Sales Strategy & Planning Flashcards
7 cards from real CSM practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Sales Strategy & Planning flashcards as text
Which sales planning approach starts with a revenue goal and works backward to determine required activity levels?
Answer: Top-down planning
Top-down planning begins with an executive revenue target and decomposes it into quotas, activities, and headcount requirements.
A sales manager notices that win rates drop sharply when deals involve more than three decision-makers. What strategic adjustment is most appropriate?
Answer: Develop a champion-building playbook and multi-threading strategy
Multi-threading—engaging multiple stakeholders through a coached internal champion—directly addresses win-rate erosion in complex buying committees.
What is the primary purpose of a competitive displacement strategy?
Answer: Targeting prospects already using a rival solution and converting them
Competitive displacement focuses resources on stealing installed-base customers from rivals by highlighting differentiated value and switching cost offsets.
A territory plan assigns higher quotas to reps covering accounts with the greatest total addressable market. This is an example of:
Answer: Market-potential-based quota allocation
Market-potential-based allocation ties quota to the estimated revenue opportunity within each territory, incentivizing effort where upside is largest.
When building an annual sales plan, which element should be defined BEFORE setting individual rep quotas?
Answer: Company revenue target and growth assumptions
The company revenue target and growth assumptions form the foundation from which quotas, headcount, and activity plans are derived.
A 'land and expand' sales strategy is best described as:
Answer: Securing an initial small sale then growing the account through upsell and cross-sell
Land and expand prioritizes a low-friction initial sale to reduce buying risk, then systematically grows the account value post-adoption.
Which metric most directly measures how efficiently a sales team converts pipeline into closed revenue?
Answer: Win rate
Win rate (closed-won deals divided by total opportunities) is the direct measure of pipeline-to-revenue conversion efficiency.