When a salesperson has a bad month, sales managers respond by quickly scheduling a one-on-one meeting to evaluate what happened and why. Sales managers evaluate the rep’s metrics — their activity level and (lack of) sales results — with the purpose of making recommendations to the rep on how they can get back on track.

This is such a big mistake, for at least three reasons:

Reason #1: Activity metrics can’t tell you why

When you play golf, you write your score for each hole on the scorecard. At the end of the round, the scorecard will tell you on which holes you did well and which ones you didn’t. But the scorecard doesn’t tell you why. It’s not the number you wrote down for how many strokes you made, your score is the result of the good and bad swings (and decisions) you made while playing.

If you gave somebody your scorecard and asked them to get you back on track they can’t really help you. So why do so many sales managers continue to think that they can improve salespeople by managing metrics?

In fact, when used as the basis for coaching, activity metrics can do more harm than good. In their mind, a sales manager figures that if a salesperson misses quota they can always swoop in, look at a few metrics, and provide a solution. Invariably that solution is — voila! — for the salesperson to make more sales calls!

As the products and services that our salespeople are selling become more and more complex, sales effectiveness is less about the quantity of sales calls made and more about the quality of each interaction with a customer.

Think of it this way: Does your number one sales rep make substantially more sales calls than everybody else? Most often, the answer is “no.” That’s because top reps have fewer, but higher-quality meetings with customers and prospects. As they get further into a sales process, the meetings get longer and often require follow-up actions. That takes time.

If you propose a quantitative “activity solution” (such as “make more calls”) to solve a rep’s quality of meetings problem, then the solution won’t work.

Reason #2: Monitoring activity metrics shouldn’t be confused with manager involvement.

Too often, sales managers can fall into the trap of equating “monitoring metrics” with “actively managing.” They rely on the metrics to alert them to a problem, knowing they can come in afterwards to intervene with a rep. This gives them the illusion of being able to solve a rep’s sales performance problem when that problem becomes visible (like when a rep badly misses quota). In that way, looking at activity metrics becomes an excuse to not be doing more to engage with our salespeople in meaningful ways every day.

Trouble is, any analysis of metrics occurs weeks or months after the activity. It is therefore disconnected from the mistakes the rep made weeks and months before that led to a lousy result. You can’t accurately diagnose what caused the problem, so any actions you take — or advice you offer the underperformer — comes too late to lead to meaningful improvement.

Reason #3: “Monitoring” is not “coaching.”

If you were ever on a sports team, you know that effective coaching doesn’t happen after the game as much as before the game.

In the same way, effective, strategic sales coaching cannot be based on a monthly one-on-one sit down.

Effective sales coaching is something you must do every day. It’s based on in-depth observation of your players in action. That enables you to do a better assessment of their skills and wills, strengths and challenges, and work with them in such a way that you help them get better.

Effective coaching is based in the decision you make every day to not do one thing and instead do something else that will make a bigger impact on your team’s results.

Keep doing the monthly one-on-ones so your salespeople know where they stand. But if you want to see improvement in their results, you’ll need to coach somebody every day. Do it first thing in the morning — or at least before noon — before the immediate demands on your time get in the way.

Kevin Davis is president of TopLine Leadership, Inc.