A strong strategy is the backbone of every high-performing sales force. It outlines how your business plans to generate leads, move them through the pipeline and close deals efficiently.
Whether you’re building a new sales function or working on existing processes, this guide will help you find success faster. You’ll learn what a strong sales strategy entails, which types to consider and how to build your own in clear, practical steps.
What is a sales strategy (and why is it important)?
A sales strategy is a structured plan that outlines how a business sells its products or services.
Yours will define your goals, your ideal customers and the specific sales activities, tools and messaging your sales and marketing teams will use to win deals.
An effective sales strategy helps your business in the following ways:
Keeps your team aligned and focused on the right opportunities
Shortens your sales cycle by mapping efficient workflows
Improves conversion rates by using data to guide decision-making
Scales your operations with repeatable, predictable processes
Without a clear strategy, teams often waste time chasing the wrong leads or using inconsistent sales tactics. With one, they can prioritize high-impact activities and maximize every customer interaction.
For example, a project management software firm might target mid-size tech companies with growing remote teams.
Its reps focus on demo-led selling, supported by tailored email sequences and industry-specific case studies.
The approach ensures every lead gets a consistent, personalized experience, making it easier to move them through the sales pipeline and close deals.
7 types of sales strategies to consider
Different teams succeed with different approaches to selling, often influenced by their industry, target customers and various other factors.
Here are seven of the most effective sales strategies to consider as you decide which is best for your business:
Marketing strategies attract leads through content, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media (e.g., social selling). Sales reps then convert those leads using helpful, tailored conversations (i.e., nurturing). | |
2. Outbound sales strategy | Sales reps rely on proactive outreach methods, including cold emails, cold calling and direct messaging. An outbound sales strategy lets you control who you target, making it ideal for B2B companies with niche audiences. |
Sales reps focus on demonstrating how their product solves specific customer challenges or helps them reach specific goals. Instead of features, value-based selling focuses on outcomes. | |
4. Account-based sales strategy | Sales reps target high-value accounts with personalized outreach. Account-based selling is a collaborative effort between marketing and sales, designed to close larger, more complex deals. |
Sales reps lead with questions, working to deeply understand the buyer’s circumstances and needs before pitching a solution. Consultative selling aims to build trust and valuable long-term customer relationships (including retention and referrals from existing customers). | |
Sales teams identify customer pain points and offer tailored solutions. Solution selling is similar to consultative selling but more focused on the match between problem and product and less on the consultant role. | |
Sales reps educate prospects, offer new perspectives and control sales conversations. Challenger selling is particularly effective in highly competitive markets where buyers need help seeing things differently. |
These sales strategy examples aren’t always mutually exclusive. Many successful teams combine elements from several to suit different target markets or sales initiatives.
For example, an outbound strategy might use value-based messaging to strengthen its cold outreach. Similarly, inbound marketers can weave challenger-style messaging into lead generation content, priming prospects for deeper conversations once they engage with a rep.
Note: Some of the strategy types listed above – like challenger and solution selling – are also considered sales methodologies. The distinction is in scope: strategies define a broader plan for finding and converting new customers, while methodologies offer specific frameworks for how reps engage leads in the sales process. Blend both to create a cohesive sales approach.
How to build a sales strategy in 7 simple steps
The best sales strategies are grounded in structure. The steps below will help you clarify your sales process, find ways to close more deals and set your team up for long-term success.
1. Map your sales process and set high-level goals
Map your sales stages and choose high-level goals for each one (i.e., the purpose of each activity in the sequence).
Understanding this process keeps teams focused on high-impact activities in a logical order and stops them from wasting time on guesswork.
Generally speaking, most sales processes have these stages and desired outcomes:
Prospecting | Identify potential customers |
Qualification | Determine if those prospective customers are a good fit |
Discovery | Understand their specific needs |
Proposal | Present your solution (i.e., get it seen by the right people) |
Negotiation | Address final concerns |
Close | Secure the deal (upselling may happen here, too) |
Each sales process stage should have a defined purpose and clear next steps. From here, set two types of goals for all of them:
Activity-based goals – what reps must do at each stage to progress sales opportunities (e.g., make follow-up calls or send proposals)
Results-based goals – what should happen due to those actions (e.g., book appointments or close deals)
Avoid starting with big-picture revenue targets and reverse-engineering your plan. Sales consultant Susan Tourville recommends a bottom-up approach to ensure your revenue goals are realistic:
In other words, aim for an objective view of how much effort, time or resources it will take to reach your set of key predefined goals (e.g., the number of sales across a period), as this will help with your sales plan efforts and the strategies you develop.
2. Collect the right metrics to benchmark your performance
With your process and general sales goals mapped, the next step is establishing benchmarks. Doing this will allow you to track progress and spot where improvements are needed.
Start by collecting data across these key metric categories:
Activity metrics (e.g., emails sent, calls made)
Pipeline metrics (e.g., close rate, average deal size).
Lead generation metrics (e.g., new leads per month, average response time).
Outreach metrics (e.g., email open/reply rates, meeting booking rates)
Conversion metrics (e.g., opportunities closed, win/loss rate)
You’ll find these sales metrics and other helpful markers in your sales CRM system. Here’s how Pipedrive presents real-time sales performance data in one of its analytics dashboards:
While the above metrics will give you an overview of activity performance, sales key performance indicators (KPIs) indicate the health of your entire organization – i.e., your sales strategy’s broader impact.
Metrics in this category include:
Total revenue
New business revenue and percentage of overall revenue
Growth year-over-year
Customer average lifetime value (LTV)
Revenue segmented by product/service offered
You can set benchmarks at a team or individual level. If performance varies widely across your team, consider segmenting benchmarks into tiers (e.g., top performers vs. average performers). Doing this allows you to set realistic stretch goals and drive healthy competition – it should also help inform your sales training initiatives.
Finally, tie benchmark metrics to roles to ensure team members can focus on sales targets most relevant to them and stay on track.
For example, a sales development rep (SDR) will most keenly focus on their own lead-gen and outreach numbers. A sales manager, on the other hand, will need a top-level view of pipeline health and overall team performance.
3. Find improvement opportunities
Once you’ve established benchmarks and KPIs, it’s easier to spot inefficiencies in your current sales strategy.
Use a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
This analysis activity involves checking your process against the following list:
Strengths. What do we do well? Think about recent successes and the activities your team performs well.
Weaknesses. Where do we fall short? Where are your pipeline’s leaks? Where do leads typically go cold?
Opportunities. What external factors can we leverage for better results? Consider emerging technologies (e.g., automation) or internal collaboration opportunities (e.g., with marketing or customer support).
Threats. What external issues could impact sales performance? Think about disruptive technologies or new competitors entering the market.
For example, you might have a strong workflow for nurturing leads through the pipeline (based on a low number dropping out), but struggle to generate high-quality leads. That’s a sign to work on earlier sales funnel activities.
In the example above, your strength is the process you use to close leads once the initial appointment has been made, and your opportunity is generating more leads and increasing the conversion rate to appointment.
4. Collect qualitative insights for informed decisions
Many sales professionals see collecting qualitative data as a tactic reserved for marketing.
However, collecting and sharing your own data about leads and customers will help you do all of the following:
Craft more compelling outreach and follow-up emails that get to the crux of customer pain points
Know exactly when to hone in on a certain aspect of your solution or features with each customer demographic and buyer persona
Address sales objections not just by logic but based on the prospect’s goals and motivations
Recording frequent pain points is a simple way to start collecting qualitative insights.
You and your reps talk to the target audience on a daily basis, and every single conversation is an opportunity to learn more about their challenges and desires.
These insights can help you tailor your sales pitch and techniques to be more engaging and impactful.
As a sales leader, you must also encourage active listening in sales calls and meetings and create a process for reps to record what they learn.
That recording process could look something like this:
Note down the timestamp during the call when the pain point was mentioned
Use a call recording system to go back to that point
Note word for word how the customer framed the pain point and the language used
Store this insight in your CRM’s notes feature or a global spreadsheet
Over time, as you collect data around this insight, you can help your reps identify which they mention most often.
Standardize how they’re positioned by looking at the common language used and order them by importance.
5. Get clear with your core differentiator
What makes you different from your competitors?
Marketers are usually responsible for answering this question, but just like with customer pain points, you’re uniquely positioned to uncover gaps left by your competitors.
There are two stages in your sales conversations where you can collect insights on competitors and uncover gaps in the market:
The initial conversation, asking the prospect which supplier they currently use
During objection handling, where inevitably they’ll measure you against other vendors
Let’s take a closer look at both approaches:
Approach 1: The initial conversation
The initial conversation about the prospect’s challenges is a prime opportunity for uncovering what attracted them to you and why they’re dissatisfied with their current vendor.
To uncover gaps your competitors are leaving open, ask questions like:
Why did you originally decide to work with [competitor]?
Which of their features did you find most useful?
Why are you looking for a new solution?
Then, dig deeper into their responses by asking follow-up questions. This initial conversation is where you find their true motivations and frustrations.
Seal More Deals With Your Free Sales Communication Handbook
Approach 2: Objection handling
Competitor-based objections (e.g., company A does [X], but you don’t… so why should I buy?”) are tremendous opportunities to figure out the gaps in your own positioning.
When a lead objects based on a competitor’s offering, follow up with “Why is this important to you?” or “How do you feel this will solve your problems better than our product (or feature) will?”
As long as you’re ready with the right sales enablement data or content, you can address the objections and better position yourself against the competition.
Note: Objections are a regular part of selling that every rep must know how to handle. For more guidance on tackling them, check out our sales objections tool.
6. Build a robust qualification system to prioritize leads
Use a structured qualification framework at the beginning of your sales process to accurately assess each lead’s fit. It’ll stop your team from wasting time chasing the wrong people.
There are three factors to consider when defining what makes a strong B2B lead:
Opportunity. Does the prospect have a clear challenge or problem that your product can solve? Opportunity is one of the most important things to check as you begin the sales cycle, because it helps you tailor your pitch and emphasize your value proposition’s most relevant aspects.
Organization. What’s the company’s size? Does it sell into your industry? Check out its website and company LinkedIn to see if it fits your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Stakeholder. Does it have the budget available? Small businesses and startups may need your solution, but many will lack the money to buy it. Who is involved in the buying process? These are the decision-makers you’ll need to impress.
Letting a sales opportunity go is difficult for salespeople, but disqualification is a key part of a smart sales strategy. Wasting time on poor leads distracts from tasks that will bear better fruit. It’s all about knowing when an opportunity doesn’t fit the criteria you set above.
For example, suppose you see that a company has only been in business for a year and know that your ideal clients are well-established with 100+ employees. In that case, you can politely end the process without setting an initial appointment.
The popular BANT qualification framework is another simple way of remembering what to check when evaluating leads.
BANT stands for:
Budget. Do they have the resources allowing them to buy?
Authority. Do they have the ability to make the final decision?
Need. Can you solve their problem(s)?
Timeline. When are they planning to invest in a solution?
If a lead meets all your criteria – i.e., they have the purchasing power and are ready to buy – you can categorize them as a sales-qualified lead (SQL) in your CRM and assign a rep to work on the deal.
7. Automate your follow-up processes and save time
Reclaim time by automating tasks that don’t need your and your team’s full attention. Doing so will allow you all to focus on more impactful activities.
For example, you could automatically send cross-selling emails to existing customers, or welcome new ones with onboarding content.
The first step in building automation into your sales strategy is to figure out what can and can’t (or should and shouldn’t) be automated.
Answer these questions to start making your sales strategy leaner:
Can the activity be eliminated? If an activity is not truly bringing value to the sales organization (or your prospects), removing it from your sales strategy might be best. Then you can focus your automation efforts on the most helpful actions.
Can the activity be automated? You can’t take all tasks off your plate through technology. For example, building relationships or deeply understanding unique customer needs requires a human touch. However, a great CRM can handle lead routing, follow-up reminders, pipeline updates and reporting.
With a list of common follow-up tasks to automate, you can begin working on finding the right technology to handle them. Your most helpful tool will undoubtedly be a sales and marketing CRM system – especially one that integrates with the rest of your tech stack.
Our State of Sales and Marketing report revealed that people believe adopting automation would positively impact their work, and those who automate tasks are generally happier in their roles.
When evaluating different CRM vendors, find one that ticks these boxes:
Business function. Does the vendor’s product help you achieve both common tasks and more specific business goals?
Cost. Does the system provide those features within your budget? The best CRM vendors offer a range of pricing plans.
Data quality. Does the product enrich your data and help you personalize your follow-up messaging?
Brand. Is the provider familiar? Do they have clout in the industry and a proven track record?
Scale. Will the solution handle your sales strategy plans for growth and expansion?
Your chosen CRM platform should have the features to automatically follow up with prospects. For example, in Pipedrive, you can create workflows that automate various follow-up tasks for you:
At the very least, your CRM should integrate with third-party tools to automate these tasks. Find out what other marketing, business and sales tools integrate with Pipedrive in our Marketplace.
Ultimately, automation is twofold: it handles the execution of basic tasks while empowering you to simplify activities that demand input. Know when to use which approach, and you’ll have a bulletproof follow-up process that runs on autopilot.
Final thoughts
You’ll notice that understanding your target audience is a common theme we’ve addressed across the entire guide.
After all, when you use your CRM to collect insight and data on your customer base, you can create a sales strategy template that aligns their needs with your goals – and once you’ve nailed this, all your carefully planned activities will have a bigger impact.
