THE FUTURE MARKETACADEMY
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School of Business

Sales Leadership: coach a team and build a sales system

What you'll be able to do
  • Set honest sales targets from capacity and past results, without promising anyone income.
  • Hire sellers fairly, following your country's rules on job postings and trial shifts.
  • Onboard and coach sellers with a plan, one-on-ones and a call-review scorecard.
  • Write a sales playbook and a simple sales system that anyone on the team can follow.
  • Design a pay plan that rewards good, honest selling.
  • Keep the whole team inside your country's rules on consent, do-not-call lists and honest claims.
  • Measure results with a few numbers, forecast carefully, and teach a short session that proves you can lead others.

This course is education only. The numbers are made-up examples, not predictions, and nothing here promises income to a seller or a business. For employment, tax or legal questions, ask a licensed lawyer or accountant.

Words in this course 50Open the Vocabulary Hall
01

Honest targets from capacity

In simple words

A coach does not tell a team "score ten goals" without looking at how many shots they can take. A sales target is a plan built from what people can really do, not a wish. If the target is a wish, people feel pushed to cut corners.

Before this course: Consultative Selling: discover needs and close bigger deals (course 2.5.3), which builds on Sales Process: pipeline, follow-up and objections (course 2.5.2) and Sales Fundamentals: Conversations That Close (course 2.5). You should already run a pipeline, qualify leads, follow up with CASL consent, track conversion, run discovery calls and write proposals. If not, finish those courses first.

Key facts
  • A target (or quota) is a planned result for a period, for example new customers or new revenue this quarter. It is a plan, not a promise of what a seller will earn.
  • Build it bottom-up from your own numbers, in this order: target revenue, average deal size, win rate (from your conversion table in course 2.5.2), deals needed, opportunities needed, and how many opportunities one seller can really work.
  • Then check top-down: is the target close to what the team really did in past periods? A large jump needs a reason (a new product, more people, a new market).
  • Ramp time: a new seller needs weeks or months before reaching full speed. Count a new hire as part capacity at first.
  • Use ranges for planning (low, expected, high), and write down your assumptions so they can be checked.
  • Honest targets protect customers too. Pressure from an impossible target is a common reason people make misleading claims (Lesson 6).
Example (pretend small agency; made-up numbers)
StepNumber
Target new revenue for the year$240,000
Average deal$4,000
Deals needed240,000 / 4,000 = 60
Win rate on qualified opportunities25%
Opportunities needed60 / 0.25 = 240
One seller can properly work8 new qualified opportunities a month = 96 a year
Sellers needed240 / 96 = 2.5

Result: two full-time sellers plus part of the owner's time, or a lower target, or a better win rate. The plan shows the real choice instead of hiding it.

Step by step
  1. Write your target for one quarter or year.
  2. Write the average deal size from your last 10 to 20 sales (use practice numbers if you have none).
  3. Write your win rate from your conversion table.
  4. Calculate deals needed (target / deal size) and opportunities needed (deals / win rate).
  5. Estimate how many qualified opportunities one seller can work well in a month.
  6. Divide to find how many sellers you need, and adjust for ramp time for new hires.
  7. Write low, expected and high versions and list your assumptions.
  8. Check: you can explain each number in one sentence and the target is not far from past results without a reason.
LESSON 01Honest targets from capacity
LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:00
Read the video script
[Host] "A target is a plan, not a wish."
[Text on screen: $240,000 / $4,000 = 60 deals / 25% win rate = 240 opportunities] "Work backwards: revenue, deal size, win rate, then how many opportunities you need."
[Text on screen: 240 opportunities / 96 per seller = 2.5 sellers] "Compare that with what one seller can really handle."
[Host] "If the numbers do not fit, change the plan, not the truth."
Try it now

Build a bottom-up target for one team or a practice team. Write the table from the example with your numbers, three versions (low, expected, high) and your assumptions.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Sales Leadership: coach a team and build a sales system" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "Honest targets from capacity".

What the lesson teaches:
- A target (or quota) is a planned result for a period, for example new customers or new revenue this quarter. It is a plan, not a promise of what a seller will earn.
- Build it bottom-up from your own numbers, in this order: target revenue, average deal size, win rate (from your conversion table in course 2.5.2), deals needed, opportunities needed, and how many opportunities one seller can really work.
- Then check top-down: is the target close to what the team really did in past periods? A large jump needs a reason (a new product, more people, a new market).
- Ramp time: a new seller needs weeks or months before reaching full speed. Count a new hire as part capacity at first.
- Use ranges for planning (low, expected, high), and write down your assumptions so they can be checked.
- Honest targets protect customers too. Pressure from an impossible target is a common reason people make misleading claims (Lesson 6).

The exercise I'm working on:
Build a bottom-up target for one team or a practice team. Write the table from the example with your numbers, three versions (low, expected, high) and your assumptions.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.
I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "Honest targets from capacity" from the course "Sales Leadership: coach a team and build a sales system".

Here's what the lesson says:
A coach does not tell a team "score ten goals" without looking at how many shots they can take. A sales target is a plan built from what people can really do, not a wish. If the target is a wish, people feel pushed to cut corners.

The activity:
Build a bottom-up target for one team or a practice team. Write the table from the example with your numbers, three versions (low, expected, high) and your assumptions.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.
Open Claude
Sources
My notes
02

Hiring sellers fairly

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03

Onboard and coach

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04

The sales playbook and system

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05

Pay plans that reward honest selling

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06

Compliance for the whole team

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07

Measure, forecast and review

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08

Teach it: a team training and review session

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++

Final project

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??

Quiz

  1. How do you build a sales target from the bottom up?

  2. In the example, how many sellers does $240,000 need at 8 new opportunities a month each?

  3. Why check local job-posting rules before advertising a sales job?

  4. Name two things an honest job posting should include.

  5. Can a trial shift make a candidate an employee?

  6. What are the three parts of a 25-minute call review in the lesson's ending?

  7. Why pay commission when the customer has paid?

  8. Why should a sales leader learn the anti-spam rules where messages are sent?

  9. What should a telemarketer do about do-not-call lists?

  10. What kind of law covers false or misleading claims to promote a business?

  11. What is the difference between leading and lagging numbers?

  12. How do you prove a teaching session worked?

EX

Final exam

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CE

Certificate

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