Sales Capacity, Quotas and Revenue Metrics for CEOs
This guide is for CEOs and founders who own a revenue number and need the sales team built to hit it. It covers how many reps you need, how to set quotas and comp, and how to qualify deals the same way every time.
What's in the guide
- The CRO in 2026 by the numbers: 48% of AEs hit quota in 2025, average AE ramp is 6.2 months and new-business win rate is 18%
- The revenue organization and CRO priorities across sales, customer success, revenue ops and marketing
- MEDDPICC qualification: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, pain, champion and competition
- Quota and capacity planning in 10 steps, with the capacity formula
- AE and sales compensation benchmarks by role, with base and variable split
- The ARR bridge and an executive dashboard from beginning ARR to ending ARR
- Cohort and churn analysis, with a 3.2% monthly churn benchmark for B2B SaaS
- MQL-to-SQL rates by lead source, compared with B2B SaaS benchmarks
- How to cut AE ramp time from 6.2 months toward a 4-month target
Questions this guide answers
How many sales reps do I need to hit my revenue plan?
Capacity equals ramped reps × quota × expected attainment. In the guide's example, a $12M plan ÷ ($960K median AE quota × 75% attainment) needs about 17 ramped AEs. Hire ahead to cover the 6.2-month ramp and attrition.
What is MEDDPICC in sales?
A deal qualification checklist: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion and Competition. Paper process and Competition extend the original MEDDIC.
How much should an account executive be paid?
The guide lists a median US on-target earnings of $200K for an AE, split 53% base and 47% variable, against a median quota of $960K. SDRs are at $80K with a 68/32 split.
How long is a typical B2B sales cycle?
Ebsta's 2025 benchmarks put new-business deals at 91 days and expansion deals at 52 days. ICONIQ's 2026 data shows about 19 weeks on average across deal sizes.
What is a good net revenue retention for B2B SaaS?
Benchmarkit and Pavilion data in the guide show 101% median NRR and 88% median gross revenue retention, with 40% of new ARR coming from expansion.
How Strativ helps
Measuring pipeline with rigor so companies don't miss their forecast is core Strativ work. Strativ builds the ARR bridge, capacity model and dashboards, and Mark Sue's FATE Certificate background helps connect the CRM to the finance stack so the numbers agree.
The full guide includes the executive dashboard, the comp table and the capacity model. Request the full guide, or book a call to talk it through with Mark.
