When does each rep cohort pay back fully-loaded cost, and how do bookings compound over their tenure?
№ 159 · Rep ROAS curve
Definition
MetricCumulative gross profit from a rep cohort divided by cumulative fully loaded cost of that cohort, plotted by month of tenure
Unitratio of cumulative gross profit to cumulative fully loaded rep cost, by tenure month
Cumulative rep bookings divided by fully-loaded rep cost, plotted across months since hire. Multiple cohort lines for hire cohorts or segments. Reveals when reps become profitable. Build per-rep cohort. Example: Top quartile crosses 1.0x at M6, hits 4.8x at M24; bottom never crosses.
- ROAS
- Return on ad spend. Revenue attributed to a campaign divided by the spend on that campaign.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| Crosses 1.0x after month 24 or not before the cohort attrites | Crosses 1.0x around month 14 to 16 and reaches roughly 2.4x by month 36 | Crosses 1.0x by month 9 and reaches 4.0x or above by month 36 |
B2B SaaS $5M to $100M ARR, AE cohorts. Fully loaded cost taken as roughly 1.3x to 1.4x OTE including burden, tooling and allocated management. Gross profit taken as booked new ARR times subscription gross margin, counted once rather than as a recurring stream. · This is a sales-capacity curve and shares only its shape with the marketing ROAS curve in other sections. The denominator is a fully loaded headcount cost that continues whether or not the rep books anything, not media spend that can be switched off, which makes the early months of this curve structurally worse than a paid channel curve and the later months structurally better. Inputs are sourced but the curve itself is constructed: Bridge Group 2026 gives quota, OTE and 6.2 month ramp, Benchmarkit gives 81% subscription gross margin, RepVue gives realised attainment. Two cautions apply. Average AE tenure of 2.2 to 2.8 years means the right-hand end of the curve describes a minority of hires. And billing terms shift the whole curve left or right by months rather than weeks, with Tunguz modelling AE-only breakeven at roughly three months on annual prepay.
Category split omitted: Rep-level cohort returns are not published by segment by any two independent Tier 1 or Tier 2 sources; the curve is assembled from separately segmented quota, attainment, compensation and margin datasets.
When it looks bad
The cohort curve flattens below 1.0x and the average tenure marker arrives before the crossover point, so the cohort is exited or attrites before it has repaid what was spent on it.
Cohort sits at 0.9x at month 24 with 40% of the original hires already gone, meaning the cohort will never cross 1.0x.
What to do about it
- Move to annual prepay before touching anything inside the sales org. Tunguz models AE-only breakeven dropping to roughly three months on annual prepay against materially longer on monthly billing, which moves this curve more than any performance intervention available.
- Attack attrition rather than only ramp. Bridge Group reports SDR attrition at a 40% median with a 21% to 57% interquartile range, and AE turnover around 30%, so a curve that crosses at month 15 against a two-year average tenure leaves very little productive window even when it works.
- Cut ramp months directly. At 6.2 months average and rising, ramp is the flat section at the start of this curve, and each month removed shifts the entire curve left by a month.
- Plot cohorts separately by hire date and never blend them. A blended curve mixes cohorts hired under different quota, territory and pricing conditions and will show a smooth line that describes no actual group of hires.
Sources
- The Bridge Group 48% of reps at quota, down from 51% in 2024. Median AE OTE $200K. Median AE quota $960K at 4.6x quota-to-OTE. Average ramp 6.2 months, highest in study history. Required experience at hire 3.7 years, up from 2.7 in 2022. SaaS median quota $875K. bridgegroupinc.com ↗
- Benchmarkit (with Pavilion) New CAC Ratio median $2.00 of S&M per $1 of new customer ARR, up 14%, with the fourth quartile at $2.82. Blended CAC Ratio $1.40, down 12%. Expansion CAC Ratio $1.00. CAC payback 18 months median. Gross margin 77% total, 81% subscription, 30% professional services. S&M 37% of revenue median, 45% for VC-backed versus 33% for PE-backed. ARR per FTE $240,000 at $50M-$100M ARR and $283,379 above $100M. GRR 88%, NRR 101%. benchmarkit.ai ↗
- Tomasz Tunguz On annual prepay terms the breakeven period on the AE alone drops to about three months, and the full unit including SDR and CSM repays in about five months, versus materially longer on monthly billing. tomtunguz.com ↗
- RepVue Cloud Sales Index (reported via QuotaPath) Average quota attainment 42.69% in Q2 2025, meaning 57.31% of reps missed target. quotapath.com ↗
- RepVue Median AE OTE $200,000. Top performers earn $502,796 or more. About 42% of AEs reach or exceed annual quota. repvue.com ↗
- The Bridge Group 60% of SDRs at quota, lowest on record. Median SDR OTE $80K at 68:32 base to variable. Pipeline per SDR $3.78M, with 50% of respondents between $1.9M and $6.4M. Monthly held-meeting quota median 10 at Stage 0 and 6 converted at Stage 1. Ramp 3.0 months. Attrition 40% median, 21% to 57% interquartile. 4.1 quality conversations per day on 112 total daily activities. bridgegroupinc.com ↗
- InterviewCost.com Interview loop for a typical AE runs $4,000 to $10,000 in direct spend, while the ramp period adds $50,000 to $120,000 per hire, giving a total cost of hire of $55,000 to $130,000 all in. interviewcost.com ↗
- The Bridge Group Median OTE $190K at 53:47 base to variable, up from $167K in 2022. Median commission rate 11.5% of ACV at full attainment. Quota-to-OTE 3.2x at 25th percentile and 4.8x at 75th. Quotas grew about 2% annually while OTE grew above 5% CAGR. blog.bridgegroupinc.com ↗
- ICONIQ Growth Companies surveyed expect gross margins to reach roughly 52% on average in 2026, materially below traditional SaaS subscription margins. iconiq.com ↗