Behavior, Attitude and Technique

1Why this session is company-wide

This is your copy to keep. The gold Going deeper boxes go past what the session covers, for anyone who wants the fuller picture.

The first eight sessions handed out techniques. How to open a conversation, how to agree what a meeting is for, how to find out what a problem is costing a client, how to ask about money, how to find out who decides. Some of those are now in use and some of them are not, and the ones that are not were not forgotten. This session is about the two things that have to sit either side of a technique before it produces anything.

It applies to every seat here, not just the two that carry a pipeline. A technician who has been moving a call to a difficult client down the list each day, an engineer who writes a scope and leaves their own hours off it, a coordinator who apologises when a client questions an invoice that is correct: each of those is the same shape as a salesperson who knows how to ask about budget and has not asked. The fix is the same in all four cases, and it is not a better script.

This session assumes sessions 01 to 08: the seven steps of the system, and the techniques inside them. You leave this one with a single action written down, a number you chose, and the place you will record it.

The method here comes from the Sandler Foundations course. The examples and everything about how it applies here are ours. The chapter PDFs are in the reference folder of this program if you want the source.

2The three parts

A technician sat through session 03 and can recite the four-part opening from it: appreciate the client's time, say naturally what you want to cover, check what they obviously want out of the conversation, and agree what typically happens at the end. Four weeks later they have not used it once. Nothing is wrong with the words, and nobody needs to teach them again. What is missing is a point in their week where they decided to use them, and the expectation that the call would go better if they did.

A result needs three parts, and the words are only one of them.

The parts depend on each other. A new technique with no plan for using it and no belief that it works changes nothing, which is why a session on its own does not move a number. The name for the three together is the Success Triangle, shortened to BAT for behavior, attitude and technique. The name is worth knowing because it is in the workbook. The plain words are what we will use.

3Behavior

You already work inside a version of this. We run on the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, which gives us a Scorecard of measured activity looked at every week, and Rocks, which are the things we commit to for a quarter. The behavior part of this model is the same idea applied to one person's week.

A behavior is an action you control and can count. A result is not a behavior. "Win more project work" is a result, and it depends on clients. "Ask what they have in mind to invest, in every first conversation I have this week" is a behavior, and it depends on you.

Three tests for whether you have written one:

1. Countable. Somebody else could count it by looking at a record, without asking you how it went.
2. Numbered. It says how many times, in a stated week.
3. Yours. You picked the number, because you are the one who knows how many of those conversations your week actually contains.

Model example, figures for illustration only. If you pick eight and you have four working days left in the week, that is 8 divided by 4, which is 2 a day. Look at your calendar before you write the number, not after. A number you abandon on Wednesday leaves you with no count to read on Friday.

Write down where it gets recorded, and make it one place you already open: an activity on the Nutshell record, a note on the Syncro ticket, a Notion page, a line in a notebook. Nobody is adding a report. The count is for you, so that on Friday you can tell the difference between a technique that did not work and a technique you did not use. Those two look identical without a count, and they need opposite fixes.

4Attitude

Attitude here is narrower than the everyday word. It is the view you hold of four specific things, and each one shows up in a different way.

The clearest example is the third one. A client questions an invoice that is correct, and the answer opens with an apology. The words are polite and the view behind them is that the invoice is an imposition. What the client hears is that the number is open, and a conversation about work that was agreed and delivered has turned into a negotiation.

The obvious objection is that this asks you to talk yourself into something. It does not. The fix here is checkable: before the call, confirm three facts. The work was agreed, the work was done, and the number on the invoice matches those two. A person who has checked all three is describing something they verified, and that sounds different without any change to the script.

5Commitment

Commitment is the connection between attitude and behavior. It is the part of this model that tells you what to do on a morning when you do not feel like doing the thing.

The working rule this session uses is that acting first tends to change how you feel, rather than the feeling arriving first and producing the action. The technician who is waiting to feel ready for the difficult call is waiting for something that the waiting does not produce, and each day the call sits there it gets a little heavier. Make the call at a set time, and the second one is easier than the first was.

This is not an instruction to pretend. The claim is narrow and you can test it this week. Take the call you have moved down the list three days running, put it on the calendar for a specific time today, make it, and notice what the next one feels like. The practical form of commitment is putting the behavior on the calendar and letting the feeling catch up.

There is real preparation and there is waiting, and they are easy to confuse. Reading the ticket history in Syncro so you have the facts straight is preparation, and it has an end. More time to feel differently about it has no end.

6Identity and role

An engineer writes a proposal for a server replacement, the client goes with somebody else, and the engineer says they are not a salesperson. Two separate things have just been added together.

Identity is what a person is worth. It does not move with a result. A role is something a person does, and a performance in a role can be good, bad or average, and is worth reviewing every time. The separation has a name in the workbook, Identity and Role theory, written as I over R. What matters is keeping the two accounts apart.

Adding them together is wrong on the facts. A lost proposal is information about that proposal: what was known about the client's budget, who the decision actually sat with, what the competing option was. None of those are facts about the person who wrote it.

It is also expensive, and the cost is in work rather than in feelings. The engineer who decided they are not a salesperson stops offering to scope things. On the next site visit, a five-year-old firewall comes up, they answer the question and leave. Nobody records that as a loss, because it never became an opportunity, and nothing in Nutshell shows it. The cost is in the conversations that did not happen.

The bottom line. Somebody who has decided they are bad at part of the job stops volunteering for it, and work that is never offered is never recorded. This is why being handed a technique does not lift results on its own, and it is why session 01 through 08 could be perfect and still change nothing. It also gives you something to do when you watch somebody avoid a part of their job: ask what they concluded about themselves the last time they did it.

The working rule for every debrief from here on: review the performance, not the person. "The budget question did not get asked" is reviewable and points at a next action. "You are not good at money conversations" is a verdict, and what a verdict produces is avoidance.

7Mastering a technique

Technique is the third part, and the sessions supply it. Having been given one is not the same as having it. Five things are involved, in order:

1. Recognise the situation you are in. Which of the seven steps this conversation is on, out of bonding and rapport, up-front contract, pain, budget, decision, fulfillment and post-sell, and who you are talking to.
2. Know which skill applies, and why. Not just which one to reach for, but what it is supposed to do.
3. Apply it. Use it with a client.
4. Practise it. Off the client. Pair up with somebody here and run the conversation twice before the live one.
5. Correct it from your mistakes. Write down what the situation was, what you said and what came back, and look at those three lines with somebody else.

The first three happen in a session. The last two happen in the weeks after it, which is where techniques get lost. The common pattern: somebody uses a new question once with a good result, twice more with bad ones, and drops it. Three uses is not enough to judge a technique, and the fault is often in the first step rather than in the question, because it was used in a situation it does not fit.

8Practice: your behavior for the week

You wrote this card in the session. If you were not there, write it now. It takes five minutes and it is the whole point of the hour.

1. Pick one technique from sessions 01 to 08 that you have not been using. Your choice. The opening agreement, asking what the client wants the call to settle, the budget question, asking who else is involved in the decision.
2. Write the behavior as an action. One sentence, starting with a verb, describing something somebody else could count from a record.
3. Choose the number and write it. How many times, this week. Check it against your calendar before you write it.
4. Write where you will record it. One place you already open, and the first date you will do it.
5. Write one line on what you expect. What you expect the client to do when you use it. This is the line that makes the count worth reading on Friday, because it is what you check the result against.
6. Read it to somebody. They ask two questions: can that be counted by Friday, and is the number one your week actually holds.

On Friday, read the count. If you did it the number of times you wrote and it did not work, that is information about the technique and it goes into the next session. If the count is short, that is information about the plan, and the fix is a smaller number or a fixed time on the calendar rather than a different technique.

9Check for understanding

1. Somebody came out of session 06 knowing how to ask a client what they have in mind to invest, and four weeks later has not asked it once. Which of the three parts is missing, and what two questions would tell you which?

2. A technician has been putting off a call to a client who was difficult the last time they spoke. They say they will call once they have a better handle on it. What does this model tell them to do, and why?

3. An engineer loses a proposal for a server replacement and says they are not a salesperson. Two things have been added together. Name them, and name what the mixing costs us in work rather than in feelings.

4. A coordinator apologises whenever a client questions an invoice that is correct. Would sending them to a training on invoice wording fix it?

5. Why does a behavior need a number you chose and a written place to record it, when you already know what you should be doing?

6. Someone uses a new question once with a good result, twice more with bad results, and stops using it. Which of the five steps of mastering a technique did they skip, and what should they have done on the third try?

10Before the next session

• Do the behavior on your card the number of times you wrote, and record it where you said you would. Bring the card and the count, including a count that came in under the number. A short count is useful, because it says the plan needs fixing rather than the technique.
• Write one line on what happened when you used the technique: the situation, what you said, what came back.
• Optional. Chapter 9 of the Sandler Foundations workbook in the reference folder.

Next session. 10 - Prospecting Behavior. Where new conversations come from, how to turn a goal into the number of calls, emails and meetings a week that would reach it, and how to build a weekly plan you can count. This session is the model and the next one applies it to the top of the pipeline.

11Glossary

Behavior

A planned, systematic set of actions: decided in advance, given a number, and done on a schedule rather than when convenient.

Attitude

The view you hold of yourself in your seat, this company, the service we sell, and the market we sell it into.

Technique

The strategies, tactics and personal presence you use to carry out the plan.

Success Triangle

The name for the three together, shortened to BAT. A result needs all three.

Commitment

The connection between attitude and behavior. In practice, putting the action on the calendar rather than waiting to feel like doing it.

Identity

What a person is worth. It does not move with the result of a performance.

Role

Something a person does. A performance in a role is reviewable, and reviewing it says nothing about the person's worth.

Identity and Role theory

The name in the workbook for keeping those two apart, written as I over R.

Countable behavior

An action somebody else could count from a record, with a number and a stated week.

Scorecard

In EOS, the small set of measured activities the team looks at every week. The behavior part of this model is the same idea for one person.

Rock

In EOS, something committed to for a quarter.

12Sources

• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations, chapter 9, Improving Your BAT-ting Average: chapter PDF.
• Sandler Systems, Sandler Foundations: full workbook PDF.

The three parts and the name Success Triangle, the definition of commitment as the connection between attitude and behavior, Identity and Role theory, and the five steps of mastering a technique are Sandler's. The worked examples, the behavior card, the connection to the Scorecard and Rocks, and everything about how this applies at Hermetic are ours.