The Ultimate Guide to Building a B2B Sales Plan

Introduction

Sales can be tricky for businesses, especially when you’re selling to another business. B2B businesses have a longer sales cycle and require more convincing compared to B2C. 

However, it is far more profitable than B2C. That’s why B2B businesses are always changing their sales tactics and creating sales plans. But how do you create a B2B sales plan that guarantees conversion? 

This guide will help you understand the nuances of a B2B Sales plan, its core components, and a step-by-step strategy to create a B2B sales plan. 

What is a B2B Sales Plan? 

A B2B sales plan is a detailed strategy that lays out how your company will approach selling its products or services to other businesses. B2B sales involve multiple stakeholders, longer decision-making cycles, and typically higher-value contracts.

In a B2B sales plan, you’ll define your ideal customers, outline how you’ll engage them, allocate resources efficiently, and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress. It serves as a blueprint to ensure that everyone on your sales team is on the same page and working toward the same goals.

The Need for a B2B Sales Plan

Let’s be clear: A B2B sales plan isn’t just a nice-to-have document. It’s vital to your business's success. Here’s why:

• Alignment Across Teams: Research shows that organizations with aligned sales and marketing teams see 36% higher customer retention rates. Thus, sales, marketing, and leadership teams must work in tandem. A B2B sales plan ensures everyone is moving toward the same goals using the same priorities. This alignment leads to smoother communication and more successful conversions.
  
• Efficient Resource Use: A B2B sales plan allows you to map out territories, quotas, and budgets in advance. Thus, teams can allocate resources effectively.
  
• Predictable Growth: With well-defined KPIs, leadership can more accurately forecast future revenue, enabling smarter scaling and more data-driven decision-making. Clear sales metrics help ensure that growth strategies are aligned with actual performance, allowing companies to adjust and refine their approach for long-term success.
  
• Stronger Customer Relationships: A report from McKinsey found that 71% of buyers expect personalized interactions throughout their journey. By understanding your buyer personas and their pain points, your sales team can engage more effectively, build trust, and improve customer retention rates.

Core Components of an Effective B2B Sales Plan

Crafting a B2B sales plan requires focusing on several key areas. Let’s dive into each of these components in more detail.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) & Buyer Personas

Before you start selling, you need to know who you’re selling to. The ideal customer profile (ICP) defines the characteristics of businesses that are the best fit for your product or service. 

On the other hand, buyer personas go deeper and describe the people within those organizations who are making the decisions. These personas outline their roles, challenges, motivations, and pain points. Understanding these elements is key to crafting messaging that resonates.

Example:
Let’s say your product is a CRM (customer relationship management) system designed for small businesses in the tech industry. Your ICP might be small-to-mid-sized tech startups, while your buyer persona could be a Chief Marketing Officer who is frustrated with managing customer data across multiple platforms.

Account Segmentation

Not every prospect is created equal. You must segment your accounts based on various criteria like industry, company size, and readiness to buy. By segmenting your accounts, you can prioritize outreach and allocate resources.

A good segmentation strategy could look like this:

• Tier 1 (High-Value Accounts): Large enterprises that have a clear need for your product and substantial budgets.
  
• Tier 2 (Medium-Value Accounts): Growing companies that could benefit from your product but have smaller budgets or less immediate needs.
  
• Tier 3 (Low-Value Accounts): Small businesses or startups that may need your product eventually but are not the right fit for immediate sales efforts.

Sales Capacity Planning

How many deals can your sales team realistically close in a given period? Sales capacity planning is all about making sure your team’s headcount, territories, quotas, and revenue goals align. McKinsey reports that 90% leaders consider capacity building a pressing to-do that needs addressing. 

If you don’t do this, you risk overloading your team or missing out on opportunities.

To calculate sales capacity considering deal complexity and cycle length, factor in deal type (simple, medium, complex) and adjust for the time each deal takes. Account for sales cycle duration and sales rep availability to avoid overloading and ensure optimal performance.

Sales Enablement Strategy

Sales enablement is about providing your sales team with the tools, resources, and content they need to close deals more effectively. This includes training materials, pitch decks, case studies, objection-handling scripts, and more. Organizations with a sales enablement strategy achieve a 49% more win rate on forecasted deals.

A good sales enablement strategy pairs these tools with CRM systems and automation to maintain consistency and scale efforts.

How To Create a B2B Sales Plan?

Now that you know about the core components, let’s read this step-by-step guide to create a B2B sales plan: 

Set Goals and Expectations

In B2B sales, establishing clear, measurable goals is the first step toward driving success. The SMART framework ensures that your objectives are not only realistic but also aligned with broader business priorities. 

Sales goals should be centered around key performance indicators (KPIs) like lead generation, conversion rates, and revenue growth. 

You should ensure that the goals break down into actionable steps for the team and are equipped to meet sales targets and track progress along the way.

Choose Sales Strategy Template

The sales strategy you choose must align with your business’s product and target market. Whether you opt for consultative selling, challenger sales, or account-based selling (ABS), each approach brings its own strengths. 

Consultative selling, for example, focuses on deeply understanding the client's pain points and providing tailored solutions, which works well in B2B markets with complex products. ABS, on the other hand, focuses on highly targeted, personalized outreach to a select number of high-value accounts. 

Choose the strategy that aligns with your sales team’s strengths and your customers’ buying behavior to ensure your efforts are focused on what drives results.

Determine Your Budget and Set Up Resources

A successful sales plan requires strategic allocation of resources. Start by determining your sales budget, which includes headcount, technology, training, and marketing. 

Sales enablement tools like CRM systems, automation platforms, and data analytics software are vital for tracking customer interactions and performance. Also, make sure that your team has access to high-quality content and training materials that support the sales process.

Budgeting for these tools and resources ensures that your team has what they need to perform at their best. Efficiently allocated resources drive better performance, help reduce inefficiencies, and empower your sales people to close deals more effectively.

Segment & Score Target Accounts

Account segmentation is crucial for ensuring your sales team focuses on the highest-value prospects. Not all leads are created equal, so teams should use firmographics (like industry, size, and revenue) and behavioral indicators (such as engagement signals and buying intent) to score and rank accounts. 

Segment your accounts into tiers like high-value accounts (enterprise clients) that require personalized outreach, and mid- or low-value accounts that may benefit from automated engagement. This approach allows your team to prioritize resources and efforts, and ensure that they’re targeting the prospects most likely to convert.

Plan Territories & Assign Quotas

Territory planning spreads your sales team’s efforts evenly and strategically. Hence, you should divide your market based on geographic regions, industries, or account size to create manageable areas of focus for each rep. 

Proper territory planning ensures reps aren’t competing for the same accounts and that all potential markets are being addressed. Tools like Everstage help with territory planning and segment them based on revenue potential, rep capacity, and business goals. 

Develop Sales Assets & Enablement Content

Sales enablement tools are essential for empowering your team to close deals more efficiently. Develop a library of sales assets, such as case studies, whitepapers, product demos, ROI calculators, and pitch decks, that align with your target accounts’ pain points. 

Ensure that your sales team has easy access to these resources, ensuring they can deliver a compelling message to prospects at every stage of the sales cycle. 

Sales enablement content, such as objection-handling scripts, email templates, and detailed product brochures, can streamline the selling process and ensure consistency across your team. Equip your reps with the resources they need to succeed and reduce ramp-up time for new hires.

Examples of B2B Sales Plan

There are various types of sales plans for businesses. Let’s look at these B2B sales plans with examples: 

1. The One-Page Sales Plan

A one-page sales plan provides a high-level overview of your sales strategy, typically used by executives or managers to communicate the sales priorities for a period. It is designed to be simple yet impactful, capturing the essentials that guide the sales team towards achieving their goals.

A one-page plan is useful for providing clarity on overall sales objectives and making sure everyone is aligned on the strategy.

Example:
A B2B cybersecurity firm targeting small businesses might create a one-page sales plan with goals such as achieving $500,000 in revenue for the next quarter. The target audience might be defined as small businesses with under 200 employees. 

Strategies could include a mix of digital outreach (e.g., Google ads), content marketing (e.g., educational blog posts), and direct sales (e.g., cold-calling decision-makers). The plan also features key metrics, such as lead conversion rates and customer acquisition costs, with the expectation that each sales rep closes at least 10 deals within the quarter.

2. The 30-60-90 Day Sales Plan Template

The 30-60-90-day sales plan is structured to provide a detailed roadmap for a sales representative’s first three months in a role. It is a time-phased strategy that evolves from learning and absorbing information in the first 30 days, to building relationships and engaging leads in the next 60 days, and finally, executing and closing sales in the last 90 days.

Example:
Consider a new account executive joining a software company selling CRM solutions.

• First 30 Days: The focus would be on learning the CRM product’s features, customer benefits, pricing structures, and familiarizing oneself with the target market (e.g., small to mid-sized businesses in the retail sector).
  
• Next 60 Days: The rep would begin outbound calls and set up product demonstrations to understand the customer needs and pain points.
  
• Final 90 Days: The emphasis would shift to closing deals and refining the sales approach to optimize conversions. The last 90 days focus on signing 5 contracts and bringing in $100,000 in sales revenue within the first 90 days.

3. The New Product Sales Plan

A new product sales plan is focused on introducing a product to the market for the first time. It outlines the strategies for building awareness, generating leads, and securing sales. The success of a new product often hinges on the ability to create demand, educate potential customers, and differentiate the product in a crowded market.

This plan includes a launch strategy, but it also focuses on longer-term customer adoption. Sales teams need to be well-versed in handling objections and demonstrating the value proposition of the new product. 

Example:
Imagine a company releasing a new mobile payment processing tool for small businesses.

• Pre-Launch: The team might generate excitement with a teaser campaign, share use cases on social media, and offer a sneak peek of the product at an industry conference.
  
• Launch: After the product’s release, the sales team could offer free trials, webinars on how to use the tool, and personalized demonstrations to small business owners. The target might be to acquire 200 new customers in the first quarter.
  
• Post-Launch: The sales strategy could shift to client success stories and referrals, using customer feedback to refine the product or address any pain points.
  

4. The Market Expansion Plan

A market expansion plan is focused on entering new markets, such as geographic regions, new industry verticals, or untapped customer segments. This plan ensures that the business can strategically scale its operations, adapt to local needs, and develop targeted sales campaigns.This includes building a localized sales team, adjusting the product offering, and fine-tuning marketing strategies. 

Example:

A company based in the US that sells marketing automation software decides to expand into Southeast Asia. The market expansion plan involves hiring local sales representatives fluent in the region’s languages, conducting market research on local businesses, attending industry conferences, and offering region-specific pricing or features. The goal would be to sign 50 new clients in the region within the first 12 months.

5. The Territory Sales Plan

A territory sales plan focuses on maximizing sales within a specific geographic area, customer group, or industry sector. Sales representatives are assigned territories, and the plan is designed to optimize their efforts within those territories by leveraging local insights, customer relationships, and targeted marketing.

Territory sales planning often includes segmenting the region or market by industry, company size, or even potential revenue. 

Example:
For an industrial equipment company selling large machinery to manufacturing plants, a territory sales plan focuses on the Southwest region of the U.S. The sales rep responsible for that territory would analyze local manufacturing trends, identify large factories in need of machinery upgrades, and attend regional trade shows. The goal could be to generate $1M in sales within the year by targeting mid-sized manufacturers looking to expand operations.

Conclusion

A well-executed B2B sales plan is a game-changer. By defining your ICP, segmenting accounts, planning capacity, and providing the right tools and content, you’ll be ready to tackle the complexities of B2B sales with confidence. 

A strong plan doesn’t just help you hit targets; it empowers your team, aligns cross-functional departments, and creates predictable growth.

Remember, a sales plan isn’t set in stone. It’s a dynamic tool that should evolve with the market. Keep an eye on your KPIs, revisit your strategies quarterly, and always be prepared to adjust.

With tools like Everstage, sales teams can win half the battle using features like quota attainment, territory planning, and sales team distribution. Book a demo with us and drive your sales performance with amazing sales planning.