Getting the most out of the Quota Planning Solution Guide

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As we reach the last few weeks of the calendar year, many sales organizations put their blinders on and focus exclusively on closing business in a busy shopping season.

But it is never too early to start thinking about what comes next from a sales planning perspective. How will you measure and motivate your sales force in the next year? What changes, if any, do you need to make?

Anaplan experts have created a series of solution guides to help you get started. For this post, we aim to help users get the most out of our Quota Planning Solution Guide.

For more general background information on the solution guides, check out our discussion with Anaplan’s own @PamWalker.

 

Using sales quota planning to maximize team performance

A sales quota is a time-bound milestone used to measure performance and motivate sellers. When designed well, quotas can be a powerful way to keep sellers performing at their maximum potential. Yet quota planning is not a one-size-fits-all process; every organization will have a unique approach based on its product mix, market dynamics, and go-to-market strategy. Quota planning in Anaplan provides users and model builders a lot of flexibility so they can create and optimize their sales quotas during annual planning — and throughout the year.

In general, quotas should strike a balance between being aspirational and motivating for sellers, while still meeting revenue objectives. When quotas are too high, they are demotivating and frustrating. When they’re too low, you may exceed your compensation budget with high payouts. It varies by industry, but best-in-class organizations aim for 60-70% of sellers achieving quota.

 

Leveraging best practice steps for quota planning 

Best practice approaches to planning and managing quotas include the following steps:

1. Model market condition scenarios.
   1. View total market revenue “what-if” scenario results using calculated relative account value and adjustment options.
2. Top-down target setting.
   1. “Total Target” is distributed proportionally top-down through the sales hierarchy. The proportion differs based on the allocation method. For example, an even allocation method takes the organization’s revenue goal and divides this equally across all territories.
   2.  Additionally, targets are often over-allocated down the hierarchy by sales leaders to create a buffer. 
3. Bottom-up target setting.
   1. Calculate and associate potential revenue amount to customers and prospects to determine territory potential and sales capacity. Aggregate potential revenue up the territory hierarchy.
4. A mixture of top-down and Bottom-up target setting.
   1. Process where top-down and bottom-up territory planning are combined, which allows input from executives and sales and results in more realistic targets.
5. Sales coverage planning.
   1. Ratio of account assignments where salespeople can make their quota while effectively providing the optimal service to accounts and prospects.
6. Sales analysis.
   1. Measure your sales progress throughout the year. Analysis allows you and your sales team to identify weaknesses in your sales strategy and make changes so that you can improve the results over the next period.

Be sure to check out the Quota Planning Solution Guide for common challenges, details on using Predictive Insights in Anaplan to augment your planning process, a full dashboard and demo flow, and more.