The problem with "best practices"

Published: Wed, 02/11/26

Updated: Sun, 02/15/26

February 11, 2026

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back to another frigid issue of The Quota, the sales newsletter considered by many to be “actually quite good.” In this week’s issue, we’ll look at why best practices are often based on organizational fear rather than results. Then, we’ll dig into Fails, advice and more. Let’s do this.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

Sales cycles have extended 22% longer since 2022

Source: Spotio

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

A man in central Ohio asked a car saleswoman to test drive a Jeep Wrangler just to abduct the woman and order her to wait while he took care of some errands, authorities say. Todd Marrs, 51, has been charged with abduction and disrupting public services, court records show. The defendant met with a sales associate, and they went on a test drive. However, from the employee's perspective, things went awry when Marrs went a different route than usual. You can read more about it here.
A now-former Joseph Chevrolet employee who opened fire inside the Ohio car dealership’s showroom will learn his fate at sentencing this week. Rashid Dewees, 22, of Fairfield, pleaded guilty in December to one count each of improper discharge of a firearm and inducing panic. Police wrote in court records Dewees was “brandishing a firearm” before firing multiple shots inside Joseph Chevrolet just before 4 p.m. on Jan. 30, according to court records and police news release. You can read more about it here.

FEATURE

Amanda Rollins in Switzerland

The problem with "best practices" in sales

Every sales organization has a moment where someone says, “This is a best practice.”

Best practices have a calming effect. They promise certainty in a job defined by uncertainty. They suggest that someone else has already made the mistakes, learned the lessons, and packaged the answers. What they rarely do is work as advertised.

Why Best Practices Feel So Convincing

Organizational researchers have studied this pattern for decades. When leaders face ambiguous decisions, they tend to copy what respected peers are doing. The goal is legitimacy. If things go well, the leader looks smart. If things go poorly, the leader can point to precedent.

This behavior shows up clearly in management research on institutional conformity. Organizations adopt widely accepted practices to appear competent and modern, even when those practices are a poor fit for their context.

In sales, this instinct is amplified. Revenue pressure is constant. Forecasts are public. Misses are visible. Leaders are rewarded for predictability more than experimentation. Best practices offer cover.

Who Benefits From Best Practices

Sales teams rarely adopt best practices organically. They are usually introduced from the top down.

A new CRO joins from a high-performing company. A board member references how another portfolio company runs sales. A consultant points to a recognizable logo and says, “This is how the leaders do it.” Suddenly, a framework becomes mandatory.

The problem starts when practice turns into doctrine. Once labeled “best,” a process becomes difficult to question.

Best practices often benefit leadership more than sellers. They create alignment. They simplify reporting. They standardize language. They make organizations easier to manage from a distance.

They also shift accountability.

If a deal fails under a custom approach, someone made a bad call. If a deal fails under a best practice, the system fails. Responsibility diffuses upward and outward. The leader followed the playbook. The rep followed the process.

Why Sales Is Especially Vulnerable

Sales lives at the intersection of human behavior and organizational pressure. Buyers vary widely. Products vary widely. Markets shift quickly. Yet sales leadership often borrows practices developed under very specific conditions and applies them universally.

A playbook built at a hypergrowth SaaS company gets dropped into a mid-market manufacturing firm. A process designed for enterprise buying committees gets enforced on transactional sales. A forecasting model built for scale is imposed on teams still finding product-market fit. Sales teams feel this mismatch immediately. Leadership often doesn’t.

The Social Cost of Questioning the Playbook

Once a best practice is in place, challenging it becomes risky.
Reps who push back get labeled as uncoachable. Managers who adapt processes quietly do so without advertising it. Over time, teams learn which parts of the system are performative and which parts actually matter. This creates a strange dual reality.

Officially, everyone follows the best practice. Unofficially, high performers bend it. The organization pretends consistency while rewarding deviation.

Why Best Practices Keep Winning Anyway

Despite all this, best practices continue to spread.

They are easy to explain. They are easy to defend. And they look good in board decks.

In uncertain environments, that matters more than outcomes people can’t control.

The Quiet Tradeoff

This does not mean best practices are useless. Many exist for good reasons. The problem is scale. When a practice travels far enough from the conditions that produced it, it turns into ritual.

Sales organizations pay for that tradeoff. Creativity narrows. Judgment gets outsourced to process. Local nuance fades. The system becomes easier to manage and harder to win with.

The most important question is not whether a practice is best.

It is best for whom, and under what conditions. Answering that question requires judgment. Judgment carries risk. Best practices exist partly to avoid that risk.

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MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Approximately how many realtors were there in the U.S. in 2025?

A. 1,766,643
B. 1,290,026
C. 998,401
D. 1,489,932

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

I had been in communication with a qualified prospect whose current contract is ending at the end of 2026. This prospect mentioned multiple times during our conversation that they wanted to start the process of finding a replacement.

During our last conversation she was checking to see if it would be possible to have me and one of our engineers join a zoom call with their leadership team. That zoom call was ultimately canceled due to winter weather in the area.

Now the good part… I called the prospect yesterday to follow up on the rescheduling of that meeting and was told by the prospect that she had told me multiple times that she was not interested and for me to take them off the list.

I politely said, “The last time we spoke, I was going to be joining a zoom with your leadership team.” Her response was, “Well, now I’m telling you we are not interested and please take us off your list.

Am I living in bazarro world!?

Anonymous Location Withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- February 2026

WORTH A PEEK

What sales knowledge can only be gained through experience? This question was posted by a recent Redditor and garnered over a hundred responses. Check out the full conversation here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

I’m an enterprise AE selling cloud security software to regulated financial services companies.

My VP of Sales loves joining late-stage calls to “sell the vision.” He talks big about roadmap items, future integrations, and where the product is headed over the next 12–18 months.

The problem is that I’m the one who stays behind to clean it up. Buyers come back with expectations that aren’t in writing, timelines we can’t commit to, and features that don’t exist. I spend weeks walking things back, re-scoping deals, and calming down security and legal teams.

The VP gets credit for momentum. I get stuck closing a mess. Is this just part of enterprise sales, or am I absorbing work that shouldn’t be mine?

Cleaning Up in Location Withheld

Dear Cleaning,

This is incredibly common. These vision selling calls with the VP are part of the process and likely do help get deals over the finish line. But there are ways you can do damage control. After any “vision” call, follow up in writing with what is committed versus what’s directional. Not to undermine your VP, but to protect the deal and yourself. If expectations aren’t documented, they’ll become assumed.

Quiz Answer: D. 1,489,932 — In 2025, there were approximately 1,489,932 realtors in the U.S. (You can read the source article here).

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik and Steve Rado.

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