The System Makes the Rep
A rep who hit 70% of quota at a rocket ship startup joins your company and closes zero deals all year. This is not rare. SaaStr's data shows only 18% of early-stage teams have 70%+ of reps hitting quota, with most sitting at 20-40% attainment or worse.
Jason Lemkin calls it the 0% Quota Club. Same rep, different system, completely different outcome.
The Three Variables That Decide Attainment
Lemkin argues that mediocre reps hit 50-90% of quota in companies with three things: extreme product-market fit, tight process, and substantial support. Miss any one and those same reps hit zero.
Here is what that looks like in practice. At a company with strong PMF, leads arrive warm. The buyer knows the category and the brand. Pricing is standardized. There is a deck, a demo script, a mutual action plan, and an SE who handles technical calls. The rep's job is to not screw it up and ask for the order. A mediocre rep can do that for years.
Now put that rep somewhere without those systems. Leads are inconsistent and often wrong ICP. Pricing gets negotiated fresh every deal. The demo changes based on who gives it. There is no SE so the rep fields technical questions they cannot answer. Security review takes six weeks because nobody owns it. The product does not quite do what the prospect needs.
That rep now has to invent the sales process, the pricing strategy, the technical story, and the objection handling, deal by deal. That is founder work. It is VP of Sales work. It is not something a 50th-percentile AE has ever done.
So they do nothing. They stay busy, run activity, keep a pipeline that never closes, and end the year at zero.
What This Means for ANZ Sales Leaders
If you are hiring reps from Atlassian, Canva, or SafetyCulture and they are underperforming, the problem is probably not the rep. Those companies have dialed systems. Your company might not.
Before you PIP someone, ask: do we have repeatable process, or are we asking every AE to be a founder? Is our product actually solving the problem, or are we still figuring that out? Do reps have the support they need, or are they winging technical questions and security reviews?
Quota attainment is an output of the system, not just the rep. If your whole team is missing, the system is broken.