Sandbagging may seem like a harmless sales tactic, but it quietly undermines forecast accuracy, strains client relationships and causes revenue losses. When sales professionals deliberately delay deals or withhold information to manipulate quotas, the entire company feels the effects. Understanding how to stop sandbagging from destroying sales forecasts starts with recognizing why it happens and implementing proactive prevention measures.

Defining Sandbagging in Business

Sandbagging involves deliberately delaying the closing of a sale to exceed sales targets later in the period or withholding information about potential deals.

In practice, it entails extending the sales cycle even when the buyer is ready to move forward or keeping deals out of the customer relationship management (CRM) platform until they're guaranteed to close. Sales professionals may push the close date out, reply to clients slowly or add unnecessary extra steps to the process.

Sandbagging deals is a common strategy among business and sales professionals who want to subtly manipulate quotas.

Research from Selling Power, a leading digital magazine for sales leadership, shows that 72% of new business-to-business prospects stall for at least 60 days in the middle-to-late stages of the pipeline. By redesigning middle-stage milestones, organizations can lower the number of stalled sales opportunities by over 60% within 90 days. When businesses hold salespeople accountable for meeting each milestone, prospects move through the sales pipeline 37% faster.

Why Do Salespeople Sandbag Deals?

Although sales reps sandbag deals, they don’t get all the blame. According to the sales experts at QuotaPath, a commission management software provider, sandbagging is the company's fault, not the sales team's. "Most commonly, reps sandbag deals because they believe they will earn more in the long run by closing it at a later time. That might be because of a commission cap, an upcoming change to a comp plan, or to hit an accelerator," QuotaPath explains.

Creating a performance boost to increase a payout isn't the only reason sales professionals sandbag deals. Some may want to manage expectations and get management off their back. Say they have a strong quarter and surpass a sales target. As a result, management raises their quota, making their job harder. 

Their reward becomes a punishment, and they worry they won't be able to repeat their results. To top it off, they don't look as good on paper as their colleagues who held off on reporting sales until the first of the month. Whatever the reason, sandbagging is unacceptable.

Why Should Business Owners Care?

While sandbagging can maximize incentives and make sales professionals look good to leadership, it distorts sales forecasts, strains client relationships and erodes trust. As the name suggests, it brings organizations down.

This matters because it's difficult to build an accurate sales funnel forecast. Research shows that 63% of consumers who request information about a company will not make a purchase for at least three months. Some take up to 12 months.

When growth is unpredictable, it is difficult to make strategic long-term decisions. Even if sales close, inconsistent performance forces business owners into a reactive decision-making mode.

Sandbagging can also undermine management. Employees may think they're getting away with it because their managers are incompetent or apathetic. This view can foster a divide between employees and leadership, thereby eroding trust and communication.

Say the probability of closing is 90%, according to the pipeline report. However, that deal hasn’t moved forward for weeks. The cause? A sales professional trying to manipulate their quota to maximize their bonus.

Sandbagging is likely an issue at many companies. Level 6, a leading end-to-end solutions provider for channel sale incentives, asserts that most compensation plans incentivize sandbagging, and leaders don't realize it. "Studies have found that sandbagging costs businesses between 4% and 6% in lost revenue, and the data shows that somewhere around 30% to 40% of sales teams have big problems with it," it states.

How to Detect and Stop Sandbagging

Business owners can identify and stop sandbagging within sales teams through several strategies.

Review the Sales Pipeline

A consistent, sharp spike in deals near period-end after a slow start is a sign of sandbagging. Another common indicator is a large, unexplained discrepancy between forecasted and actual sales results.

Business owners may even receive feedback directly from clients who are frustrated that deals were delayed without reason. While hold-ups in later stages of the sales cycle do happen, low activity with prospects when deals are ready to close is unacceptable. Analytics and pipeline reviews can help leadership catch unusual timing patterns.

Teach Executive Presence

Understanding executive presence is key because it influences sales outcomes and client relationships. This trait encompasses diverse qualities, such as adaptability, confidence, emotional intelligence, problem-solving and articulate communication.

According to Janek Performance Group, a consulting firm specializing in leadership development and sales performance, some techniques for developing executive presence in sales teams include developing a persuasive communication style, building emotional intelligence, developing concrete leadership skills and promoting cross-functional teamwork. "By cultivating executive presence, sales teams can enhance their ability to connect with clients, demonstrate value and, ultimately, drive revenue growth," Janek explains.

Set up Sales Accelerators

Telling the sales team to bring in as much business as they can at the earliest date possible incentivizes sandbagging. Rather than closing deals when they're ready, they wait until the first of the month or until the next quarter.

Many teams have flat commissions. On a $200,000 deal, they earn $20,000, regardless of when they close. Accelerators could increase their payout by thousands of dollars, based on where they finish at the end of the month. By giving them extra money for closing faster, companies make sandbagging less attractive.

By uncapping commissions, companies eliminate the need for employees to delay deals to increase earnings.

Weight the Sales Pipeline

According to Rework, an AI-native unified business operations platform, a total pipeline is misleading because it provides a false sense of security from inflated early-stage deals and overinflates potential revenue. A weighted pipeline multiplies each opportunity's value by the probability of closing based on its current stage, right-sizing coverage. "Mature forecasting operations calibrate probabilities based on their actual conversion data," Rework explains.

Even with a weighted pipeline, reviews are key. If someone keeps deals out of the CRM until they're about to close, they impact their probability score, which affects forecasting.

Strategically Preventing Sandbagging

If the company has created a scenario where sandbagging is beneficial, employees will sandbag deals. The best way to prevent sandbagging in business is to foster transparency, teach executive presence, revisit compensation plans and create a weighted sales pipeline.