Recently, I published an article that introduced a way to measure sales progress by means other than conventional numbers and metrics. 

Today, I received an email from a property leasing salesperson who had his own question about sales effectiveness.  He asked, "How do I determine if I am seeing results from me being a good salesman or if it’s from my sheer volume and what kind of selling would you say a Real Estate Salesperson uses most?"

I explained that there are four types of sales conversations and by conducting some self-analysis you can determine whether success or failure is the result of your own effectiveness, or because of your company's reputation, quality and features of your product or service, the timing of your conversation, or that you happen to have the lowest price.

These are the four types of sales conversations and potential outcomes that I shared:

1. They want to buy and you help and/or allow them buy from you.  You are not a factor in this decision - they are not buying due to your own effectiveness.
2. They haven’t yet decided to buy but you persuade them to buy from you.  You are a major factor in this decision as you caused them to make a decision and take action.
3. They haven’t yet decided to buy and you don’t persuade them to buy from you.  You are not a factor in this decision - they are not buying and you were not able to influence the prospect.
4. They want to buy and somehow you mess it up and they don't buy from you.  You are a huge factor in this decision.  They were predisposed to buy and something you did cause them to change their mind.

In the end, your effectiveness is determined by how consistently you achieve scenario #2, and how infrequently scenario #4 occurs.

If you have a lot of successful #2's and few to none #4's, it would appear that you are very effective.  If you have a measurable number of #4's, it is safe to assume that you are a crappy salesperson.  If you don't have a lot of #2's, you are somewhat ineffective.  If you have a lot of #1's, you have very little do with your own success.

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