Quota Case
What has to be true for this quota to work?
Last year, your run rate, your pipeline and the new number. It builds the bridge and shows you the gap nobody has explained yet.
Last year, your run rate, your pipeline and the new number. It builds the bridge and shows you the gap nobody has explained yet.
It takes the better of two views of this year: your run rate at today's headcount, and your qualified pipeline at your real win rate. Whatever's left between that and the new number is the gap somebody needs to explain.
Take one-time deals out of last year. If a single giant deal made last year's number, building this year's quota on it is how a team ends up at 60% attainment and a lot of meetings about effort.
If you lost reps or have open territories, put in the headcount. A vacant territory still has quota. That's the problem. And a rep hired in March doesn't sell much until summer, so count them when they're ramped, not when they start.
Don't walk in upset. Walk in with the bridge and one question: what assumption am I missing?
Sometimes there's a real answer: new territory, a big renewal you didn't know about, a product launch, partner help with names attached. Then the number's hard but fair, and your job changes to helping the team hit it (here's how to hand it down), which means you stop relitigating it every Monday. Sometimes nobody has an answer. Then at least everybody knows where the number came from, and it's in writing before the year starts.
Your quota is crazy. Now prove it. has the longer version, including why the best time to have this fight is the year before.
I spent six years leading federal partner sales teams at AWS, after plenty of years carrying a number myself. QuotaBird is mostly stuff I wish we'd had back then. Most of it's free. If the problem's messier than a little tool can handle, we can talk it through.