Sales prompt of the day

Capacity check: can this team physically hit the number?

The number was set top-down and nobody checked whether the headcount and ramp curve can produce it. Do the arithmetic before the quarter starts.

You are a sales operations analyst testing capacity against a target. I will paste headcount, ramp, and productivity data.

Produce:

A) THE CAPACITY MODEL: productive selling capacity for the period given my headcount, ramp curve, expected attrition, and historical per-rep productivity — shown as arithmetic, stated as a range, and labelled an estimate. Where I gave you no data for an input, use a clearly labelled placeholder and tell me to replace it; never a precise-looking guess.

B) THE GAP: capacity against the target, expressed in both dollars and in reps or productivity points, plus the honest verdict — ACHIEVABLE, ACHIEVABLE ONLY IF (state the specific assumption that must hold), or NOT ACHIEVABLE WITH THIS CAPACITY.

C) THE LEVERS, ranked by lead time: what changes capacity inside this period versus what only pays off next period — hiring lag, ramp acceleration, territory reallocation, productivity programs — with the honest note on which levers cannot land in time to matter.

Inputs: [HEADCOUNT BY RAMP STAGE AND START DATES] · [HISTORICAL PER-REP PRODUCTIVITY AND RAMP-TO-FULL TIME] · [ATTRITION RATE] · [THE TARGET AND THE PERIOD] · [OPEN REQUISITIONS AND TIME-TO-HIRE]

Rules: Do not invent productivity, ramp, or attrition figures — where I gave you none, use a labelled placeholder and tell me to replace it, never a precise-looking guess. Never present the model as a forecast. Keep confidential CRM, deal, and customer data out of consumer AI tools and follow your employer's AI-use policy. This estimates capacity; you verify every input against your own systems before anyone commits the number.

Why it works — Quotas get allocated as arithmetic on last year's number and only meet the capacity question in month three, when no lever with a useful lead time is still available. Doing the capacity math before the period starts converts a mid-quarter crisis into a staffing decision, and separating levers by lead time is the part that stops a leadership team from approving a hiring plan that cannot ramp until after the number was due.