How to set sales targets: monthly numbers that add up

To set sales targets, work out what the business needs and what each rep can sell, then settle the gap between the two. Allow for ramp and slow months, spread each rep's year across the months, and work each month back to the calls and meetings a week needs. Agree the number with the rep, then check it halfway through the week.

A good sales target is a number for one rep, for one month, that the rep thinks is hard and possible. It adds up to the team's number. And it comes with the weekly activity it takes, so at any point the rep can tell whether they're on track.

Hard matters. Cranfield School of Management's Javier Marcos and Monica Franco-Santos point to decades of research finding that people perform better against specific, difficult targets than against easy ones or "do your best" (Setting effective sales targets). Possible matters as much. Push a target past what the rep believes and the damage shows up in how they sell.

Most teams get one or two of those right. The team number gets split evenly, so the new rep and the five-year rep carry the same load. Or the monthly number is fine, and nobody works out what it means for this week's calls.

The steps below are for a manager setting numbers for a team of 3 to 20, with a section at the end for people who sell on their own. How to word a goal so it's specific and dated is in SMART goals for sales, and the definition and types of quota are on the quota glossary page.

Most teams set a revenue target and stop there. Cranfield's list of what undermines targets includes ones based entirely on financial measures, so pair the money with one number a rep controls.

One outcome number and one activity number per rep is enough. Five targets at once and nobody knows which one matters this week.

There are two ways to arrive at a target, and each one catches the other's mistakes.

Work out both, then compare. If the bottom-up total is a fifth short of what the business needs, you have a real gap to talk about: more reps, more leads, a bigger average deal, or a smaller number. Splitting the gap evenly across reps and hoping isn't one of the options.

1. Start with the team number for the year

Take what the business needs from sales this year and check it against last year's actual and what's in the pipeline now. A sound starting figure is last year's actual, plus growth you can name (a new rep, a price rise, a new area), minus what you've lost (a rep who left, a big client gone). A jump of nearly half with the same team and the same leads needs an explanation before it becomes anyone's target.

2. Work out each rep's capacity

For each rep, look at three things: what they sold last year, how their activity and win rate have moved, and what's already in their pipeline. A rep who sold 30 deals last year at a steady pace is a better guide than a team average.

Ask each rep what they think they can do, and why. Their answer is the start of bottom-up, and it often surfaces something the numbers miss, like a big client going quiet or a new area opening up.

3. Allow for ramp

A rep in their first few months can't carry a full target. Give new reps a stepped target that rises month by month until they reach full. The ramp time page shows how a ramped quota steps up. Whatever the new rep can't carry is part of the gap you talk about in step 1, not extra weight on everyone else.

4. Allow for slow and busy months

If December is always slow and March is always busy, don't set twelve equal months. Look at the last two years and spread the year the way sales actually fell. A rep who misses an unrealistic December target in the first week stops looking at it.

5. Set the monthly number per rep

Now each rep has a yearly figure, spread across months by season and ramp. Check that the reps add up to the team number. If they don't, go back to the gap.

6. Turn each month into weekly activity

This is the step that makes a target usable. Use the rep's own conversion rates to work back from the month to deals, from deals to proposals or meetings, and from meetings to calls.

For example: a monthly target of 8 deals, at a win rate of 1 in 4 from proposal, needs 32 proposals. That's too many if the rep sends 12 a month. So either the win rate has to rise, the deal size has to grow, or 8 is the wrong number. The activity calculator works back from a sales goal to the calls and meetings each week needs.

7. Agree it with each rep

Sit down with each rep, show them how you got to their number, and listen. Change it if they show you something you missed. A target a rep helped set is one they'll own when they're behind.

A yearly number sets the direction. The weekly number is the one a rep acts on, because nobody picks up the phone for a figure eleven months away.

Split each month by its selling days, not by four. A month with 19 working days after a public holiday can't carry the same weekly number as one with 23. Count the days, divide the month's activity by them, and multiply by the days in each week.

For a shop or a counter, the daily line does more of the work. Divide the day's sales number by the average sale, and you know how many customers the floor needs to serve before closing.

A monthly target checked at month end tells you what went wrong. Checked every Wednesday, it tells you what to change while there's still time.

Each Wednesday, compare each rep's activity to the weekly numbers from step 6. A rep at half their meetings with two days left can still book a call block, and a rep on pace gets left alone. The quota calculator shows attainment, whether you're ahead or behind pace, and what each week still needs.

Keep the weekly number where the rep sees it every day, on their phone or on the wall, not in a spreadsheet they open on Friday. A short contest on the weekly number helps in a slow month, and sales incentive ideas has formats that don't reward gaming.

Cranfield's list includes targets that are never reviewed after they're set. Review each rep's number every quarter, and change it mid-quarter only when something outside the rep's control has moved:

• Their area or client list changed.
• A big client left, or a big one arrived through no work of theirs.
• They took long leave, or covered someone else's accounts for weeks.
• Prices or the product changed.

Don't raise a rep's target mid-year because they're ahead, or your best people learn to slow down in October. And don't lower it because they're behind on effort. That's a coaching conversation, not a new number.

Javier Marcos and Monica Franco-Santos of Cranfield School of Management list ten common issues that undermine sales targets. Several match what small teams get wrong:

• Targets based only on past performance. Last year plus a tenth ignores who left, who joined and what changed.
• Targets split across the team without regard to each rep's area and experience.
• Targets that are "given" to reps rather than agreed with them.
• Targets with no agreed action plan, so the rep can't tell if they're on track.
• Targets that are never reviewed after they're set.

Targets set too high

A target nobody believes in does worse than no target. A paper by Lisa Ordonez, Maurice Schweitzer, Adam Galinsky and Max Bazerman, Goals Gone Wild, lists the side effects of goals pushed too hard: a narrow focus that ignores everything off the target, more unethical behaviour, riskier bets and less interest in the work itself. In the early 1990s, Sears gave its auto repair staff a sales goal of $147 an hour. Staff overcharged customers and did repairs nobody needed.

In a sales team it looks like a rep offering an extra discount to get a customer to buy something they don't need, which Cranfield's piece names as the risk of any quota. When a rep's weekly number looks impossible at step 6, change the number, the leads or the deal size. Don't leave the rep to fix it at the customer's expense.

And don't set a target you won't check: if nobody looks until month end, the rep stops looking too.

A consultant, coach or freelancer sets the target from the other end: what the business has to bring in. The U.S. Small Business Administration's break-even formula is fixed costs divided by price minus variable cost per unit. Add the pay you want to take home to your fixed costs, and the same sum gives you the clients a month you need.

Say your costs run to 3,000 a month, you want to pay yourself 5,000, and a client pays 1,000 with 200 of direct costs. That's 8,000 divided by 800, or 10 clients a month. Then work back the same way as step 6: at 1 in 4 from first conversation to client, 10 clients need 40 conversations a month, or 10 a week. If your week can't hold 10 conversations, change the price or the offer before you change the hours.

Take last year's numbers for each rep and next month's target. For each rep, work back to the calls and meetings a week needs, from their own rates, and divide by next month's selling days. If any rep's weekly number looks impossible, that's the conversation to have this week, before the month starts.

• Cranfield School of Management, Setting effective sales targets: ten common issues that undermine sales targets, by Dr Javier Marcos and Dr Monica Franco-Santos, read 27 October 2026
• Harvard Business School Working Paper 09-083, Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting, by Lisa Ordonez, Maurice Schweitzer, Adam Galinsky and Max Bazerman, read 27 October 2026
• U.S. Small Business Administration, Plan your business: break-even point, read 27 October 2026