Quota Fairness & Sandbagging Audit Checklist

Run this before every quota-setting cycle using actual CRM/territory data, not manager say-so. Score each item 0 (fails) / 1 (partial) / 2 (passes) and total at the end.

A. Territory & TAM Equity

1. ☐ Every territory's TAM (account count × average deal size for that segment) has been recalculated this cycle, not carried forward from last year's map
2. ☐ No territory has more than 1.5x the TAM of another territory at the same quota level without an explicitly documented reason (new market, strategic account, etc.)
3. ☐ Account reassignments from the prior period are reflected in TAM before quota is set — not applied against last year's frozen number
4. ☐ "Legacy" accounts (assigned for reasons unrelated to current territory logic) are flagged and excluded from the TAM-equity comparison, or explicitly justified if included

B. Historical-Data Integrity (Sandbagging Signals)

1. ☐ No territory shows pipeline consistently entered late in the quarter relative to peers (a classic sandbagging tell — check average days-in-pipeline-before-quarter-close by rep)
2. ☐ Win rates by rep have been checked for artificial suppression (deals marked "lost" then re-created next quarter as "new")
3. ☐ Forecast-to-actual variance by rep has been reviewed for consistent under-forecasting (reps who beat their own forecast by >20% every quarter is a sandbagging signal, not just high performance)
4. ☐ Quota baseline uses a rolling trailing average (e.g. trailing 4 quarters), not a single best-or-worst prior quarter a rep could have gamed

C. Ramp & Tenure Checks

1. ☐ No rep is carrying a full, un-adjusted quota while still inside their documented ramp period
2. ☐ "Stacked ramp" is checked — a rep who inherited a second ramping territory (e.g. absorbed a departed colleague's book) has quota reduced to reflect two ramp curves, not one
3. ☐ Tenure-based quota relief, if the company grants it, is applied consistently across reps at the same tenure stage — not manager-discretionary on some and not others

D. Comp-History Bias Checks

1. ☐ Quota is not silently anchored to a rep's last plan's payout rather than territory potential (a rep who negotiated a soft quota last year shouldn't get that same soft number rolled forward)
2. ☐ High performers aren't penalized with disproportionately higher quota increases purely because they overachieved — increase % should correlate with TAM/territory change, not last year's attainment %
3. ☐ Underperforming territories are checked for a structural cause (TAM, competitive intensity, product fit) before quota relief is denied on the assumption it's a rep-execution problem

E. Manager-Discretion Audit

1. ☐ Every manager-requested quota exception this cycle is logged with a written justification, not verbal
2. ☐ Exception rate by manager is reviewed — a manager granting exceptions to most of their team signals a base methodology problem, not a rep problem
3. ☐ Reps have a documented channel to flag a quota they believe is inequitable, with a defined response SLA, separate from asking their own manager informally

Scoring & Remediation

`` Total Score = Sum of all 17 items (max 34) ``