Hiring the most qualified technical sellers requires the hiring organization to perform some analysis of the position prior to posting, recruiting, and hiring. Technical sellers use consultative tools and techniques to assist their current and prospective customers in the design and deployment of enterprise-class business solutions based on the suppliers’ offerings. Therefore, this responsibility can usually be broken into the three following objectives:

1) Influence the stakeholders and sponsors at customers in favor of purchasing the supplier’s offered solutions and technology.

2) Own personal relationships at customers in order to advise them on the optimal use of of the supplier’s technology to run their business.

3) Ensure that customers are fully enabled to take responsibility for the successful implementation of the solutions and the realization of value for their business.

With these objectives in mind, the hiring manager can explore what sort of skills, abilities, and experience that they should look for in the most qualified candidates. These attributes might be divided into the four categories below, each with their associated attributes.:

Technical Skills

• Experience implementing multiple types of enterprise-class technology solutions and products across several solution domains
• Understanding of customers’ enterprise-class information technology environments and deployment practices
• Understanding of new developments in the supplier’s own business technology domain (business analytics, CRM, cloud computing, etc.)

Business Skills

• Understanding of business models, customer practices, and industry trends in specific business and industry segments
• Understanding of customers’ buying behaviors
• Ability to tie customers’ investments in technology to specific customer business outcomes (make money, save money, mitigate risk)

Interpersonal Skills

• Ability to lead and/or influence a sales team in the planning and execution of opportunity pursuits
• Ability to effectively engage with customer business & technology leadership as well as rank and file information technology professionals
• Ability to effectively work with product development teams to improve offerings based on customer requirements and real world usage scenarios

Lifestyle

• Ability to travel by air or auto, often at short notice, up to 50% of a typical work week
• Ability to put in the required effort outside normal working hours to take responsibility for business results

Although often requiring coordination and teamwork in pursuit of sales opportunities, this position is largely based on the concept of pooled interdependence. This is to say that the qualified candidate must be internally motivated as an individual performer and not reliant on others to contribute substantially to his or her success. Typically, incentive compensation (i.e. commissions) is based on the individual’s specific contributions in driving revenue. These contributions may come in the form of customer technical deliverables, customer implementation readiness assessments & advice, key customer relationships, and opportunity prospecting. A full analysis such as the above will help the hiring manager arrive at the most accurate profile of the ideal candidate.