Develop a Sales Strategy: Five Decisions You Have to Make

Why does sales without a strategy feel like an endless run?

Many owners know the feeling: sales is running, but it is running after everything. Every inquiry is accepted, every quote written, every discount request negotiated. At year end, revenue is decent, the margin thin, and the team exhausted. Nobody could say which orders were deliberately pursued and which simply arrived.

This is rarely due to a lack of effort. It is because nobody has decided where the effort should be directed. A sales strategy is the sum of decisions about which customers, which offer, which route, and which terms a business wants to generate its revenue with. It defines what time and money in sales are spent on, and what they are not spent on.

For a business with five or fifty employees this matters more than for a corporation, because resources are scarcer. An hour spent with an unsuitable prospect is missing for a suitable one. The guiding question of this article is therefore: which decisions does a small business have to make so that its sales has a direction? To answer it, we first break the strategy down into five decisions you can make in an afternoon, then go through them one by one, check at the end whether they fit together, and clarify who reviews them and how often.

Strategy in sales mainly means deciding which deals you will stop chasing.

What is a sales strategy? The Five-Decision Map

The Five-Decision Map is the mental model of this article. It organizes the strategy into five questions that build on each other. The order is deliberate: if you talk about price before your target customers are set, you are negotiating with yourself.

The map does not replace a sales process. The sales process governs how a single inquiry becomes an order. The strategy governs which inquiries you want in the first place and how many you can handle. Each needs the other: a clean process without a strategy works efficiently for the wrong customers.

Decisions 1 and 2: For whom, and with what offer?

The first decision is the hardest because it contains a no. Defining target customers means deliberately not pursuing others. That is difficult as long as every order seems welcome. A look at your own numbers helps: with which customers was the close rate high, the collaboration smooth, and the margin good? Almost always these customers form a recognizable group. How to turn that into a profile your sales team actually uses is described in the guide defining target customers.

A study from Brazil suggests that this work pays off. Rodrigues, Brito, Moreno, Toaldo, Prado, and Marchetti (2020) surveyed 223 companies in information and communication technology. They examined how market orientation, meaning the systematic gathering of knowledge about customers and competitors, relates to financial results. In their model, the link ran through the ability to manage the sales force: how sales is structured, how salespeople are led, and which customers it focuses on. Market orientation acted mainly on customer targeting and on leadership. It is a survey within one industry and one country. The direction is still clear: knowledge about customers only pays off once it turns into a decision about whom sales visits.

The second decision follows from the first. For a clearly described customer group you can build an offer that is repeatable: two to four fixed services with a defined scope. The less you reinvent for each customer, the faster your quotes and the better your margin. Why this determines whether a business can scale is shown in the article Scaling or just growing?.

Decision 3: Which sales channel fits your customers?

A sales channel is the route through which you reach and serve customers: field sales with visits, inside sales by phone and video, dealers and partners, your own website, or platforms. Small businesses often make the mistake of working all channels a little. The result is one channel that works and four that eat time.

Ergun and Schmitz (2026) of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany studied how salespeople should mix in-person visits with remote calls by video or phone. At a European industrial manufacturer, they analyzed CRM data on 3,565 existing customers with more than 15,000 contacts, served by 27 salespeople over 18 months, and added a customer survey in a second study. The result is an inverted U: a mix of both forms performed better than visits alone and better than remote contact alone.

In the study, the right share depended on three things: how complex the product is, which contact route the customer prefers, and how skilled the salesperson is at remote calls. The values come from a single company and cannot be transferred one to one. The logic can: the channel follows from target customer and offer. A simple, recurring product tolerates a lot of remote contact. A project that needs explaining needs people to meet.

A second study urges caution when combining channels. Ramos, Claro, and Germiniano (2023) analyzed data on 13,210 business customers of one company over two years. A stand-alone inside sales team created more value for customers, especially for previously less valuable customers and simpler sales. When the same customer was also served by field sales or through distributors, performance fell. For a small business this means: decide which channel serves which customer group instead of offering every customer every route.

Decision 4: How do you set prices strategically?

In many small and mid-sized companies, price is the result of a conversation, not of a decision. The customer asks for a discount, the salesperson gives in, and over time a price level emerges that nobody chose. The strategic decision has two parts: a pricing logic, meaning the rule by which you arrive at a price, and a floor you will not go below.

• Pricing logic: Do you price by effort, by package, or by the value to the customer? For fixed services, packages with a clear scope are usually the simplest route.
• Floor: What contribution margin must at least remain per order? Contribution margin is revenue minus the costs caused directly by the order.
• Discount rule: Who may grant how much of a discount, and in return for what? A discount without something in return is a price cut.

If your prices have not gone up in years, that is itself a strategic decision, just an unconscious one. How to prepare and justify an increase is covered in the guide raising prices without losing customers.

Decision 5: How much selling can your business handle? A worked example

The fifth decision is forgotten most often. A revenue target without a time calculation assumes that someone will somehow manage the necessary conversations and quotes. In small businesses that someone is usually the owner, who also delivers, buys, and leads on the side.

So calculate backward. In the following example, all numbers are freely chosen. A business has 20 hours a week for sales over 46 working weeks, so 920 hours a year. A conversation including preparation takes 2 hours, a quote 4 hours, the follow-up 1 hour. Of the decided quotes, just under one in three currently becomes an order; the close rate is 30 percent. Handover to delivery takes 1 hour per order. That means an order needs about 24 hours of sales time, and the business manages about 38 orders a year. At 15,000 euros per order, that is around 570,000 euros. The target is 800,000 euros, which means 53 orders.

The calculation shows why the five decisions belong together. With today’s habits, the time is not enough. More inquiries would not change that; they would only produce more quotes that sit idle. Only a focus on suitable customers, which lifts the close rate, and a channel that saves travel time bring the target within reach. How to derive weekly activities from such a target is shown in the guide planning sales targets.

Capacity also means limiting the load. Claro, Plouffe, and Vieira (2023) found in salesperson data around the introduction of a new compensation plan that too many opportunities pursued at the same time overload people and reduce both commitment to the goal and performance. Beyond a certain point, more parallel opportunities are no longer progress but dispersion.

Do your decisions fit together? The consistency test

A strategy rarely fails because of a single wrong decision. It fails because the decisions do not fit each other: a premium price with a channel that allows no advice, or large accounts as the target with a sales function that has two hours a week. So test your five sentences against each other.

• Target customers and offer: Would a typical target customer buy exactly this offer without you having to rebuild it?
• Offer and channel: Can the offer be explained and sold through the chosen route?
• Channel and price: Does the price cover the cost of the channel, such as travel time or dealer margin?
• Price and target customers: Can and will the target customers pay this price?
• Capacity and target: Does the time calculation yield enough orders for the revenue target?
• All five: Can everyone in sales repeat the five sentences without looking them up?

1. Write down the current state

   For each of the five decisions, describe in one sentence how you actually work today, not how you would like to work.

2. Put the numbers next to it

   From the quotes of the last twelve months, pull close rate, order value, and margin per customer group.

3. Formulate target sentences

   Rewrite the five sentences. Each sentence also states what you will no longer do.

4. Check consistency

   Go through the test questions. Where two sentences contradict each other, the decision higher up on the map wins.

5. Discuss with the team

   Present the page to sales and ask where it does not work in daily practice. Adjust it once, then it applies for a quarter.

Who decides on the sales strategy, and how often?

The five decisions belong to the owner. That holds even when a sales manager or a team is responsible for execution. Target customers, offer, and price limits are directional decisions about the company. You can delegate the groundwork, not the decision. How the owner’s role in sales changes with company size is described in the guide scaling sales in four phases.

A strategy that is reinvented every year is not one. Neither is one that is never reviewed. A fixed rhythm has proven itself: once a quarter you put the five sentences next to the numbers. Fundamental changes happen only when the market has changed or the numbers have spoken clearly for two quarters.

A good sales strategy is boring: five sentences that hold for a year.

What you can do this week

You need no offsite and no consultant. One afternoon and last year’s list of quotes are enough for a first draft.

1. Monday: Sort the orders of the last twelve months by customer group and note close rate, order value, and margin for each group.
2. Tuesday: Write the sentences for target customers and offer. Each sentence contains a no.
3. Wednesday: Set your main channel, pricing logic, and discount limit.
4. Thursday: Do the capacity calculation: hours per week, hours per order, possible orders per year.
5. Friday: Run the five sentences through the consistency test and schedule the review three months from now.

By the end of the week you have one page that explains why your sales team does what it does. That alone changes the conversations in the team: instead of “Should we quote this?” the question becomes “Does this fit our five sentences?”

Taken together: a small business gives its sales a direction when it makes five decisions explicitly, namely for whom, with which offer, through which channel, at what prices, and with what capacity it sells. Each of these decisions contains a no. They prove their value only when they fit together and are reviewed at fixed intervals.