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There's an old joke about a woman who cuts the ends off a ham before putting it in the oven. The reason for this practice was traced back through generations to the family's great-grandmother, who finally explained: "I cut the ends off the ham because my oven wasn't big enough to hold the whole ham!"

Unfortunately, many sales leaders use management techniques that stem from the same idea: just because a practice has been used for a long time doesn't mean it's effective. However, Aubrey Daniels, an expert on management, leadership, and workplace issues, says this isn't always true. He is also the author of the performance management publication "OOPS! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money (and What to Do Instead)." The book lists 13 commonly used but wrong management practices, including:

Wrong Management Practice #1: Setting Stretch Goals Stretch goals, as defined in most companies/organizations, are those that can be achieved less than 10% of the time, meaning sales reps fail to meet them 90% of the time. This repeated failure gradually weakens employee performance. What's the result? Sales reps lose the willingness to take on difficult tasks. Discard/abandon flexible goal setting and start doing the following three things:

  1. Set many "small goals." When you set lower-level goals, you increase the likelihood of success. "While setting small goals may take longer to see obvious results, conversely, if you want to see obvious results, you need to set small goals one by one," Daniels explains. "This is because positive feedback accelerates better performance, and small goals provide more opportunities for acceleration."
  2. Make employee progress visible. Put employee performance data on a chart so your employees can see their progress. One-hour increments are ideal, and doing this daily or weekly is also a viable method.
  3. Provide positive encouragement. Researchers have found that achievable goals combined with positive feedback, social recognition, and financial rewards can lead to a 45% improvement in performance. Daniels says, "When using concrete feedback and positive encouragement, it's not uncommon to see two to three times the improvement/progress."

Wrong Management Practice #2: Publicly Ranking Sales Reps' Performance Another commonly used but ineffective method is publicly evaluating your sales team. The thinking behind this is that ranking can create healthy competition among top performers and motivate those who are not performing well. But often, ranking doesn't work, let alone motivate underperformers without any support.

"Employees should compete against their real competitors, not against each other," Daniels says. Instead of internal rankings, try using external top performers as benchmarks to motivate individuals and teams.

"Setting benchmarks allows your employees to compete against their real competitors or those who perform best," he explains. "Letting employees know they can start competing, close the gap with the benchmark, and become the benchmark themselves is the most motivating method."

Wrong Management Practice #3: The Sandwich Method Every manager knows the "sandwich method" for giving performance feedback: start with two positive points, then insert criticism in the middle. That's fine, but does it work? The answer is: not in the long run. Employees quickly figure out your strategy and soon question the sincerity of your praise. And they'll know your praise is just a lead-in to criticism. So, forget the sandwich method! If your feedback is meant to be corrective, state it directly. Point out the problematic behavior, the expected behavior, and the consequences if no change is made. Also, having employees track the behaviors you want them to exhibit is a very helpful management tool.

Einstein once said that problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. So, if you find a method doesn't work, don't keep doing what your predecessors and managers did. Instead, question everything you do. Gather information to determine whether each of your management practices is truly effective, and discard those that aren't.