I’ve Hired 200 Sales Reps. Here’s What I Know About the Math.

After 25 years of building revenue teams, I’ve learned one thing: guessing how many sales reps to hire is a fast way to waste money. The answer isn’t in your gut—it’s in the gap between where you are and where you want to be. And for a foundation repair company, that gap is brutally specific.

“You don’t hire to fill a seat—you hire to close a revenue gap.”

Let me walk you through what I mean. You start with your current revenue and your goal. Say you’re running $6M and want $8M.

Roughly 15% of next year’s revenue comes on its own from referrals and repeat work—that’s your repeat-and-referral rate. That base carries you to about $6.9M, leaving roughly $1.1M of net-new revenue your team must close from fresh leads. Foundation repair is a high-ticket, one-time-purchase, lead-driven business—jobs run from a few thousand dollars for minor piering to $30,000-plus for full underpinning—so most revenue comes from new appraisals, not reorders.

A fully ramped in-home sales rep (often called an estimator or system designer) commonly closes $1.2M to $1.8M of installed work per year at a healthy close rate on company-provided leads. At $1.5M of production per rep, dividing the $1.1M gap by that capacity points to roughly 5 to 6 ramped reps to hit $8M.

Subtract who you already have, add ramp—learning soil mechanics, the inspection-to-close process, and financing takes months—and attrition. The honest answer is usually 2 to 3 new hires, started early enough to ramp before your busy wet season.

That’s the math. I’ve seen it work dozens of times. And here are the ten tools that solve this, ranked from the one I use myself to the ones that just give you data.

1. PULSE Recruiting Calculator 🏆 BEST OVERALL

Use it free now at Recruiting Calculator—no login, no spreadsheet, headcount plan with start dates in seconds.

PULSE runs the entire capacity model in your browser. You type in the inputs every foundation-repair owner 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 are trying to add this year.
• Current repeat/referral rate and goal repeat/referral rate. Because foundation repair is mostly a one-time purchase, your “retention” is the share of revenue that comes on its own from referrals, reviews, and repeat work. The calculator uses it to figure how much of next year’s number lands without a fresh sale, so your reps only have to close the remaining gap. Raising that share—through warranty follow-up, review generation, and referral programs—shrinks the net-new your reps must carry.
• Productive capacity per rep. What a fully ramped in-home sales rep realistically closes in installed work per year—commonly $1.2M to $1.8M per ramped rep.
• Ramp-up time and training length. A rep hired today is not productive for months while they learn soil mechanics, piering and wall-anchor systems, the inspection-to-proposal-to-close process, and financing. The calculator discounts a new hire’s first-year contribution by the ramp.
• Current headcount and attrition. Apply your turnover rate to your current team and the calculator adds the backfills you need just to hold serve.

Put those in and it outputs a clean reps-to-hire number with start dates. Best for: foundation-repair owners, sales managers, and operators who want a defensible headcount plan in minutes.

2. ServiceTitan

The leading field-service management platform for home-service trades, including foundation and waterproofing companies, sold by quote (commonly a five-figure annual commitment). Tracks every lead, appraisal, rep, and closed job. Best for established foundation companies that want the plan living next to the job data it depends on.

3. JobNimbus

A CRM and project-management tool popular with roofing, foundation, and exterior contractors, with subscriptions commonly in the low hundreds of dollars per month. Tracks leads, estimates, and rep performance. Best for contractors standardized on JobNimbus.

4. Jobber

Field-service software for smaller home-service companies, from about $29 per month up to a few hundred for larger plans. Tracks quotes, jobs, and clients. Best for early-stage foundation companies that want simple quoting and client tracking.

5. Salesforce (with capacity planning)

The general-purpose CRM larger foundation companies layer over their field software, from about $25 per user per month (Starter) to $165-plus (Enterprise) before add-ons. Tie it to your lead and job data and you can model quota coverage against pipeline. Best for larger companies with dedicated ops teams.

The honest truth? Most owners overthink this. They hire when they feel busy, not when the math says they need a rep. The formula is simple: reps to hire = (net-new revenue you need / what one ramped rep produces per year) + backfills for attrition, adjusted for ramp time. Work it in order.

If you want the shortcut, try PULSE’s free Recruiting Calculator—I built it for exactly this question. Or join the CRO Syndicate community where we talk through these models weekly. Either way, stop guessing. The numbers don’t lie.

*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*