Managing the number
Seventy per cent of target is either excellent or a disaster.
It depends entirely on the date, and on whether your business closes evenly across a quarter — which almost none do. A straight line tells a team selling into a December budget cycle that they are failing every November.
After the second time, they stop looking.
Pace
Three numbers, not one: attained, on pace, and the gap.
A quota carries a target and a shape. The shape divides the period into segments with weights you choose, so the expected-by-today line follows how your business actually lands rather than a straight diagonal.
The progress bar shows attainment. The marker shows where you should be. The distance between them is the only figure that means anything in week six.
The line is not the halfway point. It follows the shape you gave the quarter — so a business that closes in December is not told it is behind on the first of November.
- Seven metrics, and the right one matters —
Booked value, won value, activated recurring revenue, cash received, deal count, qualified leads, placements. A quota on cash received and a quota on bookings incentivise genuinely different behaviour.
- A count metric cannot carry a currency —
And a money metric must. Refused by name in both directions, so nobody creates a target of "a hundred and fifty deals, in dollars".
- A person, a team, or a territory —
And a rep sees every quota they could be credited under — directly, as a team member, or as a territory's owner — with days remaining.
- Attainment keeps the deals that made it —
Not just a percentage. The contributing records are recorded so a rep can audit their own number rather than asking somebody to check it.
- Over-attainment is expected and handled —
Two hundred per cent renders as two hundred per cent rather than overflowing or clamping at the target.
Honest about these
Four things to know before you set targets on this.
Quotas do not convert currencies. A target in one currency counts deals in every other at face value. Forecasting handles this properly and tells you what it excluded; quotas do not, so set them where your team sells.
A refunded payment is not netted off a cash target. The refund is recorded against the credit note rather than the payment, so a fully refunded receipt keeps counting.
There is no proration. Somebody who joins in the second month of a quarter gets the full target and the full pace curve.
Targets change without a trail. There is no version history on a quota, so lowering one mid-quarter leaves no record that it was lowered.
- Cash received is attributed through the account —
Which means a payment that cannot be attributed to a customer — a freehand invoice with no account on it — is deliberately excluded rather than credited to whoever happened to raise it.
- Qualified-lead targets anchor on the real moment —
When the lead converted, falling back to when it was last touched for one that qualified and has not converted yet. So the count reflects work done in the period rather than records created in it.
- History is never recomputed —
A closed period's attainment stays as it was. Recalculating it would shift as deals are re-owned or back-dated, which is exactly what makes last quarter's numbers unarguable.
›How often does attainment update?
Overnight, or on demand when an administrator asks for it. It does not recompute the moment a deal closes.
›Can quotas be imported or bulk-created?
No. One at a time through the form, and they cannot be edited afterwards — worth knowing before setting fifty of them.
›Can I report on quota attainment?
Not through the report builder — quotas are not one of its subjects. The attainment card and the rep's own view are where it lives.
›Do territory quotas count a territory's secondary owners?
No — the primary owner only.