ Meeting with all of the decision makers

☐ Trial sign-up

☐ Other:

Negotiate

Empower sales reps to negotiate from a position of strength. Read How to

negotiate like a pro for more tips.

 ☐ Before any negotiation, each sales rep knows:

☐ Whether they can offer discounts and the maximum amount they can
offer.

☐ How often they can offer discounts or other perks to customers.

☐ The prospects they can offer discounts or other perks to.

Finalize the deal

Set customers up for long-term success while managing their expectations.

☐ Explain to customers how much time & resources onboarding may

require.

☐ Explain to customers the results they may expect after implementing your
solution.

☐ Assign each new customer an account manager or customer success

representative (if applicable).

Congratulations!

By investing the time into creating a sales strategy, you’ve set your sales team
and company up for great success. Winging it is for amateurs; to create a
predictable and scalable sales process, you have to define and measure the
metrics and activities that matter.

For the best results, treat your sales strategy as a living, breathing document. It
isn’t the type of thing that’s done once and finished forever. As you experiment

and learn what works for your team, update and refine your sales strategy for
continuous improvements.