Sales Planning: A Guide For The CSO

By effectively navigating the sales planning process, the chief sales officer (CSO) can help sales gain an early advantage to position it for a successful year. The CSO must drive a well-structured process that allocates sufficient time to gain agreement on an achievable sales target and build a plan to achieve that target. Forrester’s benchmarking data shows that high-performing sales organizations are 28% more likely to invest four or more months in sales planning than their lower-performing peers. In this report, we describe the CSO’s roles, responsibilities, and actions across the first four steps of the Forrester Sales Planning Process.