Should I Be Thinking About Creating Sales Teams?

Clients sometimes come to us looking for help identifying a candidate with strong technical skills who also has the aptitude to sell. This is a tough nut to crack because the skill set and interests often do not run in parallel.

Years ago, IBM stopped trying to find these needles in the proverbial haystack and paired strong salespeople with strong computer science people and had great success in doing so. The salespeople would push to get the appointments and knew how to close. Meanwhile the computer scientists could connect with their counterparts at the meetings, answer technical questions and establish product/service credibility at that level.

This is worth thinking about if you are selling a highly technical product to people who want to know the technical details. They do not have much time for salespeople who do not live and breathe in their world, but by the same token, most technical people are not born with an accompanying passion and skill set to sell well. However, when you team them up, great things can happen!

Have you had success with creating sales teams within your organization? We’d love to hear about it! Tell us your stories in the comments section below.

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Dr. Christopher Croner and Richard Abraham are authors of Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again and developers of the proprietary and patented sales assessment test, The DriveTest™, for sales candidates. To experience the difference of the DriveTest, contact us today!