Our sales team is consistently hitting their weekly new contract sign-up goals on our leadership Scorecard, but our average deal size is plummeting because they are discounting heavily to hit their targets. How do we structure our sales metrics to stop this gaming of our revenue numbers?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is classic metric gaming. When you track a single volume metric without a balancing quality or profitability metric, people naturally take the path of least resistance. In your case, sales reps are hitting their contract quantity target by giving away your margin. To solve this, you must pair the activity with a margin-guardrail metric on your weekly Scorecard.

Replace or pair the simple contract count metric with two interrelated metrics. First, track total weekly new contract gross profit dollar volume instead of just contract count. Second, track average contract margin percentage.

By putting the gross profit dollar amount directly on the weekly Scorecard under the sales seat, the salesperson is forced to balance volume with deal quality. They can no longer hit their green status by discounting. This aligns their weekly behavior with the actual financial health of the business and ensures you are growing top-line revenue that actually flows to the bottom line. It also changes the conversation in your Level 10 Meeting from how many deals we signed to how much profitable business we brought in.