When you’re assembling a sales team, should you look for complementary skills?

This article first appeared on October 28th, 2011.

When you’re assembling a sales team, should you look for complementary skills?

Or do you want a team entirely made up of ruthless, commission-hungry people?

Assembling a sales team based on ruthless commission-hungry people sounds like a recipe for disaster!

Unlike commonly held beliefs, sales people need to have a variety of qualities, including drive, confidence, ability to persuade, ability to relate, great organisation and service orientation skills.

This is the reason great sales people are hard to find – they need to have both left and right brain qualities.

Can you imagine the problems that can be caused by commission-hungry sales people who do not look after their customers?

That is the image we have of the old style used car salesman who moves from caryard to caryard.

Today’s consumer has high expectations about a sales person’s knowledge and ability to listen to his/her needs.

Sure, we may still have some of the old style left in the market, but I don’t feel there is a place in a progressive organisation for anything less than the high level, smart salesman who is a good listener and can both create customer wants and satisfy customer needs.

Each salesperson has to have the package required, unless of course they operate as a team then possible complementary skills may work.

I would prefer to hire salespeople who bring individual and complete personal qualities to the table.