A strong sales strategy plan creates the foundation for a cohesive and successful sales organization. Sales strategies and initiatives also align salespeople on shared goals and empower them to do their best work — keeping them happy and successful, too.

In this guide, I’ll dig into some sales strategies and initiatives that I’ve found can help you generate more leads and close more deals. But first, let’s define what a sales strategy is.

What is a sales strategy?

A sales strategy is a set of decisions, actions, and goals that inform how your sales team positions the organization and its products to close new customers. It acts as a guide for sales reps to follow, with clear goals for sales processes, product positioning, and competitive analysis.

Most strategies involve a detailed plan of best practices and processes set by management.

Why is a sales strategy important?

A clear sales strategy serves as a map for the growth of your business. Your sales strategy is key to future planning, problem-solving, goal-setting, and management.

An effective sales strategy can help you:

• Give your team direction and focus. Strategic clarity can help your sales reps and managers understand which goals and activities to prioritize. This can lead to improved productivity and outcomes.
• Ensure consistent messaging. Your sales strategy can help your team deliver a consistent message to prospects, partners, and customers. This can increase both trust and effectiveness.
• Optimize opportunities. Strong sales strategies will help you target the right prospects and customize your approach. This can help your team make the most of every sales opportunity.
• Improve resource allocation. Your sales strategy outlines your priorities and resources. In turn, this can help your sales team use their time, effort, and other resources more efficiently, boosting your team’s ability to focus on high-potential deals.

Next, let’s cover some of the sales strategies that I’ve found can be most effective.

Sales Strategy Types

The customer is the most important element to consider when choosing your business‘s sales strategy. Once you’ve addressed their needs, you can start thinking about your sales team. Your sales strategy should offer a framework that attracts and engages prospects — while simultaneously enabling your team to build relationships.

Prospects‘ and teams’ needs and interests vary, so your sales strategy shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Every sales org should draw up the type of sales strategy that works best for its priorities. Here are some frameworks you can reference when putting yours together.

Outbound Sales Strategy

Outbound sales strategies are the legacy approach of most sales teams. In these systems, companies base their sales strategy on the seller, not the customer.

Outbound sales processes often include cold calling, purchasing email lists, and engaging in other cold prospecting techniques. As a result, daily success metrics are often based on the quantity of connections, not the quality.

Outbound sales teams often rely on manually-entered data to monitor their sales pipelines and coach their salespeople. To enhance efficiency, outbound sales teams may utilize software to automate certain tasks, though the integration might not be seamless. They may also run sales and marketing independently, which can create a disjointed experience for buyers.

Inbound Sales Strategy

Inbound sales strategies are the modern methodology for sales teams. Companies following an inbound approach base their sales processes on buyer actions, capturing seller and buyer data to monitor their pipelines and coach their salespeople.

Inbound sales strategies connect reps’ activities to the three stages of the buyer journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — encouraging sales teams to map their tactics to each step.

The inbound methodology also aligns sales and marketing, creating a seamless experience for buyers. Check out this post to learn more about inbound sales and how to develop an inbound sales process.

Inbound vs. Outbound Sales Methodology

Nowadays, much of the information needed to evaluate a product is available online — empowering buyers and making them less reliant on sellers for product knowledge and insight. That means that if sales teams don’t align with the modern buyer’s process. If they fail to add value beyond the information already available online, then buyers will have no reason to engage with a sales team.

As mentioned above, inbound sales benefits buyers at each stage of the buyer process, including:

• Awareness.
• Consideration.
• Decision.

Inbound sales teams help buyers become aware of potential problems or opportunities and discover strategies to solve those problems.

Then, buyers evaluate whether the salesperson can help with their problem, and if the buyer thinks they can, they’ll purchase a solution to their problem. Inbound sales reps are helpful and trustworthy, creating partnerships rather than power struggles.

Consultative Selling

The modern sales professional should always act as a helpful, consultative resource for prospects. Consultative selling is a strategy that leans into that trend. It places emphasis on leading with relationship building and positioning the right product after that connection has been established.

This brand of sales involves certain key actions, including balancing questions with insights, developing trust with extensive product knowledge, active listening, and letting feedback guide conversations.

Free Sales Plan Template

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

• Target Market
• Prospecting Strategy
• Budget
• Goals

Account-Based Selling

Account-Based Selling (ABS) is a sales strategy that’s rooted in locking in on key, higher-value accounts as opposed to casting a wide net for a broad range of prospects. With ABS, salespeople are expected to identify and pursue specific accounts that have high conversion potential.

That means salespeople are expected to conduct thorough, thoughtful research on prospects to more effectively meet them where they are. The strategy also places emphasis on collaboration with marketing — sales teams lean on their marketing departments to create personalized, targeted content for each account.

Ultimately, successfully executed Account-Based Selling rests on a sales team’s ability to take a granular approach to really lock in on individual prospects’ needs and interests. Salespeople leveraging the strategy also need to know how to prioritize the accounts they pursue.

ABS can be extremely effective if it’s done right, but it does come with its share of risk — if your sales org elects to forego reaching out to a wide range of prospects in favor of connecting with key accounts, you generally have less room for error.