Your quota went up 30%. Did your territory?

The number moved. Before you decide whether you can make it, ask what else did.

A quota is a claim about a patch. When it goes up 30%, one of three things is true: the patch got bigger, the patch got better, or somebody needed the spreadsheet to add up. The first two are fine. The third is the one you want to know about in January, not in October.

So do the boring arithmetic first. Divide the new number by your on-target earnings. Somewhere between 4 and 6 is the range I've usually seen for mid-market cloud and SaaS reps; 6 to 8 is enterprise at a big provider; above 10 the plan is asking the territory for something it may not have. Then divide the number by what you actually closed last year. That's the growth the plan is assuming, and it is the honest measure of how much harder this year is.

Then look at the patch the same way a stranger would. Has anyone ever made this number in it? What's the addressable spend, and how much of it is already committed to somebody else? If the number went up and the patch didn't, say so early, with the sizing, in writing. Nobody argues with a number that came with its work shown.

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