# Levers *Find which part of the number actually moves.* --- Your sales leader presents next year's plan. The business has grown 10-15% a year for three years, and the team is growing to match. Ten reps, each carrying a £500k quota. That's £5m. You've watched the team work. You know how long a deal takes from first meeting to close, how many weeks disappear into pipeline reviews and admin, how few selling days a rep actually gets. Something about £500k per rep doesn't sit right. But the growth rate is real, the target is just another year on the same line, and you can't say what's wrong. Break it apart. --- Each rep has a year, but not all of it is selling. Subtract four weeks of holiday, a week of company meetings, two weeks of training, a week of conferences. Then the internal time that fills the gaps: CRM updates, pipeline reviews, forecasting calls, admin. Thirty selling weeks is generous. A rep can work four active opportunities in parallel before quality drops. Each deal cycle takes about six weeks from first meeting to close, typical for a mid-market buyer. Win rate across the team is around 25%. Average deal size is £30k. None of those numbers look broken individually. One equation ties them together. $\text{Revenue per rep} = \frac{\text{£}}{\text{Win}} \times \frac{\text{Deals won}}{\text{Deals worked}} \times \frac{\text{Active deals}}{\text{Cycle}} \times \frac{\text{Selling weeks}}{\text{Weeks per deal}}$ Plug in the numbers: £30k × 0.25 × 4 × (30/6) = £150k. The quota is £500k. --- The room starts reaching for levers. First instinct: push deal size up. Move upmarket, target £50k+ contracts. But £30k is what the product sells for in mid-market. Enterprise buyers bring longer cycles, procurement teams, legal review. Your six-week deal becomes a four-month deal, and your win rate drops because you're now competing against incumbents with dedicated account teams. Deal size and cycle time are coupled. Moving one hits the others. The room reaches for win rate next. But 25% is already honest for outbound in this segment. Invest in coaching, tighten qualification, and you might push to 35%. Plug that in: £30k × 0.35 × 4 × (30/6) = £210k. Better, but still miles off. Win rate is an outcome of product-market fit, competitive dynamics, and buyer readiness. You can influence it over quarters, not weeks. Third instinct, and the one the room actually spends time on: discounting. Should we offer 5% to close faster? 10%? But even at zero discount, full book price, each rep needs to work sixty-seven opportunities a year to hit quota. The formula gives them twenty. --- Deal size is a parameter of your market, cycle time reflects your buyer's purchasing process, and win rate is an outcome of many things you don't directly control. Selling weeks is different. That number is partly a function of how you run the team. Holidays, training, and conferences are mostly fixed. Internal overhead is not. Two standing pipeline reviews each week, a forecasting call, CRM hygiene sessions, a monthly all-hands. Cut two of those meetings and automate the weekly forecast. Forecasting precision drops, but you recover four or five selling weeks. Plug in 35 weeks instead of 30: £30k × 0.25 × 4 × (35/6) = £175k. Combine that with modest win-rate gains from reps spending more time with buyers and you're approaching £210k-£225k. Still not £500k (that gap is a headcount and product question), but selling weeks is the only component in the equation that responds to a decision you can make this quarter. --- The plan shouldn't start with ten reps at £500k. It should start at thirty-five selling weeks, four parallel opportunities, a six-week cycle, and build the number those inputs actually produce. The room was debating pricing. The answer was in the calendar. ---