Anakwsn's profile is not public

Anakwsn S

Sales Development Representative at glacier media

How to Effectively Negotiate My Quota and Grab Management's Attention

As a BDR in this company, my assigned quota is 20 opportunities per month, including side projects assigned by the manager, closed cases by Account Managers (AMs), and converting Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). However, this quota only applies to outbound efforts, and I am restricted from engaging with existing accounts.

The challenge I face is that we lack a dedicated BDR manager, and instead, I am managed by the AM manager. The quota assigned to me seems unreasonably high, especially when compared to the quotas given to other branches within the company.

I am seeking advice on how to effectively negotiate with my manager regarding this demanding quota.

🧠 Advice

🤞 Negotiation

😒 Quota

10 comments

Sort by:

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

If I were you, I would either negotiate a lower quota>20 opps a month OR demanding to get an access to existing accounts and to be extra commished for that when their deals get closed.
If his response was just negative, I would definitely just jump the ship!

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

How many other BDRs are there? Does anyone hit the 20 opps a month outbound?

Sales Development Representative

1 in the other territory, worse than mine

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

Do they hit the goal? If yes, I'd ask to shadow them or see what you can use from his/her playbook in your own territory to hit the goal.

FWIW in my experience I've never seen an SDR go to management and successfully negotiate a lower opps quota. Not saying it's impossible but just my $0.02.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

A couple of questions: how long have you worked there, and what have you been able to accomplish so far?

Sales Development Representative

1: Since this year
2: Best BDR here

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Sorry, I guess I should have been more specific, by which I mean how many opportunities do you typically get in a month? If 20 is too much, based on your experience, what would be reasonable and realistic?

The reason for asking how long you’d been there was to establish that you a) know the job and b) know the company. Which you do. That was to help with a frame of reference for your thoughts around what the quota should be, based on your performance.

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

Before you charge in and present this, I would recommend starting from a place of curiosity. Instead of 'my quota is too high' go in with something more like 'I would love to understand how my quota is set and what factors go into that.'

Going to management to negotiate lower goals is tough. Those goals were set for a reason, and likely much higher up the food chain than your direct manager. Your direct manager likely also feels their quota is too high.

Understanding how the quota was rolled down to you, what it drives for other parts of the sales organization and company generally, and what key data points are important in setting quota and company goals, is going to put you in the best position to negotiate.

Your best friend in this is data. Gather all the metrics you can about opportunities created, outreach made, what the conversion from outreach to an opportunity looks like. Package this up neatly. Use it to inform your argument.

It's important that you go in with a solution - Not just a problem. If you want a lower quota, what does that look like? How does that still meet the goals of the sales team that's expecting your pipeline of opportunity creation?

Good luck. In my decade+ career I have only successfully negotiated a lower quota once.

DataCorrupter

Politicker

Account Executive

Agreed with all of these points.

In my experience, quota is usually set way above your AM's level. The board or leadership decide it based on a number they want to hit and work backwards. Company wants 12m in revenue this year, that means closing 1m per month, and we need X number of qualified meetings from the BDR team to get that. You get the idea.

Don't want to discourage you too much, but you're the lowest man on the totem pole trying to tell the highest on the totem pole how the business should work. The odds are, it just won't go well.

One of the best things you can do as a BDR is to walk into a company that has reasonable standards you can meet and beat. That means asking in the interview about those metrics, what % of the team are hitting those, etc.

FoodForSales

Politicker

-1

Show effort in trying to attain the quota and then talk about how you and the other BDRs just aren't able to hit it.

Otherwise, go find another job.

Bravado is a community of trusted sales professionals endorsed by their customers.

Products

The War Room Jobs Salary Guide Tech Sales U

Company

About Us How It Works Blog Bug Bounty

Contact

Press Careers

If you are hired as a contract sales rep by a Bravado customer, we may ask you to prove access to the employee email account provided to you by that customer. This data will be shared with customers to track your sales productivity; customers can use this data to confirm you meet the minimum activity requirements to pay out your ramp stipend and commission.

Anakwsn S

How to Effectively Negotiate My Quota and Grab Management's Attention

10 comments

Related posts

*UPDATE* Didn't get the raise and now they're raising my quota. Time to go

Prospect willing to pay a 3YR agreement upfront, CRO won't give me full quota relief

Numbers, numbers,numbers. Currently- my team is at 97% top line and 112% profit. Was told need to develop a plan to get over 100%. Have to forecast for rest of year as well. Just venting. Your only as good as your last month.

UPDATE Didn't get the raise and now they're raising my quota. Time to go