Start with the sales engine

Estimate how many active sellers or channels can operate, how many qualified opportunities each can create and how long conversion takes. Use observed pilot results wherever available. Headcount alone is not capacity: training, management coverage and lead quality all influence what the team can realistically deliver.

Stress-test the weak links

Build low, central and high cases by changing a few visible assumptions. Identify whether performance is most sensitive to productive sellers, opportunity volume or conversion. Do not change every input simultaneously and then call the result a measured forecast. Show why each range was selected.

Review by cohort and channel

Compare actual outcomes with the assumptions after each operating cycle. A distributor producing fewer qualified opportunities requires a different response from one generating meetings that do not convert. Use the target model to diagnose the constraint, not merely to judge whether a large country total was reached. Include the time needed for new sellers to become productive. Treating every person recruited at the start of the month as immediately fully effective can materially overstate capacity, particularly when product training and customer qualification require supervised practice.

Imagine this

Illustrative operating example

At a hypothetical ten productive sellers, 20 qualified opportunities per seller per month and a 10% close rate, the model produces 20 sales monthly. Reaching 200 would require a tenfold improvement somewhere in the combined sales engine.

Make it practical.

Use this checklist as you read. Checks are not stored.

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