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Honest, effective communication hinges on being able to make a distinction between what we know and what we think we know, and to apply this to our professional and personal interactions with clients, friends, colleagues and associates. This is a concept that was articulated at length by Dr. Brad Blanton in his book, Practicing Radical Honesty: How to Complete the Past, Live in the Present and Build a Future with a Little Help from Your Friends. He describes this distinction along the lines of what is noticed and what is imagined

To explain this important distinction, let's look at some examples:

* You notice a colleague arrives 30 minutes late for an internal sales review. You might think that this person simply forgot about the meeting, and your manager sitting across from you might notice the late arrival and assume that this person just doesn't care about the meeting.

* You notice that the man across from you at a sales meeting is wearing a red tie. What you think you see is a tie that is fashionable, and someone else might notice it and think it's not fashionable.

*You notice that a client did not return your phone call as promised. You might think it's because they have chosen a competitor's product instead. Someone else might assume there's another reason for the unreturned call (e.g., because the client is on vacation).

The things we see-what we notice-are matters of fact, such as appearance, words or actions. The rest of our experiences are based on subjectivity-what we think we see or what we imagine.

Assumptions can cloud the path to honest communication. People can confuse what they think they see with what they know by verifiable fact to be true. In other words, they can think their opinions are facts. In sales this can lead to trouble.

Learning to distinguish between imagination and fact-between what we think we see and what we know-can pay important dividends in our professional lives. Let's look at some case studies that explore how this simple distinction can affect the sales success of an organization.

a) Motivating a sales force

A reward can be a great motivator, but there are perils in giving rewards that you think people will want. Consider the following example:

Recently during a coaching session, Brian, the sales director of an international software company, shared an example of how he attempted to motivate a series of teams.

The end of fiscal year was fast approaching and his teams were dangerously close to not hitting their revenue targets. To get things back on track, Brian promised each team that its members would be treated to a company-sponsored ski trip if the sales numbers were met. Sales started to grow everywhere except for one team on the West coast. Brian reminded this team about the ski trip, hoping to increase their productivity, but to no avail.

Later, the leader of the West coast team gave him an insight into what went wrong: none of the team members were enticed by the skiing offer because none could ski very well…and no one owned the equipment required to participate in the trip. By attempting to use what he imagined would be a good motivator for everyone; Brian accomplished the opposite with his West coast team.

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