Carles Reina instructs his team to forecast deals at the lowest possible value (e.g., forecast a potential $500k deal at $24k). This forces reps to build a much larger pipeline to meet their quotas and prevents inflated expectations with investors, creating a culture of under-promising and over-delivering.
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VP of Sales Carles Reina sets a sales quota of 20 times a rep's base salary (e.g., $2M quota for $100k base), far above the 6-10x industry standard. Reps who don't hit their quota are let go, creating a high-performance culture where over 80% succeed.
Average reps hoard deals to make their pipeline look full, creating a clogged 'sewer pipe'. Top performers are ruthless about removing deals that aren't progressing. They prioritize velocity and treat their pipeline as a 'water tap' where every opportunity must be flowing through.
Instead of focusing on a large quota, leaders should reverse engineer it. Calculate the number of deals needed based on win rate and average contract value, then break that down into weekly opportunity creation goals for reps.
Salespeople often keep dead deals in their pipeline out of hope. To get realistic, ask a simple question for each opportunity: "If I had to bet my own money on this closing by year-end, would I?" If the answer is no, immediately remove it from the active pipeline and replace it.
Encourage reps to take full ownership of their total pipeline number. Use sales math to show them how self-sourced deals, which often have higher contract values, give them more control over their success than relying purely on inbound or SDRs.
To exceed sales targets, stop focusing on the final number. Instead, use math to reverse-engineer the quota into controllable daily and weekly activities. Consistently hitting these input goals will naturally lead to crushing the overall output goal without the associated pressure.
Instead of aiming for their quota, elite salespeople plan to significantly exceed it. This 'overplanning' builds a necessary buffer or cushion for the inevitable deals that fall through or get delayed, ensuring they still hit their target at minimum.
Sales reps often feel overwhelmed by their large annual number. The key is to break it down, subtract predictable existing business, and focus solely on the smaller, incremental revenue needed. This makes the goal feel achievable and maintains motivation.
The cost of setting quotas too high is catastrophic: you demoralize and lose your A-player sales team. The cost of setting them too low is manageable: you overspend on commissions but exceed targets and retain a motivated team. The latter can be adjusted; the former is an unrecoverable error.
Have reps spend the first week of each quarter identifying 10 high-value accounts (double the average contract value) with a strong business case. This 'big rock' approach focuses efforts on deals that can cover 50% of their quarterly pipeline needs.