How do you train your salespeople and sales engineers to sell digital signage? When you hire people for these positions how do you test them? Since I’ve been in the digital signage business I have learned the most important quality for these people is something that is not taught in school: creativity.

The days of simply learning your product and pitching it to your prospect are over. It’s gotten more complicated. Now they have to understand what the prospect needs, work with the engineers to help design the solution and show the prospect how to use it. I don’t mean adding cute little features that only make the product more expensive, but features that solve problems and meet needs.

A great way I have found to test prospective employees for these positions is, if you are selling digital menu boards take them into a restaurant and ask them to come up with ideas on how digital menu boards can be used to increase sales or reduce costs. That may sound a little difficult, but if they can do that you usually have a winner. For continued education, after they are hired, I like to take them out as a group and do the same thing. I have gotten some great ideas for new products or features for existing products that way.

A small company with very creative people or a larger company with small creative teams will usually be very successful. It reminds me of a comment Bill Gates made. He said, “I fear the two creative people in a garage type of companies more than I do my large competitors.” Take a look at some of the recent huge successes and you will understand why he said that.