E=AP Effectiveness=Awareness x Persistence

Your awareness is how well you know your sales abilities; your skills and limitations as well as your weaknesses, the issues that prevent you from being as effective as you could be. The better you know those weaknesses and limitations, when they’ll get in your way, how they’ll get in your way, and how to push through them, the greater your awareness.

Give yourself a 5 if you have acute awareness of your sales abilities, if you know exactly why you get the responses, outcomes and results you get. Give yourself a -5 if you don’t have a clue why you get the selling outcomes you get when you selling. If you are somewhere in between, rate yourself appropriately.

Persistence is your consistency of effort.  How consistently you prospect, how you deal with fears, how many calls you’ll make, how many no’s you’ll take, how many attempts you’ll make, how many follow up calls you’ll attempt, how many times you’ll attempt to close. Do you do whatever it takes or do you come up short?  This is a measure of your persistence.

Give yourself a 5 if you are incredibly persistent. Give yourself a -5 if you are really meek and passive about your selling.  If you are somewhere in between, rate yourself appropriately.

Now, to measure your effectiveness, multiply your Awareness Score by your Persistence Score.  You should have an Effectiveness Score of somewhere between -25 and 25.

If your score is a zero, you are average. Are you Okay with that?

If your score is below zero, you aren’t very effective. Are you Okay with that?

If your score is above ten, you are quite effective. Are you Okay with that?

If you have the book, reread the sections on the weaknesses that get in the way and be more honest in your assessment of which weaknesses you have and how they affect you. If you don’t have the book, get a copy to improve your effectiveness. Better yet, if you’re reading this prior to May of 2008, attend my Baseline Selling Boot Camp!