Short answer: Good AOP planning starts with a fact base: an honest look back at how the commercial system actually performed, measured against benchmarks. Without it, every target in the plan is a guess with a decimal point. The fact base gives you the “today” values that every planning assumption has to be tested against.
Most annual planning starts at the end. The board sets a target, and leaders work out how to get there. The trouble is that “how to get there” depends on numbers nobody has checked: what win rate really was last year, how long new reps really took to ramp, how much pipeline marketing really sourced.
When those numbers come from memory or from last year’s plan instead of last year’s data, the new plan inherits every error in the old one.
A planning fact base is a single, agreed view of how the commercial organization performed over the last year, built from data rather than opinion. It covers sales, marketing, customer success and the market, and it compares each measure to a benchmark so leaders can see where performance is strong and where it’s weak.
SBI’s annual planning approach puts the fact base first in its five-step process: Establish Fact Base, Inventory Bets, Place Bets, Build Revenue Plan, and Execute and Rollout. Everything that follows depends on it. For the full set of elements, see The Elements of an Annual Planning Fact Base.
Five areas cover most of what a commercial plan depends on:
Revenue operations should own the data collection. Functional leaders should own the interpretation.
Benchmarks turn a number into a judgment. A 3.2x pipeline coverage ratio means nothing on its own. Next to a benchmark, it tells you whether to inspect pipeline quality or invest in demand generation.
These are SBI’s general guidelines. Results vary by industry, lifecycle stage and go-to-market model, so treat them as a starting point for discussion, not a verdict.
| Measure | SBI benchmark | If you’re above | If you’re below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales investment as % of revenue | 20% to 25% | Review sales efficiency | Evaluate where to invest |
| Marketing investment as % of revenue | 3% to 5% | Review marketing efficiency | Evaluate where to invest |
| Pipeline coverage ratio | 3:1 to 4:1 | Inspect pipeline quality | Evaluate demand generation |
| Sales rep turnover | 15% to 20% | Look at performance conditions | Evaluate talent standards |
| Selling time | 60% to 63% of the week | Remove barriers from sellers | |
| Bookings attributable to marketing | 25% to 35% | Check for insufficient prospecting by sales | Evaluate demand generation |
| Reps at or above quota | about 60% | Check whether quotas are too low | Check quota setting, territories and enablement |
The fact base does three jobs in the planning process.
It sets the “today” column. Every condition the plan depends on, from win rate to ramp time, needs a current value. If the plan assumes a 22% win rate and the fact base shows 19%, that three-point gap is now visible and has to be explained or funded.
It exposes the assumptions nobody wants to test. Teams often discover that marketing-sourced pipeline was lower than reported, that ramp took longer than the comp plan assumes, or that selling time is well below 60% because of internal meetings and admin work.
It gives the leadership team one set of facts. When sales, marketing, CS and finance each bring their own numbers to planning, the debate is about whose data is right. A shared fact base moves the debate to what to do about it.
Without a fact base, plans carry forward last year’s assumptions. Targets get set top-down and split across teams. Leaders argue from anecdotes. The gaps surface in Q2, when there’s little time left to close them.
SBI’s annual planning approach lists two risks that follow directly: approaching each year as a one-off project, which leads to point-in-time decisions, and leadership working in silos, so plans get added together without cross-functional agreement.
Ask RevOps for last year’s actuals on the measures in the benchmark table above. Put them next to SBI’s ranges. Circle anything outside the range, and ask the owning leader to explain it before planning goes further.
Then use that fact base to test the board’s target, as described in Which Number Is the Real Number?