Annual planning is a period of high-stakes decisions, complex data challenges, and significant organizational change. In a recent Fullcast Customer Office Hours session, a panel of Fullcast’s RevOps and sales leaders convened to demystify the process, breaking it down into a practical, four-part playbook.
While the framework is simple—Foundation, Motion, Go-Live, and Follow-Through—success lies in the partnership between sales strategy and operational execution.
Note
For tactical templates related to each pillar of the process, check out these free Resources to Level Up RevOps in the Annual Planning Process. They include:
The Annual Planning Kickoff Kit: Transform vague leadership requests into concrete project scopes and manage expectations effectively.
The Collaborative Carving Playbook: Engage sales managers collaboratively to build trust and secure buy-in for territory carving.
Your Go-Live Primer: Prepare for a smooth annual plan launch by ensuring foundational setup, rigorous validation, and clear communication.
Post-Launch Support & Iteration Guide: Manage post-launch challenges, provide effective field support, and lay the groundwork for continuous process improvement.
Pillar 1: The Foundation - It Starts with Strategy, Not Spreadsheets
While it's tempting to dive straight into data analysis, the panel agreed the true starting point is the strategy set by revenue leadership. As Director of Product Tyler Simons noted, the team realized the "foundation actually starts with the CRO, right? What is the ultimate strategy that we're thinking about for next fiscal year?".
To support that strategy, Implementation Manager Marisa Reed stressed that the first step should be to review the post-mortem from the previous planning cycle. This analysis, ideally conducted shortly after last year's cutover, provides the crucial lessons needed to inform the current year's plan.
Leveraging the Fullcast Platform
To support this analysis, Fullcast allows you to investigate the effectiveness of your previous plan. As Marisa explained, "if you have Fullcast pull an analysis of how many pinned [named accounts] you have versus not, you can get a sense of how well your carving process went". This data provides a concrete starting point for your data-readiness initiatives.
Pillar 2: The Motion - Building Alignment Through Collaboration
With a clear strategy, the next phase is building the plan collaboratively to ensure buy-in. This means moving away from a siloed process and toward an iterative one built on early feedback.
Pete Shelton, Fullcast’s Chief Revenue Officer, shared his approach: "I start to read in my sales leaders early, and I tell them very clearly, this is probably going to change 5 times". This transparency builds trust and allows him to get valuable feedback.
This is where RevOps can become a true strategic partner. As Pete put it, RevOps has the unique "ability to keep sales out of harm's way". He shared a powerful story of coming to his RevOps team with a plan that felt intuitive. They quickly modeled it and returned with a stark finding: "They said, if you do what you're wanting to do, you're gonna actually maximize disruption," he recalled. They returned with a data-backed alternative that achieved his goals without the unintended chaos.
How Fullcast Accelerates the Motion
This rapid modeling and iteration is difficult with spreadsheets but simple in a dedicated tool. "You can create as many plans as you want," explained Marisa. This allows RevOps teams to build and compare different scenarios side-by-side. You can also give managers direct login access to provide input on their teams’ territories. According to Tyler, you can then "run SmartPlan on top of those moves that have already been made... and that keeps things balanced in the end".
Pillar 3: The Go-Live - Marrying the Art and Science of the Launch
The go-live is where your plan meets the real world. Success requires both flawless technical execution—the science—and compelling communication—the art.
The "art" is about telling the story of why the change is happening. Pete shared an anecdote about a former colleague who was a "master at telling the story of why this is going to be better for everybody". By framing the new plan in terms of increased opportunity for reps, she transformed a potentially disruptive event into a moment of motivation.
The "science" is about ensuring a smooth technical cutover. Many on the panel shared experiences with what Marisa called the "giant spreadsheet of doom", a familiar source of errors and anxiety.
Executing a Flawless Cutover with Fullcast
A modern planning tool removes much of this technical risk. Implementation Consultant Heather Warren highlighted a key feature for this stage: the ability to simulate the export, see the data that's about to go before it goes, and make sure that that's exactly what was expected... lets you go forward with much more peace of mind".
Pillar 4: The Follow-Through - Your Plan is a Living Document
A common mistake in annual planning is treating it as a one-time event. As Tyler put it, "This plan that you do, annual planning, really is actually happening all of the time". The goal is to build an agile GTM motion that can be adjusted as you learn.
Pete provided two examples. After noticing an imbalanced pipeline, a quick analysis revealed the employee count threshold was slightly off. The fix? "That took 5 minutes," he said. In another case, a conflict arose over parent-child accounts. After his RevOps partner informed him, "this could happen to you 50 more times," a simple change to a "radio button for keeping parent and children together" instantly solved the issue for good.
Turning Insights into Action with Fullcast
Fullcast is designed to support this continuous, iterative process. To measure how your plan evolves, Tyler laid out a powerful best practice. First, when you go live, you "can essentially clone that [plan] and keep that as an archive". This creates a permanent snapshot of day one. Later in the year, you can run a disruption report that shows you where account ownership has changed from the original plan, allowing you to "dig into that data to understand why". This process of archiving, measuring, and iterating is what turns annual planning from a yearly project into a continuous strategic advantage.