Grab our Feed 
7 Reasons to Sandbag
Posted by Colin Wilson
In Jul 08
After a couple of weeks break it’s time to start the writing again. Summer breaks are often associated with time on the beach… sun, surf and sand… and it’s the last of these associations that I thought I would make to get me back in to the swing of things… sand, or in this case sandbagging.
Generally I can’t condone it, but it happens and it will continually happen while the sun still rises in the morning and will only be eradicated when pigs learn to fly. In my experience, the predominate reason for sandbagging is due to poor sales management… not necessarily the sales manager of the sandbagger per se, but sales management culture in the organisation.
I would suggest that those with the wrong sales culture are those with the rising fixation with spreadsheets… it’s often more difficult to manage and motivate sales professionals than it is to manage numerous versions of the numbers. You can therefore plot the decline of good sales management skills to the rise of the use of Excel…. The more spreadsheets in existence the more sales management skills erode. It’s a dying skill and soon no one will be left to pass on the skills to the younger generation. A harsh assessment?… perhaps… but also probably not too far from the truth. It is therefore the dying art of sales management that is leading to the rising tide of sandbags.
However, before I divulge anything I should point out to the uninitiated that sandbagging relates to not putting sales opportunities into the corporate pipeline… like keeping some back for a rainy day… and having cleared that up, here’s my list of reasons why sales professionals sandbag.
1. There’s Only a Pipeline, no Funnel
CRM systems do not appear to be able to handle the concept of a funnel and pipeline. Proof, if any were needed, that Customer Relationship Management were not designed for sales management… however, I digress on to another hobby horse and I know what happened last time I jumped on my hobby horse… where was I?… pipelines.
The pipeline is for real opportunities that have been qualified; the customer will be buying from someone… hopefully you. The funnel is for the unqualified… the sales leads that need to be investigated and developed with the customer to get them to the point where the customer agrees that they need to do something… and at this point they go into the pipeline.
The funnel is an important part of sales management. It’s an important part of obtaining incredibly high forecast accuracy… and most sales organisations don’t have one… because their CRM system doesn’t have one. Now, sales management may recognise this and encourage their team to put early opportunities into the pipeline as 0% or 1%…
“…listen team, we need to see everything that you have, so even if it’s early in the process (sales lead) put it in the system at 1%”
So, the unsuspecting sales rep puts their juicy deal, that they are trying to develop, into the system… it’s not a real deal yet, but the customer is talking and it may develop into a real opportunity soon. However, once in the system the red mist descends on sales management and they see a real opportunity and want to know when it is going to close… sales rep protests that it’s not real and that they can’t yet predict when it will close… the response by management?… offer to discount and see you can close it this quarter… the red mist is very intoxicating.
The sales rep won’t make that mistake again… safer to sandbag.
2. Target Setting
Most sales people are on commission… nothing like stating the obvious… and most have their commission earnings are accelerated if they overachieve… and so as sales people like to earn as much money as they can… they strive toward overachieving. If they overachieve they are happy, and the company is happy because someone else has missed their target, but thanks to the overachievers the company has not missed theirs.
So, with target set the sales rep sets forth and goes out to hunt for business and bring back the kills to feed the corporate beast. There is often a lot of work involved in finding and stalking the prey and the rep wants to be rewarded after the kill… sales reps are not like lions… they don’t want to be the lioness of the pride, to be sent out to hunt and kill, only for the head male lion to take the kill away and gorge themselves at the expense of the female hunters.
Same for sales reps. Why should they do all the stalking and working the deal and getting it ready for the kill only for the organisation to see the kill and then take it into account in the reps target.
If the large deal can’t be closed before the new targets are set, then best to sandbag until targets are known… better safe then to be out of pocket.
3. Commission Caps
As mentioned, sales reps are in it for the accelerators. A deal in accelerators is worth more in commission. However, once a commission cap has been met, then the deal will not be worth anything in commission… the rep will lose money. Therefore, better to sandbag until next quarter than lose money.
4. Bad Quarter
Similar to reason 3. If it’s going to be a bad quarter and accelerators are out of the question, then it can often be more profitable to bring the deals in next quarter if there is a chance of moving into accelerators. So, instead of a bad quarter, have a terrible quarter by pushing the close date back until the next quarter. All good sales reps are allowed a terrible quarter now and again!
5. Protection
This is similar to reason 1. If you declare all your potential deals early and by early I mean they are in the funnel, rather than pipeline, then by definition the fall out will be greater than those deals that have passed qualification. If sales management do not understand the difference between a funnel and pipeline then you could gain the reputation of losing large deals… not a good reputation to have… and therefore safer to sandbag all these early deals until you are sure that they have a good chance of progressing and closing.
6. Unwanted Attention.
Big deals attract upper management like raw meat attract flies in the summer… they swarm all over it trying to feast in the glory of closing the large deal that will be the difference that make the difference. Sales reps will be asked questions by their manager and their manager’s manager and their manager’s manager’s manger and so on until the CEO is calling for his daily update. It’s not the attention that most sales reps crave and so sandbagging until it’s nearly a done deal saves weeks of unwanted attention.
7. Unnatural Acts
In their eagerness to close anything in the pipeline, no matter how far out, sales management will be encouraging, nay forcing, sales reps to offer discounts and other incentives for early closure. This is a bit like signing to buy a house before you have fully decided whether you want a house in the first place. If the rep is then forced to make the offer they know it will tarnish their hard fought credibility… so best not to tempt hard pressed managers… sandbag!
There we go a quick roundup of the 7 best reasons to sandbag and hopefully no one will recognise any of them.
6 Comments
An excellent post Colin and good to see you back. You highlight the dichotomy that is sales management in that for a greater understanding of sales performance all information has to gathered yet when this disclosure happens they use that information to pressure. There is absolutely no incentive for sales people to input data into systems because of the corporate culture that surrounds sales management. Only when you get a management culture based on reciprocal understanding will this change. The idea that sales and management want different things is strange, both sales people and sales management want to improve, however until the guillotine is removed from the office there will be fear - which to some extent accounts for most of the points you make.
[...] 7 Reasons to Sandbag Colin Wilson (Managing Director & Founder FirstBorder) explains why sales reps do sandbag most [...]
Aaagh #6 - it brings back nightmarish memories just thinking about it. It was the bane of my life back when I was selling big consulting projects. Luckily when my firm was taken over by a big IT firm my single digit £million consulting projects were dwarfed by the big IT and outsourcing deals so I got left alone a bit more!
I must admit, I used to invest significant time in thinking about how to give the senior executives something “harmles” to do so that they felt they had made a major contribution without them actually putting the sale at risk because of their lack of knowledge and expertise.
Ian
Great post Colin. Another little know fact, but sales managers often sandbag a bit because most of us are expected to grow 10% (or some other arbitrary number) over prior year regardless of market conditions or prior year performance. This puts the sales manager in the position where the set a new sales record this year at 15% over prior year, but next year when they only grow 8% they are getting disciplined and people start wondering if they “still have it”.
If I were to show a 10% growth in sales model year over year forever to a VC I would get told I was out of my mind, but those are the marching orders for many sales managers.
What that tells the savvy manager is: Beat your number, but just by a little; otherwise you may not make it next year.
Hi Colin,
Excellent post.
As I was reading this, I thought back to the sales meetings I’ve attended as a salesrep, sales manager, or consultant. During numbers of those meetings, at what seemed the most opportune (as in opportunistic) moment, some hot-shot salesrep announces a win, holding the contract high above his (these people are mostly male) or her head. It comes as a big surprise to everyone, including the sales manager.
How do the sales managers react? With appreciation and awe. (I was guilty of this behavior myself when I was young and had little business acumen.) If that isn’t positive reinforcement for sandbagging, I don’t know what is.
How does one prevent sandbagging? I’ve seen savvy sales leaders put a sandbagging penalty in comp plans. The rep only gets 90% of their commission on any deal that was not tracked from beginning to end in the CRM or other system. The value of the deal was built into the plan as well–you can’t put a deal for ten thousand in the system and then, presto, it turns into a million dollar contract when it closes.
A penalty clause like this needs to be in place for only a quarter. Even with all the compelling reasons you stated in your post, sandbagging promptly ceases.
[...] 7 Reasons to Sandbag Colin Wilson (Managing Director & Founder FirstBorder) explains why sales reps do sandbag most [...]