You’ve got a job interview for your dream sales job.
You have the experience and a track record of success. The only thing between you and your offer letter is your (hopefully) future sales manager.
Impress them with your exceptional selling skills and expertise, and you’ve got the job.
But the question is: how?
This Salesman.org sales plan template guide will show you how to put together a winning 30-60-90 day sales plan to impress your sales manager with your sales knowledge and expertise and nab your dream sales position.
A 30-60-90 day sales plan outlines the measurable goals for your first three months on the job. Think of it as your personal value proposition that shows your superiors you’re a self-starter and helps you be laser-focused on achieving results.
It expands on what success looks like in the first 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. The idea here is to lay out your clear-cut plans for measuring a successful transition and keeping everyone focused in the right direction.
Your dream sales job is also somebody else’s dream job. This means you have to stand out in your interview and make sure the hiring manager can see what a great addition you can be to the organization.
The only way to do this effectively is to create a sales plan that shows your vision of the future of the sales territory or customers you’ll be taking over. It should outline your interaction with your sales team, sales strategies, sales cycle, target audience and revenue goals.
Each aspect of your 30-60-90 day sales plan should detail a specific focus, your priorities and goals, and a plan for measuring success. Getting this right will help you maximize your progression into a new role by identifying potential partners to sell two and establishing a general framework for success.
Here’s are the biggest benefits of developing a 30-60-90 day plan:
If you bring in a well-thought-out plan into a job interview, you’ll have an advantage over other under-prepared candidates, significantly improving your chances of getting hired.
Putting together a 30-60-90 days sales plan takes time and effort, but the good news is you don’t have to do it often. When you write a sales plan it becomes a sales tool that can be used over and over.
Besides the interview process, you can also use your sales plan for the following circumstances:
You got a brand-new job—or maybe you’ve earned an internal promotion.
Regardless of the circumstance, you should create a 30-60-90 days sales plan within the first week on the job. Doing this will demonstrate your commitment to your new role and give you a well-defined plan to ensure you’re off to a good start.
If your company follows the territory management approach, creating a 30 60 90 day plan for new sales territory is a no-brainer.
Your plan should clearly define geographic boundaries for territories you’re responsible for and the metrics you’ll use to evaluate territory performance. It should include any new business goals, changes in the company mission or types of sales that you'll be making.
Next, let’s understand how you can draft an effective 30 60 90 day sales strategy plan.
You should know who you’re making the plan for. This involves thinking from the perspectives of two stakeholders: your team and you.
Understand your sales team’s priorities and goals and align your sales plan with them.
For a job interview, try to connect with a salesperson already working with the company on LinkedIn. Strike a polite conversation and ask them what goals they’re being pushed towards corporately.
If you’re new on the job or handling a new territory, speak to your sales manager and ask them about goals that matter most to the organization.
Find out current revenue targets, sales and marketing initiatives and any strategies and tactics that are working for the sales team.
What are your current priorities and personal goals?
Do you want to earn more money? Or do you want to focus on building now to set up your territory for even bigger successes? Maybe you want to position yourself as a legendary adviser for all things sales.
You must identify your own priorities before you start building your 30 60 90 day plan. This will give you a clearer perspective on how to approach things and set yourself up for success.
Do you want to install new sales tools, motivate your team or start pushing a new product or service? Creating your sales plan can reduce the time to implement a more effective sales action plan.
Don’t worry; we’ll also share a super-easy template you can follow and ensure better outcomes.
Now that you know your sales goals, your next step is to measure progress against those goals.
In the words of Peter Drucker, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” When you know how to measure success, you can improve your plan further by identifying and eliminating weak aspects.
Here are a few tips to help you get started on the right track:
At this point, you’ve already done most of the hard work.
You can now focus on documenting the information you currently have to create a more formal 30-60-90 day sales plan that you can then share with your sales manager. For each section of your plan, ask yourself “what does success look like?“.
Note: We’ve also added critical questions below to help you create a more impressive sales plan.
As mentioned, the first step is to ask yourself what success looks like after 30 days are complete.
When applying for a job, success in the first 30 days is likely completing your onboarding and training process successfully. In addition, you can also add the following criteria if you want to be more specific:
The 30-day section of your sales plan should define your success goals and briefly explain how you plan on achieving them. It should also share how you‘ll know you’ve been successful in meeting these goals.
Let’s explain this using an example.
This will allow you to show off your self-starting nature and help you understand your responsibilities better.
Be sure to schedule a meeting with your sales manager to discuss successes and any issues you had during the 30 days before moving on to the 60-day and 90-day time periods. It’ll make the transition smoother.
With the first 30 days up, you have to amp up your sales efforts in the second month.
You’ll be spending more time in the field or talking to potential partners at this stage. Keeping this in mind, you should understand your marketplace and products at a high level. Regardless of what you’re selling, after 60 days of being immersed in it, you should know everything related to the offering—big or small.
Another good tactic is to role play with co-workers and shadow your senior sales professionals to understand their sales processes and approaches.
Here are some pointers to include in the 60-day section of your sales plan. Notice how some of them are mandatory, while others are more flexible depending on your role, experience, and onboarding process.
Of course, these objectives will vary depending on why you’re drafting the 30-60-90 day sales plan. For instance, if you’re an experienced sales professional who has been recently assigned a new sales territory, your success criteria will look something like this:
Information overload, we know. But getting this step right will help you achieve greater success. Plus, once you get the hang of things, everything will become easier.
This is where you hit the ground running.
Your 31-90 day plan sets out what you’re planning on doing for the rest of the time in the specific sales role. Here, you should have an optimized prospecting list and have your foot in the door with at least a couple of potential new key accounts.
Only a few things can go wrong at this point, which might stop your 30-60-90 day sales plan from being fabulous. Don’t worry, though. We’ll cover 30-60-90 day sales plan mistakes later to make sure all your hard work pays off.
At this point in your new sales role you should have a lead generation strategy, be on top of all the new sales enablement tools and content, understand your customer pain points and have a few new customers on the go.
At the 90-day meeting with your sales manager, discuss any 3-4 points from the following success criteria:
And that’s it! That’s how you create a solid 30-60-90 day sales plan.
The whole point of creating a 30-60-90 day sales plan is to give you a clear direction in your new sales role. But there are a few errors that may make it less effective…
We get it: you don’t want to make promises you can’t keep. But not including specific ways of measuring your success on your sales business plan is a huge red flag that may cause your sales manager to question your capabilities.
You must be willing to put your money where your mouth is. So make sure you include measurable success criteria for each section of your 30-60-90 day sales plan.
Planning is about being specific and granular.
If you’re going to be ambiguous, your plan isn’t going to inspire confidence in your new sales leadership role and may fall flat.
Sales managers want to see numbers and progress towards a target rather than vague business strategy and generic sales plans.
Similar to how following up is necessary to win deals, holding meetings with your sales manager is important for improving your 30-60-90 day sales plan and self-improvement. Don’t forget to schedule meetings with your sales manager at the 30, 60, and 90-day points to review your progress and ask for advice on your sales process.
As promised, right click and save as to download your 30 60 90 day sales plan template. This free template will take you through the process of creating a sales plan.