This one works backward from your target to the headcount it actually requires — then shows you how many of those hires you don't need. Built from the operating system behind a decade of multi-route growth — direct, partner, distribution and enterprise.
Each one has different economics. Picking one loads sensible starting numbers you can overwrite.
Five numbers. If you don't know one exactly, estimate — the shape of the answer holds.
Revenue per rep is an average, and averages hide distributions. On most teams a third of the reps carry well over half the number. Adding headcount at your average assumes the next hires perform like the middle of your team rather than the bottom — and that the top of it stays. If your spread is wide, the levers below are a safer bet than the hires above.
If nothing about how you sell changes, this is the arithmetic. It's the plan most companies take to the board, and it's the most expensive way to close a gap.
Every slider below is a system you can change without adding a person. Watch the headcount number at the top of the screen fall as you move them.
Optimising one route to market changes your slope. Adding a second changes your level.
It is the only thing that produces a step change rather than an incremental one.
It is also slower, harder, and most attempts fail. A new motion contributes almost nothing for the first two or three quarters — which is exactly why it has to be started before you need it, not when the number demands it.
Solid: what the new motion contributes month by month at your chosen start. Dashed: what it would have contributed if you started today.
It is a reach motion, not a growth motion. You inherit the distributor’s growth rate, sell-in is not sell-through so you cannot see end-user demand, and you have no relationship with the buyer to expand or defend. And the margin you trade for the reach is the margin that would have funded the demand engine — which is why healthy distributor relationships so often sit flat for years.
Ask both gates, not one. Will they actually sell it? — a distributor earning a one-time margin opens a door; one earning a recurring stream sells. And can you grow through them alone? — after the route margin above, are there discretionary points left to fund anything?
Productivity targets are easy to write down. This is what yours demands of a single rep, every working day, for a year. Note that levers behave differently here — winning more of what you already work, or raising deal size, costs no extra effort. Shortening cycles or raising output does. That difference is usually the whole argument.
Two engines with completely different constraints. Bought pipeline is limited by budget; prospected pipeline is limited by hours. Most companies run both, and the mix decides which wall you hit first.
Every company defines these differently. What matters is that your conversion rates above use the same definitions as these — if you count meetings as opportunities, your rates need to say so.
This counts prospecting only. Servicing existing customers — chasing reorders, quoting, shepherding a deal through a partner's own sales cycle — is real work and none of it appears above. In a repeat-purchase business that is most of a rep's day, which is exactly why prospecting is the first thing a reactive week eats. Read the daily figure as the protected block you need to defend, not the total workload.
If your team is split by role, this is a blended average. An SDR sustains far more daily volume than a quota-carrying AE. A rep farming existing accounts often carries two or three times the revenue of one hunting new ones, while prospecting almost none of it. Count every selling head in your rep number and read the activity row as the team's load — then set the rep-sourced share to reflect how much of your pipeline the hunters actually create.
Anyone can set an ambitious target. This scores whether the plan behind it survives contact with a real year — sustainable workload, credible assumptions, leverage that isn't just headcount, and enough runway to execute.
Every number above is revenue. Revenue is only half a plan — a target you hit by giving away margin is a target that costs you next year.
A discount does not come out of margin. It comes out of R&D.
Your operating costs are fixed and your profit number is committed to somebody. So a concession lands almost entirely on the only bucket that flexes — the one that funds the next product, the next hire you actually wanted, the next process improvement. The company does not look less profitable that year. It looks the same, and it stops improving.
This is deliberately a floor, not a forecast. It counts only the selling cost the plan adds and the pipeline it buys — not the rest of your operating base, which the growth will also stretch. If the number here is thin, the real one is thinner.
This plan assumes your current forecast is trustworthy. If you have not landed within about 5% of your number for two or three consecutive quarters, fix that first. One good quarter is a sample of one — it is indistinguishable from a lucky mix, and headcount added against an unreliable forecast is the most expensive way to find that out.