Dispatch #003
The quota was built on a lie. Here is how to build it on evidence.
Most quotas are built backwards. The board sets a target. Finance divides it by headcount. Sales leadership presents it at kickoff and calls it a plan. Nobody tests whether the territories, the pipeline, or the ramp assumptions can actually support the number. By Q2 the gap is visible. By Q3 it is a crisis. The quota was never wrong — it was never real.
The failure is not ambition. Ambitious targets are fine. The failure is building a quota on assumptions that nobody interrogated: that every new hire ramps in 90 days, that every territory has equal opportunity, that pipeline will materialise because it did last year. Bottom-up quota construction forces the organisation to confront the gap between target and capacity before the quarter starts, not after.
The answers below expose the specific assumptions that break quota models and show how to build targets from evidence — territory capacity, historical conversion, and actual pipeline reality.
The wrong quota is built on assumptions nobody tested. Here is how to build it from data.
If 80% of your team is hitting quota, your targets are probably wrong.
Most headcount decisions are made backwards. Here is how to calculate using real data.
38 questions that expose the assumptions your quota was built on.
Quota Construction Framework →