Behavior, Attitude and Technique

1Session at a glance

2Open (0:00, 4 minutes)

• Rule the board into three columns now, headed behavior, attitude and technique, and leave them up. Everything in this session lands in one of the three.
• Say what the hour buys on Monday: one thing you will actually do this week, chosen by you, that you can count on Friday.

3Concept (0:04, 22 minutes)

The three parts (4 min)

• Lead with the example, then name the parts. A technician sat through session 03 and can recite the four-part opening: appreciate the client's time, say naturally what you want to cover, check what they obviously want out of it, and agree what typically happens at the end. Four weeks later they have not used it once. Nothing is wrong with the words. There is no point in their week where they decided to use them, and they do not expect the call to go differently if they do.
• Now name the three parts and define each in the sentence that uses it. Behavior is a planned, systematic set of actions: decided in advance, counted, done whether or not the day is convenient. Attitude is the view you hold of four things: yourself in your seat, this company, the service we sell, and the market we sell it into. Technique is the strategies, tactics and personal presence you use to carry out the plan.
• State the dependency plainly. A result needs all three. A new technique with no plan for using it and no belief that it works changes nothing, which is what the hand count at the top of the hour showed.
• Give the name once and move on: the name for the three together is the Success Triangle, sometimes shortened to BAT for behavior, attitude and technique. Use the plain words for the rest of the session.

Behavior (5 min)

• Start from what the room already runs. We run on the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, so we already have a Scorecard of measured activity looked at every week, and Rocks as the things we commit to for a quarter. The behavior part of this model is that same idea applied to one person's week.
• Draw the line that does the work: a behavior is an action you control and can count. A result is not a behavior. "Win more project work" is a result. "Ask what they have in mind to invest, in every first conversation I have this week" is a behavior.
• Three tests for whether something is written as a behavior. Could somebody else count it by looking at a record. Does it have a number. Is the number yours, chosen by the person doing the work, because they are the one who knows how many of those conversations their week contains.
• Run it through the non-sales examples so nobody sits this out. The engineer who leaves their own hours off a scope: the behavior is putting their hours and their rate on every scope that goes out this week, counted against the scopes that went out. The technician avoiding the call: the behavior is counted as calls placed. How the client feels afterwards is a result, and it sits on the other side of the line.
• Say where it gets written and keep it open: one place the person already opens. A Nutshell activity, a note on the Syncro ticket, a line in a notebook. The place matters less than that it is one place and it is the same one on Friday.
• Answer the objection before it is raised. Nobody is adding a report. The count is for the person who wrote it, so that at the end of the week they can tell the difference between a technique that did not work and a technique they did not use.

Attitude and commitment (5 min)

• Take the four views one at a time with an example each, not as a list. Yourself in the seat: whether you think this part of the job is yours to do. The company: whether you would recommend us to somebody you like. The service: whether you think the monthly fee is worth what the client gets. The market: whether you think there are clients out there who want this.
• Use the coordinator example on the invoice, because it is the clearest. A client questions an invoice that is correct, and the answer opens with an apology. The words are fine. The view sitting behind them is that the invoice is an imposition on the client. The client hears that the number is open, and the conversation is now a negotiation about work that was agreed and delivered.
• Say what fixes it, and keep it checkable rather than motivational: before the call, confirm three facts. The work was agreed, the work was done, the number on the invoice matches the two. A person who has checked those three is describing something they verified.
• Define commitment as the connection between attitude and behavior, and then give the finding that matters: acting first tends to change how you feel, rather than the feeling arriving first and producing the action. The technician waiting to feel ready for the difficult call is waiting for something the waiting does not produce. Make the call, and the second one is easier than the first was.
• Answer the obvious objection in the next breath. This is not an instruction to pretend. The claim is narrow and each person can test it this week: take the call you have been moving down the list, put it at a set time today, make it, and notice what the next one feels like.
• Land the practical version: put the behavior on the calendar and let the feeling catch up. That is what commitment means here.

Identity and role (5 min)

• Open with the example. 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 just got added together: how that one performance went, and what the person is worth.
• Name the two and keep them apart on the board. Identity is what a person is worth, and it does not move with a result. A role is a thing they do, and a performance in that role can be good, bad or average and is worth reviewing.
• The name for the separation is Identity and Role theory, shortened to I over R. Use it once so the room recognises it in the workbook, then go back to the plain words.
• Say why the confusion is expensive, in work we can point at rather than in feelings. The engineer who decided they are not a salesperson stops offering to scope work. The next site visit where a five-year-old firewall comes up, they answer the question and leave. That is the cost: the opportunities not raised afterwards, and we never see them as losses because they never became anything.
• Give the bottom line, because it is why this block sits inside a sales course at all. 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 handing somebody a technique does not lift their results by itself, and why a manager watching a person avoid a part of the job should ask what they concluded about themselves after the last time.
• Give the practical rule for debriefs, and hold the room to it for the rest of the arc: review the performance, not the person. "The budget question did not get asked" is reviewable. "You are not good at money conversations" is a verdict, and a verdict produces avoidance rather than a change.

Mastering a technique (3 min)

• List the five things it takes, in order, and keep each to a phrase: recognise the situation you are in, know which skill applies and why, apply it, practise it, and correct it from your mistakes.
• Point at where the room loses techniques. The first three happen in the session. The last two happen in the weeks after it, and that is where the arc has been leaking.
• Name the common failure concretely: a person uses a new question once with a good result, twice more with bad ones, and drops it. Two bad results are not enough to judge a technique, and often the fault is in the first step rather than the technique, because the question was used in a situation it does not fit.
• Say where practice goes so it is not on a client: pair up in the office and run the conversation twice before the live one. That is the whole of the Do blocks in this arc.

4Show (0:26, 10 minutes)

1. Put the technique back on the board. The one from the open. Write out exactly what it is in one or two lines, so the reason for not using it cannot be that nobody remembers it.
2. Ask the room why it has not been used, and take every answer. Do not respond to any of them yet. Write each answer into one of the three columns while they watch. "I never worked out when I would do it" goes under behavior. "It would feel pushy" and "our clients will not answer that" go under attitude. "I could not remember how it starts" goes under technique.
3. Read the columns back and count them. Read the three counts back as they are, then ask the room which column they expected to be the longest.
4. Run the two-minute role-play. Presenter takes the Hermetic seat, the volunteer takes the client, and the presenter uses the technique cold in front of the room. Do it for real, including the part where it does not go smoothly.
5. Debrief it against the five steps out loud. Which situation was it, which skill applied and why, what was applied, what would be practised before the next one, and what to correct. Say your own mistake first and say it as a performance, not as a verdict on yourself. That is the model for every debrief after this.
6. Put your own behavior card on the board. The action, your number, the place you will record it, and the first date. Say the number out loud and say why you chose that one for your week.

5Do (0:36, 13 minutes)

1. Everyone picks one technique from sessions 01 to 08 that they have not been using. Their own choice, not the presenter's. A technician picks the opening agreement, a coordinator picks asking what the client would like the call to settle, a sales seat picks the budget question.
2. Write the behavior as an action, on the card. One sentence, starting with a verb, describing something somebody else could count by looking at a record. Not "be more confident about money" and not "close more work".
3. Choose the number and write it. How many times, in the coming week. The number is theirs. Point out the arithmetic they should do before writing it, as a model example only: if you pick eight and there are four working days left in your week, that is 8 divided by 4, which is 2 a day, and you should look at your calendar and decide whether your week actually holds that.
4. Write the place it gets recorded. One place they already open. A Nutshell activity, a note on the Syncro ticket, a line in a notebook, a Notion page. Then write the first date they will do it.
5. Write one line on the attitude part. What they expect the client to do when they use it, and what they will check that expectation against afterwards. This is the line that makes the count worth reading on Friday.
6. Pair off and read the card out loud. The partner asks two questions only: can that be counted by Friday, and is the number one your week actually holds. The card gets corrected on the spot and the person keeps it.
7. Three people read theirs to the room. Presenter picks, including at least one seat that does not carry a pipeline.

6Check (0:49, 7 minutes)

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?

   Answer

   It is behavior or attitude, and rarely technique, because the words were handed out in the session. Ask what they decided to do and how many times, which finds a missing plan. Then ask what they expect the client to say when the question is asked, which finds a view that the question is rude or that our clients will not answer it. Those two answers separate the two parts, and they need different fixes: a number and a place for the first, a checkable expectation for the second.

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?

   Answer

   Put the call at a set time today and make it, rather than waiting to feel ready. Commitment is the connection between attitude and behavior, and acting first tends to change how you feel, so waiting for the feeling leaves the call unmade and makes the next day's version of it harder. The preparation that helps is bounded and specific, such as reading the ticket history in Syncro so the facts are straight. More time to feel differently about it is not preparation.

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.

   Answer

   How one performance went, and what the person is worth. 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. The cost is the work not offered afterwards. The next time a five-year-old firewall comes up on a site visit, that engineer answers the question and leaves, and nobody ever records that as a loss because it never became an opportunity.

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

   Answer

   Mostly no. Wording is technique, and the apology is coming from the view held about the invoice, which is that sending it is an imposition. Give them better words and the view will still be audible, because it is in what gets added after the words.

   Wording is the obvious answer because it is the visible part and the easy thing to buy, and it is worth naming why it fails. Here is the test: give them a script and listen to the next call. If they deliver the script cleanly and then add "sorry about this", the words were never the missing part. The fix is to have them confirm three facts before the call, that the work was agreed, that it was done, and that the number matches, so what they say next is something they have checked rather than something they are hoping the client accepts.

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?

   Answer

   Because at the end of the week you need to tell the difference between a technique that did not work and a technique you did not use, and an intention without a count cannot tell you that. The number turns it into the same kind of thing as a measure on the Scorecard: an activity you control, counted on a fixed cadence. It is yours rather than assigned because you are the one who knows how many of those conversations your week contains, and a number somebody else picked gets checked for compliance rather than read for what it shows.

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?

   Answer

   Practising it and correcting it from mistakes, which are the last two of the five and the two that happen after the session rather than in it. Two bad results are a sample, not a verdict, and the decision to drop the technique was made on three uses.

   The first step is also worth checking, which is recognising the situation. A question that fits a first conversation with an owner can fail in a call with someone who has no authority to answer it, and that is a recognition problem rather than a fault in the question. On the third try the right move is to write down what the situation was, what was said and what came back, and take those three lines to somebody else to look at before deciding anything about the technique.

7Close (0:56, 4 minutes)

Work before the next session

• The behavior card written in the Do block, done the number of times written on it, recorded in the place written on it. Bring the card and the count, including a count that came in under the number.
• One line on what happened when the technique was used, for the debrief at the start of session 10.
• Chapter 9 of the Sandler Foundations workbook, in the reference folder, for anyone who wants the source.

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 rather than a list of good intentions. Session 09 is the model and session 10 applies it to the top of the pipeline.

Open items to settle

• Whether the weekly behavior counts stay personal or get read out at the start of the next session, and who asks for them if they do.
• Whether there is one place these counts live, or whether each seat uses the record it already works in.
• Whether debriefs after a lost opportunity get a standard set of questions about the performance, so the review does not turn into a verdict on the person.

8Sources

• 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.

9After the session