Salespeople know they should listen more than they talk and if you ask them, they can rapidly list the steps in your selling process.  Yet when they are in front of a client they almost always talk too much and fail to execute properly on the steps in your selling process. Recent neuroscience research on working memory capacity explains why this happens. It also suggests the solution to the problem.

Working memory is the number of items that you can hold and manipulate in your brain for a purpose. For example, the number of steps in a sales process and the number of pieces of information about a client that you can hold in your head and manipulate to determine what you should say or do next.  Healthy adults can normally hold between three to five items in working memory. This means that if your working memory capacity is five, you can hold and manipulate five items at a time: Add a sixth item and the brain is forced to dump one of the items to make room for the sixth.

To experience the impact of your own working memory limitations try to solve the following two problems. Read each problem only one time and then look away as you try to solve them in your head.

1. Multiply ten times one thousand, then double the number and add ten.

Were you able to solve the problem? Are you feeling confident? Now try the second problem. Remember, you must solve the problem in your head with no pencil or calculator. To get the full experience don’t give up easily. Instead try hard to solve this problem in your head.

1. Please read the following problem only once and then look away as you try to solve it in your head. Multiply 267 times 431.

Welcome back! How far did you get before you forgot one of the two numbers in the problem? Don’t feel bad… almost no one can do this problem in their head. The question is why? After all, if most people have a pencil and paper they know the multiplication rules well enough to easily solve this problem.

The reason the average person can’t solve this problem in their head is that they lack the number of working memory slots required to remember the problem, the steps required to solve the problem, and the results of each step.

The fact that you couldn’t answer the second question is interesting. However, the epiphany comes when you ask yourself how you were able to answer the first question. After all, if you use the rules of multiplication the first problem actually involves more steps.

The reason you were able to answer the first question is that in school most of us mastered the use of 10′s. Mastery means that your brain wrote a separate program for solving problems involving 10′s in the same way it wrote a program for riding a bike. Since mastery-based programming runs automatically without using working memory capacity, you had slots available to remember the components of the problem and still solve the problem. When you read multiply 10 times 1000 your brain subconsciously ran the 10′s program and placed 10,000 in one of your working memory slots.

Now let’s examine the brain of a salesperson that just completed a sales training event. The next week they are out in the field trying to recall and use a specific strategy for overcoming objections. In this case it is an objection that a customer just raised in the form of a question.

To properly respond to the objection, the sales person must keep the following items in working memory:

1. Hold the question the customer asked. (One slot if it is a simple question, two or more slots if it is a multipart question.)

Minimum: 1 slot

1. Recall and hold the strategy for effectively answering client objections. (One slot for the current step in the process and one slot for remembering where you are in the process.)

Minimum: 2 slots

1. Recall the facts about your products or services and determine which ones to use in your answer. (This requires a minimum of two slots in order to compare one item to the next.)

Minimum: 2 slots

Danger – at this point most sales people are already out of working memory capacity. The next thing they bring into working memory leaves the brain with no choice but to dump something to make room for the new item. Often this is a critical part of the client’s question.

As bad as this seems, it is actually worse. This is because the salesperson is probably stressed out by the objection. The emotion of stress or anxiety takes up at least one working memory slot if the stress is mild, and almost all of working memory if it is extreme.

Before we leave this exercise, let’s count the rest of the slots a sales person would need in order to effectively execute the “overcoming objections” strategy.

1. Recall the customer’s primary goals and objectives for needing your products and services in the first place and formulate your response in a way that uses this information.

Minimum: 2 slots

1. Some systems stress the importance of remembering the personality style of the client and using this information to determine how detailed or brief your answer should be.

Minimum: 1 slot

1. Use the right emotions. For example, some systems teach a specific method for the level of emotion and energy you should have in your response based on the emotions and energy of the prospect’s question. Of course this must have been remembered.

Minimum: 1 slot

If we count up just the minimum numbers and don’t account for any spaces taken up by emotions, we come in at nine slots. This is far more than the average person’s brain possesses. Yet, everyday millions of sales people effectively execute on this and similar strategies for overcoming objections. The reason they can exceed their working memory limitation is the same reason you can do mental math involving 10′s. The salesperson practiced the strategy on enough different days to stimulate their brain to grow the connections required to reach mastery.

Of course, if the sales person hasn’t mastered the strategy disaster often strikes.  Instead of listening to the customer and effectively executing on the objection handling strategy the sales person interrupts the customer mid-sentence to blurt out information.  The sales person does this out of fear that they will soon forget the important point – which they will as soon as the next thought enters working memory and bumps out the important point.

The most important conclusion regarding working memory is that nothing should be taught in your sales training courses unless it is important enough to teach to the point of mastery. Lots of extra nice-to-know information might make your sales training seminar seem more interesting, but in the long run you are doing your sales people a disservice because during the pressure of the selling situation these extra, un-mastered pieces of information or strategy tips will take up too much working memory capacity.

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What’s a leader to do? Today, with their broad spans of control, leaders are frustrated that they can’t spend enough time with each of their employees. And yet, today’s economic environment demands that managers maximize employee productivity.

Leaders are challenged to build skills and provide counsel, while also motivating and inspiring employees to take action.

What Got us Here Won’t Get us There
Historically, role plays have been the holy grail for developing these skills.  But role plays demand time away from the job, and the quality of the practice and feedback is widely variable.

The industry had high hopes for solving this challenge with innovative, new simulation technologies.  Early generations of branching simulations offered flexibility and delivered consistent quality.

Think about the endless directions a coaching conversation can take. Unfortunately, the limited outcomes of those early simulations didn’t cut it. Interactions in these simulations presented few choices (nodes) and because they were preprogrammed, were highly predicable.

For a while, it appeared that “Level 4″ simulations, which use game engines with rules and probabilities, would come to the rescue.  They have similar benefits to that of a live role play, but can be done remotely online at a time convenient to the learner, while still delivering a consistent experience and feedback.

Alas, none of these technologies could provide the chief advantage of an in-person role play: realism. The role player could respond in the conversation ad hoc, as they saw fit. We can’t do that with a computer.

Or can we?

Introducing a New Age in Coaching Skills Training

Imagine a coaching skills practice session so real that you will forget that you are interacting with the computer. Hundreds of nodes and voice recognition deliver the most immersive simulation you have ever experienced.  Couple that with coaching best practices defined by one of the world’s best-known authorities and a simulation designed by one of the premier designers in the space.  Taken together, it represents a breakthrough in Coaching and Leadership Development the likes of which we haven’t seen in a decade.

We’ve got it here at Blueline Simulations. And you have to see it to believe it. My own experience has made me a believer. I want you to experience it for yourself. Give me a call today, and I’ll give you an exclusive peek at the next level of coaching skills training.

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During a recent client engagement I was reminded once again of how critical effective coaching is to success in the workplace. While conducting a gap analysis to identify failure points in a new sales process, one refrain was stated loudly and consistently: “our coaching on the new process is inconsistent, at best.” Unfortunately, this is a theme I’ve heard all too often in my career.

Numerous studies have shown the significant impact that effective coaching can have on performance. One frequently cited study by Olivero and Bane, showed that, “After training alone, the average increase in productivity was 22.4 percent. When training was reinforced with coaching, the average increase in productivity was 88 percent.” And a 2001 case study by MetrixGlobal found that “coaching produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business.” And if the financial benefits from employee retention were included it boosted the overall ROI to 788%.

Given that coaching delivers such dramatic impact, why is it so underutilized in so many organizations? There are a number of answers to that question, including: increasing spans of control limit coaching opportunities, competing priorities, and simply a lack of focus on employee development within the culture. The one that I want to address here is a lack of comfort with the skills required to coach effectively. While many managers are comfortable with setting goals, allocating resources and developing or evaluating reports, they are often hesitant to engage in a performance coaching dialogue.

While traditional classes devoted to coaching provide the context and process for coaching effectively, they fail to develop mastery. Most training sessions can offer only two or three opportunities to role-play a coaching conversation. While this may be sufficient to reinforce the key concepts, it falls far short of developing unconscious competence. Role-playing rarely provides the variety of emotional responses one is likely to encounter during actual coaching conversations, either. And unless there is an immediate opportunity or need to engage in coaching after the training, the limited proficiency that is developed will have faded before the leader can apply the skills in a critical coaching situation.

Fortunately, the latest in Level 4 coaching simulations addresses all these shortcomings. This new rules-based simulation utilizes voice recognition and hundreds of “nodes” to deliver the most immersive experience ever developed.  Learners encounter a wide range of “personalities” and emotional responses during the practice sessions. This allows sufficient practice to develop unconscious competence while never delivering the same experience twice. And it has the added benefit that leader’s can use the sim for a just-in-time refresher prior to a developmental coaching session.

Blueline will be launching this new off-the-shelf simulation in the next few weeks. Considering the significant return on investment, shouldn’t you be exploring this very cost-effective means of boosting organizational performance?

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Part 4:

I can’t write about trust and team development and managing teams without talking about the necessity of setting expectations and communicating them. Yes, it involves both… setting them and letting each team member know what those expectations are. Everyone needs to know what they are expected to do for each project.

Project team members often have many different talents and can serve in different roles depending on the project. It cannot be taken for granted that team members know what it is they should be doing and how they will be evaluated on their performance. It can seem disgenuine and trust may be violated if expectations aren’t communicated but consequences for performance follow…whatever that may be… deadlines not met, deliverables submitted that aren’t as expected, meetings/calls not attended because required participation wasn’t known. It is difficult to have a conversation about these things if expectations were never set. It is difficult, if not impossible, to foster trust when a person feels sabotaged or not adequately informed. Trust is established when team members know what to do and follow up can be counted on.

As I’ve been writing, and reviewing what I’ve written, it has become apparent to me that you can’t talk about trust without mentioning the valuable skill of listening. We all want to be heard and know that what we say is valued by others. Good listening skills:

• Are a part of good communication skills.
• Allow us to learn about others and to respect their experiences and points of view — whether the same or different than ours, and whether 100% relevant to the task at hand or not.
• Help each team member to ascertain their responsibilities and expectations for the project and clarify anything that’s not clear about those BEFORE it becomes an issue impacting the success of the project.

It is in the project leader’s best interest to create an environment where listening is part of the team culture and expected.

Successful project teams don’t have to rely on team members that necessarily like each other, have the same interests or beliefs, or even share the same physical location. But as I have endeavored to outline in this series of blogs, there are some common elements that contribute to the trust that exists on a project team and the results that they are able to accomplish together.

Did you miss Blueline’s Building & Restoring Trust Webinar? Click here to view the recorded webinar.

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Part 3:

Equally critical to creating and maintaining trust among project teams has to do with having respect for each other. That includes respect for the client organization…what they’re trying to accomplish, the steps that they must go through in their process and their challenges, and respect for what each team member brings with them to a project.

Respect is one of those words and concepts that carries with it big ideas and expectations. It happens that in my role as project manager, sometimes I’m the only one who may have worked with everyone on the team, and often the team members may not even know each other. And yes, in those cases there can be skepticism about the value of team members, what they can contribute and initial impressions of personality, knowledge and/or skill may need to be overcome. In building trust in these situations there are some things I’ve found that work well.

• It’s important to allow each team member to share with me, and when appropriate, with the other team members, the experiences and ideas they have that they think are relevant to the project at hand. That doesn’t mean that at times discussions aren’t stopped because they are headed in the wrong direction, but even that can be done in a respectful manner that acknowledges the person offering the suggestions.
• It’s important to be mindful of personal preferences and to accommodate those whenever possible. It may seem small, but being considerate of meeting times and locations, of restaurant choices/dietary restrictions of team members, and of family or other personal obligations can go a long way in building trust.
• It’s important to understand the capabilities of people and to respect that they may need additional help in new areas OR that they may be a great team resource and can provide assistance in a particular area of expertise.

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Part 2:

It won’t come as a surprise that clear communication is vital to building relationships with project team members. But what does that mean? It encompasses a myriad of things when bringing people together to work on a project.

• It’s not assuming that the members of the project team want to be communicated with in the same way that you like to receive or deliver information.  It’s important to find out each team member’s communication preferences, especially in this world of various communication devices and methods, and to be flexible enough, when possible, to accommodate those differences. And to trust that the information will flow when, and as, needed.
• It’s anticipating client and internal team member needs and asking great questions with sincerity and without ulterior motives, then proactively engaging in dialogue that leads to meeting those needs or searching for alternative solutions that can be agreed upon.
• It’s also about identifying and interpreting non-verbal cues. Doing a literature review will net varying statistics regarding percentages of non-verbal vs. verbal communication, but for the purposes of this discussion, that’s really not important. What’s important is that we know that non-verbal communication is a very significant part of communication, and we need to pay attention to and acknowledge what we observe…and act accordingly. It makes an impression when we notice the little things about others and helps to build the relationship.
• Building trust through communication means deciding to communicate even when the message isn’t pleasant. I find that sometimes team members want to shield sharing a message that may be unpleasant or that there may be hesitancy to deal with something that is messy. In my experience, THIS NEVER WORKS! I have found that in the long run, hitting situations head on and dealing with them leads to trusting relationships — a lot better than pretending that a problem doesn’t exist. What a great way to build trust by acknowledging with the team that yes, what’s facing us is difficult/not what we expected/will take us some time and effort to figure out, but that we have the tools to do it and we’ll do it together.

Communication is important to building trust because it’s how we stay in the reality of the situation we’re working in – it’s how we gather information about how we’re doing and what we need to start, stop, or continue — as we work together throughout the project. It’s the way we course correct as, and when needed, and it’s one way each team member knows that they matter.

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Part 1:

In our business, like most others, working effectively with project teams is critical to our success. Today’s constantly changing marketplace is forcing teams to evolve while demanding higher levels of productivity and efficiency.

The modern workforce is much more diverse now than it has been in years past, not just with ethnic or gender diversity, but with diverse work styles, diverse personal priorities, generational diversity, etc.

All of this is changing the nature of the project team and workplace dynamics. Today, we must frequently consider things like:

• Resources external to a physical location as team members
• Flexible schedules
• Global time zones
• Heavy work loads
• Different work styles
• A plethora of communication methods and technologies

Because there is so much being said about trust in the workplace, I thought I would weigh in on the importance of creating trust among these diverse project teams. It has been my pleasure to work with some very talented professionals throughout my career, and sometimes I wonder how and why I’ve been so lucky to have derived so much satisfaction from what I’ve chosen to do. I do understand that a good part of that is due to the people I have worked with, what we have been able to create, and the relationships that we have created while working together.

So when you think about it, how does it all work? How can these people with distinct characteristics/needs/backgrounds/values/technical know-how trust each other enough to work together to create success… however that is defined for a project?

Over the next several weeks, I plan to share a few specific ideas and experiences with you. See you next week…

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Creating transparency is gaining recognition as a critical behavior in high-trust companies. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the – spirit of transparency – is the first key to restoring public trust.

Is there a business consequence to a lack of transparency? I bet you can think of several examples but here’s a good one:

Eckhard Pfeiffer, the former CEO of Compaq, had two different types of executives on his team. The first was a group of executives whose instinct for self-preservation biased them to consistently reinforce his vision (whether they believed in it or not).  The second was a group of astute observers willing to speak truth to power.  As you might have guessed, Eckhard preferred the first group because they boosted his self-esteem.

There were many on his staff that realized that both Gateway and Dell were dominating Compaq in the marketplace through the use of innovative manufacturing technologies and customer service strategies to build custom computers unique to the needs of each customer. But Pfeiffer was unwilling to receive counsel from the second group on this issue.

As a result, he not only failed to notice that other firms were gaining on his; he also failed to seize the opportunities created by the Internet and these new manufacturing technologies, as others had done.

The consequences for Compaq?

After consistently missing revenue and profit goals, they were acquired by Hewlett Packard for a fraction of what this once mighty company had been valued.

As a leader you might want to ask yourself, “Do people who are not in my inner circle have a way to get information to me?” “How do I react – what do I do – when someone brings me unwelcome news that might undermine my own assumptions or strategy?” “Am I able to reward the messenger even though I don’t like the message?”

Please drop us a line and share your transparency stories with us. We particularly welcome positive examples of the demonstration of this Speed of Trust behavior.

Today, trust and transparency are as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services. Attend Blueline’s Building & Restoring Trust Webinar. Click here to learn more.

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The worst recession in three generations has wreaked havoc on our markets and the companies that operate within them. And our employees are living with fear and uncertainty about the economy, their jobs and their careers.

More than ever, there is urgency around building and restoring trust – between departments, within teams, across suppliers, with customers, and in the marketplace.

Now the organization looks to you. How are you, as a learning professional, going to help your leaders to rebuild trust in your organization, trust in its leadership, and trust among peers?

On August 24th and Sept 1st, Blueline Simulations will be holding a complimentary webinar on Building and Restoring Trust in the workplace.  Should you be attending?  Click here to learn more.

Organizations don’t build trust, people do — one conversation and one behavior at a time.

If you are facing a trust issue, please send us an email or leave a comment in the box below. We will do our best to tailor the webinar to the needs of the participants.

Most importantly, if you have a successful story or tip, please share that, too!

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With its headquarters located in Tampa, Florida, the people of Blueline Simulations have been casting their gaze to the water. Here, it is mostly rocky and not sandy, but the water is blue and warm. A drive across town is marked by sightings of pelicans, and sometimes even a few dolphins. You see a lot of fishing boats here in Tampa; the families who make their living from the sea are not some far-away abstraction. They’re right there on the side of the freeway with their lines in the water.

I haven’t seen any oil. At least, not yet.

I remember the early, bitter-sweet sense of relief that we all felt when the news reported that most of Florida coast would be spared from the rush of oil that was escaping into the gulf. That relief is gone, and today it is replaced with a dread that is creeping as surely as thick, black ooze.

Today in the morning paper, I saw a full-page ad from BP. The headline and copy in the ad struck a reassuring tone. The message was that the company would make things right, and would take full responsibility.

My wife looked over my shoulder. “How much do you think they paid for that ad?” she asked. I knew what she was going to say next, because the thought had crossed my mind, too: “Wouldn’t that money be better spent cleaning up the mess?”

As an organizational guy, I often find myself imagining how these kinds of public relations disasters look from within the organization. I am confident that the BP organization takes no joy in harming the environment, or the public’s trust. I wonder about the meetings that take place internally, the growing internal anxiety, as time and again,  the organization’s well-intentioned public statements and actions are received in the worst possible ways: “Don’t they see how hard we’re trying?!”

When we talk about trust here at Blueline Simulations, we cast it in terms of behaviors. There are things you can do to build trust and to restore trust. There are also certain behaviors that will destroy it in a heartbeat. One of our partners in learning, Stephen M. R. Covey, has identified 13 behaviors of high-trust organizations, and they read like a really, really bad report card for BP.

Covey’s behaviors include talk straight, confront reality, and right wrongs.

Think about the statements you’ve heard company representatives make in the news and also the ways those statements have been mercilessly picked apart by pundits. Now play a little “Monday morning quarterback” and imagine how you would recast each of those press events. Think about the statement that Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, made: “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

If you were Tony’s “trust consultant,” what would you advise? In this case, what does it look like to talk straight, confront reality, right wrongs?

I know that the Tylenol scare of 1982 is one of the more overplayed business case studies, but doggone if those guys didn’t get it right. After seven people in the U.S. died from ingesting Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson alerted the nation to stop using Tylenol until they could determine the extent of the tampering. They recalled 31 million bottles, retailing at over $100 million. They offered to exchange capsules already sold for tablets which cost them millions more. They established relations with law enforcement officers on every level to help search for the person who laced the medication and to help prevent further tampering. When they reintroduced the product, it had new triple-seal, tamper resistant packaging. As a result of their actions, they turned what could have been a disaster into a victory in credibility and public trust.

J&J practiced accountability, confronted reality, talked straight. Yes, it was painful and yes it was expensive. (And remember that the crisis wasn’t even J&J’s fault.) To this day, that company enjoys a level of trust and credibility that others envy.

Again, imagine yourself as the trust consultant to BP. As you think about Tylenol’s response, what might Covey’s trust behavior of “practice accountability” look like? Winston Churchill said that it is fruitless to claim “we are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

The opportunity exists today for BP — and for any company — to exercise behaviors that build trust at all levels of the organization. It requires resources and a fair amount of courage. But the rewards are great.

Today, trust and transparency are as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services. Attend Blueline’s Building & Restoring Trust Webinar. Click here to learn more.

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