Attaining or even surpassing sales quotas is one of the most important goals for a sales leader. 

The ability to generate desirable and predictable sales results is essential to every business as it drives overall team morale, allows investment in business development and growth, enables confident communication with investors, and secures a competitive edge.

According to Forrester, the average quota attainment is 47%, which sounds a bit frightening. 

Moreover, this number has dropped over the last few years, so the issue is real.

In this article, we will discuss what hinders quota attainment, what you can do to increase quota attainment, and what constitutes good quota attainment.

But before moving on, we need to define quota attainment.

There are two main concepts of sales quota attainment:

• A percentage representing how actual sales compare to the set quota.

• A percentage of the sales reps that have attained their quota.

These are essentially two different indicators. 

The first highlights overall sales success, while the second focuses more on the quality of the team. For example, even if only 50% of your sales reps meet their quota, you can still achieve your overall team goals thanks to outperforming reps. Therefore, both indicators are important.

How to calculate quota attainment

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

The obstacles on the way to achieving quota

Hitting sales quotas consistently is a challenging task for sales leaders, involving various obstacles that can impact their teams' performance.  

Specifically, it has become more difficult to attain sales quotas in recent years as cold outreach conversions have dropped, inbound marketing has become more expensive, and sales cycles have lengthened.

What are the main challenges sales leaders face on the way to attaining their sales quotas?

Inaccurate forecasting 

Without accurate b2b sales forecasting, it's difficult for sales leaders to set realistic targets and plan effective strategies.

Poor lead quality

If the marketing team provides leads that aren't well-qualified or relevant, sales reps will struggle to convert them into customers.

Ineffective sales processes

Inefficient or outdated sales processes can slow down deals, leading to missed quotas.

Lack of alignment between sales and marketing

Misalignment on target markets, goals, and strategies can result in wasted efforts and missed opportunities.

Insufficient training and resources

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

High sales rep turnover

Frequent changes in the sales team can disrupt sales processes and relationships with prospects and customers. According to multiple sources, the average attrition rate in sales teams is about 30% annually.

Changing market conditions

Economic shifts, new competitors, or changes in customer preferences can all unexpectedly affect sales performance.

Limited visibility into pipeline health

Without clear visibility into the sales pipeline, it's difficult for sales leaders to identify bottlenecks or stages where deals are getting stuck.

All the above-mentioned factors contribute to slowing down growth and to unmet sales quotas.

Key strategies to boost quota attainment

Let’s discuss what a sales or revenue leader can do to increase quota attainment.

Here is a list of proven strategies and sales quota attainment tips that allow you to boost the probability of hitting your sales targets.

Set realistic sales quotas based on historical data and sales forecasts

This is the first step in achieving sales goals. Instead of setting sales quotas based on intuition or gut feelings, make sure you set attainable sales targets that are justified by the historical performance of your team and are aligned with sales forecasts for future periods.

Implement efficient pipeline management to prevent revenue leaks

Be aware of any bottlenecks in your sales pipeline that may prevent you from closing deals efficiently. Adjust your real-time pipeline tracking to spot risks and react swiftly.

Utilize sales performance tracking software to investigate inefficiencies

Make sure you know how your key sales metrics have changed lately. Moreover, be able to quickly conduct root-cause analysis to understand the reasons for any inefficiencies and eliminate them immediately.

Build efficient sales enablement processes

The effectiveness of your sales enablement process plays a crucial role in how quickly your new sales hires ramp up and hit their quotas. Moreover, continuous training, coaching sessions, and tech tools can ensure that your current team's performance does not deteriorate.

Utilize sales forecasting for better resource allocation

Accurate sales forecasting provides a solid foundation for effective decision-making. By knowing your future numbers and the risks of not hitting quotas, you can efficiently allocate resources such as budgets, people, and tools to increase quota attainment.

Align sales and marketing towards the same goals

Sales and marketing should be tightly integrated and aligned toward 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 generated in dollars instead of the number of MQLs/SQLs) or implementing SLAs.

Additionally, leveraging tools to import LinkedIn contacts to HubSpot can ensure that both teams have access to the most accurate and up-to-date contact information, which helps streamline efforts and improve alignment.

Focus on building top-notch, steady sales teams

Invest time in recruiting top talent. Hiring A-players is a direct responsibility of a sales leader. Make sure you can objectively measure the performance of sales reps on your team and identify mediocre performers. Lay off mediocre players as they negatively impact the rest of your team. Build a culture where talent is challenged and valued to decrease attrition rates.

Although all the mentioned strategies are utterly important for increasing the quota attainment rate, in this article, we will delve into a few of them in greater detail.

Efficient sales planning and goal setting

Achieving your sales quotas starts with comprehensive sales planning and setting realistic sales targets.

This process can be broken down into two major activities:

1. Assessing what you can expect, taking into account your current performance.

2. Determining what you need to hit your sales targets.

Assessment of current performance

First and foremost, 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 by 15% quarterly, it’s unlikely that you will be able to grow by 30% in the next quarter.

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

Knowing these numbers, along with the average lead volume growth rate, you can predict which goals are attainable.

Third, you need to analyze your current pipeline and create forecasts to estimate projected revenue for future periods.

To create accurate forecasts, you will need to utilize credible forecasting models. CRMs often lack these capabilities, so you might try specialized tools like Forecastio or Clari.

The more accurate your forecasts are, the more precisely you can set sales targets.

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

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

Estimating resources

Estimating resources allows you to assess your sales targets from a different angle.

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 be added to the pipeline and when?

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

Let’s consider a simple example:

Your key strategy to generate leads is inbound marketing. This means most of your leads come from the website.

You must know how much traffic needs to be generated to secure a certain number of leads, MQLs, SQLs, and deals in the pipeline to hit your numbers.

And the most important question is 'when.'

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

Additionally, you need to align your goals with marketing. 

Will marketing commit to the numbers?

If not, should you lower your sales goals as they are unattainable, or seek another source of leads, such as cold outreach?

Also, it’s utterly important to understand the sales capacity needed to hit your targets.

To answer these questions, you should estimate how many sales reps should be on your team, taking into account the average revenue per rep.

If you don’t have enough sales reps, estimate how many more you need to hire and when, considering your average ramp-up period and the annual attrition rate in sales teams.

Performance tracking and pipeline management

When sales quota is set, a sales leader should be able to preventively spot possible risks and factors that can negatively impact sales quota attainment.

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

Pipeline management

Key in pipeline management is to detect which deals are at risk and which areas of the pipeline are performing poorly.

CRMs allow you to manage deals, but in most cases, to understand which of them need immediate attention, you have to do a lot of manual work.

That’s why utilizing sales performance tracking software can help you receive signals related to risky deals:

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

• A deal without any recent activity;

• A deal with close dates that are being changed frequently;

• A deal with an amount that has been significantly decreased;

Being able to receive all these signals in real time gives you the opportunity to react swiftly and prevent potential revenue leaks.

When it comes to the pipeline, it’s important to be able to monitor how it develops over time:

• Has the amount of the pipeline decreased significantly?

• Do you have enough pipeline coverage to attain your quota?

• Are a large number of deals slipping from the current quarter to a future period?

• Is your pipeline shrinking or growing over time?

For example, if you notice that a huge amount of the pipeline is slipping to a future period, you can understand that your sales reps may have issues estimating close dates, or you can get a list of slipped deals and intervene.

Platforms like Forecastio can help you manage your pipeline more efficiently, spot bottlenecks in a timely manner, and ensure a high sales quota attainment.

Performance tracking

What can prevent you from attaining sales quotas? Decreasing sales performance.

If the win rate has decreased, the sales cycle has lengthened, or the conversion from a demo to an opportunity has dropped, there is a huge risk of not meeting the quota.

As a sales or revenue leader, you should track key sales metrics in real time and react quickly as soon as any negative tendency is discovered.

But it’s not enough to spot the negative trend; it’s important to quickly figure out the reason.

Has your win rate decreased because:

• Deals are lost at a certain pipeline stage;

• Deals from a particular source convert poorly;

• A certain sales rep's performance has dropped;

• The quality of leads has dropped.

Has your sales cycle lengthened because:

• Deals become stuck at a certain pipeline stage;

• Some of your reps struggle to close deals;

• The quality of leads has dropped.

If you can quickly spot the negative trend and understand the reason for it, you can eliminate all inefficiencies before they affect your quota attainment.

Summary

It’s been increasingly difficult to sell and meet quotas lately. Therefore, you need to be well-equipped to outperform your peers.

Leveraging the described strategies to increase quota attainment will not guarantee hitting or surpassing your quota. However, the mentioned sales quota attainment tips will definitely help you increase the likelihood of meeting your sales targets and becoming one of the top-notch sales or revenue leaders.

The average quota attainment is 47%. What is considered good quota attainment? It’s about 80%. Aim to be among those whose teams consistently meet their quotas.