A sales plan can look achievable in a spreadsheet and fall apart once you assign the accounts. One territory may have twice the opportunity of another. A new hire may carry a full quota before they finish ramping. Field reps may spend so much time driving that they can’t visit every account on schedule. The best sales planning software helps you spot those gaps before the plan goes live.
Start with Anaplan if sales and finance need to model the same revenue plan, Xactly Plan if quota and headcount are your main concerns, or Salesforce Sales Planning if territory assignments already revolve around Salesforce. Badger Maps is the better starting point for daily field routes, while SAP Integrated Business Planning is a specialist pick for businesses that need to match customer demand with inventory and supply.
Best sales planning software at a glance
| Software | Best for | What to test before buying |
|---|---|---|
| Anaplan | Cross-functional revenue and capacity planning | Whether finance and sales can trace a target to the same assumptions |
| Salesforce Sales Planning | Territory and quota planning in Salesforce | How approved account assignments and quota changes reach the CRM |
| Xactly Plan | Quota allocation and sales capacity scenarios | How hiring delays, vacancies, and ramp times affect quota coverage |
| Varicent Sales Planning | Connecting territory, quota, capacity, and compensation planning | How a midyear account move affects targets and incentive assumptions |
| Salesforce Maps | Route planning for teams already using Salesforce | Whether the proposed edition handles your visit rules and scheduling constraints |
| Badger Maps | Mobile route planning for field sales teams | CRM sync, account filtering, and last-minute route changes |
| SAP Integrated Business Planning | Sales and operations planning for product businesses | How a revised demand forecast flows into inventory and supply decisions |
This shortlist is based on official product documentation. The picks are grouped by the decisions each product supports, with different criteria for quota planning, field routes, and supply planning.
What does sales planning software do?
A sales planning tool helps a business decide where to sell, who covers each account, and what targets the team can reasonably carry. A revenue operations team might use one to divide accounts by opportunity, model hiring and ramp time, and allocate quotas. The plan becomes the baseline against which sales leaders review coverage and performance.
Three related software categories solve different problems:
- Sales territory management software helps determine which rep or team owns each account. It matters when workloads, account potential, or ownership rules vary across regions and segments.
- Sales route planning software helps field reps decide which customers to visit and in what order. It matters when travel time, appointment windows, and visit frequency limit coverage.
- Sales and operations planning software connects expected demand with inventory, supply, and operating capacity. It matters when a change in the sales outlook affects purchasing or production.
If your bigger problem is fragmented CRM data, pipeline visibility, or reporting, see PickMySoft’s guide to revenue operations software.
1. Anaplan — Best for connecting sales and finance plans
Anaplan is a strong fit when finance sets a revenue target and sales needs to show whether the available territories, accounts, and people can support it. Its territory and quota planning application brings top-down targets and bottom-up account potential into the same planning process. Anaplan also documents collaborative what-if modeling for quota planning. anaplan.com
In the demo, move a planned hiring class back one quarter and see how the change flows through capacity and quota coverage. Ask who can change the assumptions and how regional managers review the resulting plan. Include model administration in the buying decision. The value depends on someone owning the inputs after rollout, especially when finance and sales update them on different schedules.
2. Salesforce Sales Planning — Best for Salesforce-based territory and quota planning
Salesforce Sales Planning supports plans built from Salesforce or connected data sources. Its documentation describes territory planning and quota plans built from territory alignments, including hierarchy, ownership, and attribute data. This makes it a logical candidate when Salesforce already holds the account and ownership records that drive your planning process. Salesforce Help
Test a territory split with an account that has open opportunities and related subsidiaries. Ask an analyst to model the change, a manager to review it, and a CRM administrator to explain when the approved assignment takes effect. Get the required Salesforce editions and entitlements confirmed in writing. Small differences in how your organization handles account ownership can change how much configuration the workflow needs.
3. Xactly Plan — Best for quota and headcount scenarios
Xactly Plan helps sales leaders model headcount, capacity, territories, and quotas. Its product documentation describes scenarios such as adding reps, changing ramp time, or reorganizing territories. It’s a good starting point if sales leadership needs to quantify how much productive capacity it loses when hiring slips or turnover rises. Xactly Plan
Ask Xactly to model a fully productive rep, a new hire on a staged ramp, and a vacant territory in the same plan. Then compare the capacity implied by quota assignments with the company’s revenue target. If the proposal also includes compensation or forecasting, ask which Xactly products cover those workflows and how data moves between them. Xactly
4. Varicent Sales Planning — Best for connecting planning and compensation
Varicent Sales Planning brings together territory, quota, and capacity planning. Varicent also describes a model that links those decisions with compensation planning assumptions. It’s worth shortlisting if changing an account assignment or quota routinely sends sales operations and compensation teams back to their spreadsheets. Varicent
Bring a real midyear reorganization to the demo. For example, move a group of named accounts from geographic territories to a strategic accounts team. Check how the plan reflects target changes for both groups and which compensation steps require a separate workflow or product. The goal is to see whether administrators can explain the change to the reps affected by it.
5. Salesforce Maps — Best for routing around Salesforce records
Salesforce Maps lets field teams visualize Salesforce records, plan routes, and capture activity. Salesforce documents manager-defined visit plans in Maps Advanced, making edition selection important if managers need to set visit rules for reps. Salesforce Help
Ask a field rep to build a day around two fixed appointments, a high-priority prospect, and an account due for a visit. Then cancel an appointment and see how easily they can rebuild the route and record completed visits. Salesforce Maps is the stronger candidate when those activities need to revolve around Salesforce records your team already maintains.
6. Badger Maps — Best for mobile-first field sales routing
Badger Maps combines route planning, sales mapping, and CRM integration in a mobile-focused platform. It’s a strong candidate for outside sales teams whose immediate problem is fitting more relevant customer visits into a working day. The \#1 B2B Field Sales Platform
Give a rep a list of accounts with mixed priorities and have them build tomorrow’s route from a phone. After a visit, ask them to log the outcome and check where it lands in the CRM. Confirm which fields sync, in which direction, and how quickly. For daily adoption, the time it takes to update an account between appointments can matter as much as route quality.
7. SAP Integrated Business Planning — Best for sales and operations planning
SAP Integrated Business Planning combines sales and operations planning with demand, inventory, and supply planning. It belongs on the shortlist when the business needs to decide whether it can fulfill the volume that sales expects to sell. SAP Help Portal
A useful demo starts with a promotion that increases expected demand for a product family. Ask the planning team to show how the revised demand changes inventory and supply requirements, where a shortage becomes visible, and how stakeholders review their options. Bring operations and supply chain leaders into the evaluation because they’ll own many of the inputs and decisions.
How to choose a sales planning tool
Run the same scenario across comparable vendors. Give each one a representative sample of accounts, ownership rules, targets, and constraints. Keep one version of your existing plan as a baseline so you can compare the result and see how the software handles exceptions.
- Measure territory balance by opportunity and workload. Check whether similarly sized territories have comparable account potential, travel demands, or service requirements.
- Test a midyear change. Simulate a hiring delay, a rep leaving, or an account moving territories. Ask who approves the revision and how teams see the effective date.
- Check what writes back to the CRM. Distinguish fields the tool can read from the assignments, quotas, or visit outcomes it can update.
- Price the full workflow. Request a breakdown of licenses, connectors, implementation, mapping or compensation add-ons, and ongoing administration. Check who needs a paid seat, including approvers and field reps.
- Have the person doing the job run the demo. An analyst should revise a quota model, a manager should approve a territory change, and a rep should rebuild a route on mobile.
Once you know who covers each account and what goals they carry, the next question is how to equip them to execute. PickMySoft’s sales enablement software guide covers tools for seller readiness, content, and buyer engagement.
