Be a 5 Tool Contributor

John Stroili, COO of The TNS Group offered the following analogy between a 5 tool player in baseball, and a 5 tool sales person.

1. Ability to sell in all settings
2. Adequately technical where “adequately” is defined as meeting the minimum amount of technical proficiency demanded by the role (sales, engineering, etc.)
3. Excellent verbal and written communication skills
4. Strong Microsoft Office skills – Ability to be self sufficient and create quality written documents (Proposals (Word), ROIs (Excel), Project Plans (Project), Presentations (PowerPoint), etc.)
5. Well polished in front of a client

If you can attain proficiency in all of these sectors, you can be a well rounded, and more often that not, successful in many aspects of IT sales and business development.