Much has been written about the key skills that should be sought in a sales professional, especially those responsible for the daily management of clients and who are the face of the organization to them. Numerous analyses, mostly lacking in scientific basis, attempt to argue for the acceptable or recommended competencies these individuals should possess to perform their role effectively. These analyses also attempt to explain how the various roles associated with the daily management and development of sales should adapt to the changing world, making all sorts of projections about their future evolution.

In any case, the concern with defining the appropriate professional profile is primarily based on the need to recruit a key player in the sales process. This is someone who not only performs the transactional function of “closing the sale” with the client, but also becomes one of the company’s main marketing tools. The sales professional, in any of their roles, must have firsthand knowledge of sales trends and conduct a detailed analysis of them (which, in turn, is a primary indicator of consumer behavior). They must also be someone who, for their counterpart (the client), is capable of solving problems and generating new ideas that directly impact the growth of their business. The effective development, by these individuals, of these qualities—providing market feedback (for the organization) and supporting the business (for the clients)—will lead to the sustainable growth of the organization’s economic transactions over time.

However, a professional profile with these characteristics challenges the organization regarding decisions to be made about a particular type of sales team and specific considerations to take into account for talent recruitment. These decisions involve prioritizing long-term customer relationships, focusing efforts on those tasks that allow for effective customer retention, and considerations related to the indicators that are sought and measured in sales interviews.

As an initial conceptual consideration, it is important to bear in mind that the act of selling is not primarily a transaction involving a tangible good or a specific service, but fundamentally the exchange of an idea. The goal is for the potential or current customer to acquire a specific interpretation of an infinitesimally small portion of reality, embodied in a product, based on the belief that their needs have been understood and, therefore, that the best solution to satisfy them is being offered. The transaction occurs when this particular interpretation is not unilateral (the result of what one wishes to impose), but rather arises from an interaction between individual positions (that of the seller and that of the buyer), becoming a joint and therefore social construction. This is simply a consequence of how we operate as individuals in our social lives, a mechanism that is constitutive of our personality: we produce ideas that result from various transactional mechanisms with other individuals, solely for the reward of feeling included in (and participating in) the construction of the reality that surrounds us.

At this point, business ideas are nothing more than ordinary ideas that reach a certain degree of evolution, and sales individuals should become key people in the process of understanding customer needs, based on a particular inclination they should demonstrate towards more collaborative relational modes.

It is precisely this competence, developed through learning and experience, for collaborative building that must be traced in the selection processes for roles associated with the daily management and development of sales. This individual competence may appear superficially to the unsuspecting observer as a rich or varied personal history (street smarts) or simply as an ability to connect with people, but it is actually built upon the exercise of a series of specific skills such as non-linear knowledge (intuition, gathering clues, empathy, etc.), creative cooperation, effective communication, and other knowledge more or less removed from analytical-rational thinking. This facilitates a higher-level connection between the sales professional and their counterpart in the commercial transaction. In any relationship, connections of this kind bring tangible benefits to the individual; in the commercial sphere, this benefit translates into increased sales resulting from a relationship that is sustainable over time.

We understand the importance for an organization of forging quality connections with its environment and the effective contribution this makes to a healthy business. However, this capacity develops from a primary tendency or inclination within the organization to establish relationships with that environment—a relational propensity that initially carries no specific value (it is neither positive nor negative), but which depends heavily on the organizational front office to become truly constructive. While sales professionals are not the only members of the organization who represent it to the community, they bear the most strategically important relational responsibility: prospecting, recruiting, and serving those who are vital to the business’s success—the customers. A significant part of the organization’s relational capacity with its environment, and the possibility of this relationship being positive, necessarily rests in the hands of these individuals.

The demands of a rapidly changing social, economic, and political environment have become more aggressive and challenging. It is the organization’s responsibility to remain vigilant and proactive in interpreting this environment and adapting its response accordingly. To achieve this, it must cultivate a positive approach to its surroundings, fostering greater empathy within them.

The sales individual is a key piece for the development of this positive relational capacity of the organization, and having the conviction and the appropriate tools for detecting collaborative building talent is a strategic decision that organizations must make in order to ensure the future sustainability of their business in a market scenario that will demand increasingly tailored responses to its needs.

Fernando Sierra

Founder & Executive Partner

Salesciology