We suspect our sales team is gaming our weekly outbound call metric by making short, low-quality dials just to hit their targets on the Scorecard. How do we structure our metrics to prevent this kind of manipulation without adding heavy administrative tracking?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If you measure a metric without context, people will find a way to game it to keep their scorecard green. In sales, measuring raw outbound dials often leads to reps making brief, low-quality calls to automated voicemails or dead ends. To prevent this behavior, you must pair your activity metrics with quality or conversion metrics to create healthy friction. Instead of tracking outbound calls in isolation, track both outbound calls and the number of scheduled discovery meetings. If a sales representative has a high volume of outbound calls but zero discovery meetings booked, the data immediately flags a quality issue. During the Level 10 Meeting, this discrepancy becomes an IDS topic. The conversation shifts from a binary check on activity to a coaching opportunity about call quality and script execution. You can apply this balancing technique across all departments. For customer support, do not just track the number of tickets closed, track tickets closed alongside client satisfaction scores. For operations, do not just track units produced, track units produced alongside the defect rate. By pairing quantity with quality, you make it virtually impossible to game the system without exposing poor performance elsewhere. This keeps your team focused on delivering genuine value rather than just hitting a vanity number.