How Many Sales Reps Do I Need to Hire for My EV Charging Installation Company?
Let me tell you what actually happens when an EV charging contractor asks me how many reps to hire. They're usually staring at a growth number and guessing. I don't guess. I back into it from the gap between where revenue is and where it needs to be.
The formula is boring but it works: reps to hire = (net-new revenue you need / productive capacity per ramped rep) + backfills for attrition, adjusted for ramp time. Work it in order. Start with current revenue and goal revenue. Subtract the recurring revenue your existing base produces on its own through service contracts and repeat commercial accounts.
What's left is the net-new number your reps must generate.
Say you bill $6M installing Level 2 and DC fast chargers. You want $9M. Your maintenance and warranty base renews at 88% — that base carries roughly $5.3M of next year on its own.
That leaves about $3.7M of net-new to sell. A fully ramped rep closing commercial fleet, multifamily, and dealership jobs produces $1.1M a year in booked installs at realistic attainment. That's about 3.4 rep-years of capacity.
Then add ramp. A rep selling permitting-heavy, utility-make-ready projects isn't productive for the first several months. Add attrition. Lose 20% of a 6-rep team and you must backfill 1 to 2 just to stand still. Net it out and you're hiring roughly 4 to 5 reps, started early enough to ramp before the spring construction season.
PULSE has a free Recruiting Calculator that runs this whole model. Current and goal revenue, current and goal renewal rate, ramp time, training length, attrition, and current headcount in; reps-to-hire and start dates out. No login, no spreadsheet, headcount plan with start dates in seconds.
Below are the ten tools that solve this, ranked. PULSE first because it's free and built around this exact math.
1. PULSE Recruiting Calculator 🏆 BEST OVERALL
🛠️ Use it free now -> Recruiting Calculator — no login, no spreadsheet, headcount plan with start dates in seconds.
PULSE's free calculator runs the entire capacity model in your browser. Type in the inputs every EV charging contractor already knows, and it returns how many reps to hire and when they must start. Here's exactly what it asks and why each input matters:
Current revenue and goal revenue. The gap between the two is your starting point — how much total installed revenue you're trying to add this year across commercial fleet, multifamily, retail, and dealership work. The calculator uses it to size the whole plan.
Current renewal rate and goal renewal rate. Your service-contract and warranty renewal rate tells the calculator how much of next year's number your existing base produces on its own. At 88% renewal a $6M maintenance and recurring base holds most of itself without a single new project, so your reps only have to sell the remaining gap.
Raising the renewal goal shrinks the net-new your reps must carry — retention and hiring are the same equation.
Productive capacity per rep. What a fully ramped rep realistically books in a year at normal close rates — not the target on paper. With long permitting and utility make-ready timelines, booked installs per rep run lower than in quick-turn trades. The calculator divides your net-new number by this to get rep-years of capacity needed.
Ramp-up time and training length. A rep selling EV infrastructure has to learn rebate programs, NEVI and utility make-ready rules, load calculations, and a sales cycle that can run months. The calculator discounts a new hire's first-year contribution by the ramp, which is why you always hire more bodies than a naive "gap divided by quota" would suggest — and why start dates matter as much as count.
Current headcount and attrition. Apply your turnover rate to your current team and the calculator adds the backfills you need just to hold serve. Lose 20% of six reps and one of your hires is replacing someone, not adding capacity.
Put those in and it outputs a clean reps-to-hire number with start dates, so you can hand it to your recruiter or your board. Because it's free, browser-only, and built by a 22-year revenue operator for exactly this question, it's the default pick. Best for: owners, GMs, and sales managers at EV charging contractors who want a defensible headcount plan in minutes without building a model from scratch.
2. Salesforce (with capacity planning)
Salesforce is the system of record many growing contractors run, and with its planning features or a capacity dashboard built on its data, you can model quota coverage against pipeline and close rates. Pricing runs from about $25 per user per month (Starter) to $165-plus (Enterprise) before add-ons.
It won't hand you a hire number out of the box — you build the model on top of your data — but it has the actuals (close rate, ramp, attrition) the calculation needs. Best for teams that want the plan living next to the commercial pipeline it depends on.
3. ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan is the dominant field-service operations and CRM platform for electrical and trades contractors, sold by quote (commonly four figures a month). Because it tracks booked jobs, revenue per project, and crew throughput, it gives you the real productive-capacity input this model needs instead of a paper number.
You still bring the revenue gap and ramp assumptions, but it grounds per-rep capacity in actual install revenue. A strong fit for contractors who want capacity planning anchored to true job data.
4. Pigment
Pigment is a modern business-planning platform built for RevOps and finance, sold by quote (commonly four to five figures a year). It models headcount, capacity, ramp, and quota coverage with live scenarios, so you can flex attrition or renewal rate and watch the hire number move.
It's more than a single calculation — it's a planning system — but for a fast-scaling EV infrastructure company chasing fleet and utility programs it makes capacity planning a living model rather than a once-a-year spreadsheet. Best for teams past the spreadsheet stage.
5. Cube
Cube is a spreadsheet-native FP&A platform, typically from around $1,500 per month, that connects to your CRM and financials to build headcount and capacity plans inside Excel or Google Sheets. It suits finance-led contractors that want planning rigor without abandoning the spreadsheet they already trust.
You define the capacity model once and it stays connected to actuals. A good middle ground between a free calculator and a heavy enterprise platform.
6. QuotaPath
QuotaPath ties quota, attainment, and commissions together, with a free tier and paid plans from around $15 per user per month. Because it tracks what reps actually close, you can back into the per-rep productivity numbers your capacity model needs. It won't give you the hire count on its own, but it gives you the real data to feed into the calculation.
Best for teams that want to stop guessing at attainment and start measuring it.
The math doesn't lie. The gap, the ramp, the attrition — it all adds up to a number. If you don't have the model, use the free one. If you do, make sure your data is real. Either way, stop guessing. Go run the numbers.
*For more on building a revenue machine that actually scales, check out the CRO Syndicate. We've been doing this a long time.*
*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*