Industry Benchmarks 2026 · Built from live commission data
Fewer than 1 in 4 AEs hit quota. That’s not a rep problem.
We looked at 25,112 quota carriers across SaaS & AI-native peers. Median AE attainment was 61.7%. When three out of four reps miss, the plan is what broke. See where yours lands before you lock 2027 quotas.
77.2%
of AEs missed quota
61.7%
Median AE Attainment
25,112
Quota Carriers
80+
Countries
WHAT YOU'LL GET
A read on the market before you build your 2027 plan.
Your CRO is going to ask how your attainment compares to SaaS & AI-native peers. Right now you’re guessing.
01
Your Distribution Health Score
A 0–100 score for your attainment curve. A decent median can hide an unhealthy curve: too many reps in the tail, too few in band.
02
Attainment by role and quota type
See whether your SMB, mid-market and enterprise reps are missing at the same rate as SaaS & AI-native peers, or worse.
03
Quota levels and variable pay
Nominal and purchasing-power adjusted, so you can see where your quotas and pay are out of line with the market.
04
The three plan-design choices
What the data says about each one.
A FINDING FROM THE REPORT
Smaller quota, bigger miss.
We split reps into four bands by quota size. AEs carrying a median $3.3M quota hit 73.4%. AEs carrying $126K hit 51.9%.
The pattern holds inside 71% of companies large enough totest it. Lowering the number didn’t raise attainment.
1:1 consultation with Jose.
Jose Aleman built this benchmark.
He's spent 15 years in sales ops, customer success, and product ops at Diligent, Galvanize, and ACL, and pulled apart the commission plans of 1,200+ go-to-market teams, costing the gaps and helping rebuild them. That work shaped the methodology behind every number here, so he usually knows what your curve will say before he reads it. He ran the Northstar'26 benchmarking session with RepVue's Ryan Walsh, to a room that wanted more time than the agenda gave.
What previous attendees have to say
“The 45 minutes with Jose did more for our planning than the consulting engagement we paid for the year before.”
[VP RevOps, Series C SaaS]
“We’d been guessing at our attainment spread. Seeing it size-matched changed the quota conversation with our CRO.”
[Sales Ops Director, mid-market SaaS]
“It was the first comp benchmark our CFO actually read, because it wasn’t a survey.”
[RevOps Lead, enterprise SaaS]
You’re about to lock 2027 quotas. Lock them against the market, not last year’s spreadsheet.
Attainment, pay and distribution health against SaaS & AI-native peers, by role, industry and geography. Built from live commission data, not survey answers.
