Prospecting Plan: 7 Steps, a Filled-In Example and the Math Worked Backwards

A prospecting plan fits on one page and does one job: it replaces "we'll make more calls" with numbers you can check at the end of the month. This guide builds a sales prospecting plan in seven steps, then fills one in from end to end, from the revenue target down to the cost of a signed customer.

Many sales prospecting plans start with an activity: so many calls, so many emails, so many follow-ups. Yet that volume says nothing about what it has to produce. Without knowing how many meetings you need, you can't tell whether 50 calls a day is too many or too few. Here we start from the other end, and every number comes from the one before it.

Key takeaways

• The plan comes down to one page: seven decisions, each with a number and a deadline.
• Volume is worked out backwards: target revenue, customers, opportunities, meetings, replies, contacts, rows in the list.
• The rates in the example are assumptions. Replace them with your own after your first 100 sends, and read those as an order of magnitude.
• Part of any list never gets used: you have to source more rows than the contacts you need to reach, and that surplus has a cost.
• Set the review date before the first send: without it, nobody will look at the numbers.

What is a sales prospecting plan?

A prospecting plan is the document that sets, for a given period, what you want to sign, who you are targeting, with what resources, at what pace, and how you will know it worked. It turns a sales target into dated actions, each owned by someone and each measurable.

It is useful at three moments. Before launch, to check the target is reachable with the time and budget you have. During, so the team knows what to do on Monday morning without asking. After, to find the stage that broke when the result isn't there. A founder prospecting alone needs one as much as a team of ten: the short version fits in a spreadsheet tab.

Don't confuse it with the method. Our guide on how to prospect effectively explains how to decide on channel, message and cadence. The plan records those decisions with numbers and a deadline.

Why start from revenue instead of call counts

Starting from revenue changes the question. Instead of "what can we do this month?", you ask "what do we have to do to sign this amount?". If the answer is more than the team can absorb, you see it on paper, before you have burned a quarter. The calculation always has the same shape:

1. Customers to sign = target revenue / average contract value.
2. Opportunities = customers / close rate.
3. Meetings = opportunities / share of meetings that qualify.
4. Positive replies = meetings / share of replies that accept a meeting.
5. Contacts reached = positive replies / positive reply rate.
6. Rows to import = contacts reached / share of rows actually usable.
7. Budget = selling time + tools + cost of the list.

Each rate becomes a checkpoint, and the budget gets a number without guesswork.

The 7 steps of a prospecting plan

1. Set numeric goals.
2. Define the target.
3. Build the prospecting list.
4. Choose channels and prepare messages.
5. Set the budget and acquisition cost.
6. Lay out the prospecting schedule.
7. Pick KPIs and set the review date.

Step 1: set numeric goals

Write the outcome goal of your prospecting plan with an amount and a date: in the example further down, "72k EUR of new revenue by the end of March". SMART goals sum up the requirement: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. "Grow the portfolio" doesn't qualify, because nothing will ever tell you it was missed.

Then run the chain down to the volume you have to source. The calculator below starts from the example: 4 customers a month lead to 1,600 contacts reached and 2,500 rows to import. Change the values, your rates are the ones that matter.

Part of the list will never be used: companies outside the target, duplicates, people whose address stays out of reach. Take that rate from your last campaign report; it adds to the volume you have to source every month. To go from meetings to contacts per day, use our planner for daily prospecting volume by channel.

Step 2: define the target

Describe the company that signs fastest and stays longest: industry, size, region, tools already in place, trigger event. You now have your ideal customer profile (ICP). Then add the buyer persona: the person to contact inside that company, their role and what is on their mind. If you have several segments, handle them one at a time, each with its own qualification criteria.

A good test: reading one row in your list, would two reps make the same decision? If one keeps it and the other drops it, the criteria are still too vague. Write down what you exclude too: sorting will go much faster.

Step 3: build the prospecting list

The prospecting list brings together the people to contact, each with a dated contact method. There are three sources: your own data (past customers, dormant CRM contacts), bought lists, or lists built to your criteria, which match the target from step 2. A bad list distorts every rate that follows.

With Derrick, for example, you describe your target in one sentence in the web app, get the matching leads, then search for their emails. For the full method (sorting rows, deduplication, order of operations), follow our guide to building a prospect list.

Give every row at least a name, title (decision-maker or not), company, contact method and verification date. Without that date, there is no way to tell which rows have gone stale.

Step 4: choose channels and prepare messages

Pick the channel where your target already replies: phone, email, LinkedIn, trade shows, direct mail. Add one only if you can reach enough people through it. A multichannel plan isn't mandatory: if you only have a direct number for one contact in five, a phone-led plan won't hit its volumes, however well it converts on paper.

For each channel you keep, write a short pitch, a script or template message, and answers to the most frequent objections. Set the number of follow-ups before a contact is closed, too, and log each exchange in the CRM so nobody chases forever.

Step 5: set the budget and acquisition cost

The budget of a prospecting plan covers reps' time, sending and tracking tools, and the cost of the list. The customer acquisition cost formula brings it down to one number: CAC = (marketing costs + sales costs) / new customers. Compare it with what a customer brings in. If the cost gets close to first-year margin, rework the target, the contract value or the channel before launching.

The list can be costed row by row. With Derrick (pricing as of November 2026):

• importing a lead from a sentence: 1 credit if your own Sales Navigator account is connected (LinkedIn connected through the Chrome extension), 10 credits otherwise;
• enriching a kept row to qualify it: 1 credit per profile, LinkedIn connected;
• finding a work email: 5 credits per email found, already verified, on paid plans.

Step 6: lay out the prospecting schedule

The schedule spreads the work over time: who does what, on which days, in which protected slots. Book those slots in the calendar before the month starts, or emergencies will eat them. No need to reinvent the grid: take our sample prospecting week and adapt it to the volume from step 1.

Step 7: pick KPIs and set the review date

Separate two families of metrics. Activity KPIs tell you whether the plan is being executed: rows sourced, contacts reached, calls made. Outcome KPIs tell you whether it works: positive reply rate, meetings booked, conversion rate, sales cycle length, cost per lead, cost per customer and ROI. If the team does what was planned and results don't follow, review targeting or messaging. If it misses its volumes, look first at how the team is organized.

Each KPI compares to a line in your plan: in the example further down, 2,500 rows sourced, 1,600 contacts reached, 64 positive replies, 32 meetings, 16 opportunities and 4 customers a month, at 1.17k EUR per customer. To choose your metrics, see our lead generation KPIs. Then put a review date on the calendar, 30 days out at most.

A filled-in prospecting plan example

Here is a fictional example: a B2B software company, selling at 6k EUR a year, that wants to sign 72k EUR of new revenue in one quarter. It isn't a real customer, and every rate is an assumption made for the example, never a market average. The right-hand column shows where each number comes from.

Each customer costs about 20% of their first year here: does that ratio hold for your margin? The table lets you answer before spending anything. Without a connected Sales Navigator account, imports rise to 25,000 credits, the total to 35,000, and you need the Pro plan at €175 a month. Finally, the list is about 1% of the budget in this example: if its quality drops, all that selling time is wasted.

Download this prospecting plan as a spreadsheet (CSV) and replace the values with yours.

Recalibrate your rates after your first 100 sends

A plan filled with assumed rates is still an assumption. Launch a first batch of 100 contacts, wait for the sequence to end, then replace the example's rates with yours in the step 1 calculator. A hundred sends give you an order of magnitude: run the numbers again after several hundred.

Change one variable at a time, or you won't know which one mattered. If the positive reply rate halves, the volume to source doubles, and so does selling time. Better to find that out after two weeks than at the end of the quarter.

Mistakes that sink a prospecting plan

• A goal with no derived volume (step 1). "20 meetings a month" means nothing until you know how many contacts it takes to get them.
• A target that is too broad (step 2). It inflates the list and drags the reply rate down, and then the message gets the blame.
• An external list sent without verification (step 3). Bounces damage your domain and distort every rate you measure afterwards.
• A budget that forgets time (step 5). Salaries weigh far more than tools. Leave them out and any channel looks profitable on paper.
• No review date (step 7). Without a fixed appointment, the plan sits in a folder until the year-end review.

Build the plan's list with Derrick

In the example, the list is 2,500 rows a month. In the Derrick web app, you write who you are looking for, say "sales directors at B2B software companies in France, 50 to 200 employees", and importing leads from a prompt returns the list. Expect 1 credit per lead if your own Sales Navigator account is connected (LinkedIn connected, which needs the Chrome extension), 10 credits without. Enrichment then completes the kept rows, and the email search returns addresses that are already verified, at 5 credits per email found. Email verification is for lists from elsewhere, such as an old CRM or an export; it costs 1 credit for each email verified, on paid plans. Two video tutorials show importing from a sentence and the email search.

Depending on how you work, the same actions are available in Google Sheets (a sidebar, column by column), in Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client, and through the REST API if the list feeds a CRM or a workflow. MCP and API are included from the Plus plan, at €47.50 a month, the plan used in the example.

For a smaller volume, the Standard plan at €20 a month gives you 10,000 credits, and the free plan offers 100 credits a month to test imports. Email search and verification need a paid plan.

Free prospecting plan template, no form

Download the prospecting plan template (CSV, no email needed): one row per number, with planned, actual, gap and the calculation to apply. It opens in Excel or Google Sheets and holds the example's values, ready to replace with yours.

To track execution, copy our cold outreach tracker in Google Sheets: just make a copy. It logs each contact, the channel and the follow-up date, then calculates your reply and meeting rates, which you compare to the lines in your plan.

Where to start this week

Take an hour to draft the first version of your prospecting plan: open the step 1 calculator and enter your real target. If you have no history, keep the example's assumptions and label them as such. Then write your target in one sentence, source 100 contacts and set your review date. The rest of the document fills in from that first batch.