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Sales Capacity & Headcount Planner

Model how many quota-carrying reps you need to hit a revenue target this year, split into growth hires (closing the gap to target) and backfill hires (replacing expected attrition) — with a quarter-by-quarter hiring waterfall and a capacity-vs-target gap that accounts for ramp time and hiring lead time.

Your numbers

This year's bookings goal the team needs to carry
Full-productivity annual quota for one quota-carrying rep
Reps already carrying quota today
Share of the current team likely to leave this year
Months from start date to hitting 100% of quota
From opening the req to the hire's first day

Method & assumptions

  • Assumes a 12-month planning horizon; the revenue target is treated as this year's annual goal, split into four even quarters for pacing purposes.
  • New hires ramp linearly from 0% to 100% productivity over the ramp period entered; existing (already-ramped) reps are assumed fully productive from day one, before attrition.
  • Attrition is modelled as a roughly even drip through the year (average retained headcount ≈ current × (1 − attrition/2)), not a single point-in-time cliff — real attrition is lumpier than this.
  • Growth hires (closing the gap to target) are recommended as early as possible, since a rep started in Q1 delivers more this year than one started in Q3; attrition-backfill hires are spread evenly across quarters to mirror ongoing churn. Real hiring plans should also weigh recruiting and onboarding throughput, which this model doesn't constrain.

How to use it

Pull your annual revenue target and average annual quota per rep straight from the comp plan. Add your current quota-carrying headcount and the annual attrition rate you're planning around (use your trailing-12-month regretted + non-regretted departure rate if you have it). Set ramp time to full productivity from your own ramp data (time from start date to first quarter at 100% of quota) and hiring lead time from your own recruiting funnel (req approval to first day). The tool splits the answer into growth hires (needed to close the gap to target) and backfill hires (needed just to replace expected attrition), shows which quarter to open each cohort in, and flags whether — even with this plan — you're still projected to land short of target by year end.

For enablement leaders

Make the layer underneath this measurable.

Tools like this describe good practice. They can't tell you which of your reps actually have the skill, or in what order to build it. That's what The Mastery Standard does: 27 frameworks, 54 competencies, every rubric cell written, every assessment human-signed-off.

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