Sandbagging

A pipeline is not a record that fills itself. Reps fill it by hand. Which deals go in, which stage they sit at, and when they're recorded as likely to close are all human judgments.

The compensation attached to that person changes those judgments. In a structure where hitting the target pays and missing it doesn't, a rep who has already cleared this quarter and sees a contract land in the final week has two options: close it now as overachievement, or move it to the first week of next month and start the next quarter comfortably. When the rate on the excess is low or zero, the second option is the rational one.

From the company's side the outcome is bad. This quarter's forecast comes in under actual, and next quarter opens with an inflated number in week one. Both quarters are wrong, which removes the basis for deciding where headcount and budget should go. A forecast that misses low is not harmless either — capacity gets cut, hiring gets deferred, and the team goes into the following quarter smaller than the pipeline warranted.

Naming the behavior sandbagging exists to move it into the category of compensation design. Used as an accusation it changes nothing, because under the same rules the next person makes the same choice.

It shows up in three forms. The first two appear when targets get set; the last appears in the final week of a quarter.

1. Taking a low target. When quota — the revenue target assigned to a rep — gets set, the rep describes their pipeline as thinner than it is. Understate what the assigned accounts could produce and the assigned number comes down. Set at $75,000 instead of $100,000, the same results produce a higher attainment percentage.
2. Under-reporting the pipeline. Deals don't get promoted to an opportunity, the status given to a deal with confirmed budget and intent, and stay in the rep's private notes instead. Promoting one puts it into the forecast, and failing to close it means explaining why. Kept off the record, it only ever appears when it closes, which makes it permanently good news.
3. Delaying closable deals. The signature date moves to next month, or the rep suggests to the customer that they handle it next week. On the record the deal is simply still in progress, indistinguishable from one that genuinely stalled.

None of the three is a false record, and that's what defines the behavior. A deal not promoted to the pipeline breaks no rule, and adjusting a signature date always comes with the explanation that the customer needed it. So it can't be handled as a violation, and any attempt to handle it that way turns forecast reviews into an argument about intent.

Looking at where the benefit comes from shows the cause. When commission, the pay tied to performance, stops at 100 percent attainment, the excess is worth nothing. Meanwhile a contract closing in the first week of next quarter raises that quarter's attainment, and that attainment decides the next pay band. If the same contract pays the rep differently depending on which side of a date it lands, moving dates becomes part of the job.

The word gets used in three settings.

1. Target setting. In the first two weeks of a quarter, compare the pipeline the rep describes against the pipeline in the records. When the two differ, ask about the difference.
2. Forecast reviews. When the sales forecast — next period's revenue estimated from the pipeline — comes in under actual for one rep every quarter, this behavior is the suspect. Once is luck; four quarters in a row is a method. The comparison worth making is not forecast against target but forecast against what actually closed, rep by rep.
3. The last week of a quarter. Watch whether deals belonging to reps who already hit target suddenly move to next month. The signal is a deal stage frozen just short of signature while only the date slides backward.

Removing it matters more than detecting it, and the place to work is the commission rule. Pay a higher rate on the excess and the reason to delay disappears. Using recorded pipeline instead of the rep's description when setting quota has the same effect. And counting forecast accuracy itself as performance puts a price on calling numbers low to clear them easily.

Overcorrecting creates the opposite problem. Pressure reps to forecast high and they promote deals that won't close, and the forecast misses in the other direction. What's wanted isn't a high forecast but an accurate one, which is why the metric worth rewarding is the gap between forecast and actual rather than the forecast itself.

"This could close this quarter. Why is it dated next month?"

Checking why a date moved.

"That rep's forecast has come in under actual four quarters running. That isn't chance."

A judgment that this is a pattern rather than an incident.

"We added a rate on the excess and deals stopped sliding out of the last week."

A rule change that produced a behavior change.

At Pagedeck this happened once last year. Sofia set the signature on a $15,000 contract that arrived in the final week for the second day of the following month. The explanation was that the customer needed it, and that was partly true. It had also happened the quarter before.

What Grace changed was the commission rule rather than Sofia. The rate on anything above 100 percent attainment went up by half. For the two quarters after that, no deal moved out of the final week. One more thing changed alongside it: quota now gets set from recorded pipeline rather than from what the rep describes.

A common belief is that sandbagging is false reporting. It looks like stating numbers other than the real ones, so that's how it reads. But there's no incorrect record in this behavior. A deal not promoted to the pipeline breaks no rule, and a signature date is something agreed with the customer. Treated as dishonesty, the rep defends themselves and the cause stays in place. Seen as someone following their own interest inside the rules, it points precisely at what to fix.

The other belief is that changing the person solves it. When one rep's forecast is persistently low, it looks like an attitude problem. But under the same commission rule, a new rep learns the same choice within two quarters, because they can see from the next desk that overachievement is worth nothing. What needs changing is the rule that put no price on the excess. Swap the person and leave the rule and you're having this conversation again in six months.