There are a few reasons but they are all related to the quarterly numbers. Whether it's salespeople who get a bonus or the board pushing for a quarterly revenu

There are a few reasons but they are all related to the quarterly numbers. Whether it's salespeople who get a bonus or the board pushing for a quarterly revenue number, sales will make the biggest concessions at the end of the quarter to try to close the deal. Customers are aware of this and so they push closing out to the end to take advantage of it. Ways around this might be to look at some kind of rolling 3-month average when examining revenues/sales or comparing sales people to each other (although depending on the sales volume this might suck statistically). You could also do sales bonuses as a combination of numbers + manual review. Maybe eliminate bonuses altogether and go straight commission so that the salespeople's incentive is to close the biggest deal irregardless of when. This of course is predicated on the board not pushing for big quarterly numbers; if that is the case then they are possibly the ones being the "bad managers" (minus extenuating circumstances like shopping around for a buyout).