Code Brain | 10 Insights on Sales Strategy Planning

On January 17, we published an article titled "Code Brain | On Performance: How Should Startups Build a Scientific Marketing Plan?," which covered the highlights from the sixth session of Code Brain's "Management Fundamentals" series — the Sales Strategy Planning Workshop.

Unlike a traditional classroom format, this course emphasized practice over instruction, creating a space for hands-on learning. Over two days and 13 hours, led by instructor Ziliang Zeng, CEOs and senior executives from Js.Design, Unisun Energy Group, Saiqiao Biotech, CoolCollege, Whale, and ZNLH continuously refined and adjusted their sales strategies and tactics, upgrading their understanding of sales in real time.

Sales is a practical science, but only if you first have a clear understanding of what sales actually is. You need to study your customers and have a clear sales plan before you can execute effectively and win in the field. Building on our previous article covering the course content, we've compiled the key insights and executive feedback from this Sales Strategy Planning Workshop below.

Ten Core Insights on Sales Planning

Executives Share Their Takeaways

Guorui Li, Founder and CEO of Js.Design: "What struck me most was how critical target-setting is — this isn't just a sales issue, it's a company-wide issue. For a founding team, improving per-capita productivity requires getting things right from top to bottom, and that includes sales. Because sales is closest to the customer, it captures information that no one else in the company can access. So I think management needs to take on some sales roles themselves to gather external intelligence. Going forward, we're going to build out our annual sales plan and have more core team members engage directly with customers, understand the full sales process, and feed that back into improving company-wide efficiency and productivity."

Whale executive: "After two days of hands-on sales strategy planning, what I gained was a complete system framework with detailed process specifics. What impressed me most was the 'Dao, Fa, Shu, Qi' framework — it combines theory with practice. I'll be applying these methods to our actual business going forward."

ZNLH executive: "The course breaks down annual planning into interconnected steps, which is exactly what companies need. Next, we'll take the methodology introduced in the course and adapt it to our own industry and business model, testing, refining, and adjusting it as we put it into practice."

Saiqiao Biotech executive: "The course presented the complete sales framework in a very systematic way, with practical tools throughout. We'll need to do more detailed analysis going forward. We had already set three-year goals for the company, and after this training we can map out a much clearer path to achieving them. Two things stood out for me today: first, we reached strong alignment on our multi-year goals; second, we unified our thinking on how to coordinate the actions needed to reach those goals."

Yisha He, CEO of Unisun Energy Group: "Over the two days, one line from the instructor stuck with me: 'Sales starts as a language problem, but eventually becomes a math problem.' Standardizing sales actions is a critical piece of the puzzle. Our team is now going to identify every area where we want to improve our sales logic and turn those into standardized behaviors, continuously updating and iterating them along the way."

CoolCollege executive: "Two things stood out to me. First, we can't make our sales plans overly detailed at the expense of focus. I've planned extensively in the past, but failed to execute on most of it. Second, learning is crucial — especially exchanging ideas with experienced instructors who can elevate your perspective."