How to Hit Your Average Quota Attainment in B2B Sales

Hitting or beating sales quotas is one of the most important things a salesperson can do to succeed in their role.

Producing desired and predictable sales results is key to every business as it boosts team morale, allows investment in growth and development, gives you the confidence to talk to investors, and gives you a competitive advantage.

According to Forrester, the average quota attainment is 47% which is pretty scary. A well-managed sales organization can significantly improve these numbers by optimizing strategies and utilizing effective incentive programs.

And that number has been dropping over the last few years so this is a real problem.

In this article, we will cover what stops quota attainment, what you can do to increase quota attainment and what is good quota attainment.

But before we get started we need to define quota attainment.

There are two main types of sales quota attainment:

• A percentage of actual sales vs the set quota.

• A percentage of sales reps that have attained quota.

These are two different metrics.

The first is overall sales success and the second is team quality. For example, if 50% of your sales team hit their quota you can still hit your team goals because of the outperformers. So both are important.

How to calculate quota attainment percentage

Sales Quota Attainment, % = (Actual Sales, $ / Sales Quota, $) x 100

The obstacles to hitting the sales quota

Hitting sales quotas is hard for sales leaders and involves many obstacles that can impact their teams. Inefficiencies in the sales process can lead to lower motivation and performance metrics, making it crucial to streamline operations for better quota attainment.

It’s gotten even harder to hit quotas in the last few years as cold outreach conversions have dropped, inbound marketing has gotten more expensive and sales cycles have gotten longer.

What are the biggest obstacles sales leaders face to hitting their quotas?

Bad forecasting

Without b2b sales forecasting you can’t set realistic targets and plan properly.

Poor lead quality

If the marketing team gives you leads that aren’t qualified or relevant you can’t convert them into customers.

Poor sales processes

Slow or outdated sales processes can kill deals and miss quotas, highlighting the need to align sales efforts with performance metrics.

Lack of sales team and marketing alignment

Misalignment on target markets, goals and strategies means wasted effort and missed opportunities.

Not enough training and resources

Sales teams need ongoing training and the right tools to adapt to changing market and customer needs.

High sales representative turnover

Changes in the sales team can disrupt sales processes and relationships with prospects and customers. According to multiple sources, the average sales team turnover is 30% per year.

Market changes

Economic shifts, new competition or changes in customer behavior can all impact sales performance out of the blue.

Limited pipeline visibility

Without pipeline visibility, you can’t see where deals are getting stuck.

All the above-mentioned factors slow down growth and miss sales quotas.

How to increase quota attainment

Let’s get to what a revenue or sales leader can do to hit quota.

Sales managers play a crucial role in setting achievable goals and monitoring team performance to improve quota attainment.

Here are the strategies and quota attainment tips to increase your chances of hitting your sales targets.

Set quotas based on data and forecasts

This is step one to hitting sales goals: setting sales quotas based on historical team performance and aligned with sales forecasts for future periods. Instead of setting quotas based on intuition or gut feeling, set quotas that are based on data and closely monitor quota attainment to assess performance and make strategic adjustments.

Manage your pipeline to prevent revenue leakage

Know where the bottlenecks are in your sales pipeline that are killing deals. Adjust your real-time pipeline tracking to spot the risks and react fast.

Use sales performance software to diagnose inefficiencies

Know how your key sales metrics have changed recently. And be able to do root-cause analysis to understand why the inefficiencies are happening and fix them fast.

Build sales enablement processes

Your sales enablement process is key to how fast new sales hires ramp and hit quota. And continuous training, coaching, and tech tools to prevent your current team from degrading.

Use sales forecasting for resource allocation

Accurate sales forecasting is the foundation for good decision-making. By knowing your future numbers and the risk of missing quota you can allocate resources like budget, people, and tools to increase quota attainment.

Align sales and marketing to the same goals

Sales and marketing should be tightly integrated and aligned to the same goals. Make sure marketing understands what you as a sales leader need to hit your numbers. They should not only understand but also commit to certain numbers. Consider changing KPIs (pipeline in dollars instead of MQLs/SQLs) or SLAs.

Also, use tools to import LinkedIn contacts to HubSpot so both teams have access to the most up-to-date contact information to streamline efforts and align.

Build great steady sales teams

Invest in top talent. Hiring A-players is a sales leader’s responsibility. Make sure you can measure sales team performance objectively and identify underperformers. Fire underperformers, as they will drag the rest of your team down. Build a culture where talent is challenged and valued to reduce turnover.

Although all the above mentioned are important to increase quota attainment we will go deeper into a few of them in this article.

Sales planning and goal setting by sales leaders

Hitting your sales quotas starts with sales planning and setting realistic sales targets. A well-defined sales target is crucial for evaluating sales rep performance against predefined goals and making necessary adjustments.

This can be broken down into two main activities:

1. What can you expect based on your current performance?

2. What do you need to hit your sales targets?

Current performance assessment

First, you need to plan your sales quotas based on historical and current performance.

One of the first things to consider is the monthly or quarterly growth rates from the past. If you grew 15% last quarter you won’t grow 30% this quarter.

Second, you need to assess key metrics like win rate, average quota attainment by sales reps, marketing funnel conversions (MQL to SQL, SQL to Opportunity), and sales cycle length.

With these numbers and lead volume growth rate, you can determine what is achievable.

Third you need to analyze your current pipeline and create forecasts for future periods.

To create good forecasts you will need to use good forecasting models. CRMs lack these so you might use tools like Forecastio or Clari.

The more accurate your forecasts the more precise you can set sales targets.

Finally don’t forget to repeat all the above steps when setting targets for your sales reps.

Each sales rep on your team has their historical performance and pipeline.

Resource estimation

Resource estimation allows you to look at sales targets from a different angle. Sales organizations face numerous challenges in achieving sales quotas, including motivating sales representatives and adapting to market changes.

In simple terms, resource estimation should answer the following questions:

• How many leads/demos do I need to hit my targets?

• How many new deals should I add to the pipeline and when?

• Do I have enough sales capacity or should I hire more people and if so when?

Let’s say:

Your strategy to generate leads is inbound marketing. Most of your leads come from the website.

You need to know how much traffic you need to generate to get a certain number of leads, MQLs, SQLs, and deals in the pipeline to hit your numbers.

And the most important question is ‘when’.

All of these should be based on historical data and your current team performance.

And you need to align with marketing.

Will marketing commit to the numbers?

If not should you lower your sales targets as they are unrealistic or look for another source of leads like cold outreach?

Also, you need to know the sales capacity to hit your targets.

To answer these questions you need to estimate how many sales reps you should have on the team, based on average revenue per rep.

If you don’t have enough sales reps estimate how many more you need to hire and when. Be sure to take into account the ramp-up time and attrition rates in your sales teams.

Performance tracking and pipeline management

When a sales quota is set a sales leader should be able to see ahead of time potential risks and factors that can impact sales quota attainment.

This can be done by monitoring sales performance management tools in real-time, identifying and then removing bottlenecks whether it’s a pipeline issue or negative dynamics of one of the key sales metrics

Pipeline management

The key in pipeline management is to see which deals are at risk and which areas of the pipeline are underperforming.

CRMs allow you to manage deals but in most cases to see which ones need attention you have to do a lot of manual work.

That’s why using sales performance tracking software can give you signals on risky deals:

• A deal that has been stuck in a certain pipeline stage for too long;

• A deal with no recent activity;

• A deal with close dates being changed frequently;

• A deal with the amount being decreased significantly;

Having all these signals in real-time allows you to react fast and prevent revenue leakage.

When it comes to the pipeline you need to be able to see how it evolves:

• Has the pipeline shrunk significantly?

• Do I have enough pipeline coverage to hit my quota?

• Are many deals slipping from this quarter to the next quarter?

• Is the pipeline growing or shrinking over time?

If you see a lot of pipeline slipping to the next quarter, your sales reps may be struggling to estimate close dates. You can also get a list of slipped deals and intervene.

Tools like Forecastio can help you manage your pipeline. They can find bottlenecks and help you hit your sales quota.

Performance tracking

What can prevent you from hitting the sales quota? Decreasing sales performance.

If the win rate is down, the sales cycle is longer or the conversion from demo to opportunity is down there is a big risk of not hitting quota.

As a sales or revenue leader, you should track key sales metrics in real-time and react as soon as you see any negative trend.

But it’s not enough to see the negative trend; you need to quickly figure out why.

Has your win rate gone down because:

• Deals are getting lost at a certain pipeline stage;

• Deals from a certain source are converting poorly;

• A certain sales rep is underperforming;

• Lead quality is down.

Has your sales cycle lengthened because:

• Deals get stuck in a certain pipeline stage;

• Some of your reps can’t close deals;

• Lead quality is down.

If you can see the negative trend and understand why you can eliminate all inefficiencies before it impacts your quota attainment.

Conclusion

It’s getting harder to sell and hit quota. So you need to be better than your peers.

Using the above strategies to hit your quota will not guarantee you will hit or exceed your quota. But, the tips above will boost your chances of hitting your sales targets. Paired with the Forecastio platform, they will help you become a top sales leader.