Most revenue plans answer every problem with "hire more reps."
This one works backward from your target to the headcount it actually requires, then shows you how many of those hires you don't need. Built from the operating system behind a decade of multi-route growth: direct, partner, distribution and enterprise.
Three minutes to a first answer, longer if you test it. Nothing is stored unless you save it, and then only in your browser.
Five motionsDirect, enterprise, online and self-serve, partner-led and distribution, each with its own economics.
Eight leversEvery one a system you can build instead of a person you have to hire.
One scoreNot how ambitious your plan is. How likely it is to actually happen.
PART ONE OF FOUR
Your numbers
Where you are and where you are going. Three short steps, and the headcount the target needs appears in the bar that follows you down the page.
1 · THE MOTION
Which motion are you modelling?
Each one has different economics. Picking one loads starting numbers you can overwrite, and you should. They are illustrative placeholders, not industry benchmarks. The arithmetic is what this tool is for; the figures should be yours.
2 · TODAY
Where you are today
Eight numbers. If you don't know one exactly, estimate: the shape of the answer holds.
On the revenue you book, after cost of goods.
1 for one-off. Higher for reorders or subscriptions.
Revenue per ramped rep
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The number everything else hangs on
Transactions per rep
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Orders per year, at your deal size
Customers per rep
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Opportunities per rep
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To win that many customers
Revenue per rep is an average, and averages hide distributions. On many teams a third of the reps carry well over half the number. Adding headcount at your average assumes the next hires perform like the middle of your team rather than the bottom, and that the top of it stays. If your spread is wide, the levers below are a safer bet than the hires above.
3 · THE TARGET
Where you're going
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TO HIT THE TARGET YOU NEED
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VERSUS THE DEFAULT PLAN
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HIRING COST AVOIDED
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Per year, fully loaded
PLAN SCORE
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PART TWO OF FOUR
Close the gap
Three ways to reach the number: hire for it, build the systems that make hiring unnecessary, or add a route to market. Most plans only ever look at the first.
4 · THE DEFAULT ANSWER
Hire your way there
If nothing about how you sell changes, this is the arithmetic. It's the plan many companies take to the board, and it's the most expensive way to close a gap.
A model, not a forecast. It runs on the numbers above, so it is exactly as good as they are.
Additional reps required
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On top of the team you have
Annual cost of those hires
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Fully loaded, at steady state
They must be hired by
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To be ramped in time
5 · THE LEVERS
Or move the levers instead
Every slider below is a system you can change without adding a person. Watch the headcount number at the top of the screen fall as you move them.
6 · A SECOND MOTION OPTIONAL
Or add a motion entirely
Optimising one route to market changes your slope. Adding a second changes your level. If you are not weighing a new route yet, skip ahead to Part three.
It is the only thing that produces a step change rather than an incremental one.
It is also slower, harder, and many attempts fail. A new motion contributes almost nothing for the first two or three quarters, which is exactly why it has to be started before you need it, not when the number demands it.
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What the route takes off your price. Zero if it buys at your wholesale price, or you sell it yourself.
Contribution, after route margin
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Direct reps it replaces
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Net of the reps it needs itself
Cost of waiting to start
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Solid: what the new motion contributes month by month at your chosen start. Dashed: what it would have contributed if you started today.
⚠ Distribution is not the same shape as the other three
It is a reach motion, not a growth motion. You inherit the distributor’s growth rate, sell-in is not sell-through so you cannot see end-user demand, and you have no relationship with the buyer to expand or defend.
And the margin you trade for the reach is the margin that would have funded the demand engine, which is why healthy distributor relationships so often sit flat for years.
Ask both gates, not one.Will they actually sell it? A distributor earning a one-time margin opens a door; one earning a recurring stream sells. And can you grow through them alone? After the route margin above, are there discretionary points left to fund anything?
PART THREE OF FOUR
Test it
A plan can hit the target on paper and still fail in a real year. Three tests: can the team physically do the work, how likely is the plan to happen, and can the company afford it.
7 · REALITY CHECK
Is the plan physically possible?
Productivity targets are easy to write down. This is what yours demands of a single rep, every working day, for a year. Note that levers behave differently here. Winning more of what you already work, or raising deal size, costs no extra effort. Shortening cycles or raising output does. That difference is usually the whole argument.
Where does your pipeline come from?
Two engines with completely different constraints. Bought pipeline is limited by budget; prospected pipeline is limited by hours. Most companies run both, and the mix decides which wall you hit first.
Paid ads, inbound, content, events
Cold calls, emails, in-person visits, list work
PARTNER, REFERRAL & REPEAT
10%
Costs neither budget nor rep hours
The bought half
Leads required
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Across the whole team, per year
Marketing spend required
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Cost per won deal
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The prospected half
Reading the daily number
It is the volume the plan needs, not what you should manage. Dials can be padded. The course measures hours on the phone and the quality of those calls, scored by a person who listened.
It counts prospecting only, and it is a team average. Reorders, quotes and partner deals are real work that is not here, so read it as the protected block to defend. If SDRs and AEs split the work, set the rep-sourced share to what your hunters actually create.
It assumes every opportunity is real. If part of your pipeline never was, the true load is higher than this.
AI can raise output per hour on research, first drafts and sequences, and it should. AI drafts. A person sends. How the course uses it.
What counts as what: activity, contact, meeting, opportunity
Every company defines these differently. What matters is that your conversion rates above use the same definitions as these. If you count meetings as opportunities, your rates need to say so.
Activity
One attempt. A dial, an email, a social touch, a site visit or walk-in. Counted per attempt, not per person: three dials to the same prospect is three activities.
Contact worked
A distinct company or prospect you actively worked: dialled, emailed, sequenced or visited. Not necessarily reached. One contact however many attempts it took, so "50 net-new companies a week" is 50 contacts worked, not 50 conversations.
Meeting
A scheduled call that actually happened, an SQL in many CRMs. Booked-but-no-showed does not count, and that's the number many teams flatter themselves with.
Opportunity
Qualified and in the pipeline, an SQO. A real business problem, a known decision process, an agreed next step. Not everyone who took a meeting.
Self-sourced
Opportunities the rep created themselves. The rest arrive from marketing, partners, referrals or repeat business and cost the rep no prospecting effort.
8 · THE SCORE
How likely is this to actually happen?
Anyone can set an ambitious target. This scores whether the plan behind it survives contact with a real year: sustainable workload, credible assumptions, leverage that isn't just headcount, and enough runway to execute.
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9 · THE OTHER HALF
Can you afford the plan?
Every number above is revenue. Revenue is only half a plan: a target you hit by giving away margin is a target that costs you next year.
A discount does not come out of margin. It comes out of R&D.
Your operating costs are fixed and your profit number is committed to somebody. So a concession lands almost entirely on the only bucket that flexes, the one that funds the next product, the next hire you actually wanted, the next process improvement. The company does not look less profitable that year. It looks the same, and it stops improving.
Gross profit added
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What the plan costs
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New reps, fully loaded, plus bought pipeline
Left over
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This is deliberately a floor, not a forecast. It counts only the selling cost the plan adds and the pipeline it buys, not the rest of your operating base, which the growth will also stretch. If the number here is thin, the real one is thinner.
PART FOUR OF FOUR
Your plan
Everything above on one card, ready to print, share as a link, or have sent to your inbox.
10 · THE SUMMARY
Your plan
THE PLAN
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PLAN SCORE
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SELLING TEAM
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REVENUE PER REP
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HIRING COST AVOIDED
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SECOND MOTION
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MARKETING SPEND
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DAILY ACTIVITY
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Per rep, per working day
GROSS PROFIT ADDED
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—rev-op.com
Before you hire against this
This plan assumes your current forecast is trustworthy. If you have not landed within about 5% of your number for two or three consecutive quarters, fix that first.
One good quarter is a sample of one. It is indistinguishable from a lucky mix, and headcount added against an unreliable forecast is the most expensive way to find that out.
Email me this plan
You get a link that reopens this page with every number exactly as you have it now. Nothing is stored here. The whole plan travels inside the link.
✓Sent.
Check your inbox. Here is the same link, in case you would rather keep it now.
You just entered one gross margin for a business that runs on four
That is the honest limit of a free tool. This model runs one route at a time, one margin, one horizon, one average rep, and it still found something worth knowing. Your actual business is a portfolio: routes with different margins, different cycle lengths and different ramp curves, running at once and competing for the same people.
The full model runs them side by side. Named reps with individual quotas and ramp dates. Each route carrying its own economics, including what the channel takes. Quarterly phasing instead of a single horizon. Saved scenarios you can put next to each other. And comp modelled against the output, so the plan and the pay plan are the same document.
Nothing above gets taken away. This calculator stays free, keeps every number it already gives you, and stays the honest version of the argument: that many revenue plans answer every problem with a hire, and most of those hires are a system nobody built.