How to work out your sales capacity

Targets are frequently set without checking whether there are enough hours in the week to hit them.

Selling takes time per opportunity. Multiply that by the opportunities a target requires and you find out whether the plan is arithmetic or aspiration.

Step-by-step

1. Enter the number of salespeople and their selling hours.
2. Enter time per opportunity at each stage.
3. Read the deals your team can physically handle.

Selling hours are a fraction of working hours

Administration, reporting, internal meetings, training and travel all consume the week. Selling time is typically 50–60% of it, sometimes far less in organisations with heavy reporting requirements.

Planning on 40 hours of selling per person per week is the standard error, and it produces targets that were never achievable.

Count the whole cycle

Time per deal is not just the pitch. It is research, first contact, follow-up, discovery, proposal writing, negotiation, and the handover afterwards. Long-cycle sales consume many hours spread over months, and every open opportunity keeps consuming them.

What to do when capacity is short

• Qualify harder. Time spent on deals that will not close is the largest available saving.
• Remove non-selling work, which is often the cheapest intervention.
• Shorten the cycle with better materials and clearer next steps.
• Raise average deal size, so the same hours produce more.
• Hire, which is the slowest and most expensive option and usually the first one proposed.

Frequently asked questions

How many selling hours does a salesperson actually have?

Typically 50–60% of their working week once administration, reporting, internal meetings and travel are removed. Planning on the full week guarantees the target fails.

What is the cheapest way to increase capacity?

Qualifying harder. Hours spent on opportunities that were never going to close are the largest single waste in most sales teams.

When should I hire another salesperson?

When the existing team is genuinely at capacity on well-qualified opportunities and the pipeline supports more. Hiring to fix a qualification or process problem adds cost without adding output.