GUIDE AND WORKBOOK
A working sales plan
From a growth target to this week's activity. A guide and an Excel workbook, with a worked example you can follow line by line.
Free · A 29-page PDF and an Excel workbook, sent to your inbox
Most plans stop at the number
Somebody agrees a revenue figure for next year, it goes into a spreadsheet, and the team is asked to go and find it. What rarely gets written down is how that number turns into an ordinary Tuesday: how many conversations, meetings and proposals it takes, with which customers, and who is doing what in the next 90 days.
The guide and workbook close that gap. The plan starts from what your organisation wants to achieve in its market, works out where next year's revenue will actually come from, and ends with the activity each week has to hold.
What is in it
- The revenue bridge. Your revenue target, less forward orders and existing business, plus churn, less share-of-wallet growth. What remains has to come from new customers, and the workbook turns it into the number of deals you need.
- Leading activity. Conversion rates turn those deals into proposals, exploration meetings and prospecting calls per year, month and week, for new business and account management separately.
- 90-day priorities. 5 or fewer, each with an owner and a date, replaced every quarter.
- Market strategy. Up to 3 target markets, who decides in each, the problems you solve, and what you say about it.
- What moves the number. Change one input at a time and see which assumptions your plan depends on.
- The workbook. It opens on the guide's worked example for a fictitious Finnish company. The formulas are protected, so nobody overwrites one by accident
Who is it for
Three readers with the same problem and different constraints.
The sales leader
You own a number and a team. The plan links the figure the board agreed to what your sellers do each week.
The founder
You still sell, and you are starting to hire people who will sell for you. The plan is the document they will work to.
The solopreneur
You are the entire sales function. Every line in the activity tables is an hour of your own week.