What is a ramp quota?

A reduced quota applied during a new seller's ramp period, stepping up to full quota over several months. It exists because a rep cannot produce at full rate before they have learned the product, built a pipeline and completed a sales cycle.

How should a ramp curve be set?

From your own cohort history rather than convention. Find the month at which previous hires reached average productivity and shape the steps to match, and check the curve against your sales cycle — a rep with a six-month cycle cannot produce in month two whatever the plan says.

What happens to unmet ramp quota?

It is either forgiven or carried, and the choice must be explicit in the plan. Forgiving it is right for the rep and creates a capacity gap the operating plan has to absorb elsewhere; carrying it protects the plan and penalises the rep for a ramp everyone expected.

How does ramp quota affect capacity planning?

It reduces assigned quota below headcount-times-full-quota, which is the gap most annual plans miss. Modelling ramp explicitly is the difference between a plan the team can produce and one set to a number that never existed.

Ramp Quota

A reduced quota applied during a new seller's ramp period, stepping up to full quota as productivity is expected to arrive.

Why it is not generosity

A full quota from day one is unachievable, which makes it demotivating and makes attainment data useless for the whole team. Ramp quota keeps the measure meaningful and the target credible.

Model it in capacity planning

Capacity plans that assume full productivity from the start date overstate coverage by the entire ramp period, and the shortfall appears exactly when the plan said it would not.

How to set the curve

Derive it from your own cohort history: find the month new hires historically reached average productivity and shape the steps to match.
Match the curve to the sales cycle. A rep with a six-month cycle cannot produce in month two regardless of ability, so an early step is a paper target.
Decide what happens to unmet ramp quota — forgiven or carried — and state it in the plan, because ambiguity here is a recurring dispute.
Model the capacity effect before hiring. Ramp quota lowers assigned quota, and the plan has to absorb that gap somewhere.
Re-derive annually. Ramp lengthens when the product gets more complex and shortens when enablement improves.

Where it goes wrong

Ramp quotas set from a hiring plan rather than from cohort data are targets that happen to be lower, not a modelled curve.
Aggressive curves push new reps towards small, fast deals that establish poor habits for the territory they will inherit.
Forgiving unmet ramp quota is right for the rep and creates a capacity gap the plan must absorb; carrying it is the reverse. Both need deciding explicitly.
Ramp quota interacts with draw arrangements in ways that are frequently not modelled together, producing unexpected compensation outcomes.

RELATED TERMS

Quota Attainment

The proportion of quota a rep achieved, and across a team, the distribution of that proportion.

Capacity Planning

Translating a revenue target into the number of productive selling resources required to hit it, accounting for ramp, attrition and expected attainment.

Ramp Time

The time between a seller starting and reaching expected productivity. The variable that makes hiring plans wrong when it is guessed rather than measured.

Draw

An advance against future commission, used to provide income stability during ramp or seasonal variation.

Quota

The revenue target assigned to an individual rep for a period. The most consequential number in a seller's working life, and the mechanism translating a company target into individual accountability.

COMMON QUESTIONS

What is a ramp quota?: A reduced quota applied during a new seller's ramp period, stepping up to full quota over several months. It exists because a rep cannot produce at full rate before they have learned the product, built a pipeline and completed a sales cycle.
How should a ramp curve be set?: From your own cohort history rather than convention. Find the month at which previous hires reached average productivity and shape the steps to match, and check the curve against your sales cycle — a rep with a six-month cycle cannot produce in month two whatever the plan says.
What happens to unmet ramp quota?: It is either forgiven or carried, and the choice must be explicit in the plan. Forgiving it is right for the rep and creates a capacity gap the operating plan has to absorb elsewhere; carrying it protects the plan and penalises the rep for a ramp everyone expected.
How does ramp quota affect capacity planning?: It reduces assigned quota below headcount-times-full-quota, which is the gap most annual plans miss. Modelling ramp explicitly is the difference between a plan the team can produce and one set to a number that never existed.