What is Quota?

A quota is the sales target a rep, team or territory is expected to hit in a set period, usually measured in closed revenue, and it’s the number commission plans and sales capacity plans are built around.

At a glance

• Quotas are usually set monthly, quarterly or yearly, and they roll up to the company’s revenue target.
• Salesforce lists five common types: activity, profit, forecast, volume and combination quotas.
• Performance against quota is quota attainment, written as a percentage.
• A quota is specific and time-bound. A sales goal is the broader company objective it serves.
• Quotas are set top down, bottom up, or by a back-and-forth between the two.

The common types of quota

• Revenue or volume quota: closed bookings or units sold. The most common for account executives.
• Activity quota: calls, emails or meetings. Often used for SDRs, or when a team is building a new market.
• Profit quota: revenue minus the cost of the sale, for teams where discounting or margin matters.
• Forecast quota: built from past results and expected market conditions.
• Combination quota: two or more of the above, such as revenue plus a set number of meetings held.

How quota is set

In a top-down plan, leadership takes the revenue target and divides it across teams and reps. In a bottom-up plan, managers work out what each rep can sell from their pipeline, territory and history, and pass that up. Most teams do both and settle somewhere between.

Example (illustrative): a segment needs $2M in new ARR next year at a $40,000 average deal, so it needs 50 wins. At a 25% win rate that’s 200 qualified opportunities. If one AE can work about 50 opportunities a year, the segment needs four ramped AEs carrying $500,000 each, plus enough top-of-pipeline work to create those 200 opportunities.

What the data says about quota

Salesforce’s 2024 State of Sales survey of 5,500 sales professionals found 67% of reps didn’t expect to hit quota that year. Writing for Salesforce, sales trainer Lori Richardson suggests setting a quota at least half of your sellers can reach, so high performers stay stretched and others can still get there.

Common quota mistakes

• Last year plus a growth percentage. It ignores whether the pipeline, the territory and the headcount can support the number.
• Full quota during ramp. New reps need a ramped quota that steps up over their first months. See rep ramp time.
• Uneven territories. Two reps with the same quota and very different account lists aren’t being measured on the same thing. See territory.
• Changing it mid-period. A moving target breaks trust in the plan and every comparison with earlier periods.
• No link to inputs. A revenue quota with no agreed pipeline or meeting targets underneath leaves nobody accountable for the work that produces it.

How quota shows up in a revenue system

A closer’s quota depends on the meetings and qualified pipeline feeding it. At Payoneer, a pod opened one region for one product line under Payoneer’s brand and booked 111 meetings in 3 months for Payoneer’s closers. Read the Payoneer story.

Terms that sit next to quota

Quota is the target, and quota attainment is how you did against it. Whether it’s reachable depends on pipeline coverage, and short pushes toward it often come from a SPIFF.