A Sales Drumbeat

Do I set quotas annually, quarterly or monthly? This helps determine the pace of the sales drumbeat. There isn’t necessarily a single answer per sales organization – it will vary by individual sales team and their target customers. One company, with different sales teams, can have multiple drumbeats.

Is the sales cycle several months? Quarterly quotas might work best. Is it 15-30 days? Go for monthly quotas with the ability to over-achieve every month, forgetting about annual quotas.

It’s a mistake to assume what worked in the past (even five years ago) will work now, or what worked in a big company will work in a startup. It’s much more effective to align the right quota drumbeat to a sales team based on the sales/buying cycles, rather than trying to force a the sales team and buying cycle to some arbitrary quota drumbeat!

Also, cost-effectively closing a new customer requires more and more tight collaboration across a company now, such as with sales engineering, sales operations and finance. When planning quotas and your drumbeat, consider the entire impact it has on across the company. Like a metronome guiding a group of musicians, a regular, aligned sales drumbeat can help the whole company work together smoothly, reliably and predictably.