David Michael promotes teamwork.

Employee recruitment and training is a challenge that is traditionally left to human resources departments. But David Michael & Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has made it a company-wide effort that is leading to a more educated sales staff.

The company started the STAMP (Sales Training Account Management) program in 1979. It is based on the premise that there are two ways of developing a well-trained sales staff -- find trained people from other companies, or bring in young people and train them in-house.

"We had two choices," says President Skip Rosskam. "One was to go out and hire high-priced free agents from the competition. We didn't want that kind of …