Our inside sales team hits their target for outbound dials and scheduled discovery calls every week, but our account executives reject half of them as unqualified junk. How do we structure measurables so one department cannot game their weekly numbers by pushing bad work downstream?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an employee or seat games an activity metric, it is almost always because the measurable rewards raw volume without a paired acceptance criteria. In EOS, you never track upstream volume in isolation if the downstream seat has to absorb the wreckage.

Inside sales reps hit dial and appointment targets because their seat is evaluated on scheduled calls, not qualified opportunities. If an appointment with an unqualified contact counts the same as an appointment with an ideal customer profile decision-maker, human nature will choose the path of least resistance.

Fix this by pairing the volume metric with a downstream acceptance metric. Keep the activity number, but add a strict gate:
- Qualified Calls Held: The call only counts if the Account Executive accepts the deal profile as meeting minimum qualification standards.
- Disqualification Rate: If an inside sales rep logs more than twenty percent unqualified appointments in a rolling two-week window, the volume metric is marked red regardless of total count.
- First Meeting to Stage Two Progression: A leading ratio tracking whether the appointments convert into genuine pipeline stages.

Give the receiving seat the authority to reject bad handoffs. When the upstream seat only gets credit for accepted handoffs, the incentive to game volume disappears.

Single metrics drive perverse incentives. Paired metrics drive operational discipline. Update your Accountability Chart expectations and Scorecard definitions so that work is only complete when the next person in line can successfully execute their seat.