My clients often ask me to assist in developing existing personnel, or help in developing a New Hire Sales program. I ask them to define the requirements for success in each of the following areas for sales personnnel:

- Skills
- Knowledge
- Attributes/Qualities

Let's look at each:

Some basic skills include:
- prospecting
- discovery and qualification
- presenting
- objection handling
- closing

Some skills not looked as often are:
- strategic thinking
- problem solving
- negotiations
- selling to C Level executives
- understanding ROI
- time and territory management
- putting together a solution

Knowledge would include:
- business
- industry
- company
- resources
- competition
- product
- who to go to for what
- how to work the systems the company uses

The attribute least examined and perhaps the most important to create an effective sales team in Attitudes/Attributes and Qualities requirements include:

- self starter
- team play
- honesty
- initiative
- ability to work in a chaotic environment

This definition also helps with hiring the right people by adding experience to the criteria in hiring.

Do yourself a favor. Delineate the knowledge, skills and attributes that are the most important to be successful and pick the one or 2 most important to improve for 2012.