Why Sales reps sandbag deals

7 Reasons to sandbag deals

In 7 Reasons to Sandbag Colin Wilson (Managing Director & Founder FirstBorder) explains why sales reps do sandbag most of their future deals:

1. Pipeline – no funnel
If the sales rep puts in his “maybe” business deals, he will get management on his back if the deal doesn’t crystallizes.
Thus there are only pipeline deals and no funnel.

2. Setting the target
Sales people are paid on commission and commission is function of the target that has been set. If a deal can’t be closed before the end of target, he is better of with moving the deal into the next period.

3. Commission caps
Once a commission cap is reached, more deals won’t bring more income. Thus sandbag the deal until the next quarter.

4. Bad quarter
Instead of having a bad quarter, it is sometimes better to have a terrible quarter and make up for in the next quarter.

5. Protection
By showing all possible deals in the funnel and loosing many of those throughout the quarter will leave a bad impression. Thus delaying these deals, until they become more certain, gives protection.

6. Unwanted attention
Upper management is attracted by big deals, causing unwanted attention and overhead.
By sandbagging, the problem of upper management is avoided.

7. Unnatural Acts
In order to make the numbers for the quarter, any deal in the pipeline needs to be closed at any price by giving discounts. Not good for current and future business. The best thing to do is not to show up the deal in the pipeline at all.

Thus the main sandbagging reasons are:
- The drive to get commission, but without getting punished.
- Avoiding the involvement of Management.
- The personal ROI of the Sales rep.

The careful Sales rep

All good sales men have one or two deals sitting in their drawer, just in case their next quarter isn’t good enough. Also these deals can work as a lightning protector when management gets upset over missing targets or a lost deal.

Solving the CRM failure

As the Sales reps sandbag their deals, no CRM will be up-to-date and will be effectively used as garbage in is garbage out.

There should be an automated link between the lead generation, the actions of the potential customers and the actual sales follow-up in the CRM system for making the CRM interesting and beneficial for the salesman.
By getting or qualifying the leads from the website, using the website as a source of information about the deals and leads and the CRM as an Internet Data Mining tool about the potential customers, the CRM becomes interesting for the Sales rep.
This brings many benefits for the Sales rep to work with the CRM.

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