How to set sales goals by territory and call goals by rep, with a worked example

The worked example uses a synthetic dataset modeled on a real small-biotech commercial team: one injectable brand, 60 territories with one rep each, distributor sales in units and three years of calls logged in the CRM. There are no real patients, prescribers or accounts in it. Five of the 60 are MSL (medical science liaison) territories, a medical role with no sales goal, so the example works with the other 55 territories and their reps. We set goals for Q4 2026 (October through December) using the four quarters before it, October 2025 through September 2026. Twenty-two of the 55 hold a specialty pharmacy site, including the 20 largest by sales (more on that below). The example territory, Summit 18, holds none and sits in the middle of the other 33: 15th of 33 on 12-month sales and at their median on last quarter's calls.

Part 1: the territory sales goal

Why 12 months and not last year's Q4 alone? Summit 18 shipped 143 units in Q4 2025, then 169, 168 and 112 in the three quarters since. Size the goal on any one of those quarters and it could land anywhere from 112 to 169. A single quarter in one territory is noisy, because one account's ordering pattern can swing it. Twelve months of share smooths that out. Applying the share to a national quarterly goal keeps the seasonality, because seasonality shows up in the national number.

Across all 55 territories, the same method gives Q4 goals from 58 to 1,100 units, with a median of 245. The top of that range is pharmacy volume: specialty pharmacy sites bought 48% of the credited units, so the 22 territories that hold one get goals from 308 to 1,100, while the other 33 run from 58 to 330 (median 150, with Summit 18's 158 just above it). A specialty pharmacy can fill prescriptions written well beyond the territory it sits in, so its purchases say little about that territory's own prescribers. Decide where pharmacy sales count before you allocate: in the territory where the pharmacy sits, as here, or in the prescribers' territories, using the pharmacy's dispense data.

Share carries a territory's weight, not its direction. Summit 18 sold 9% less over these 12 months than over the 12 before, and its last quarter (112) was its lowest of the four. Its 158-unit goal is 41% above that quarter, while the national goal is 1% above last quarter's national sales. Where you know why a territory is moving, adjust its share by hand. Those are the goals worth your time.

Decide what to do with unmapped sales first

Distributor sales data nearly always includes some sites that are not yet matched to an account, and those sales have no territory. In the example, 4,420 of the 74,122 net units over 12 months (6.0%) were unmapped. You have two options:

Option A assigns the whole national goal to territories. It assumes unmapped sales will be mapped and credited to someone. Option B leaves the unmapped share with no owner, which is safer when the unmapped share is large or still growing. Whichever you choose, keep the unmapped units in the national actuals. If the national goal includes them, the national actual has to include them too.

Part 2: the rep call goal

Three notes on this method:

• Count calls one way. Here an HCP counts once per day, channel, and live or drop-off visit, so a visit logged twice counts once. Count the goal's history and the quarter's actuals the same way, or the goal and the attainment measure different things.
• Subtract days out, on both sides. Take company holidays, training, meetings and planned leave out of the history the rate comes from and out of the quarter ahead. The example takes out six holidays (New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas), the days its calls fall to almost nothing, so the four quarters' 261 weekdays become 255 field days and Q4's 66 become 64. Raw weekdays on both sides give nearly the same goal, 171 (2.59 times 66). Holidays out of the quarter but not the history would give 166 (2.59 times 64). In practice, a rep on two weeks of leave should get a smaller goal.
• Choose one rule for reps off the team rate. The Summit 18 rep runs a little below the team rate, at 2.41 calls per field day: 154 calls at the rep's own rate, 170 at the team's. The middle half of the team runs from 2.22 to 3.26 calls per field day, and for reps toward either end the rule matters more. Some teams hold everyone to the team rate and let attainment show the gap. Others start from each rep's own rate and raise it toward the team's. Either is defensible. Applying different rules to different reps is not.

Plan how the calls are spent

A call goal on its own says nothing about who gets called. Turn it into a plan by tier, the brand's ranking of HCPs by priority (Tier 1 is highest). Here we use the median calls per HCP that the example field team actually delivered last quarter (Q3 2026) for each tier:

The median untiered HCP got no call last quarter (fewer than half got any), so the plan starts them at zero. That leaves 66 calls, more than a third of the goal, with nothing planned for them. Decide where they go before the quarter starts:

• Raise the top tiers. The Summit 18 rep already ran at 9 calls per Tier 1 HCP and 5 per Tier 2 in Q3 (the medians). Planned at that pace, the tiers take 123 calls and leave 47 (28% of the goal), still more than the 19% of its calls the team gave untiered HCPs last quarter.
• Add targets, if the territory has HCPs that belong on the tier list. Summit 18 has 19 Tier 1 and 2 HCPs, where the median sales territory has 25.
• Name the untiered HCPs who get the spare calls, such as those with recent activity: new patients or recent orders at their practice.

The opposite case also happens. When the plan needs more calls than the goal allows, don't solve that by raising the goal past what a rep can deliver. Protect the top of the list and trim the untiered calls first.