There are times when business as usual just does not work -- when standard operating procedure means standing still or even losing ground -- when you have to engage in new thinking and acquire new skill habits. But rather than just go off on some erratic quest, you want things that have been tried and proved elsewhere. You want what are called "best practices."
  
There are three categories of best practices: First are those at the corporate level, second are those at the industry level, and third are those that transcend this or that industry and are the era's best practices. Best practices are adopted and verified annually, monthly, and even daily on the production line. And production also engages in skill ratcheting to ensure there is no slipping back to the old ways.
  
But what of sales?

  
Many sales sections do not even deploy their own companies' best practices, much less tweak and verify in a cumulative process. Even when something goes right, two years later it is just a wistful memory that "we really showed them then." This is inexcusable. You'll never build a culture of evolving best practices if you just keep plowing the same furrow. And without that culture, you'll never succeed except by accident. So what are you waiting for? Do you want to do better or not?
  
Mizuguchi Kenji
Strategic Design Institute