I've led annual planning at many different B2B SaaS companies, and I can tell you the pattern is always the same. Sales wants more leads. Marketing wants credit for pipeline. Customer Success wants renewals prioritized over new logo acquisition. Finance wants predictable revenue. And everyone leaves the planning meeting thinking they "won" their budget battle.
Then Q1 hits, and nobody's talking to each other.
The problem isn't that these teams have different goals—it's that nobody designed the system that connects them. That's the RevOps job. And the impact is real: companies that achieve GTM alignment grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable than those that don't.
Here's how to run annual planning that actually produces aligned execution in 2026.
The three questions that matter
Before you open a single spreadsheet, answer these:
- What customer behavior drives our revenue?
Not what you think drives revenue. What data-backed numbers actually show conversions, expansions, and renewals? - Where are the handoffs breaking?
MQL to SQL. SQL to Closed-Won. Onboarding to activation. Usage to renewal. - What can we change that moves multiple metrics at the same time?
Pipeline generation, win rate, and expansion. If a change only helps one, it's a tax on the others.
Everything else is commentary.
Start with the full funnel, not department budgets
Most planning starts with last year's budget and adds 20%. That's how you end up with Marketing hitting lead targets while Sales complains about quality, or CS hitting renewal rates while Sales complains pipeline is dying.
Do this instead:
1. Model the entire revenue machine first
Build a simple model with actual conversion rates:
- Marketing → MQL
- MQL → SQL
- SQL → Opportunity
- Opportunity → Closed-Won
- New customer → Onboarded
- Onboarded → Active user
- Active user → Expansion opportunity
- Renewal → Retained customer
Use your actual numbers from the past 12 months. Don't smooth them. Don't optimistically project. Use what actually happened.
2. Identify the constraint
Where's the biggest drop-off? That's your constraint. That's what you optimize.
One of the more common drop-offs from my experience is MQL-to-SQL. I've seen it dozens of times where everyone is focused on top-of-funnel and lead volume. Marketing celebrates and is rewarded because of the amount of forms filled out. Meanwhile MQL-to-SQL conversion was 12%. In other words, the company was celebrating the drowning of themselves in unqualified leads.
In isolation Marketing was succeeding. In the larger context, the revenue engine was broken. If this is your reality, you should likely invest in lead scoring, buying signal detection, and sales enablement on disqualification. Spend to get MQL-to-SQL from 12% to 31% in six months. Same budget allocated differently. Better system.
3. Set goals that require collaboration
Bad goals:
- Marketing: Generate 10,000 MQLs
- Sales: Close $10M in new ARR
- CS: Achieve 95% gross retention
These goals can all be "achieved" while revenue tanks.
Better goals:
- Reduce MQL-to-SQL cycle time from 14 days to 7 days (requires Marketing + Sales)
- Increase velocity in onboarding from 82 days to 30 days (requires Sales + CS + Product)
- Improve expansion ARR from 15% to 25% of total bookings (requires CS + Sales + Product)
Notice how these goals require multiple teams to win together? That's the point.
The planning process (how we actually do this)
Month 1: System audit
Week 1-2: Pull actual data from your GTM systems
- Salesforce pipeline reports
- HubSpot/Marketo campaign performance
- Customer health scores and churn data
- Win/loss analysis
- Sales cycle length by segment
- Expansion rates by cohort
Week 3-4: Interview each team about their constraints
- What broke this year?
- Where do handoffs fail?
- What would you change with an unlimited budget?
Document everything. The constraint will become obvious.
Month 2: Model & workshop
Week 1: Build the revenue model
- Map every stage of the customer journey
- Add actual conversion rates and cycle times
- Model different scenarios: What if MQL-to-SQL improves 20%? What if ACV increases 15%?
- Identify the biggest leverage points
Week 2-3: Run cross-functional workshops
- Show everyone the same model
- Let Marketing see what happens when lead quality improves
- Let Sales see what happens when deal velocity increases
- Let CS see what expansion does to CAC payback
Week 4: Build first-draft OKRs that optimize the system, not individual departments
Month 3: Resource allocation & buy-in
Week 1-2: Allocate budget to the constraints
- If onboarding is the bottleneck, that's where resources go
- If pipeline quality is the issue, invest in signal detection and scoring
- If expansion is untapped, build the CS playbook and comp plan
Week 3: Get exec/board alignment
- Show them the model
- Show them the constraint
- Show them what success looks like in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4
Week 4: Cascade OKRs to individual teams with weekly metrics
What you'll need in your systems
Annual planning exposes every gap in your GTM tech stack. Nearly half of RevOps directors report that their GTM processes are overly manual and lack essential automation—which makes accurate planning nearly impossible. Here's what you'll need:
CRM foundation (Salesforce/HubSpot)
- Clean pipeline stages with accurate probabilities
- Historical close rates by segment, rep, and source
- Cycle time reporting at every stage
- Win/loss tracking with categorized reasons
Attribution & analytics
- Source-to-close tracking (first-touch, last-touch, multi-touch)
- Campaign ROI by channel
- Lead scoring models based on conversion data
- Cohort analysis for expansion and churn
Handoff documentation
- MQL definition that Sales actually agrees with
- SQL criteria that Marketing can target
- Onboarding milestones that trigger CS workflows
- Expansion signal detection
Forecasting tools
- Weekly pipeline snapshots
- Commit/best-case/pipeline forecasting
- Scenario modeling for what-if planning
- Quota capacity planning
If you don't have these, you're planning blind.
The biggest mistakes I've seen
1. Optimizing for vanity metrics
Marketing hits MQL targets. Sales misses bookings. CS hits NRR. Revenue is flat.
None of those metrics matter if the customer journey is broken.
2. Setting goals in isolation
When each department plans separately, you get competing priorities. Marketing runs brand campaigns when Sales needs a bottom-funnel pipeline. CS builds features when Sales needs faster onboarding.
3. Not modeling the constraint
You can't add 40% to every line item and expect aligned execution. Find the bottleneck. Fix it. Move to the next one.
4. Building comp plans that fight each other
Sales gets paid on bookings. CS gets paid on renewals. Nobody gets paid on expansion. Guess what doesn't happen?
5. Skipping the mid-year check-in
Plans change. Q1 reveals what's working. If you wait until Q4 to adjust, you've wasted a year.
What success looks like
By mid-Q1 2026, you should see:
Cross-functional metrics improving together:
- MQL volume + MQL-to-SQL conversion both trending up
- Pipeline coverage + win rate both increasing
- Time-to-onboard decreasing while activation rates climb
- Gross retention holding while expansion ARR grows
Teams proactively collaborating:
- Marketing asking Sales about which signals convert best
- Sales asking CS about which onboarding steps correlate with expansion
- CS asking Marketing about which acquisition channels produce the best long-term customers
Forecasting getting more accurate:
- Commit numbers within 10% of actuals
- Pipeline coverage predictably converting
- Expansion pipeline identified 60 days in advance
Systems automating handoffs:
- Scoring models routing leads to the right rep
- Onboarding workflows triggering based on customer actions
- Expansion opportunities surfacing automatically in CS tools
How we help with this
This is literally what we do. The GTM Advisor Group has collectively done this hundreds of times.
Our Annual Planning Engagement includes:
- Full GTM Systems Audit – We pull data from your CRM, MAP, CS platform, and billing system to model your actual funnel
- Revenue Model Build – We create a working model that shows you where to invest for maximum impact
- Cross-Functional Workshop Facilitation – We run the workshops with your Sales, Marketing, and CS leaders to build aligned OKRs
- Systems Roadmap – We identify which automation, reporting, and process changes need to happen in Q1-Q4
- Q1 Execution Kickoff – We help you launch 2026 with clear metrics, aligned comp plans, and weekly tracking
Timeline: 8-10 weeks
Investment: $25K
If your 2025 planning was three separate department plans duct-taped together, let's fix that for 2026.
