How to write the sales section of your business plan
Updated: Oct 7
A sales forecast can look convincing on a spreadsheet while leaving an important question unanswered: how will you win those customers?
The sales section of your business plan needs to explain how people move from interest to purchase, who will help them make that decision and what the business needs to deliver.
For founders, this is also a useful way to test expectations. Does your growth plan reflect what you have learned from selling, or does it depend on a process you have yet to establish?
Here is how to make the section practical.
Explain how customers will buy
Start with the route from finding your business to becoming a paying customer.
Will people buy directly through your website? Will they need a conversation, demonstration or trial? Will a partner introduce you or sell on your behalf?
Your business might use more than one route. Explain which you will prioritise and why it suits the customer and the offering.
Avoid assuming that every business customer needs a long sales process or every consumer makes a quick decision. The value of the purchase, the perceived risk and the number of people involved all affect how someone buys.
Describe the behaviour you have observed. Where you do not yet know, identify what you need to test.
Understand the buying decision
The person interested in your product may not be the person who can approve the purchase.
Find out who will use it, who controls the budget and who else needs to be involved. Depending on the purchase, customers may also need to assess implementation, security, contractual terms or the effect on their team.
Ask what needs to happen before they can decide.
Useful questions include:
What has prompted them to look for a solution?
How are they managing the problem today?
What would make a change worthwhile?
Who needs to agree?
Is there a genuine deadline or reason to act?
What could prevent the purchase?
These answers help you understand whether an opportunity is suitable and how much work may be involved.
They also help you avoid treating an encouraging conversation as a sale that is almost complete.
Set out the main steps in your sales process
Describe the stages a customer typically moves through and what needs to be true before an opportunity progresses.
For a business selling through conversations, that might involve establishing a need, confirming a fit, discussing a proposal and agreeing terms.
For a business selling online, it might involve finding the product, comparing options, completing checkout and receiving the purchase.
Use stages that reflect your customers’ decisions. A proposal being sent tells you what your team has done. It does not tell you whether the customer has the budget, authority or intention to buy.
Make the next action clear at each stage, including who owns it.
Your marketing plan should explain how you attract suitable interest. The sales plan picks up how that interest is handled and converted into business.
Be clear about what you are selling
Your plan should explain the offer, how it is priced and what the customer receives.
Consider whether customers buy once, subscribe, renew a contract or purchase additional work over time. Explain any trial or pilot arrangements and how they lead to a paid commitment.
Be clear about what is included and what would cost extra. If every proposal is different, think about how that affects your time, pricing and ability to deliver consistently.
Include payment timing in your planning. A signed contract, recognised revenue and cash arriving in the bank can happen at different points.
If you offer discounts or extended payment terms, understand the effect on the business before making them a routine way to win work.
Build the forecast from realistic assumptions
Start with the activities and customer behaviour that could produce the revenue.
For a business selling through a sales team, relevant assumptions might include:
The number of suitable opportunities you can generate.
The proportion that become customers.
The average value of a sale.
The time between the first conversation and a decision.
The number of opportunities the team can manage.
For an online business, the calculation may focus more on suitable visitors, purchase rates, order values and repeat purchases.
Use your own evidence where available. Separate established performance from assumptions
about a new product, market or sales channel.
As a simple illustration, if you win one in four qualified opportunities, a target of eight new customers requires around 32 such opportunities. Those opportunities also need enough time to move through the buying process.
The calculation is only useful if the assumptions are credible. Review what happens when fewer opportunities arrive, decisions take longer or customers spend less than expected.
Plan the people and time required
Who will do the selling now, and what might need to change as the business grows?
In an early business, founders often hold much of the knowledge needed to explain the offer and respond to customer questions. Before handing that work over, consider what someone else would need to succeed.
That could include a clear customer profile, an offer that has been tested, useful sales materials and a process for managing opportunities.
Hiring someone does not resolve uncertainty about who will buy or why.
If you need to recruit, explain the role, the support required and the time it may take for the person to become effective. Account for recruitment, learning the product and building customer relationships.
Tie hiring decisions to a clear need and the resources available. Avoid assuming that adding salespeople will immediately produce a matching increase in revenue.
Make partner sales arrangements practical
Partners can help you reach customers, but an agreement alone does not create sales.
If partners are part of your plan, explain why they would want to sell or recommend your offering. How does it help their customers and their own business?
Clarify who generates opportunities, who manages the sales conversation and who provides support after the purchase.
Consider what partners need from you, such as training, materials or technical help. Include the time and cost of that support in your plan.
Test whether the relationship produces useful opportunities before building ambitious revenue expectations around it.
Include delivery and the customer relationship
Winning a customer creates a commitment for the rest of the business.
Check that your delivery plans can support the sales forecast. More orders may require additional people, stock, implementation capacity or customer support.
Be clear about the handover from sales to delivery. What has been promised? Who needs to know? What does the customer expect to happen next?
If your model depends on renewals or repeat purchases, explain how you will understand whether customers are receiving the value they expected.
Keep new sales and repeat business visible in the forecast so you can see what each contributes.
Track progress and learn from outcomes
Use a system that makes opportunities, commitments and next actions easy to see. It needs to be maintained consistently to be useful.
Review more than the total value of potential deals. Look at how long opportunities have been open, why they are progressing or stalling and which assumptions need adjusting.
Learn from lost business too. Was the customer unsuitable, the timing wrong or the value unclear? Did they choose an alternative or decide to do nothing?
Those answers can improve your offer, targeting and forecast.
For the leadership team, sales reviews should lead to decisions and actions rather than a repeated list of hopeful deals.
Bring the sales section together
Your finished section should explain:
Who buys and how the decision is made.
The routes you will use to sell.
The main steps from interest to purchase.
The offer, pricing and payment arrangements.
The assumptions behind your forecast.
The people, time and support required.
How you will deliver, retain customers and review progress.
Keep the detail proportionate to your stage. If you are still finding a repeatable approach, your plan should show how you will learn rather than imply that the process is already established.
Use the plan to decide what needs attention
Sales planning can reveal a problem with focus, capacity or expectations.
Perhaps too much depends on the founder. Perhaps the forecast assumes customers will decide faster than they do. Perhaps the team is pursuing opportunities that are unlikely to be a good fit.
Working through those questions gives you a better basis for deciding what to change.
If you would value space to examine your growth assumptions, sales priorities and role in the business, explore working with me through founder coaching and mentoring.
Cheers,
Duncan
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