Building a sales plan: an example for a B2B tech company

A sales plan doesn't have to be a twenty-page document. The best sales plan fits on one page and answers one question: what do we need to do every week to hit our revenue target? In this article you'll see how to build it, with a worked example for an IT company, a weekly prospecting schedule and the numbers to track.

1. Start with a concrete revenue target

Not "grow" or "more customers", but an amount from new customers within a set period. For example: 240,000 euros in new revenue next year. Keep revenue from existing customers separate, because it needs a different approach.

2. Work back to what you need to do every week

This is the most important part of your sales plan. You need three numbers from your own history: the average deal value, the percentage of proposals that get signed, and the percentage of first conversations that lead to a proposal.

Worked example

Revenue target from new customers: 240,000 euros Average deal: 20,000 euros, so 12 deals nodig 3 in 10 proposals get signed, so 40 proposals nodig 4 in 10 first conversations lead to a proposal, so 100 first conversations nodig Spread over 46 working weeks: about 2 to 3 new conversations per week

Suddenly an abstract annual target is something you can check every Monday. Don't have those numbers yet? Use a cautious estimate and adjust it after three months.

3. Define who you sell to

Describe in a few sentences which type of company fits you best: industry, size, who decides and what problem they have. The sharper this is, the easier it becomes to find those 100 conversations. In this article you'll learn how to build an ideal customer profile in one afternoon.

4. Choose where those conversations will come from

Write down per channel how many conversations you expect from it. For example: 40 from your network and referrals, 30 from targeted outbound, 20 from LinkedIn and 10 from partners. You'll see right away whether your plan is realistic, or whether you're expecting too much from one channel. You can read more about which channels work for IT and software companies on our page about B2B lead generation.

5. Block two prospecting slots a week

A plan only works once it's in the calendar. Schedule two fixed blocks of about two hours a week, for example Tuesday and Thursday from 9 to 11, in which you do nothing but prospect. No emails, no proposals, no presentations, just reaching out to new companies. You plan the rest of your day and week yourself, mostly with customer calls, follow-up and proposals.

Don't lose those blocks to preparation. If you first have to build an Excel sheet of names and contact details every Monday, you lose exactly the time that should have gone into calling. So invest in a lead generation tool that lines up companies and contacts with their details for you, such as Apollo, Lusha or Cognism. Then you start every block calling and emailing straight away.

6. Keep prospecting, even with a full pipeline

This is the mistake we see most often. As soon as the pipeline is well filled, all the time goes to the open deals and prospecting grinds to a halt. Three months later those deals are signed or lost, the pipeline is empty, and you start again from zero. That's why your two two-hour blocks stay in place, even in your busiest weeks. Next quarter's customers are the ones you find today.

7. Track your numbers automatically

You don't have to keep your numbers in a spreadsheet yourself. Pull them from your CRM, or have an AI assistant send you an overview every Friday morning. These five numbers are enough:

• First conversations: how many new conversations with prospects did you have this week?
• New pipeline: how many euros of new opportunities were added?
• Proposals: how many proposals went out?
• Signed deals: how many deals and how much revenue?
• Pipeline coverage: how much pipeline do you have compared to this quarter's revenue target? A common rule of thumb is three times your target.

Have the overview also show the deals that have no next step in the calendar. Those are the deals that stall first.

A one-page sales plan

The mistakes we see most often

The target is never worked back, so nobody knows what needs to happen this week. The plan assumes conversion rates far higher than the company ever achieved. And the plan is made in January and only looked at again in December. A sales plan is a working document: look at it every month, and adjust it when your numbers drift.