Scenario: You’re more than halfway through the quarter, and you’re only at 20% of your quota. What do you do?

It’s easy to feel discouraged and want to give up when you’re far behind on your sales quota. You might feel the pressure mounting and start questioning whether it’s even possible to catch up. But giving in to those feelings won’t solve your problem. 

The difference between those who bounce back and those who don’t is their ability to stay focused and take action, even when the odds are stacked against them. So, take a deep breath and keep reading for what to do next.

Clearly Assess Your Situation

The truth is, every successful salesperson has faced setbacks and slow quarters at some point in their career. Maybe you had some deals that you were confident would close that have slipped. Or you just haven’t seen the conversion rate you expected on new leads. 

Either way, the most important thing is to take a clear-eyed view of the situation.

You have to take off the rose-colored glasses. Avoid “happy ears” on your customer calls. Take a good hard look at your pipeline and get a realistic-to-conservative assessment of the situation. 

To do all that, you need to start with the basics. What’s the average sales cycle length and average contract value (ACV)? The answers to these two questions will dictate your strategy. 

To simplify things, we’ll just look at four scenarios based on those two questions: 

• Short sales cycles – Less than 1/3 of the time period. If you’re on a quarterly quota, this would be a sales cycle of one month or shorter.
• Long sales cycles – More than 1/3 of the time period. This can be as short as 5–6 weeks, or as long as a year (or more). 
• Low ACV – An average contract value of <10% of your quota
• High ACV – An average contract value of >33% of your quota

We’ll look at what to do in each of those scenarios below.

Short Sales Cycle / Low Average Contract Value 

This is the high-volume quadrant of sales. This can be anything from B2C software to door-to-door pest control. From personal insurance plans to furniture sales. 

If you’re in this type of role, the die is far from cast on your quarter. You can absolutely make up ground and hit your number. 

But it will take hard work. 

The most important thing to understand here is how your main activity metric leads to closing sales. 

Do you know how many phone calls it takes to get an opportunity? And how many opportunities you need to close a deal? If you do, then you simply calculate how many deals you need based on your ACV and back into the number of calls it will take to get there. 

Look at the calendar and plan out, with some cushion, how much activity you need to deliver every day from now until the end of the quarter to hit your number.

In a sales role like this, you can simply hustle your way to 100% — if you have what it takes.

Short Sales Cycle / High Average Contract Value 

This is a sweet segment to be in because your fortunes can literally change overnight. But roles like this usually come with a fairly low close rates. This means that you’ll have to pursue a lot of leads to get a deal to close. Car sales comes to mind as a good example of this scenario. 

In a role like this, you should go through the same exercise as above to figure out how many opportunities or “at bats” you need to get to your number. 

It’s likely going to be a lot since you have ground to make up. Do you need to knock on doors? Take more shifts? Or maybe there are things that you can do to increase your close rate. When is the last time you’ve gone through your old closed-lost opportunities to see if any that are 3-6 months old may have had a change of heart? 

These types of “back from the dead” deals can sometimes move very quickly because the prospect has already learned about your product — so if their situation has changed, they may be ready to buy. 

Long Sales Cycle / High Average Contract Value 

This category covers most enterprise software sales, medical device sales, and just about anything that you’re selling to orgs with a lot of administration and process — like healthcare or education. 

When you’re selling in these types of environments, there is often so much process that you and the prospect need to go through to close a deal that it’s just not worth the friction of the buying process if the deal isn’t reasonably large ($250K+) — and that’s often a feature, not a bug. (We’ll save that for another article.) 

In this case, if you’re significantly behind quota at the half-way mark, you’re likely not going to close anything in the current quarter that’s not already in your pipeline. 

Be honest with yourself and your manager. Do you have deals in your pipeline that can get you to your number?

It’s not uncommon that enterprise reps have one or two deals that make the difference between being near the bottom of the leaderboard, and crushing 200% of quota. Sometimes it can even be a single large deal. So eEvaluate whether that’s the case for you. If it is, then it’s critical that you map out your process and timeline, and have a true understanding of everything it will take to get the deal signed. 

When You Do Have Deals in Your Pipeline

If you’ve done a good job of building a relationship with your prospects, then you can have a candid conversation to find out when they think the deal can get done. 

Don’t be shy about asking these questions. And most importantly, understand whether it’s important to them to get the deal signed by a certain date. 

If it’s not, then you usually can’t be confident that it will get closed in time. But if there is, then make sure you understand the nuances of their motivation so that you can hopefully align with them. Then stay laser focused on your plan so that you can do everything possible to make sure that each stage doesn’t slip. 

Another thing to consider If you have a good relationship is letting them know that it’s important to you that the deal closes by a certain date. They understand that you’re in sales, so you don’t need to pretend that you don’t care when it closes. If you’ve made enough deposits along the way, a good champion will advocate for you and try to shepard the deal along internally. 

Stay focused and you can hit or even crush your number.

When You Don’t Have the Deals You’ll Need

Sometimes, you need to be honest and recognize that with the pipeline you have, the current quarter is likely a lost cause. 

Better to be a little bit conservative here than too optimistic. 

Be honest with yourself and your manager. You’ll still try to close out anything that you can for the quarter, but you should do a root-cause analysis to determine how you got into this situation. The answer is usually that you didn’t do enough prospecting up-funnel to make sure that you had sufficient pipeline coverage coming into the quarter. 

The good news is that almost all sales reps have a bad quarter every now and then. And you (probably) won’t get fired for it. Your job now is to look ahead to next quarter and make sure that you put in the work now to set yourself up to make up the deficit from this quarter, and then some. 

By shifting your focus forward you won’t come across as desperate to your prospects. And who knows, maybe you’ll come across some quick deals that will close along the way.

Long Sales Cycle / Low Average Contract Value

We saved this one for last for a reason. Low ACV products really can’t support a long sales cycle. At least, not in a direct sales model. 

This type of product may have a long consideration period, but the economics will likely only work if it’s a self-service sale for the customer. 

Sales orgs can’t afford to pay reps to manage long sales cycles unless the ACV is large enough to support a reasonable compensation.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, it’s one that’s destined to fail. (We’re willing to bet the turnover in the org is outrageous.) 

Start looking for open roles in companies where a high percentage of the team is hitting quota.

Missing Quota Sucks

Missing your quota sucks, no question about it. But it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t define your career. What matters is how you respond. Do you give up and hope for the best next quarter, or do you take a hard look at your pipeline, adjust your strategy, and put in the work? 

Every salesperson has been here before, and the ones who bounce back are the ones who stay focused, realistic, and proactive. So, whether you need to hustle through more leads or accept that this quarter may be a wash, learn from it and set yourself up for a stronger finish next time. The reps who win are the ones who keep pushing forward, no matter what.