Free Sales Strategy Template

Fill in the checklists on this page, or download the original fillable PDF to complete offline and share with your team.

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.

Each section below has a checklist. Work through them in order with your team, and check items off as you go.

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.”

An ideal customer profile describes an organization which receives value from your solution and provides value to your company. Read How to create your ideal customer profile for more tips.

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

Establishing and 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:

Need a starting point? See these sales pitch scripts, these cold email templates, and the Sales Objections Template.

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

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.

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:

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

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.

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? and B2B lead generation basics for startups for more tips.

How will leads be assigned? Select an option:

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.

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

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

Qualifying is the difference between selling to the right customers or wasting time on the wrong ones. Read How to qualify prospects and leads for more tips.

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

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 and 13 killer B2B sales questions for more tips.

Manage objections as early as possible. Read 10 objection handling techniques for more tips.

Based upon your team’s sales style, decide which sales presentation(s) is needed to move the deal forward. For demos, read How to give product demos that sell.

Empower sales reps to negotiate from a position of strength. Read How to negotiate like a pro for more tips.

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

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.