How do I set quotas that most of the team can actually hit?

The practical method for combining top down targets with bottom up rep feedback, and the attainment bell curve to aim for: 60 to 70 percent around quota, 15 to 20 percent above, 10 to 15 percent short.

Sales Quota Planning: How to Align Targets and Drive Results

From Everstage by Arvinda Bharathi 13 min read

• A healthy distribution is 60 to 70 percent of reps at or slightly above quota, 15 to 20 percent well over, 10 to 15 percent short.
• Run baseline and stretch quotas, paying a higher rate only on the stretch band.
• Activity quota example: 50 calls a week converting at 10 percent into meetings or demos.
• Gartner: nearly 90 percent of B2B sellers report burnout and over half are job hunting, so unrealistic quotas cost you people.

Written for Indian SaaS founders by the Everstage CEO, ex Freshworks. It gives the working numbers: quota period must be at least the sales cycle, quota to OTE around 5 to 6x, and two thirds of reps landing between 80 and 100 percent attainment.

Getting the Quotas Right for Your SaaS Sales Teams

From SaaSBoomi by Siva Rajamani 10 min read

• Target a 5:1 quota to OTE ratio; below 4:1 something is wrong (600K quota against 120K OTE).
• Ramp time equals sales cycle length plus training time, assuming the rep gets enough MQLs.
• Never set a quota period shorter than the sales cycle, so no monthly quotas on a 90 day cycle.
• About two thirds of reps should land in the 80 to 100 percent attainment band, otherwise the quota is wrong.
• Only worth doing past 1M ARR with product-market fit, and needs 12 months of funnel history.

Roughly 47,000 quota carrying reps across 246 companies, with average attainment at 42.7 percent. The number to put in front of a board that thinks your team is underperforming when the quota is what is broken.

57% of SaaS Sales Reps Missed Quota in Q2 2025. Here's What That Means

From QuotaPath, using RepVue's Cloud Sales Index 8 min read

• 57.31 percent of SaaS reps missed quota in Q2 2025, across 246 companies and about 47,000 quota carriers.
• Average quota attainment was 42.69 percent, less than half of target.
• The quotas were built on growth assumptions from a different market, and comp plans never adjusted to longer cycles.
• When most sellers cluster far below quota, comp stops working as a performance signal at all.

The numbers you want when arguing about a plan: median commission around 11.5 percent of ACV, AE pay mix near 53:47, quota to OTE median 4.2x, and a median SaaS win rate of 19 percent. Use it to check whether your plan is normal.

SaaS Sales Compensation Benchmarks: Trends and Best Practices

From Everstage 12 min read

• Median AE OTE is 190,000 dollars on a 53:47 base to variable split (Bridge Group 2024).
• Median commission at full quota is 11.5 percent of ACV, with most plans between 11 and 14 percent.
• Median quota-to-OTE ratio is 4.2x, typically 3.2x to 4.8x.
• Median SaaS win rate fell to 19 percent in 2024, down from 23 percent in 2022.

Built around the same idea as the answer, that a quota most of the team misses is a planning failure you pay for in resignations. It runs the top down and bottom up numbers together and shows what to do when the two disagree.

The Art & Science of Quota Setting: Get It Right or Lose Your Team | 30MPC Playbook (Lead)

On 30 Minutes to President's Club 33 min