---
name: "sales-ops-coverage-and-quota"
description: "Use when designing coverage, cutting books, allocating quota, setting comp, or cleaning CRM hygiene at scale."
triggers: ["coverage model", "cut books", "quota allocation", "comp plan", "crm hygiene", "capacity model", "territory health"]
version: "1"
---
# Sales ops coverage and quota
Use this when designing coverage, cutting books, allocating quota, setting
comp, or cleaning CRM hygiene at scale. Start from headcount and capacity, the
account universe with potential scores, current books and attainment, the
company number and fiscal calendar, the CRM export, and the comp philosophy in
play.
## Segment the universe before cutting books
Tier accounts by potential and propensity, then design coverage so every tier
has a named owner and cadence: A-weekly, B-monthly, C-watched past roughly 25
accounts per rep. Balance every book on four variables — account count,
revenue potential, travel burden, close rate — and document parent/subsidiary
ownership rules with a 3-step overlap audit enforced in CRM routing. Re-score
every refresh with intent signals plus account scoring to say which accounts
to work now; tiers are earned, not gifted. Run the territory health check on
every book: win rate vs average (design or rep problem?), coverage ratio,
capacity utilization, and account-status changes.
## Model capacity honestly
Selling days per rep, meetings per week, win rate by tier. Count quota
capacity at 100 percent of fully ramped reps plus 50 percent of new hires,
then subtract expected churn. Size the quota curve to the capacity, not the
wish: full productivity takes 2 to 3 quarters for enterprise roles. Weight
quota by territory potential, never split evenly. Before hiring, pull the
cheaper levers first: cut turnover, lift productivity and effectiveness, then
fix comp; hiring is last.
## Allocate quota top-down and bottom-up until they meet
The company number rolls down by segment potential, and rep-level build-ups
roll up by tier. Name the gap in dollars and resolve it in the plan, never in
the forecast. Validate before rollout: attainment must bell-curve around 100
percent (bimodal means a broken method), fairness whiskers across territory
size, tenure, account mix, and geo, a manager refinement cascade within
thresholds, and a backtest against prior-year actuals. Run the annual planning
calendar — strategy refresh, then capacity and draft quotas, then territories
with the fairness pack (potential-to-quota, concentration risk, whitespace
balance, workload realism), then comp plans and routing, then kickoffs. One
midyear change window only, with published credit-transfer and proration
rules, objective adjustment triggers, and a transparent appeals process.
## Draft comp to the behavior you want
Base and variable mix, accelerators past 100 percent, sales incentive bonuses
(SPIFs) for the quarter's push motion, and clawback rules for churned or
slipped deals. Every comp line
names what it pays for and what it refuses to pay for.
## Run CRM hygiene tiered
Every open deal carries close date, amount, stage, manager judgment, next
step, owner, and activities. Weekly clears duplicates, unassigned records, and
the exceptions list with owners and dates, not a lecture; monthly and
quarterly run the deep audit with a quality-trend dashboard. A step with no
date is blocked until it has one.
## Report up in one exec read
Dashboards for the week, weekly and monthly business-review write-ups, and QBR
readouts for the quarter. Open with variance before wins, keep live time for
decisions only.
## What you hand back
The coverage model with tiered books, the capacity model, the quota allocation
with the gap resolved, the comp draft with its incentive bonuses, the CRM
exceptions list, and
the exec reporting read.
## Fallbacks
No potential scores means you tier from CRM history and intent signals and
mark the tiers INFERENCE. No fiscal calendar means you plan on calendar
quarters and confirm before allocating.
## Approval gate
Nothing rep-facing or exec-facing sends and no quota, comp, or book change is
final without your explicit yes. Play-level incentive-bonus tracking lives in
the enablement skill.