Quota Attainment
Quick definition
The percentage of your sales team that hits their target (quota) in a given period.
Detailed explanation
Quota Attainment is a critical health indicator of your sales organization. It measures how many of your reps hit their targets - typically 80-100% of quota is considered "at target", >100% is overperformance. A healthy organization has 60-70% of reps at/above quota. Lower attainment (<50%) indicates: unrealistic quotas, insufficient leads/pipeline, product/market fit issues, poor sales skills, or wrong hiring. Very high attainment (>90% hitting quota) means quotas are too easy - you're leaving growth on the table. Quota attainment is also linked to retention - reps who consistently miss leave (voluntary or involuntary). It also affects forecast reliability and team morale. Companies must balance between ambitious targets (growth) and achievable targets (retention and morale).
Synonyms
Examples
Q1 results: 8 of 10 reps hit quota (80% attainment). Q2: 4 of 10 (40%). Diagnosis: lead flow dropped 50% due to marketing budget cut. Solution: rebalance quotas or fix lead gen → otherwise you lose your team.
A company sets aggressive quotas: only 30% hit target consistently. After 12 months, turnover is 60%, hiring costs explode, and remaining reps are demoralized. New sales leader resets quotas more realistically: 65% attainment, turnover drops to 15%, team grows stable.
When to use this?
Review quota attainment monthly and quarterly. Segment by rep, product, region to see patterns. If <50% hit quota, there's a systemic issue - investigate. If >80% hit quota too easily, raise targets next period. Use attainment for coaching too - reps between 60-80% have potential, focus coaching there.
Match-day approach
Match-day helps you set realistic but stretching quotas based on historical performance, pipeline coverage, and market conditions. We also implement quota relief policies for new reps (ramped quotas - month 1 is 30%, month 2 is 50%, etc) which improves onboarding success. We analyze low performers - is it skills (trainable), effort (manageable), or wrong fit (exit)? And for high performers - what do they do differently that we can scale? Quota attainment is an outcome metric - we fix it by optimizing inputs (lead quality, enablement, process).
Learn more
Wil je weten hoe je quota attainment effectief inzet in jouw organisatie? Neem contact op met Match-day.
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