Five questions that tell you whether the patch can make the number, or whether you are being asked to grow where nobody could. For sellers. No account names.
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Spend · Accounts · Base · Access · History
A quota is a claim about a territory. Before you accept it, check whether the territory agrees.
SPEND: Is the money there twice over? Agency budgets, program lines, contract ceilings. If the total addressable spend is not at least double the number, you are not selling, you are hoping for share you have no reason to expect.
ACCOUNTS: Can you name ten? Not a list from the CRM. Ten accounts you personally expect to buy this year, with a reason for each. If you cannot get to ten, your manager should hear that in January, not October.
BASE: Is there anything to grow? A territory with installed base has a floor. A territory that is all new logos has a ceiling and no floor. Know which one you have, and put the inherited number on paper so nobody counts it twice.
ACCESS: Can you get in the door? A relationship, a partner who owns the account, a contract vehicle they already buy through. One route per account. Without one, the account is a name.
HISTORY: Has anyone done it? Find the last person who had the patch. If nobody has ever made this number here, you are the experiment, and you should be paid like one.
A bad territory verdict is not an excuse. It is a document. Take it to your manager in the first month, with the sizing behind it, and ask for one of three things: a different patch, a different number, or a different plan for how the gap gets filled. Managers respect the seller who does the math in January. They have no patience for the one who discovers it in Q4.
A good verdict is worse news. The number is there. Now it is on you.
I've spent a lot of years helping customers buy complicated technology. For six of them I led partner sales teams at AWS. Before that F5, Red Hat, and a couple of storage companies you've probably forgotten. Before all of that, 20 years as a Marine.
Along the way I've been the seller defending the deal, the partner trying to help, the manager asking annoying questions, and the guy one level up explaining why the forecast moved again.
QuotaBird is where I put the things I've found useful. Most of the tools are free. Most take a few minutes. None of them require you to adopt a new sales religion. Use whatever helps.
Rarely just one of them. Usually a couple at the same time, quietly making each other worse.
The forecast call has become the job. Your manager wants a status on everything by noon, the CRM wants a next step on every line, and the customer is the last person you talk to each day.
The pipeline looks better than it really is. Plenty of opportunities in the CRM, but once you ask about budget, timing and who actually wants the thing, the number gets smaller fast.
The partner likes you, but nothing is happening. Plenty of meetings, maybe a joint deck. Nobody can point to the accounts where the two companies are actually trying to win something together.
The team is busy, but there isn't much rhythm. The forecast call happens. The one-on-ones happen. Nobody is sure what the team should do differently this week to make next quarter better.
The number from above doesn't match what you see below. Leadership has a growth number. Your team has a pipeline. You're the one who has to explain why they disagree without sounding like you've already given up.
A team can be behind plan for a lot of reasons. One seller needs help getting in front of customers. Another is doing fine and wants you to stay out of the way. Someone else thinks the year is already gone. Sometimes the rep is fine and the territory, the comp plan or the pipeline they inherited isn't. The useful part is figuring out which one you're dealing with before you fix the wrong one. That's what the tools here do, one deal, one rep, one territory at a time. It's also most of what I do.
Sometimes a calculator isn't enough. If you're stuck on a deal, an account, a partner, a territory, a QBR or a federal problem, I'm happy to look at it with you. Here's exactly how it works:
If I don't think I can help, I'll tell you.
If it's something that takes more than a conversation, we can figure that out too. I also build fedhoo, a federal market research tool.