How To Become A Sales Planner: What It Is and Career Path

What is a sales planner and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Bill Thorne

Sales planners are in charge of creating strategies on how to generate sales and reach potential customers. As a sales planner, you will be involved with analyzing market trends, researching and conducting statistical analysis on a company's sales status, and how to increase sales performance. You also have to identify business opportunities, prepare proposals, and deliver presentations on how a company's sales performance, growth, and revenue can be increased. For this, you will need to work with teams from the marketing and sales department to ensure that the promotional and marketing campaign is in line with the sales goal.

You should have excellent analytical skills, communication skills, customer service skills, research skills, presentation skills, strategic thinking skills, sales proposition skills, and be computer literate. Most sales planners have a bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or a related course. You will earn an average of $88,592 per year.

What general advice would you give to a sales planner?

Bill Thorne

Executive Director of the NRF Foundation and Senior Vice President of Communication and Public Affairs of NRF, National Retail Federation

Retail is the largest private-sector employer in the country, directly employing 32 million people and supporting 52 million jobs overall - roughly one-quarter of the U.S. workforce. While COVID-19 has presented new and unexpected challenges, retailers have continued to showcase the industry's resilience and adaptability time and again. The safety and security of customers and employees remains our greatest priority. It is no doubt that the professional environment has changed this year, but retail continues to offer a plethora of career opportunities for graduates and seasoned veterans alike.

ScoreSales PlannerUS Average

Salary

4.4

Avg. Salary $55,883

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.4

Growth rate 5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.24%

Asian 4.07%

Black or African American 3.24%

Hispanic or Latino 9.82%

Unknown 4.41%

White 78.23%

Gender

female 60.59%

male 39.41%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

6.4

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.7

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.4

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a sales planner

Explore sales planner education requirements

Most common sales planner degrees

Bachelor's

84.3 %

Associate

7.1 %

Master's

6.2 %

Start to develop specific sales planner skills

Skills	Percentages
PowerPoint	9.83%
Customer Service	8.43%
Media Sales	6.45%
Math	5.32%
Account Executives	4.87%

Complete relevant sales planner training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New sales planners learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a sales planner based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real sales planner resumes.

Research sales planner duties and responsibilities

Customize a CRM solution for the company by purchasing off the shelf software to manage and follow up on sales leads.
Provide leadership and independently manage 6 national account reps booking [] in revenue for 2008 and [] for 2009.
Manage ad inventory availability and reservation process through DFP.
Manage Doubleclick interface and capabilities for both direct and programmatic business.

Prepare your sales planner resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your sales planner resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a sales planner resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable sales planner resume templates

Build a professional sales planner resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your sales planner resume.