Quota attainment is one of the clearest measures of sales success. Yet according to Salesforce only 24% of sales reps exceeded their quota in 2023—a figure underscoring just how pervasive the attainment gap has become.

Persistent shortfalls here signal deeper issues demanding attention. When sales teams consistently miss targets, it erodes forecast reliability, increases rep turnover, and strains relationships with executive leadership—especially when organizations are asking sellers to deliver more with fewer resources.

To help you address the quota attainment challenge, we hosted a value-packed session during our virtual conference RevOps Kickoff featuring Christina Straggas (Head of Global Incentive Compensation at Equinix), James Jackson, (Global Head of GTM Planning, Compensation, and Systems at Snowflake), and Nabeil Alazzam (Forma.ai’s Founder and CEO).

Below we’ll dive into the state of the attainment gap, reasons organizations are seeing this trend, and tactical ways our experts suggest you can inch closer to closing the quota attainment gap at your org.

The 3 most common culprits for low quota attainment today

So what’s causing the downward trend in quota attainment?  

When we asked our guests, they spoke to three common culprits they see influencing the trend:  

1. Misjudging macroeconomic influences

Today’s quota setting often, inadvertently, overlooks the volatility of macroeconomic swings—especially during periods of rapid growth. For RevOps leaders, today’s current challenge isn’t just forecasting the next quarter, but stress-testing whether current demand is sustainable. When this is missed, short-term surges can quickly become long-term setbacks.

For example, James Jackson experienced firsthand how misjudging macroeconomic shifts can widen the quota attainment gap. While at DocuSign during the pandemic, demand surged overnight—revenue doubled in a year, and his team hit 140% attainment. But much of that growth was driven by short-term, one-time use cases. When renewals came around, churn spiked. Team attainment dropped to 60%, and attrition followed. The culprit, he says, was a combination of macro influences and self-inflicted “bullish” estimations on whether growth was sustainable post-pandemic.  

Further, real-time markets of today demand a new pace of sales planning…

2. The speed of information

As Nabeil shared in the discussion, in today’s market, information moves faster—and the pendulum swings in either direction are bigger. A single news headline can wipe out hundreds of billions in market cap within minutes, as we’ve seen with companies like Nvidia.  

This rapid, high-magnitude flow of information doesn’t just affect investors—it’s fundamentally changing how we manage sales performance. For sales leaders, this means increased pressure on quota setting and growth forecasting.  

The speed of sales planning that worked 10 or 15 years ago simply can’t keep pace with the velocity of today’s markets. To stay ahead, organizations need more adaptive, real-time planning processes that can respond to rapid shifts in demand and sentiment.

3. The rising complexity of the sales role itself

Additionally, we’ve just come through a massive digital transformation—one that’s forced even the most traditional industries to modernize overnight. Virtual selling, once novel, is now a baseline expectation. New tools, platforms, and data systems have flooded the sales stack.

In short: The bar for what it takes to succeed in sales has been dramatically raised.  

As Nabeil noted, this shift is creating a “Tale of Two Sellers.” On one end, some reps have adapted quickly, upleveled their skills—they’re thriving. On the other, there’s a growing population of sellers struggling to keep up with the new demands of the role. The performance delta between the two is widening, meaning overall attainment numbers are dragged down—even if top performers are hitting out of the park.

For sales leaders, this is a critical consideration when setting realistic quotas and support models in today’s post-digital-revolution environment.

As Nabeil Alazzam posited in our discussion:  

"Are we just seeing those that are really good actually excel, and more of the people who just aren’t cutting it perform underneath?"

Quarterly attainment checks with sales leaders can make these discussions easier to manage, and pinpoint low attainment before it becomes a mad rush at year-end to meet targets.  

Ultimately, in high-performing orgs, sales leaders don’t wait for missed quotas to diagnose problems—they track leading indicators and ask the right questions early. Ie.:

• Is this a comp issue?

• A GTM problem?

• A territory design flaw?  

The goal isn’t to blame—it’s to fix.

So what can you do to close a quota attainment gap?

Based on our experts' insights, here are a few key strategies to tackle the root causes head-on.

Tip #1) Diagnose if you have quota attainment problem—and understand why

Before rushing to adjust incentives or quotas, it's critical to diagnose the root cause of low attainment—which starts with studying your quota attainment distribution at multiple levels.

As Christina Straggas highlighted, while a macro-level view of attainment across the organization is interesting, you’ll get far better insights by slicing the data by segment: job role, level, and region. Look for where you have attainment that more closely resembles where you want to be, and the traits shared across segments.

In an ideal state, you'd expect a bell curve distribution, with most reps clustering around 100% attainment. Sharp bimodal distributions (lots of reps far below and above goal) are a warning sign that something systemic may be off in your quota setting, enablement, or segmentation strategy.  

However, data alone isn't enough. Christina emphasized that RevOps leaders must also talk to reps directly to understand the experience behind the numbers:

• Are sellers truly enabled to succeed?

• Have new processes, tools, or lead sources been introduced that reps aren't yet comfortable with?

• Are expectations rising faster than enablement support?

A full-stack diagnosis includes not only reviewing attainment distributions but also examining:

• Sales processes: Are they efficient and customer-focused?

• Tooling and enablement: Are reps supported with technology that boosts productivity?

• Lead quality and conversion rates: Are inputs to the pipeline setting reps up for success?

Quota attainability isn't just a math exercise — it's about aligning expectations, enablement, and execution. Understanding both the data and the human experience is essential to closing the quota attainment gap.

To diagnose the reason for low sales attainment, you can use data on the distribution of quota attainment from your sales performance management (SPM) solution. Snowflake’s James Jackson, says he likes to see 50% of his reps to hit 80% mean attainment as a benchmark.

Tip #2: Recalibrate on growth expectations and how you’ll meet targets

As Christina Straggas shared, one of the biggest pressures on today’s revenue teams comes from a disconnect between market reality and shareholder expectations.  

Investors still expect performance. Boards still expect consistency. But the playing field has changed.

“Shareholders don’t reset their expectations of a company that has grown. And even companies that have lost, they’re still not giving them a lot of forgiveness for that. They still want to see the same (or better) growth rates and them make up against competition.”

Christina Straggas, Head of Global Incentive Compensation

Equinix

At the same time, many organizations haven’t adjusted their planning frameworks accordingly. From emerging AI tools to evolving coverage models, the pace of innovation has outstripped how many businesses set goals.

This means that as a RevOps leader, you’re in prime position to rethink how growth targets are set—from both top down and bottom up. You need to modernize your approach to forecasting and territory design. Which means blending shareholder-driven growth expectations with more grounded, field-level data—identifying the gap between the two, and addressing it proactively.  

Tell executive leaders the full story—it’s not just about distribution curves, but how that translates into business performance.

Here’s a clip of Christina explaining the importance of resetting expectations:

Bear in mind: you don’t need to communicate the lowest level of granular detail.  

• Offer a broad sense that you’ve taken into account everything that would've changed quota, including levers in the comp plan as you were executing the strategic vision for the company.  

• Some leaders are qualitative and numbers-based; others are not so much. A simplified traffic light system helps translate these principles and performance reports across departments for either type of stakeholder.  

Tip #3: Use objective productivity metrics to guide quota setting and resource allocation

Sales teams are seemingly being asked to deliver more with less today—and without a disciplined, objective view of productivity, our experts recognized quota setting can quickly become disconnected from reality.

James Jackson, drawing from his experience at DocuSign, explained how rising pressure to improve profitability led his team to build a straightforward but powerful productivity model. They compared dollars generated per rep to on-target earnings (OTE) across segments, geographies, and vertical teams.

This simple “dollars in, dollars out” metric acted as a kind of LTV-to-CAC, allowing them to see which teams were driving real return on investment—and which weren't. Even within the same segment, they uncovered huge disparities in productivity, sometimes with certain teams outperforming others by 3–4x.

Rather than being influenced by assumptions, noise, or "strategic" labeling of certain verticals, this hard data provided a clear-eyed view of where to set quotas higher, where to recalibrate lower, and where to reallocate resources altogether.

As James emphasized, objective inspection is critical:

• Cut through the complexity and volume of sales data.

• Identify where your investments are truly paying off.

• Create a quota-setting process that reflects actual productivity, not just hopes or historical norms.

In a climate where sales reps are overloaded with tools, processes, and expectations, using a simple, focused metric to ground your decisions can be the difference between widening or closing your quota attainment gap.

Tip #4:Tie stretch quotas to rep-controlled inputs — and test for accuracy quarterly

In the conversation, Nabeil highlighted a crucial nuance: a well-designed quota isn't just aspirational—it’s grounded in data tied to factors the rep can control.

According to Nabeil, effective quotas should be based on concrete workload assumptions at the territory, account, and opportunity levels.  

This means leveraging everything you know about how many opportunities a rep can realistically move through the pipeline, the close rates within specific customer segments, and how long deals typically take.

Only then can you set a "slightly stretched" quota — ambitious, but still attainable with consistent effort.

One major pitfall he warns against: failing to use the full breadth of available data leads to poor forecasting accuracy, both at the quarterly and annual levels. Without accurate quarterly forecasts, it’s nearly impossible to build a robust annual quota-setting process.  

Treat each quarter as a live test of your quota assumptions, refining your approach based on real outcomes before locking in annual targets.

Nabeil also noted the balance RevOps teams must strike: while advanced data models (even AI-based ones) can help predict more precisely, they risk becoming too complex and opaque for frontline sales teams to understand. Transparency and simplicity remain critical if you want reps to trust the quotas they’re working toward.

Tip #5: Actively build credibility via seller feedback — before rolling out new quotas and comp plans

If you’ve readjusted territories and recalculated fair quotas but attainment is still falling short, investigate how you're rolling out and communicating your sales compensation plans.

Sometimes sellers fail to hit quota because they're unclear of how the plan works. You want to know if there’s pushback around the plan or general misunderstanding of what you’re asking sellers to do strategically, especially in years where you’re making changes.  

For example, when James Jackson joined Snowflake, one of the first things he did was hear feedback directly from over 80 sellers and leaders, with a note for the RevOps team to “take it on the chin”:

Quotas and plan changes were historically delivered with little transparency, often landing on sales teams' desks at the last minute without explanation.

To rebuild trust, James focused first on listening. His team gathered direct feedback from 83 sales and SE leaders through surveys, face-to-face sessions, and regional "tiger teams" — surfacing critical themes about what was broken and where improvements were needed.

Rather than surprising sellers with a finalized plan, Snowflake deployed a "pre-socialization" approach:

• Sharing back the key feedback themes they heard

• Clearly mapping those concerns to plan changes for the new fiscal year

• Rolling out enablement in waves — starting with third-line leaders, then front-line managers, and finally individual contributors — to ensure no one was caught off guard

As James emphasized (aligned to sales compensation plan best practices we've heard from other experts too!), building credibility in sales compensation isn't about agreeing to every piece of feedback. It's about making sellers feel genuinely heard, acting on the real insights buried within the noise, and avoiding surprises that erode trust.  

Even unpopular plan elements (like Snowflake's now-retired decelerator gate) were addressed transparently to signal a new era of collaboration between the sales organization and the comp team.

So, before rolling out newly proposed plans, ask sellers:  

• If given this comp plan previewed, how would you use it to make the most money possible?  

• What’s a typical day in life? What’s your sales cycle look like? This will tell you how long they’re actually spending on the sales process and any hurdles harming productivity.

What you’re looking out for is words like “unattainable”. Listen for hurdles they must go through or how engaged they are with their plans. Use the insights you find to communicate net new plans, including any adjustments.  

When rolling out your sales comp enablement presentation, you could formatted like this:

• First slide: “We heard you; here’s what we did to gather feedback.”

• Second slide: “These are the themes of what we heard. This is how we’re fixing it.”

Above all, remember that people aren’t always going to agree on your incentives—just make sure they feel heard. Soft skills like active listening, empathy, and patience can go a long way to securing buy-in for sales compensation plans designed to close the attainment gap.  

Tip #6: Use seller choice to uncover risk profiles and plan confidence

The most effective compensation plans are rooted in psychology and behavioral science and in this discussion, the panel explored an advanced — and underused — tactic: giving sellers a choice between two quota and pay curve structures to better understand their risk appetite and perceived plan attainability.

That is, you can offer sellers two options:

• A lower quota with a flatter, more punitive pay curve

• A higher quota with more upside potential

The results reveal meaningful differences in seller risk tolerance. Some reps choose the safer, lower-quota path, while others embrace the stretch for higher potential earnings. Importantly, the targets should be viewed as largely attainable — but seller behavior will still split based on personal risk profiles, sparking strategic discussions about the type of sales talent your company may want to attract and retain for different roles.

James Jackson added that small structural adjustments—like tweaking rate tables based on book size for SMB versus enterprise reps—can further fine-tune incentive alignment without unfairly “peanut butter spreading” quota expectations across different segments.

Critically, Nabeil emphasized the long-term value of tracking these individual choices over time. Monitoring how a rep's selection behavior changes year over year can offer an early signal if something shifts—either in the market, the territory, or in the rep's own confidence:

“In that moment, [the choice is] not that powerful. But over time, tracking at a territory and rep level, these decisions that they make and seeing that pattern...If you do that multiple years in a row and suddenly see the same person that’s been choosing the high quota every year all of a sudden deviates, that could be a sign that something’s off.”

Ultimately, building flexibility and behavioral insights into your comp strategy can help RevOps and Sales Comp leaders design plans that are more personalized, predictive, and sustainable over the long term.

Tip #7: Calibrate quota overassignment carefully—and act fast on risk signals

Overassignment — assigning more quota than your official revenue target—is a common tactic to hedge against risk. But as Christina pointed out, the amount of overassignment must be carefully calibrated based on the nature of your business.

In mature, renewal-driven models, overassignment might be as low as 3%. In new business or bookings-led models, it could be 15–30%. The key is aligning the level of overassignment to your actual risk profile, not applying a one-size-fits-all approach.

Here's Christina on this:

More importantly, experienced revenue leaders know that if growth expectations spike dramatically — for example, moving from a historic 15% growth rate to asking for 40% — sellers will instinctively feel quotas are unattainable. Those signals need to be anticipated early through careful quota methodology and validated through leading indicators like declining morale or rising attrition.

If warning signs appear, don't wait: act quickly to release quota relief through your overassignment buffer. Just as critically, prepare a clear and confident talk track for your CFO and executive leadership. CFOs just make sure you understand what outcome you’re trying to drive. “Make them super comfortable that you’re not just addressing a specific problem and you’re not worried about the outcome financially,” she says.

Finance leaders want to feel comfortable that you understand the cost implications. i.e.:

“You’ve got to give them to the talk-track—‘For quota, we’ve overassigned by 10%. That 10%, if we release all of it at the end of the year, or some point throughout the year, will cost us this much on average.’”

This transparency—both with sellers and with leadership—is essential for maintaining trust and ensuring overassignment remains a tool for stability, not a hidden risk.