Sales StrategySales PlanningRevenue GrowthB2B SalesSales Process
Create Sales Strategy Plan
T. Krause
Build a complete, execution-ready sales strategy that maps your ideal customer profile, defines your sales process, and gives your team a clear playbook for generating consistent revenue. This prompt turns sales thinking into a structured plan you can start using immediately.
A sales strategy isn't a target — it's a system. Most businesses set revenue goals without designing the process that will achieve them. This prompt builds a complete sales strategy from ideal customer profile through closing process, including the metrics, tools, and playbook your team needs to execute with consistency rather than luck.
What It Does
- Defines your ideal customer profile, positioning, and value proposition in language your sales team can actually use in conversations.
- Maps a step-by-step sales process with clear stage criteria, conversion benchmarks, and action items at each stage.
- Produces a complete sales playbook including prospecting tactics, discovery questions, objection responses, and closing frameworks — tailored to your business model and deal size.
The Prompt
#CONTEXT:
I need to create a comprehensive sales strategy for my business. The strategy should cover how we identify and prioritize prospects, how we run our sales process from first contact to close, how we handle objections, and how we measure and improve sales performance. I want something concrete enough that a new salesperson could follow it and be productive within 30 days.
#ROLE:
You are a senior B2B sales strategist and revenue consultant with experience building sales playbooks for companies from $0 to $10M ARR. You understand how to design sales processes that are repeatable, scalable, and adapted to specific deal sizes and buyer psychologies. You build systems that work for teams of one as well as teams of twenty.
#RESPONSE GUIDELINES:
1. Start with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) — define the company profile, buyer personas, and qualifying criteria before touching the sales process.
2. Design the sales process as a series of stages, each with a clear entry criterion, exit criterion, and required action.
3. For each stage, specify the primary goal, recommended tactics, and what "stuck" looks like so reps know when to escalate or disqualify.
4. Include a discovery question framework — at least 8 questions organized by category (situation, problem, implication, value) that reveal whether a prospect is a genuine fit.
5. Address the 3–5 most common objections for my category with specific response frameworks.
6. Close with a performance measurement framework: which metrics to track weekly, what benchmarks to target, and what to do when a metric falls below benchmark.
#SALES STRATEGY CRITERIA:
1. The ICP must be specific enough to make prospecting decisions — "mid-market B2B companies" is not an ICP; "SaaS companies with 50–200 employees, marketing-led growth, US-based, in Series A–B" is.
2. Stage exit criteria must be objective and verifiable, not subjective assessments — "prospect agreed to schedule demo" is an exit criterion; "prospect seems interested" is not.
3. Discovery questions should uncover pain, urgency, and economic impact — not just gather information.
4. Objection responses should acknowledge the concern before addressing it — never dismiss or argue.
5. Metrics must be leading indicators (activities) as well as lagging indicators (revenue) — tracking only closed revenue gives you no warning when the pipeline is deteriorating.
#INFORMATION ABOUT ME:
- My business and what I sell: [BUSINESS AND PRODUCT/SERVICE DESCRIPTION]
- My target customer: [TARGET CUSTOMER — company size, industry, role of buyer, key pain points]
- My average deal size and sales cycle length: [DEAL ECONOMICS — e.g., $5K ACV, 45-day sales cycle]
- My current sales situation: [CURRENT STATE — e.g., founder-led sales, first sales hire, 3-person sales team]
- My primary sales channel: [CHANNEL — e.g., outbound cold email, inbound leads from marketing, partnerships, referrals]
- My most common objections: [OBJECTIONS — if known, list 2–3 you hear most often]
#RESPONSE FORMAT:
Ideal Customer Profile:
- Company profile: [firmographic criteria]
- Buyer personas: [role 1] | [role 2] | [Economic buyer]
- Qualifying criteria (MUST have): [list]
- Disqualifying criteria (walk away): [list]
Sales Process Stages:
| Stage | Entry Criterion | Primary Goal | Key Actions | Exit Criterion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [stage] | [criterion] | [goal] | [actions] | [criterion] |
Discovery Question Framework:
Situation: [2–3 questions]
Problem: [2–3 questions]
Implication: [2–3 questions]
Value: [2–3 questions]
Objection Handling:
- "[Objection 1]": [Acknowledge] → [Reframe] → [Evidence]
- "[Objection 2]": [Acknowledge] → [Reframe] → [Evidence]
- "[Objection 3]": [Acknowledge] → [Reframe] → [Evidence]
Sales Performance Metrics:
| Metric | Measurement Frequency | Benchmark Target | Action if Below Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
30-Day Onboarding Plan for New Sales Reps:
Week 1: [Focus]
Week 2: [Focus]
Week 3: [Focus]
Week 4: [First solo activities]
How to Use
- Fill in your target customer with as much specificity as possible — the prompt output is only as useful as your ICP inputs. Include deal size and sales cycle length, as these dramatically affect process design.
- List the objections you actually hear most often, even if you're not sure how to respond to them. The objection handling section is often the most immediately useful output.
- Use the stage table as a CRM pipeline template — each stage maps directly to a pipeline stage with clear entry and exit conditions.
- Share the output with any sales reps, giving them the discovery questions and objection handling frameworks as a starting playbook to adapt from real conversations.
Example Input
## Information about me
- My business: AI prompt consulting and training programs for businesses; we help teams use AI tools more effectively
- My target customer: Operations managers, marketing directors, and founders at companies with 20–200 employees who are actively trying to adopt AI but struggling with where to start
- My average deal size and sales cycle: $3,500 average deal (mix of $2K workshops and $5K consulting packages), 3–6 week sales cycle
- My current sales situation: Founder-led, 80% of deals come from referrals, trying to build an outbound motion
- My primary sales channel: Outbound LinkedIn outreach + referrals + inbound from content marketing
- My most common objections: "We're not ready yet", "We already have an IT team handling this", "The budget isn't there right now"
Tips
- Use the ICP output to audit your current pipeline. Run every deal in your current pipeline against the ICP's qualifying and disqualifying criteria. Deals that fail the ICP criteria are likely to stall, so deprioritize them or walk away sooner.
- Score your discovery questions with real prospects. After each discovery call, rate whether you asked all the questions and what the answers revealed. This quickly shows which questions produce the most useful signal.
- Ask for email templates for each stage. Follow up with a prompt asking for one email template per sales stage — outreach, follow-up, pre-meeting confirmation, post-meeting, and proposal follow-up. This builds out the tactical playbook from the strategic framework.
- Track activity metrics before revenue metrics. New sales processes need 60–90 days to produce closed deals. If you only track revenue, you have no early warning that the process is working. Track calls, demos, and proposals weekly from day one.
- Revisit the ICP after 90 days. Your first ICP will be based on assumptions. After 90 days of sales activity, revise it based on which deals progressed fastest and closed most often.