As a very rough guide, when your sales process starts to work well, quotas should be at least 5x the OTE (On Target Earnings), which includes base salary + bonus. Ideally quotas are 6-8X OTE to be considered high performing.

These are guidelines we’ve observed based on empirical data from a number of successful companies we’ve worked with. But, this is just a guideline. The complexity and difficulty of your sale will determine the ratio your business can support.

Matt Bertuzzi at The Bridge Group shared this graph showing the relationship between quotas and OTE:

But, it’s worth noting that because many of the respondents to this survey were early stage startups, the numbers here are lower than you might expect and there is significant divergence.

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