SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2025

If you dont have a repeatable sales process or at least two reps hitting quota, youre not ready. You need to figure out the basics yourself firstclose the first deals, build a small team, and hit some traction (ideally $1M ARR or close to it). Heres how to approach it: Timing is Everything Dont hire a VP of Sales too early.

Quota 95

Quota Sales Up-sell Closing 95

Veloxy

JANUARY 19, 2022

Rather, let the results, numbers, and value do what most mere names cannot—close the deal! I’ve worked with dozens of regional sales managers at telecom companies T-Mobile and Comcast, multiplying revenue by eliminating non-selling activities that bog down field sales reps. They haven’t missed quota since I first called them.

Cold Call 358

Cold Call Territory Quota Up-sell 358

RingDNA

MARCH 26, 2025

LinkedIn is no longer a nice to have in 2025, whether you’re a CEO shaping your company’s vision, a COO optimizing processes, or an SDR hustling to hit quota. If you live for weekend trout fishing trips you might slip it in there, but not at the expense of describing the products or services you are selling. It’s that simple.

Closing 62

Closing B2B Sell Referrals 62

Sales Gravy

MARCH 30, 2025

You Hit Quota You on track and right where you are supposed to be against your number You are in trouble You missed your number, are behind quota, and are feeling the pressure. It can also make life much easier if your sales plan and quota gets bigger in the back half of the year as many do. Quota isnt easy to achieve.

Quota 98

Quota Pipeline Sales Up-sell 98

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 30, 2025

Yesterday, the CEO I spoke with said more than half of his salespeople were not hitting quota, and he also thought they were complacent. Its not unusual to hear about quota fails or complacency in these conversations, but on this particular call, I heard about both. Thats only a 7% difference from the group that doesnt hit quota.

Quota 69

Quota Drivers/motivators Sales Up-sell 69

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2025

Top 10 Strategies Toasts CRO Uses to Crush Sales Quotas So a little while ago Toasts CRO Jonathan Vassil joined Sam Blond on SaaStr CRO Confidential on how Toast built one of the strongest but toughest rocketship in sales: a lower gross margin, lower ACV ($10k), sales-led SMB sales motion. 5 Interesting Learnings from Toast at $1.1

Quota 55

Quota Territory Referrals Strategic partnership 55

Iannarino

AUGUST 8, 2021

Less than half of salespeople reach their quota and more than half of buyers don’t change, evidence that what we’re doing isn’t working. According to two recent studies, those are the percentages of B2B salespeople who miss their quota. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales.

Intrinsic 321

Intrinsic Quota Clients B2B 321

Salesforce

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

Create sales plans that save reps time and maximize sales impact Get your targets, budget, and headcount aligned with just a few clicks so you can sell more efficiently. These targets are used to guide the quota-setting, territory mapping , and sales team strategies. Is additional product or sales training needed before teams can sell?

Quota 116

Quota Territory Pipeline Sales 116

Veloxy

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

It delivers results by using a mix of sales technology and a value-driven approach to selling. Start selling faster, easier. Most salespeople expect to miss their quota every single year. But hitting quota every year doesn’t always equate to a perfect sales enablement strategy for a few reasons.

CRM 262

CRM Quota Sales Pipeline 262

Tibor Shanto

JUNE 17, 2021

It relates directly to how goals, targets and quotas are set and hit. Psychological Safety is important for setting hard goals and hitting quotas. But most importantly for Sales teams is they are also generally ‘high performing’ teams and over achieve their quotas. Psychological Safety is important to team performance.

Objectives and Key Results 293

Objectives and Key Results Quota Sales Drivers/motivators 293

Tibor Shanto

AUGUST 10, 2021

Questions are the weapon of choice for consistently successful salespeople, so listen up the half that aren’t making quota. Take closed ended questions, most people have bought into the myth that they are bad. As I have probably mentioned a million times, prospecting is different than selling. By Tibor Shanto.

Appointment 274

Appointment Quota Prospecting Education 274

Tibor Shanto

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

With a 4:1 closing average, every time I close a deal, I must get four more to stay afloat. The more you manage it, honestly, the more consistently you will exceed quota. Never Sit in the Lobby: 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling.

Pipeline 282

Pipeline Quota Prospecting Follow-up 282

Sales Hacker

JULY 26, 2021

It’s no secret that technology’s evolution is changing the way sellers sell. A typical sales process consists of five to seven steps: prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, handling objections, closing, and follow-up. Eighty percent of the prospecting sales force is under 25 years old.

Quota 130

Quota Cold Call CRM Sales 130

Sales Gravy

APRIL 24, 2025

Are you hesitating at the close? Soft closes? The ultra-high performers Ive seen who get coaching consistently shorten deal cycles, multiply referrals, and close with precision. The Solopreneur Youre running a business, selling the service, delivering the product, and following up with the clients. You need guidance.

Sports 97

Sports Referrals Sales Pipeline 97

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

Lindsey explains: “On one hand, if it’s a SaaS product you sell x many seats or licenses and the customer goes live, then you often can set it and forget it for the following year. But as she dug in, the real answer was too many sales reps were overbooking deals because of the pressure to hit their bookings quota.

Objectives and Key Results 117

Objectives and Key Results Growth Engineering Quota 117

Tibor Shanto

JULY 7, 2021

It was a straight unbroken line, the quota is a number, as are ROIs, commissions, and almost everything else. This may also explain why nearly half of B2B sellers fail to deliver quota. (And BTW, that small discount it took to close them, that’s a number, may not be your number, but a number. Numbers Are Here To Stay.

Objectives and Key Results 301

Objectives and Key Results Quota Gaming Commission 301

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2023

So quotas are relatively well understood, if sometimes complicated to get right in practice. Keybanc and Sapphire have some great overall metrics here : Overall, the media AE closes $750,000 a year, and that’s actually up from 2022 — mainly due to hiring freezes and contractions. And how many hit quota?

Sell 133

Sell Quota Commission Contract 133

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2021

A great rep often literally closes 9x more than a poor rep. It’s several factors compounding: First, the best reps close more seats / more revenue per deal. They are better at mapping out business processes, at discovering how many seats, units, whatever there is to sell … and they just sell more.

Closing 145

Closing Quota Pitch Gaming 145

Salesforce

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Ah — that sometimes elusive, but always thrilling moment when you close a deal. That’s why we’ll move past outdated and ineffective sales closing techniques in this article and talk to sales experts to get the nitty-gritty of what it means to close like a boss in today’s world. How do you improve at closing?

Technique 105

Technique Closing Sales Electricity 105

Veloxy

JUNE 21, 2021

If you sell telecommunications, your cold calls could and should be different than a salesperson selling software. If you sell IT services, your cold calls could and should be different than a financial services consultant. Introduction Opening Lead Qualification Closing the Sale. Close the Sale. Prospect: Yes!

Cold Call 298

Cold Call Objectives and Key Results Pitch Follow-up 298

Veloxy

JANUARY 2, 2024

However, with increasing competition combined with a limited budget and sales personnel, reaching your quotas can be challenging. While you may want your sales team to focus on selling, they also spend much time on administrative tasks. In doing so, you can give your reps more time to sell while helping them reach more qualified leads.

Product 246

Product Territory Objectives and Key Results Sales 246

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2025

rep good at one product can fail at selling another. They may not immediately hit quota (few do). But they find a way to close something relatively early. But you do need to see some deals closing within a standard sales cycle. Only the outliers will hit a full quota in their first quarter.

Quota 66

Quota Sales Gaming Closing 66

Tibor Shanto

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Quota attainment remains under 60%, closed forecasted deals aren’t much better. By Tibor Shanto. Despite advancements in tools, methodologies, and other attempts, sales as a profession continues to struggle. One has to ask what is being enabled by the new breed of soothsayers. A structured and enabled mess is still a mess.

Quota 293

Quota Technique Prospecting Closing 293

Gong.io

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Sales cliche: Top sales pros could sell ice to eskimos. Your job isn’t to use closing techniques, it’s to lead. Here are 8 sales closing questions that are 0% closing gimmicks and 100% effective. The reason most deals don’t close is misalignment. This is where asking the right sales closing questions comes in.

Closing 118

Closing Sales Cold Call Legal 118

Partners in Excellence

MAY 3, 2023

Theoretically, freeing us up to have selling conversations. Perhaps a few for outreach communications, sales enablement platforms, authoring/content platforms, conversational intelligence, reporting/analytics, messaging, proposal management, calendar management, conferencing/virtual selling, CRM, and others.

Sell 126

Sell CRM Up-sell Education 126

RingDNA

APRIL 11, 2025

What it Measures: The total number of attempts a rep makes to call prospects in a given day Value: Many sales organizations have a dialing quota since more dials can equate with more meaningful sales conversations and revenue. Value: More conversations each day virtually always correlates with higher quota attainment.

Quota 62

Quota Sales Pipeline Contact 62

Sales Gravy

DECEMBER 22, 2024

For me, the last full week of the year has always been the chance to pause, take a break from the grind of selling, and really think about what happened over the past yearthe good, the bad, and the ugly. In the sales world, we get a brand-new quota and brand-new targets. You can do so with regret or reflection. Regret is stagnation.

Quota 96

Quota Presentation Prospecting Closing 96

Cerebral Selling

JANUARY 14, 2023

You could also be well behind your quota, struggling to stay motivated and worried about job security. When pipelines shrink, close rates decrease, and your team doesn’t see a clear path to the number, they lose motivation, worry sets in, and they start blaming things outside of their control. It can also be the hardest.

Quota 209

Quota Pipeline Drivers/motivators Negotiate 209

Sales Hacker

JUNE 24, 2021

Adding insult to injury, that imbalance means all that time and money it takes to get prospects to the closing phase goes to waste. But like all other aspects of sales, closing is a process. Radio silence from your prospects at the close stage could be caused by the fact that they haven’t seen the documents your reps sent.

Closing 127

Closing Contact Sales Follow-up 127

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Look at quota attainment, activity levels (calls, emails, demos), and conversion rates. Reps who get just three hours of coaching per month can increase close rates by 70%. Deal Quality and Close Rates : Examine the quality of deals entering the pipeline and the close rates at each stage. If so, why?

Cross-sell 70

Cross-sell Pipeline Legal Contract 70

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

I wrote a post, “ Sellers, Are You Really Interested In Selling ? He did this asking, “Dave, why are you so interested in selling?” I’m obsessed with selling—all things selling. I’m driven to find and close deals. I ended up taking a role in Manhattan selling to big banks.

Sell 138

Sell Up-sell Follow-up Start-ups 138

Hubspot

SEPTEMBER 9, 2024

Many organizations may closely meet your company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) criteria and warrant sales reps to proactively reach out to them. The Benefits of a Lead List Selling without a lead list is a slow, disorganized process that usually produces poor results. This investment has helped me time and time again.

Territory 83

Territory Cold Call SQL Campaign 83

Hubspot

MARCH 13, 2025

According to a 2023 survey of over 450 sales leaders, 91% of their teams missed quota that year. This begins at the sales rep level but can become an enterprise-wide problem when sales staff, from reps up to SVPs, focus on their year-to-date (YTD) positions against quota. Why are revenue targets so hard to hit?

Meeting 66

Meeting Pipeline Quota Sales 66

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 5, 2024

As you will see, Martin has a fascinating and rich career an selling. Martin articulates something that I think so many of us find so exciting about selling: “The main reason is that it challenges you to reinvent yourself and stay current with your knowledge because it is the most dynamic industry of all.

Sell 139

Sell Territory Consult Contract 139

Sales Pop!

JUNE 23, 2023

Everything about cryptocurrency—buying, selling, exchanging—is terribly complicated. If your conversion rate for leads to opportunities is 25 percent, and you have a quota of $200,000 per month, you should maintain approximately $800,000 worth of leads in the pipeline. What is the most important factor for doing so?

Technology 246

Technology Technology Pipeline CRM 246

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I’ve Started to Hate Selling. Because the best sales leaders I know … also love to sell. Sometimes, they carry a quota themselves. But they are always in the hunt to not just close deals, but get better. Would I Be Happier as Sales Manager Instead? Yes, you will also hate sales management.

Sell 113

Sell Quota Sales Presentation 113

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 16, 2025

The truth is that even the most media-rich, entertaining, engaging, memorable sales training can’t come close to holding people’s attention when compared to a series like “24.” Salespeople who don’t buy-in should be replaced if they are also guilty of not meeting or exceeding quota.

Growth 90

Growth Sales Entertainment Quota 90