Sales Planning Manager

🌐 We're Hiring: Sales Planning Manager📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully RemoteAbout UsWe are a growth-oriented organization focused on building disciplined, data-driven, and scalable sales planning capabilities that connect commercial strategy with execution.Our distributed teams collaborate across Sales, Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, Finance, Marketing, Business Development, Customer Success, Strategy, Product, and Executive Leadership to translate business objectives into practical sales plans, targets, territories, capacity models, forecasts, and performance-management frameworks.The RoleWe are seeking an experienced Sales Planning Manager to lead sales planning, forecasting, target setting, territory design, capacity planning, performance analysis, and commercial reporting.The role will translate company and revenue objectives into sales targets, quotas, territories, resource plans, pipeline expectations, sales capacity requirements, and performance plans.The successful candidate will combine strategic planning, financial analysis, sales operations, data analytics, and stakeholder management to ensure the sales organization has the structure, resources, and visibility required to achieve its goals.Key ResponsibilitiesSales Planning StrategyDevelop annual, quarterly, and monthly sales-planning frameworks aligned with company strategy.Translate revenue and growth objectives into actionable sales plans.Establish planning assumptions, methodologies, timelines, governance, and responsibilities.Coordinate sales planning across regions, segments, products, channels, and sales teams.Align sales plans with corporate financial plans and business objectives.Identify growth opportunities, capacity constraints, coverage gaps, and execution risks.Develop scenarios for different growth, market, resource, and productivity assumptions.Continuously improve sales-planning methodologies based on business performance and market changes.Revenue & Sales Target PlanningTranslate revenue objectives into sales targets.Develop targets by region, territory, segment, product, channel, team, and individual where appropriate.Ensure targets are ambitious but achievable.Analyze historical performance, market opportunity, pipeline, capacity, productivity, and seasonality.Develop target-setting methodologies and governance.Monitor target distribution and identify significant imbalances.Recommend adjustments based on objective data.Partner with Finance to ensure sales targets align with revenue plans and financial forecasts.Quota ManagementLead or support annual and periodic quota-setting processes.Develop quota methodologies based on territory potential, historical performance, market size, account coverage, capacity, and growth expectations.Analyze quota attainment distributions.Identify over- or under-assigned quotas.Recommend quota adjustments when justified.Support quota allocation across sales roles and organizational structures.Coordinate quota changes caused by territory realignment, organizational changes, new products, or market shifts.Ensure quota-setting processes are transparent, consistent, and data-driven.Sales ForecastingLead sales forecasting processes across the organization.Develop weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual forecasts.Consolidate forecasts from sales teams, regions, segments, and channels.Analyze pipeline coverage, stage progression, historical conversion, deal velocity, and sales-cycle patterns.Identify forecast risks, gaps, upside opportunities, and inconsistencies.Challenge unsupported assumptions and overly optimistic or conservative forecasts.Develop forecast scenarios and sensitivity analyses.Improve forecast accuracy through standardized methodologies and data-driven models.Partner with Finance and Sales leadership to reconcile sales forecasts with financial expectations.Pipeline PlanningMonitor pipeline generation and coverage against sales targets.Establish appropriate pipeline-coverage requirements.Analyze pipeline by stage, value, age, probability, product, territory, segment, and sales representative.Identify pipeline gaps early.Develop action plans to address pipeline shortfalls.Monitor pipeline velocity and conversion trends.Identify stalled, aging, or high-risk opportunities.Support Sales leadership in prioritizing pipeline-generation activities.Align pipeline requirements with target and capacity plans.Territory PlanningLead territory design and optimization.Develop territory models based on market potential, customer density, account value, geography, industry, workload, and sales capacity.Analyze territory balance and coverage.Identify whitespace and under-covered markets.Recommend territory realignment where appropriate.Support account allocation and ownership decisions.Evaluate the impact of territory changes on quotas, sales capacity, compensation, and customer relationships.Establish governance for territory changes.Monitor territory performance after implementation.Sales Capacity PlanningDevelop sales-capacity models based on growth targets and productivity assumptions.Determine required headcount by role, region, segment, channel, and territory.Analyze ramp periods, attrition, productivity, hiring timelines, and capacity constraints.Identify hiring requirements to support revenue objectives.Model alternative staffing scenarios.Partner with HR and Talent Acquisition on workforce requirements.Ensure capacity plans are financially and operationally realistic.Monitor actual capacity versus planned capacity.Sales ProductivityAnalyze sales productivity by role, region, territory, segment, product, and tenure.Track productivity metrics such as revenue per seller, quota attainment, pipeline generation, conversion rates, sales-cycle length, and activity levels where appropriate.Identify productivity gaps and high-performing patterns.Develop recommendations to improve sales effectiveness.Analyze ramp performance for new hires.Evaluate the impact of sales-process, territory, compensation, enablement, and organizational changes.Provide insights to Sales leadership.Ideal CandidateThe successful candidate should have experience in Sales Planning, Sales Operations, Revenue Operations, Commercial Planning, Business Planning, Sales Analytics, Forecasting, Finance, or related disciplines.The candidate should demonstrate:Proven experience managing sales-planning processes.Strong understanding of sales forecasting and revenue planning.Experience with quota and target setting.Strong territory planning and optimization capabilities.Experience with sales-capacity and workforce planning.Strong pipeline analysis and coverage management skills.Experience analyzing sales productivity and performance.Strong financial and commercial analysis capabilities.Experience building forecasting and scenario models.Strong understanding of sales metrics, KPIs, and commercial drivers.Experience working closely with Sales and Finance leadership.Strong data analysis and problem-solving skills.Advanced Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint skills.Experience with CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, or similar systems is advantageous.Experience with Power BI, Tableau, or similar analytics platforms is highly advantageous.Experience with sales-planning, forecasting, CPQ, compensation, or revenue-management platforms is advantageous.Familiarity with AI-assisted forecasting and sales analytics is advantageous.Experience managing international or multi-country sales organizations is highly advantageous.UAE, GCC, Middle East, or multinational commercial-planning experience is advantageous.Experience in SaaS, technology, professional services, enterprise sales, B2B, consumer, retail, or other complex commercial environments is advantageous.Relevant degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Management, or a related field is highly advantageous.Professional qualifications in Finance, Business Analytics, Sales Operations, Revenue Operations, or related disciplines are advantageous.Strong written and verbal English communication skills; Arabic is advantageous for UAE/GCC environments.Strong project-management and organizational capabilities.Ability to manage multiple planning cycles, stakeholders, deadlines, and analytical workstreams simultaneously.Ability to work independently in a fully remote and internationally distributed environment.Strong analytical, commercially minded, data-driven, strategic, detail-oriented, collaborative, and results-focused mindset.