In this talk, Bradley Hamner re‑introduces the concept of quotas as a core performance‑management tool for both sales and broader organizational teams. He begins by defining a quota as a specific, measurable, time‑bound goal assigned to individuals or groups to drive productivity and align with company objectives. Hamner references recent Blueprint workshops that helped clients set yearly objectives, quarterly priorities, and traction plans, emphasizing the need for a visible scoreboard. He introduces the LAPS framework—Leads, Appointments, Presentations, Sales—as a simple metric set to track activity and outcomes. He explains how monthly team bonuses tied to quota achievement reinforce accountability. Drawing on his first job selling Yellow Page ads, Hamner illustrates how quotas can be tailored to experience level and territory, showing that fairness does not require identical numbers for every rep. He stresses the importance of tracking "percent to quota" as a clear performance indicator, using it in manager meetings to quickly assess over‑ or under‑performance. Hamner highlights a common reporting blind spot: raw activity numbers without the context of each person’s quota, which hampers coaching. By explicitly communicating individual and team quotas, leaders can provide targeted coaching, product or process training, and hold team members accountable. He concludes by promoting an upcoming February workshop on personal leadership planning, positioning personal leadership as the most valuable asset in a business.
Chapters
Hey everyone, let's talk about a term that you probably don't use in your day-to-day very much, and that is quotas. I'd like to offer you to bring this word back. We've been talking about quotas a lot, private clients, my boardroom clients, and Blueprint clients over the last 6 months, and a lot of people have ended up adopting that word. But first, let's get into what is the definition of a quota. So I went just to go to trusty Google. Could have certainly gone to AI, but here's what Google says. A business quota is a specific, measurable, and time-bound performance goal that is assigned to individuals, to teams, departments to drive productivity and achieve company objectives. It goes on. It's common in sales. It mandates targets for revenue, units sold, activity levels within a set period to measure success. We're coming up at the very end of the first month of January. And if you go back in December, we ran two Above the Business workshops to help you work not just in the business and certainly not just on the business, but to get above the business, to help you to be able to set your 2026 objectives. The very next week we came together and we helped everybody to set their quarterly priorities. What do you feel like you need to get accomplished this quarter? Then in January, or this month, the workshop that we ran was all about traction. How do you put rubber on the road in relation to your objectives, both for the year and for the quarter? How do you— what are the things that actually go in to play to do that. One of them was making sure that you have a scoreboard. I like the acronym LAPS, L-A-P-S, Leads, Appointments, Presentation, Sales. That was one. Number two is aligning everybody in the organization with a monthly team bonus. And at the end of the day, if you think about the timeframe of that team bonus and also, you know, keeping some sort of a scoreboard, One of the things that that does is it helps you to understand that there's a defined period of time and there's, there's, they are specific outcomes that we're trying to achieve. I think the same thing is true when it comes to your individual team members. What is their quota? Specifically, what is the target that they have to achieve? The measurable outcomes you want them to achieve. During a specific set period of time. Where this has come up— I, my very first job out of college when I graduated from Auburn, I was selling Yellow Page ads, and they set us a very specific quota. At the time when we were selling, um, Yellow Page ads, we would work different phone books. We would work different phone books for a different, uh, territory, basically. And so each book, or each canvas is what they refer to it as, had a set period of time that we were going to be there. And obviously, let's say the Huntsville book was a much thicker book, and so we were in that territory for a much longer period of time. And some of the smaller books that we, you know, would go and spend time at, it was maybe, you know, a tenth of the size of the Huntsville book. Well, we didn't spend nearly as much time. But either way, for the 4 different books that we worked, so the 4 different canvases throughout the year, there were different lengths of time that we worked it, but there was always a quota. Each rep had a quota to be able to hit. And here's what's interesting. Some of that was, some of that was kind of standard across the board, but some of the quotas was different depending on how long you had been there. See, what they would do is they would assign you some current advertisers. You can— this makes sense. And if you've been there a long, long enough period of time, you might would get, you know, a group of current advertisers spending, you know, let's just say $100,000 a year in, uh, Yellow Page advertising. And again, dating myself a little bit, but I think you get the point. And then other newer reps, myself included, we would not— we would get assigned some what they called revenue, some current advertisers, but it wouldn't be at the level of some of the senior ones. I think that all makes sense. And so because of that, the senior ones had more revenue to be able to handle, but they also had higher quotas that they needed to hit versus, you know, myself in my very first year. And so it doesn't mean that whenever you're having quotas in your organization that Everybody has to be the same. Um, you certainly want to treat everybody fairly, treat everybody equally, but that doesn't always mean that the numbers have to be the same. Okay. Certainly somebody that's been in your organization for 4 to 5 years probably has some advantage. They built up a pipeline that is beyond what somebody who just started 3 months ago is going to have. Either way though, there's a defined period of time. And look, it could be a month and there's a set quota. And one of the things we would do is when we would have our monthly, uh, you know, manager sit-down manager meetings, the thing that they came in, the one metric we were held accountable for was what we were, we at as a percent to quota. And the reason why this, I don't think this is a very difficult concept to be able to grasp. But I think it is so easy and simple, yet sometimes we kind of miss it. What do you expect people to do? What are the specific numbers? And look, it's a lot easier in sales positions. And I will say that, but that doesn't mean that, you know, your, the rest of your team can't be, can't have some quotas that they need to hit as well. But just taking with the sales team, how did your sales team perform? As a percent to quota in January. If they had to sell 50 widgets and they sold 55, they were over 100% to quota. And that should be certainly be recognized. I know that they probably would get commissions, but that should be recognized. And so that simple task or concept has been very transformative to a lot of the business owners that we've worked with over the last few months. We've helped them to understand what is the quota for an individual salesperson. What do you want them to do? And oftentimes, whenever I'm talking to someone and, and they share about an underperforming team member, I'll say, okay, walk me through the last 3 months of their production. What were their numbers? And with a little bit of, you know, going back and finding some numbers, they can do that. They can share, hey, here's, here's their numbers. Fantastic. Now, how are they doing in relation to what you want them to be doing? And it's very easy for them to say, well, I want them to do more. Well, how much more? Were they at 50% to quota in October? Were they at 90% to quota? What are— what is that percentage? Because it's asking you to set a specific number that they have to be able to go to, a specific goal. But I really do love the word and term quota. You can also do this with your sales team, and you can also do it with your entire organization. In order for us to hit team bonus, this is the quota that we have to hit in this organization in order for everybody to, you know, participate in a team bonus. But I think I would start specifically with your sales producers. I was just this week, kind of what brought this conversation up. And the reason I wanted to drop this today is a business owner I've worked with for a while had had his EA, which I love the fact he had an EA, had produced some really beautiful reports. And there were some weekly graphs, there were some weekly numbers, quite a few numbers, but not overwhelming. After you read it a little bit, you can kind of keep up with, okay, here's, here's the raw numbers of what they did activity-wise. Here's the results that they had last week for each team member. It was graphed, plus you had the numbers. It was great. And then you kind of go down and you, you would see the weekly numbers. And I would see the monthly numbers. And that's whenever I shared, yeah, but this is good. But I have no idea how they're doing relative to what you want them to do. And it was immediately the light bulb went off. And he said, oh, you're right. It shows the numbers and it graphs them. But it does not show exactly what so-and-so's quota is. And so if you have not explicitly shared with your team what is their individual quotas, what is the team quotas, this is an opportunity for you to do that. Setting defined timeframes and defined outcomes and targets for them to be able to hit, hit, helps you so much with being able to have clarity in the organization. And if I could add one last thing, once you've defined that clarity, they know exactly what is expected of them, then you have something that you can coach them to. You can begin to do the coaching, whether it's product training or process training, whatever that may be, to help coach them and hold them accountable to be able to get the outcomes that you ultimately want. So my suggestion consider adopting having a quota for your team and putting that as part of your vernacular. And I think your team will absolutely start and begin to bend towards closer to hitting their targets. All right, everyone, hope that episode served you well. By the way, coming up in February, next month, we are going to be hosting another workshop, our second workshop of the year. This workshop is all about a personal leadership plan. You have a plan for your business. We've talked about how to— well, this is what we're trying to accomplish this year. We talked about how we actually get traction in that plan. But what about the most important asset in the business? And that asset is you. Do you have a plan for you? Do you have a plan to lead yourself first? A personal leadership plan, because personal leadership comes and precedes leadership in the organization. I'd love to see you there. Go to blueprintos.com/assets. You can see more information to be able to come to our next workshop. Look forward to seeing you then. Till next time, lead well and go be great.
