Capacity plan

The arithmetic that says how many salespeople, calling how often, can cover which accounts at what cost, and where the gap between capacity and demand sits.

DefinitionThe arithmetic that says how many salespeople, calling how often, can cover which accounts at what cost, and where the gap between capacity and demand sits.

The two sides

Capacity = reps × calls per week × working weeks, less ramp Demand = Σ accounts × required frequency by tier

The plan is where they meet. The gap is expressed in reps: "the South is 1.6 reps short at the current frequency".

Levers

Headcount, calls per week, account tiers and their frequencies, and cost per rep. A scenario moves one and recomputes the rest.

Reconciled to the budget

Each scenario lands on a cost finance can put in the plan. That is what makes it a plan rather than a wish.

How it is computed

Touches owed across all accounts, from each tier's cadence, divided by the qualifying touches one salesperson can make in a year, gives the headcount needed; multiplied by loaded cost, the cost of the coverage model.

Example

Accounts owe 46,000 touches a year. A field rep makes about 900. The plan needs 51 reps and the team has 38, so either the cadence for the lowest tier moves to an inside team or thirteen people are hired.

Where it goes wrong

Headcount set from last year's budget. The cadence promised to customers cannot be delivered and nobody chose which accounts would miss out.

Articles that use this term

Territory, capacity and quota planning

Capacity is arithmetic: how to build a sales capacity plan that reconciles to the budget

The capacity model behind a defensible sales headcount plan: reps times calls times weeks less ramp on one side, accounts times required frequency on the other, the gap in reps per territory, and the scenario table that lands on a cost finance can put in the plan.

16 Sept 20263 min read Territory, capacity and quota planning · Tax and accounting

Deadline load per manager: filings due per week against the hours to do them

How an accounting firm turns its engagement list and filing calendar into a load curve per manager: filings due per week, the hours each typically takes from the firm's own time entries, the hours available from the roster, the weeks where load exceeds capacity months ahead, and the reassignments and early starts that flatten the peak before the season does it the hard way.

16 Sept 20263 min read Territory, capacity and quota planning

Inside sales and field: coverage and cost per touch by channel

How a sales leader compares inside and field coverage on the same book from the activity log and the ledger: touches per account by channel, cost per touch from the roster at stated rates, revenue per touch by channel and tier, the tiers where field touches return more than they cost and the tiers where inside touches return the same for a fifth of the cost, and the reallocation the numbers support.

16 Sept 20263 min read Territory, capacity and quota planning

Ramp and attrition in the capacity plan: why headcount is not capacity

How a sales leader turns a headcount plan into a capacity plan from the team's own data: the ramp curve measured from past hires' attainment by month of tenure, the attrition rate by tenure band, the productive capacity each month that results, and the hiring dates that produce the number in the year, not the year after.

16 Sept 20263 min read Territory, capacity and quota planning · Sales teams

Rep load: accounts per rep against what a rep can actually work

How a sales leader measures the load on each rep from the CRM export, accounts and open opportunities weighted by expected effort, sets the norm from the team's own best-performing reps, and finds the two failure modes the headcount plan hides: reps with too many accounts to touch and reps with too few to hit number.

16 Sept 20262 min read Territory, capacity and quota planning

Sales coverage and sales capacity: two plans that have to agree

Why the coverage model, which says which accounts each rep touches at what cadence, and the capacity plan, which says how many touches each rep can make, are the same arithmetic from two ends, how to check that they agree, the identity that touches required equal touches available within a stated tolerance, the two ways they usually disagree, cadence set without hours and hours set without accounts, and the reconciliation that fixes both.

16 Sept 20263 min read