5W2H Examples: Six Ready-Made Action Plans for Sales, HR, Quality and More

5W2H looks simple until you open the blank spreadsheet. Then the questions start: does the "why" need to be a long sentence? Is "how much" always money? Who is the "who" when three people take part? The fastest way to get unstuck is to see a filled-in plan, preferably across different areas.

Below are six complete examples, one for each area, each with a real everyday action. Copy them, swap in your own names and numbers, and adjust. If you don't know the method yet, the conceptual explanation is in the 5W2H guide; to download the blank spreadsheet, use the 5W2H template.

How to read the examples

The name comes from the seven questions in English: What, Why, Where, When, Who, How, and How much. What makes a 5W2H good is not filling in seven fields, it's the precision of each answer: "what" is an action with a verb, "when" is a date, "who" is a person, not a department.

The names, amounts, and deadlines in the examples are fictional, just to illustrate the level of detail. Replace them with your own.

1. Sales: reactivate customers who haven't bought in six months

Question	Answer
What	Contact the 40 customers who haven't bought in over six months and offer a win-back deal
Why	The active customer base has shrunk, and reactivating costs less than winning new customers
Where	WhatsApp and phone calls, from the list exported from the CRM
When	November 7 to 25, with a results review on November 28
Who	Fernanda (makes the contacts); Rodrigo, sales manager (approves the deal and follows up)
How	Three-message script, a phone call for anyone who doesn't reply within two days, and the outcome of each contact logged in the list
How much	R$ 1,200 in discounts granted (cap) and about 30 hours of Fernanda's time

What makes this plan useful: the "what" includes a quantity (40 customers), the "how" already defines plan B (a call after two days without a reply), and the "how much" has a cap. Without a cap, discounting becomes the default way to sell.

2. Customer service: reduce first response time

Question	Answer
What	Create canned replies for the five most frequent questions and set an internal first-response target of 2 business hours
Why	Customers wait hours for an answer that fits in two lines, and complaints mention the delay
Where	Support WhatsApp and email channels
When	Canned replies ready by October 14; target in effect from October 21
Who	Juliana, support lead (owner); the whole customer service team (uses the replies and suggests tweaks)
How	Collect the questions from the last four weeks, write the replies, test with two agents, and measure the time weekly
How much	No direct cost; about 8 hours of Juliana's work

Here the "how much" makes it clear that not everything has a cost in currency. Recording the time spent is already a valid answer, and it helps you compare against the gain later. To set the internal target more rigorously, see the post on customer service SLAs.

3. HR: standardize onboarding for new hires

Question	Answer
What	Build a 30-day onboarding plan, with a checklist of system access, meetings, and first-week goals
Why	Each manager onboards in their own way, and two recent hires only got access to the systems in their second week
Where	Company document and a checklist assigned to the manager on the hire date
When	Plan ready by October 30; used starting with the next hire
Who	Patrícia, from HR (owns the plan); managers of each area (carry it out with the new hire)
How	Interview the last two hires, list what was missing, turn it into a checklist, and review it after the first use
How much	About 12 hours of HR time; no additional cost

4. Quality: reduce rework in shipping

Question	Answer
What	Introduce a double-check before each order is closed in shipping
Why	Orders shipped with the wrong item cause returns, double freight, and complaints
Where	Shipping bench at the Joinville warehouse
When	Pilot from November 3 to 14; decision to keep or adjust on November 17
Who	Marcos, shipping supervisor (owner); two checkers, one per shift
How	A second person checks the order against the invoice before the box is closed; errors found are logged on a daily sheet
How much	About 2 extra minutes per order; the cost of one printed sheet per day

Notice that the "how much" is measured in minutes per order. When the action changes the workflow, the time cost usually weighs more than the money cost, and it's what decides whether the pilot becomes a rule.

5. Marketing: publish one blog post per week

Question	Answer
What	Publish one article per week for two months, each answering a real customer question
Why	The site gets little organic traffic and sales answers the same questions every week
Where	The company website blog, promoted by email and social media
When	Every Thursday, from November 6 to December 25 (eight articles); topics approved the Monday before
Who	Camila (writing); Bruno, from marketing (review and publishing); André, from sales (supplies the questions)
How	List of 8 questions from sales, editorial calendar, draft on Monday, review on Wednesday, publish on Thursday
How much	R$ 2,400 in outsourced writing and 4 hours per week of Bruno's time

6. Finance: reduce delinquency on small amounts

Question	Answer
What	Create a collections sequence with a reminder before the due date and two notices after
Why	Many late payments are just customers forgetting, and collection only starts after 15 days
Where	Email and WhatsApp, from the finance system
When	Sequence designed by November 10; active for December due dates
Who	Sérgio, from finance (owner); Camila, from customer service (reviews the tone of the messages)
How	Reminder three days before, a notice the day after the due date, and a second notice with direct contact at seven days
How much	About 10 hours of setup; no cost if we use the tools we already have

Common mistakes when filling in a 5W2H

• A "what" without a verb. "Customer service improvement" is a topic, not an action. "Create canned replies for the five most frequent questions" is an action.
• A "who" with more than one owner. There can be several people doing the work, but only one person answers for the result. When the division of roles gets confusing, a RACI matrix solves it better.
• A "when" without a date. "Soon" and "next quarter" are not deadlines.
• A blank "how much" because you assume it's zero. Almost everything consumes someone's time. Record it.
• Plans nobody reopens. A 5W2H stored in a forgotten spreadsheet is not a plan, it's an archive.

How to adapt an example to your case

Take the example closest to your area and change the fields in this order: first the "what," because it defines everything else; then the "who" and the "when," which turn the plan into a commitment; finally the "how" and the "how much," which usually get settled by talking to whoever will do the work. If you can't fill in a field, the plan isn't ready yet: the blank space points to the decision that's missing.

From example to everyday work

Each row in the examples above becomes a task if there is an assignee and a date: the task "Contact the 40 customers" has Fernanda as the assignee and November 25 as the due date. An action plan in a spreadsheet depends on someone's discipline to come back to it; in a project tool, the due date shows up in the list of whoever is doing the work and overdue items are visible. If the action repeats (like the weekly review in the marketing example), it's worth using recurring tasks, and if the action feeds a bigger goal, the next step is linking it to an objective, as we show in OKRs for small businesses.