Best CROs and VPs of Sales Lift B-Team Attainment
SaaStr outlines how top sales leaders improve B-player performance through pipeline coverage, territory design, and lifecycle ownership as teams scale.
Scaling Sales Teams Produce More B Players
Consistency remains one of the biggest challenges in enterprise sales. This challenge has not changed in the Age of AI and may be worse because the best B2B and B2B+AI companies scale faster than ever. Faster scaling means more reps hired faster, which produces more B sales reps. In SMB sales the variance in rep performance appears in less than 30 days. In enterprise sales a B player rep can take over a year to be clearly identified as such.
A Team and B Team Emerge at Scale
As organizations scale from three to 300 reps they end up with an A Team that exceeds quota and a B Team that struggles to hit quota but comes close. The best CROs and VPs of Sales know they need their top performers yet also need a broader qualified team to hit the plan. They hire a more diverse set of reps than at the founder-led stage and focus on backfilling, training, and supporting the B Team. They move C players out while providing extra help to reps at 70-80 percent of quota through joint calls, additional training, and smaller accounts.
ICONIQ 2026 Data Shows the Gap
ICONIQ’s 2026 GTM benchmark data reports that 65-75 percent of reps hit quota at traditional B2B sales organizations while 85-90 percent hit quota at top B2B and B2B+AI companies. The A Team hits quota at both types of companies. The delta between a good sales organization and a great one lives in what happens to the middle of the roster. Top-quartile quotas in 2026 stand at $2.25 million for Enterprise AE, $1.35 million for Mid-Market, and $750,000 for SMB. Quotas rose while attainment also rose.
Systems That Move the B Team
AI-forward companies put 3x-4x pipeline in front of reps. Coverage is the single biggest lever on B Team attainment. Leaders model territory on account potential and rep capacity rather than geography. Sixty-five percent of high performers have Sales owning cross-sell versus 49 percent of others, 55 percent own upsell versus 44 percent, and 37 percent own renewals versus 24 percent. The best sales organizations are not the ones with better A players. They are the ones where the B Team hits.
according to SaaStr. The best CROs and VPs of Sales build systems for both the A Team and the B Team. Mediocre VPs of Sales end up with a B and C Team. according to SaaStr. Organizations should judge the VP of Sales by aggregate numbers rather than individual rep choices.
according to SaaStr.
