sales person business plan

I Created the Best Free Business Plan Template for Individual Sales Reps

Updated: October 31, 2024

Published: January 21, 2014

A sales rep business plan is kind of an odd concept. It's not quite a sales plan , which allows a sales team to detail and guide its broader sales strategies. It's also not a conventional business plan , which guides a business on an organizational level.

What I‘ll be describing here is more focused and individualized than those documents. It’s an approach that can help support your professional development — one where you leverage the elements of a business plan to shape how you approach your career in sales.

I've put together a template that you — a sales superstar looking for guidance along the astronomical ascension to greatness that is your career trajectory — can use to get a better sense of where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there. Check it out!

Table of Contents

Sales Business Plan Layout

Free business plan template, business plan sections explained, the sales plan, individual business plan examples for sales reps.

• High-Level Review
• Tactics and Actions
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Obstacles to Success
• Personal and Professional Development

This kind of document can be a big help as you try to get a pulse on your professional status, strengths, ambitions, and trajectory — among other key elements. Let's take a look at what the layout of your sales business plan can look like.

The essential document for starting a business -- custom built for your needs.

• Outline your idea.
• Pitch to investors.
• Secure funding.
• Get to work!

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

In my (and probably your average sales leader‘s) opinion, you should start with your endgame when putting a plan like this together. These kinds of plans are roadmaps, and a roadmap is pretty useless if you don’t have a destination in mind.

Ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish professionally?”

This approach isn't tailored to suit a single, universal outcome. Where it leads is up to you. But as general as its possible purposes might be, you still want to approach it with a lot of specificity … and measurability, attainability, relevance, and time-boundness (I think that's how you would phrase that.)

In other words, make sure your goals cover all of the SMART bases.

Are you trying to get a promotion? Move up your salary band? Improve how you deliver on a specific KPI?

Whatever your ideal outcome might be, jot it down and keep it in mind as you put the rest of your plan together. That‘s your compass — your North Star. Without one, you can’t put together a thoughtful, executable plan that will get you to where you want to be.

2. High-Level Review

Now that you‘ve laid out your ambitious but doable goals, you’re going to want to consider what you‘ve already accomplished, how you’ve performed, and the strategies you've leveraged.

Nobody‘s perfect. We’ve all seen our share of good and bad days professionally. Some things worked for us. Others didn't. If you want to create a sound sales business plan, you need to take an honest stock of all of those elements — or at least the ones that are relevant to your objectives.

Now, you might be thinking, “Gee, that sure sounds helpful! But if I'm being real, you're being extremely vague. Please, tell me what this can look like.”

Well, in this context, you can start by taking an honest look at your KPIs. Where are you falling short? From a high level, what tactics would you need to refine to bump those numbers up? How do you currently approach those tactics? You can also source more qualitative feedback by consulting your manager, your colleagues, or your clients.

For instance, let‘s say you’re struggling with your conversion rate on cold calls. You might start by comparing your figures with your peers‘. You might realize you need a better pulse on your sales messaging or rapport-building skills. If your org leverages conversation intelligence, you could take a look at your transcripts — or you might consult with your manager to see if they’ve noticed any friction point in your calls.

One way or another, conduct an honest, thorough review of how you currently approach your role. That will help inform the other elements of this plan.

3. A Strategy

This is where you start to combine the key elements of the previous two sections. You have your goals set, and you have a sense of what you need to improve or lean into to accomplish them. Now, it's time to come up with executable strategies for how you're going to get to where you want to go.

If we keep running with our cold call conversion example, you might decide that you want to:

• Audit your call recordings to see where you generally lose prospects.
• Consider refining how you research prospects ahead of your calls.
• Further familiarize yourself with your org's sales messaging.
• Experiment with different sales scripts.

Ultimately, you want to pin down a game plan for how you‘re going to deliver on the goals you’ve set while incorporating the insight you gathered in your high-level review. Having a sense of what you need to work on if you don't have a plan for how you're going to work on it.

4. Tactics and Actions

This aspect of a sales business plan is essentially a more granular version of the previous one. It's about setting concrete, operational objectives that will get and keep your strategies in motion.

For instance, you might say something like, “I'm going to spend X amount of additional time reviewing my call transcripts,” or “I'm going to spend Y% more time researching prospects on LinkedIn ahead of calls.”

Just like your goals, you want your tactics and actions to be measurable. They should have concrete, quantifiable values attached to them — so you can hold yourself accountable and more thoughtfully budget your time and energy.

5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

You want to hear a wildly insightful, totally novel statement you'll only find on a publication as esteemed and practical as The HubSpot Sales Blog? Here you go:

The goal of having goals is to accomplish those goals.

I know, right? Sometimes, I blow my own mind with revelatory wisdom like that.

Seriously though, your endgame with this plan is to set objectives and deliver on them — and you can‘t know whether you’ve actually done that without establishing how you're going to measure your success. That's where KPIs come in .

You have to establish the relevant metrics that will tell you whether you're on the right track and the extent to which your strategies are working. Depending on your role and ideal outcome, those could be measurements like:

• Closed-won deals
• Activity metrics like calls made or emails sent
• Call conversion rate
• Demos scheduled

I‘ll be real — I feel like I’m just finding different ways to say the same thing here, but I‘m going to stress this section’s central sentiment again: Closely consider your goals, and pin down what succeeding at them looks like. From there, you can determine the most appropriate way to measure them.

6. Obstacles to Success

This one isn‘t always included in a typical business plan, but in the context of our sales business plan, you’ll want to cover it. Once you have a sense of what success means to you and how you're going to gauge it, you should consider the roadblocks that might undermine your ability to get there.

Ask yourself about your personal shortcomings and the factors beyond your control that could hold you back — questions like:

• “Is there a program in my org's tech stack that I'm not familiar enough with?”
• “Does my org leverage the software that's relevant to the tactics and strategies I've outlined?”
• “Does my manager have the time to give me an honest evaluation about my areas for improvement?”

No matter what your obstacles might be, put them in writing and start hashing out how you can either work through or around them. It‘s easier said than done — that’s a given — but if you don‘t give this point a lot of thought, you’re setting yourself up to be surprised and overwhelmed by hitches and hiccups.

7. Personal and Professional Development

This one might seem a little redundant — considering the sales business plan is a document where you apply business plan principles to your professional development in sales — but hear me out.

This section of the sales business plan is about what you're going to do to improve your sales acumen and skills relevant to your goals on your own time.

What books are you going to read? Are you going to attend any conferences or seminars? Are you going to enroll in any online courses or continuing education programs?

It all boils down to this: What are you going to do, independent of your immediate professional responsibilities, to help facilitate your career growth? Document the answers to that question and be prepared to deliver on them.

Click Here to Download the Template

If you want to learn to think like a business — beyond the elements I described in the layout above — you should know some other key aspects of a conventional business plan.

1. The Business Opportunity

The business opportunity is an overview of why you’re doing what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, and what you hope to achieve. Include your mission statement as a sales representative and why you’re working with the leads and accounts you chose.

In a typical business plan, this section is called an executive summary and highlights the most crucial information for readers. This means you can get creative and inspirational with it, summarizing the information that will motivate you most.

2. Company Description

The company description can refer to the organization(s) you sell for, or you can consider yourself the business being described. Because this is a personal document, choose the format that will most benefit you.

Keep in mind that there are a few elements to include in this section:

3. Company Purpose

This is a short description of the business, providing a high-level overview of your workforce, what it offers, and who it offers it to. You might consider creating multiple purposes if you sell on behalf of more than one organization or outlining your purpose as a salesperson.

4. Mission Statement

A mission statement is a formal summary of the aims and values of an organization. If you’re making multiple company descriptions, include one for each organization. You can also include a personal mission statement for why you’ve chosen this organization and how you plan to support their success.

For instance, meditation app Calm's mission statement is, “We're on a mission to support everyone on every step of their mental health journey. In an age of unprecedented anxiety, stress, and sleeplessness, mental health is finally getting the attention it deserves.”

5. Core Values

Use the core values for the organization(s) you work for, why you chose them, and how they will manifest in your interactions with prospects. For example, HubSpot’s values are humility, empathy, adaptability, remarkableness, and transparency.

If your organization doesn’t have clear core values defined, feel free to come up with your own that will serve as your modus operandi. Three to five values are what you want to have.

6. Product & Service Lines

This section will include:

• Product or service offerings - What are the lines you’re trying to sell, and what functionality does each have?
• Pricing model - How much does each product or service cost prospects, how much commission do you make for each sale, and what parameters do you have for discounts or special deals?

Outline this information in an easy-to-scan table.

In a typical business plan, this would serve as an overview of the company and all the key leadership roles. However, the most relevant information could be key contacts at your company or companies you sell to, including your sales and marketing contacts (if applicable). If you’re filling out the template to create your sales plan, you’d simply include yourself.

8. Industry Analysis

In this section, you’ll take a look at the state of the industry, including your company’s competitors and your prospect’s competitors. You’ll ask:

• Is the market in growth or decline?
• Who are your competitors?
• What edge do they have over your product?
• How can you get your prospects to buy into the product you’re selling instead?

Your sales manager might already have answers for you or relay new information as it becomes available.

If you’re filling out a business plan to understand your prospects, you’ll want to answer similar questions:

• Who are their competitors?
• What challenges are they looking to solve?
• Is their industry in decline, and if so, can your product help them grow during this decline?

9. Target Market

This will manifest in your business plan as an overview or outline of whom you’re targeting, including general demographics and psychographics. You might want to include:

• Business title
• Location and language
• Pains or problems they're looking to solve

Consider consolidating this information and creating dedicated buyer personas .

10. Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of individuals within your target market. The best practice is to create a buyer persona for each “type” of customer you serve. You can do so using HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool and exporting the information into your business plan.

If you’re filling out the template for a prospect, come up with a buyer persona for the target audience they serve.

11. Location Analysis

Where is the geographic location of your target market? Explain why you’ve chosen the location and the benefits of it. Do the same for your prospects and customers if you’re using the template for them.

Here’s a template you can use:

[Organization name] serves [Location] because [reason]. We found that one of the key drivers of a successful acquisition is [key element], which means our target buyers tend to be in [more specific location descriptor]. We plan to tap into this market by [method].

This might manifest as something like:

“Editorial Company serves authors throughout the United States because editorial work can be done online with virtual meetings and file sharing. We found that one of the key drivers of a successful acquisition is participation in online writing groups, which means our target buyers tend to be active in social media circles. We plan to tap into this market with inbound marketing.”

12. Implementation Timeline

In this section, a business typically specifies how long it will take for its operation to be up and running. They take logistics, partnerships, and other operational elements into account.

13. Marketing Plan

If your organization is an inbound sales organization with a marketing department, you might include your marketing and sales service-level agreement (SLA) in this section.

On the other hand, if you’re responsible for cold outreach and prospecting, this section might be helpful to complete on your own. The elements you’ll need to consider are:

Positioning Strategy

• How is this product or service unique and unbeatable compared to its competitors?
• Why are potential buyers going to be interested in the product or service?
• How will you address the buyer persona’s biggest challenges and goals?

Acquisition Channels

• What are your main lead acquisition channels (e.g., search engine marketing, event marketing, blogging, paid advertising, etc.)?
• What do you plan to prioritize this year for lead acquisition?

Tools and Technology

• What tools or systems are you equipped with (e.g., Content Hub , marketing automation software , etc.)?

14. Financial Considerations and Funding Required

You’ll want to consider how much financial collateral will be your responsibility as you sell for the organization in this section. You’ll want to outline:

• Startup costs
• Sales forecasts
• When you'll break even
• Profit and loss projections

These things can be estimated and calculated in Excel and then imported into the template. There’s also a section on the funding required, but you won’t need to fill it out as an individual sales representative. And since your prospects have already secured funding or are established firms, you won’t need to fill this out to understand their business.

Now, finally, we’ve reached the sales plan. This will be done in a separate worksheet — a Google Doc or Word document that you can continue to edit as you evolve in your sales role. You will likely be able to draw on your experience to outline the following:

Sales Methodology

• How will you reach and engage with new leads?
• Are you pursuing an inbound or outbound sales strategy?
• Why does your prospecting strategy make sense for your business?

Sales Organization Structure

• Who do you report to within the organization?
• Is there a marketing department and existing SLA between the departments?
• How are leads qualified?

Sales Channels

• What are your main customer acquisition channels (e.g., online purchasing, through a rep, on location, via email, etc.)?
• What tools or systems are you equipped with (e.g., Content Hub , live chat , etc.)?

We‘ve covered the different parts of a sales reps’ business plan, but what does one of these plans actually look like? Here are five amazing examples of individual business plans for sales reps.

Free Sales Plan Template

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent sales plan.

• Target Market
• Prospecting Strategy

1. Individual Development Plan

Best for General Sales Reps

5 Tactics for Becoming the Ultimate Dealmaker, According to BetterYou's CEO

CEO vs COO: Job Roles, Skills, and Salary

The Complete Guide to Business Acumen Training

Business Acumen Interview Questions: What They Are & How to Answer Them

Why Business Acumen is Key to Sales Success (And How to Get It)

The 5 Biggest Ways Technology Has Transformed Sales

7 Ways Salespeople Can Improve Their Business Acumen

17 Columnists Worth Reading on Fast Company, Inc., HBR, Entrepreneur, and More

The Ultimate Sales Glossary: 61 Terms Explained

2 Essential Templates For Starting Your Business

Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs