A rep who sells small deals costs the same as a rep who sells large ones. That makes deal size the quiet driver of whether an outbound team can ever pay for itself.
Run the payback by hand
Take the fully loaded cost of one rep and the average deal size. Divide one by the other. The result is the number of deals each rep must close to cover their own cost, before anyone earns a margin.
How many deals does each rep need to close a month to pay for themselves?
Compare it with what reps actually close
- Ask for deals closed per rep per month, not team totals.
- Allow for the time a new rep takes to ramp.
- Check whether the small deals are the ones outbound actually wins.
If the required number is higher than anything the team has achieved, the plan depends on a result that has not happened yet.