Tag Archives: Quota

How to Make and Use a Proper Sales Bookings Productivity and Quota Capacity Model

I’ve seen numerous startups try numerous ways to calculate their sales capacity.  Most are too back-of-the-envelope and too top-down for my taste.  Such models are, in my humble opinion, dangerous because the combination of relatively small errors in ramping, sales productivity, and sales turnover (with associated ramp resets) can result in a relatively big mistake in setting an operating plan.  Building off quota, instead of productivity, is another mistake for many reasons [1].  

Thus, to me, everything needs to begin with a sales productivity model that is Einsteinian in the sense that it is as simple as possible but no simpler.

What does such a model need to take into account?

  • Sales productivity, measured in ARR/rep, and at steady state (i.e., after a rep is fully ramped).  This is not quota (what you ask them to sell), this is productivity (what you actually expect them to sell) and it should be based on historical reality, with perhaps incremental, well justified, annual improvement.
  • Rep hiring plans, measured by new hires per quarter, which should be realistic in terms of your ability to recruit and close new reps.
  • Rep ramping, typically a vector that has percentage of steady-state productivity in the rep’s first, second, third, and fourth quarters [2].  This should be based in historical data as well.
  • Rep turnover, the annual rate at which sales reps leave the company for either voluntary or involuntary reasons.
  • Judgment, the model should have the built-in ability to let the CEO and/or sales VP manually adjust the output and provide analytical support for so doing [3].
  • Quota over-assignment, the extent to which you assign more quota at the “street” level (i.e., sum of the reps) beyond the operating plan targets
  • For extra credit and to help maintain organizational alignment — while you’re making a bookings model, with a little bit of extra math you can set pipeline goals for the company’s core pipeline generation sources [4], so I recommend doing so.

If your company is large or complex you will probably need to create an overall bookings model that aggregates models for the various pieces of your business.  For example, inside sales reps tend to have lower quotas and faster ramps than their external counterparts, so you’d want to make one model for inside sales, another for field sales, and then sum them together for the company model.

In this post, I’ll do two things:  I’ll walk you through what I view as a simple-yet-comprehensive productivity model and then I’ll show you two important and arguably clever ways in which to use it.

Walking Through the Model

Let’s take a quick walk through the model.  Cells in Excel “input” format (orange and blue) are either data or drivers that need to be entered; uncolored cells are either working calculations or outputs of the model.

You need to enter data into the model for 1Q20 (let’s pretend we’re making the model in December 2019) by entering what we expect to start the year with in terms of sales reps by tenure (column D).  The “first/hired quarter” row represents our hiring plans for the year.  The rest of this block is a waterfall that ages the rep downward as we move across quarters.  Next to the block ramp assumption, which expresses, as a percentage of steady-state productivity, how much we expect a rep to sell as their tenure increases with the company.  I’ve modeled a pretty slow ramp that takes five quarters to get to 100% productivity.

To the right of that we have more assumptions:

  • Annual turnover, the annual rate at which sales reps leave the company for any reason.  This drives attriting reps in row 12 which silently assumes that every departing rep was at steady state, a tacit fairly conservative assumption in the model.
  • Steady-state productivity, how much we expect a rep to actually sell per year once they are fully ramped.
  • Quota over-assignment.  I believe it’s best to start with a productivity model and uplift it to generate quotas [5]. 

The next block down calculates ramped rep equivalents (RREs), a very handy concept that far too few organizations use to convert the ramp-state to a single number equivalent to the number of fully ramped reps.  The steady-state row shows the number of fully ramped reps, a row that board members and investors will frequently ask about, particularly if you’re not proactively showing them RREs.

After that we calculate “productivity capacity,” which is a mouthful, but I want to disambiguate it from quota capacity, so it’s worth the extra syllables.  After that, I add a critical row called judgment, which allows the Sales VP or CEO to play with the model so that they’re not potentially signing up for targets that are straight model output, but instead also informed by their knowledge of the state of the deals and the pipeline.  Judgment can be negative (reducing targets), positive (increasing targets) or zero-sum where you have the same annual target but allocate it differently across quarters.

The section in italics, linearity and growth analysis, is there to help the Sales VP analyze the results of using the judgment row.  After changing targets, he/she can quickly see how the target is spread out across quarters and halves, and how any modifications affect both sequential and quarterly growth rates. I have spent many hours tweaking an operating plan using this part of the sheet, before presenting it to the board.

The next row shows quota capacity, which uplifts productivity capacity by the over-assignment percentage assumption higher up in the model.  This represents the minimum quota the Sales VP should assign at street level to have the assumed level of over-assignment.  Ideally this figure dovetails into a quota-assignment model.

Finally, while we’re at it, we’re only a few clicks away from generating the day-one pipeline coverage / contribution goals from our major pipeline sources: marketing, alliances, and outbound SDRs.  In this model, I start by assuming that sales or customer success managers (CSMs) generate the pipeline for upsell (i.e., sales to existing customers).  Therefore, when we’re looking at coverage, we really mean to say coverage of the newbiz ARR target (i.e., new ARR from new customers).  So, we first reduce the ARR goal by a percentage and then multiple it by the desired pipeline coverage ratio and then allocate the result across the pipeline-sources by presumably agreed-to percentages [6].  

Building the next-level models to support pipeline generation goals is beyond the scope of this post, but I have a few relevant posts on the subject including this three-part series, here, here, and here.

Two Clever Ways to Use the Model

The sad reality is that this kind of model gets a lot attention at the end of a fiscal year (while you’re making the plan for next year) and then typically gets thrown in the closet and ignored until it’s planning season again. 

That’s too bad because this model can be used both as an evaluation tool and a predictive tool throughout the year.

Let’s show that via an all-too-common example.  Let’s say we start 2020 with a new VP of Sales we just hired in November 2019 with hiring and performance targets in our original model (above) but with judgment set to zero so plan is equal to the capacity model.

Our “world-class” VP immediately proceeds to drive out a large number of salespeople.  While he hires 3 “all-star” reps during 1Q20, all 5 reps hired by his predecessor in the past 6 months leave the company along with, worse yet, two fully ramped reps.  Thus, instead of ending the quarter with 20 reps, we end with 12.  Worse yet, the VP delivers new ARR of $2,000K vs. a target of $3,125K, 64% of plan.  Realizing she has a disaster on her hands, the CEO “fails fast” and fires the newly hired VP of sales after 5 months.  She then appoints the RVP of Central, Joe, to acting VP of Sales on 4/2.  Joe proceeds to deliver 59%, 67%, and 75% of plan in 2Q20, 3Q20, and 4Q20.

Our question:  is Joe doing a good job?

At first blush, he appears more zero than hero:  59%, 67%, and 75% of plan is no way to go through life.

But to really answer this question we cannot reasonably evaluate Joe relative to the original operating plan.  He was handed a demoralized organization that was about 60% of its target size on 4/2.  In order to evaluate Joe’s performance, we need to compare it not to the original operating plan, but to the capacity model re-run with the actual rep hiring and aging at the start of each quarter.

When you do this you see, for example, that while Joe is constantly underperforming plan, he is also constantly outperforming the capacity model, delivering 101%, 103%, and 109% of model capacity in 2Q through 4Q.

If you looked at Joe the way most companies look at key metrics, he’d be fired.  But if you read this chart to the bottom you finally get the complete picture.  Joe is running a significantly smaller sales organization at above-model efficiency.  While Joe got handed an organization that was 8 heads under plan, he did more than double the organization to 26 heads and consistently outperformed the capacity model.  Joe is a hero, not a zero.  But you’d never know if you didn’t look at his performance relative to the actual sales capacity he was managing.

Second, I’ll say the other clever way to use a capacity model is as a forecasting tool. I have found a good capacity model, re-run at the start of the quarter with then-current sales hiring/aging is a very valuable predictive tool, often predicting the quarterly sales result better than my VP of Sales. Along with rep-level, manager-level, and VP-level forecasts and stage-weighted and forecast-category-weighted expected pipeline values, you can use the re-run sales capacity model as a great tool to triangulate on the sales forecast.

You can download the four-tab spreadsheet model I built for this post, here.

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Notes

[1] Starting with quota starts you in the wrong mental place — what you want people to do, as opposed to productivity (what they have historically done). Additionally, there are clear instances where quotas get assigned against which we have little to no actual productivity assumption (e.g., a second-quarter rep typically has zero productivity but will nevertheless be assigned some partial quota). Sales most certainly has a quota-allocation problem, but that should be a separate, second exercise after building a corporate sales productivity model on which to base the operating plan.

[2] A typically such vector might be (0%, 25%, 50%, 100%) or (0%, 33%, 66%, 100%) reflecting the percentage of steady-state productivity they are expected to achieve in their first, second, third, and fourth quarters of employment.

[3] Without such a row, the plan is either de-linked from the model or the plan is the pure output of the model without any human judgement attached. This row is typically used to re-balance the annual number across quarters and/or to either add or subtract cushion relative to the model.

[4] Back in the day at Salesforce, we called pipeline generation sources “horsemen” I think (in a rather bad joke) because there were four of them (marketing, alliances, sales, and SDRs/outbound). That term was later dropped probably both because of the apocalypse reference and its non gender-neutrality. However, I’ve never known what to call them since, other than the rather sterile, “pipeline sources.”

[5] Many salesops people do it the reverse way — I think because they see the problem as allocating quota whereas I see the the problem as building an achievable operating plan. Starting with quota poses several problems, from the semantic (lopping 20% off quota is not 20% over-assignment, it’s actually 25% because over-assignment is relative to the smaller number) to the mathematical (first-quarter reps get assigned quota but we can realistically expect a 0% yield) to the procedural (quotas should be custom-tailored based on known state of the territory and this cannot really be built into a productivity model).

[6] One advantages of having those percentages here is they are placed front-and-center in the company’s bookings model which will force discussion and agreement. Otherwise, if not documented centrally, they will end up in different models across the organization with no real idea of whether they either foot to the bookings model or even sum to 100% across sources.

Should Your Startup Have a Quota Club? (And How Much to Spend on It.)

December is when most SaaS startups are closing out the year, trying to finalize next year’s operating plan (hint:  I know a software company that can help with that), starting to get a clear view on which salespeople are going to make their number, and thus beginning the process of figuring out who to invite to the annual “Quota Club” (a.k.a. President’s Club, Achiever’s Club, or Sales Club).

In this post, I’ll discuss why Quota Clubs are so controversial and how I learned to think about them after, frankly, way too much time spent in meetings discussing a topic that I view nearly as difficult as religion or politics.

Quota Club is always highly controversial:

  • It’s exclusionary.  Consider this quote my friend Lance Walter heard years ago (I think at Siebel): “the last thing I want at Quota Club is to be lying on a chaise lounge by the pool, roll over, and see some effing marketing guy next to me.”  Moreover, the sales personality tends not to blend well with other departments, so a well-intentioned attempt to send the top documentation writer on a trip with 30 sales people is as likely to be perceived as punishment as it is reward.
  • It’s expensive.  The bill can easily run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies in the tens of millions of annual recurring revenue (ARR) and in the millions for those above that.  That doesn’t help your customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio.
  • Even the basics of qualification are somehow complicated.  Now, on the face of it, you might that “making quota” would be sufficient to qualify for Quota Club, but in some people’s minds it’s not:  “no, at this company we expect people to make quota, so Quota Club should only be for those at 120% of quota.”  (The idea that maybe quotas are set too low doesn’t seem to occur to these people.)  That’s not to mention minimum attainment rules required to avoid accidents with ramped quotas (e.g., a new rep who sells $400K on a $200K quota.)  Or the intractable problem in decentralized organizations where Country A runs large numbers of junior reps at low quotas while Country B runs small numbers of senior reps at high quotas — so someone who sells $1.25M in Country A attends club while someone who sells $1.75M in Country B does not.
  • Invitations beyond quota-carrying reps (QCRs) are always controversial.  Do consultants who hit their utilization target get invited?  (No.)  Do sales development reps (SDRs) who hit their opportunity goals? (No.)  On what basis do sales consultants (SCs) get invited?  (Depends on SC model.)  Do CSMs who hit their renewals goals?  (Maybe, depends on your customer success model and how much selling they do.)  What about the executive staff?  What about a regional VP or CRO when he/she didn’t make their number?  Who presents the awards to their people?  And this isn’t to mention companies that want to inclusionary and invite some hand-picked top performers from other departments.
  • Guest policies can be surprisingly tricky.  Normally this is simple — each qualifier gets to invite a spouse or partner, with the implication that the company wants to reward the chosen guest for the sacrifices they made while the qualifier was working long hours on the big deal and doing extended travel. What if the guest is a friend as opposed to spouse or partner?  (Well, that’s OK if not quite the intent.)  But what if that friend is coworker?  (Hum, less so.)  What if that friend is another quota-carrying rep who failed to make their number?  (Even harder.)  Or, changing angles, what if their spouse is a sales rep at your top competitor?  What if they run competitive intelligence at your top competitor?
  • Opinions diverge on family policy.   Should qualifiers be encouraged to bring their children?  How about Grandpa to watch them?  Are these family members invited to any events or activities?  Can their pay their own way on the snorkeling cruise if they want to?  Is babysitting covered?  Is the reward for spending too much time away from your family a mandatory vacation away from your family?
  • The business meeting can be a religious issue.  Many sales VPs think Club should be a 100% reward — a complete vacation with no work.  If so, the CFO will take an income tax withholding from each qualifier.  Hence most companies have a business meeting that keeps Club a business affair  — and off the W-2s of the attendees.  Some sales VPs thus think:  do the absolute minimum to stave off the tax man.   More enlightened folks think:  what a great opportunity to meet with our top performers to talk about the business.
  • People can’t even agree on the dress code.  Should the awards dinner be California Casual, Summer Soiree, Creative Black Tie, Brooklyn Formal, or just a regular Black Tie Affair.  (And where do they get these names?)
  • Picking the location is difficult.   The Caribbean isn’t exotic for East Coasters and Hawaii isn’t exotic for West Coasters.  Some people think Clubs should always have a beach location, some think European cities are more exotic.  (By the way, try to find a reliably warm beach location in February or April.)  Should you invest your money in flights to a relatively inexpensive place or get cheaper flights to a more popular and presumably expensive place?  And this isn’t to mention any debates about hotel brands and their significance.
  • In-room gifts can jack up the price.  Club planners seem to love to include special gifts each night.  A welcome bottle of champagne the first night, a beach kit the second, a Tumi backpack the third, and a farewell mini-Margarita kit can quickly add up to $500 in extra cost per qualifier.
  • Planning is intrinsically difficult.   It’s inherently hard to plan when you have 30 QCRs and you’re not sure if 10, 20, or 30 are going to qualify — this is particularly difficult when you plan sales-only Clubs because you have less to fudge in terms of non-QCR attendees.  What do you do mid-year when you’ve planned for 20 and forecast that only 10 are going to make it?  Devalue Club by dropping the qualification bar for some reps or (the same act seen through a diametrically opposed lens) preserve the incentive value of Club by making it a realistic goal for the reps who otherwise had no realistic hope?

Holy Cow, just making this list gets my blood pressure up.  Are we sure we want to do this?  My answer remains yes.

Most startups, once you’re beyond $5M to $10M in ARR, should have some sort of Quota Club.  Here is my advice on how to do it:

  • Define it as the CEO’s club.  You can call it Quota Club or President’s Club, but make it clear to everyone that it’s the CEO’s event.  It’s a big expense (with a huge opportunity to waste a lot of money on top) and it’s full of decisions that are both subjective and polarizing.  Listen to what your current sales VP wants, but make those decisions yourself.
  • Start small.  At MarkLogic our first Quota Club was something like 10-15 people for two nights at the Bellagio in Vegas.
  • Leave room to make it incrementally better each year.  This is what I call Narva’s Rule, after my friend Josh Narva who came up with it.  (By the way, had we better applied his rule, we’d have held the first MarkLogic Club at Caesar’s Palace, saving the Bellagio for the following year — but at least we got the two days part right, leaving room to later expand to three.)  Don’t cover every bite or drink that goes in someone’s mouth in the early years:  folks can get a breakfast croissant at Starbucks or a drink by pool on their own nickel. You don’t need a group breakfast and a pool party to cover it.
  • Be inclusive of other functions.  This lets you recognize a few folks outside of non-quota-carrying sales each year.  (It also makes planning a little easier.)  Don’t be so inclusive that QCR/QCM attendance is less than 50%.  But take all your qualifying QCRs and quota-carrying managers (QCMs).  Add your selected SCs.  Add your qualifying CSMs (according to whatever rules you establish).  Then perhaps add a few folks — based on their helpfulness to sales — maybe from consulting, marketing, product, or salesops.  Helpful e-staff are also good candidates and can benefit from the direct feedback they will get.  Think:  I’d rather run a bit less luxurious event and invite a few more folks from across the company than the converse.
  • Do it at a beach in April, alternating East and West coasts.  Or, if you have a strong ski contingent, alternate between a ski resort in February and a beach in April.  Beware the sales VP will gripe about too much first-quarter time in meetings with a January kickoff and February Club.  But who says you can’t still ski in April?
  • Be family-friendly.  Be clear that kids and family are welcome at the event (at the attendee’s cost) and at most, but not all, activities.  If you have two dinners, make one a bring-the-clan affair and make the awards dinner spouse/guest only.  Let family opt-in to an any easily inclusive activities like snorkel trips. Help folks find and/or pool babysitting.
  • Take the business meeting seriously.  Run the meeting on the morning of day 2.  I like doing attendee surveys in advance (e.g,. via SurveyMonkey) and then doing a detailed review of the results to drive discussion.  This sets the tone that the event is for both fun and business and that the company isn’t going to miss the chance to have a great conversation with its top performers.  Discussing business at Club isn’t a party foul.  It’s part of why you have Club.
  • Stay aligned with event planner, particularly in the early days when you are trying to run a discount event as they will, by default, try to run a standard one.  Skip the bells and whistles like custom event logos, fancy signage, custom beach bags and towels, in-room gifts, and all-meals coverage. Define what your program is going to be and deliver against that expectation.  Then make it better next year.
  • Make and hold to a sensible budget.  Know, top of mind, the total event cost and cost/attendee — and remember that cost/qualifier is about double the cost/attendee, since each qualifier invites a guest.  As part of Narva’s Rule, increase that cost every year. Because I like to make things concrete, I think cost/attendee should range from $2.5K to $5.0K as a function of your typical salesperson’s on-target earnings (OTE) and your company’s lifecycle.  This means the “prize value” of the Quota Club invitation is $5K to $10K, equivalent to a roughly 2-4% bonus against typical OTEs.  On this sort of budget, you can offer a very nice, high-quality event, but you won’t be doing the truly unique, memorable, over-the-top stuff that some CROs like.
  • If you want to have an ultra-club do what we did at BusinessObjects.  While during most of my tenure at BusinessObjects we ran in nice-but-not-crazy mode, towards the end of my tenure there was a movement to make Club truly exceptional and unique.  That first led to discussions on how to trim down Club in order to increase the spend/qualifier, including potentially increasing the attainment bar from 100% to 125% and ending our inclusive philosophy.  I’m glad we didn’t do that.  Instead, we ended up creating an intimate ultra-club as a few days tacked on to the end of Quota Club.  It provided some niche cachet when the attendees were whisked off onto their continuation trip.  It allowed “the movement” to do some truly exceptional things for a small number of people.  Most of all, I think we correctly figured out who the “right people” were — not the one-hit wonder reps who had one big year, but instead the consistent reps around which you truly build a company.  I believe we set 5 years of consecutive Quota Club attainment as the criteria for an invitation to the ultra-club.  I’d invest extra in those people any day of the week.