Almost every sales CV that reaches your desk will claim attainment above target. Very few of those claims are false outright. The problem is subtler and more expensive: the number is usually true, and still tells you almost nothing about whether the person will perform in your business.
A quota figure is a ratio. It is only as meaningful as the two things underneath it, and neither appears on the CV.
The denominator problem
The first question is what the target actually was. A quota set conservatively in a growing category produces impressive attainment from an average performer. A stretch target in a contested market can leave a genuinely strong salesperson at 85%, and that 85% may represent considerably better work.
Ask directly:
- What was the number, and who set it?
- How did it move year on year, and why?
- What proportion of the team hit it?
That last question is the most revealing one. If four of forty people hit target, a candidate at 95% is exceptional. If thirty-six of forty hit it, 120% is unremarkable.
What the machine did versus what the person did
The second question is how much of the pipeline the candidate personally created.
Someone carrying a quota at an established category leader may be working almost entirely inbound, supported by mature demand generation, a partner channel and a brand that opens doors on its own. The same person moving to a challenger business, where they must build pipeline from a standing start, is doing a materially different job. Plenty of strong performers do not survive that transition, and it is rarely because they lack ability.
The useful question is not "did you hit your number?" but "what would have happened to that number if the marketing team had gone quiet for two quarters?"
Work through the specifics. Which deals did the candidate originate themselves? What was the split between inbound and outbound? Was there an SDR feeding them, and how good was it?
Territory, cycle and deal shape
Three further variables change what a number means:
- Deal size. Closing thirty deals at £20k is a different skill from closing three at £200k. Both can be excellent. They do not interchange easily.
- Sales cycle. A candidate used to a six week cycle will find a nine month enterprise procurement process genuinely disorienting, and the reverse is also true.
- Territory quality. Inheriting a mature patch with existing relationships is not the same as opening a new region.
None of this is exotic. It is simply the context that makes a number interpretable, and it is the context that a fifteen minute screening call almost never surfaces.
What good evidence looks like
Strong candidates answer these questions easily and specifically. They know their numbers, they know where their pipeline came from, and they are comfortable naming the deals that went wrong and why. Vagueness at this level of detail is itself a signal.
Where a candidate cannot substantiate the figures on their CV, that is worth knowing before the offer stage rather than after the first quarter.
This is the screening standard we apply before any candidate reaches a client shortlist. If you are hiring across commercial or revenue functions, our SaaS sales recruitment and commercial and sales recruitment pages set out how we run these searches.