A revenue or activity target assigned to a rep or team, derived from funnel math - not from a CEO's wish.
A sales quota is the target a rep, team, or territory is expected to hit in a period. A well-designed quota is built bottom-up from unit economics and funnel math - average deal size, conversion rates, and ramp, so it's both ambitious and attainable.
Quotas set top-down by mandate ('we need $5M') without funnel grounding lead to sandbagging, churn, and missed forecasts.
