self in the ARROW Profile. These areas include personal awareness, re-
straint, resilience, empathy, and building rapport.
Personal Awareness
The first section of the book dissects the issue of awareness. It looks at
how awareness affects your relationships with clients and coworkers and
your suitability for the selling profession. Introspection leads to awareness,
which usually leads to improvement. Some of the questions I address in the
first two chapters of this section are:
- What emotional factors differentiate the good sales professional
from the great sales professional? - Why do I have an easier time connecting with some people and a
more difficult time connecting with others? - Why do some personality styles cause me an inordinate amount of
stress and tension? - Do some aspects of my personality and approach act as a turnoff to
others? - How do I recognize and compensate for the natural liabilities in my
personality makeup?
Awareness means we are willing to see ourselves from outsideof our-
selves. We must be willing to capture a portrait of the perceptions others
have of us before we can bridge the relationship gaps in our business.
We must also become aware of our strengths and learn to put those
strengths in the driver’s seat. We discuss, as the famed coach John Wooden
put it, how not to, “let the things you are not good at get in the way of the
things you are good at.”
The last two chapters on awareness, “Critical Mass for Sales Success”
and “Applied Critical Mass,” address the emotional makeup (the intangi-
bles) of sales professionals who excel year in and year out and always seem
to be at the top of their game. These chapters give you a psychological
benchmark against which to measure your attitude and approach as you
work toward higher levels of selling success.
Restraint
Have you ever had one of those nights where you beat yourself up over
something you wished you hadn’t said that day? Is there a memory that
Introduction to EQ / Five Critical Levels of Awareness 5