I contracted on a bespoke project that was in desperate straits, huge extension with no way of delivering anywhere near the sale price. We had some beers with the buyer's representative when he came to inspect progress, and asked him what they were really wanting. "Oh we didn't originally want such a system, but your sales guys named a price that we just couldn't walk away from!"

Turned out it wasn't really the sales guys fault: the CEO was trying to get acquired and figured that a well-stuffed order book looked better, just so long as the cheque cleared before the chickens landed.

I’m not saying it’s the right way to do sales. Only that some companies can skip calibrating employees in sales organizations by using objective criteria for evaluation.