Our sales team has figured out how to game our weekly Scorecard by holding back closed deals until the final week of the month to make their numbers look spectacular, which messes up operations. How do we restructure our metrics to prevent this?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

People will always optimize their behavior to match how they are measured. If you only track closed deals weekly, your team will inevitably batch their entries to hit their targets in bursts, leaving operations starved for data and then suddenly overwhelmed. To stop this gaming, you must introduce a pairing metric that measures consistency and process compliance. Instead of just tracking closed contracts, add a weekly metric for pipeline stage movement, such as the number of opportunities moved out of the discovery phase. You should also track the time elapsed between a verbal agreement and the signed contract. When you measure the velocity of the sales process alongside the volume of closed deals, batching becomes impossible to hide. Another effective solution is to measure process discipline directly. For example, add a Scorecard metric for CRM updates completed by Friday at noon. If the CRM is not updated, the metric is red, even if they closed a massive deal. This forces your sales team to feed the operational pipeline in real-time, allowing your Integrator and operations leaders to plan resource allocation with high accuracy.