Sales Manager: A Career Research Report
When I was younger, I was always fascinated about the business world. What made everything in the world work? As I aged and learned more about the business world, through news and the radio, I became even more fascinated as it seemed that the whole world was based on business transactions. Eventually, after hearing my dad talk about his job often enough, I decided to really ask him what he did. His answer was simplistic and sufficed for the time being; I manage people. Eventually it all started to piece itself together. Business is what makes everything work in the world. People get goods and services because businesses make it happen.
What is a business? When you break it all down, a business is nothing more than people making it work. This is what drives me to (at least) get my Bachelors of Science in Business Administration. As it was said in an article from Associated Content “Careers in business management are solid backbone careers. Business management is the type of degree that can benefit nearly ever career choice a person can make, because all careers or jobs are for a business.”
Of course there are also the perks that come with the degree, such as the salary $15,220 – $600,000+ and growth development around 20% for the next 4 years. (http://www.careerexplorer.net/jobchoices/business.asp) All of this really makes me interested.
Even from a young age I was curious and interested in business. It only seems fitting that I feed my curiosity with something that I’m highly interested in, and shown from above can be extremely successful. As for now I will stick with sales managing, since I like to work with people, along with being able to make good deals.
The job description for a sales manager as follows:
- Develops a business plan and sales strategy for the market that ensures attainment of company sales goals and profitability.
- Responsible for the performance and development of the Account Executives.
- Prepares action plans by individuals as well as by team for effective search of sales leads and prospects.
- Initiates and coordinates development of action plans to penetrate new markets.
- Assists in the development and implementation of marketing plans as needed.
- Conducts one-on-one review with all Account Executives to build more effective communications, to understand training and development needs, and to provide insight for the improvement of Account Executive’s sales and activity performance.
- Provides timely feedback to senior management regarding performance.
- Provides timely, accurate, competitive pricing on all completed prospect applications submitted for pricing and approval, while striving to maintain maximum profit margin.
- Maintains accurate records of all pricings, sales, and activity reports submitted by Account Executives.
- Creates and conducts proposal presentations and RFP responses.
- Assists Account Executives in preparation of proposals and presentations.
- Controls expenses to meet budget guidelines.
- Adheres to all company policies, procedures and business ethics codes and ensures that they are communicated and implemented within the team.
- Recruits, tests, and hires Account Executives based on criteria agreed upon by senior management.
This list was taken from http://www.salescareersonline.com/articles/article_08132006_2.html which is a site devoted totally to sales careers, and specifically management positions. The site allows you to look up job listings for sales managers. The salary range is huge depending on the area where the work is required and the company. From the listings I saw salaries ranging from 30+K to 250+K as well as bonuses and commissions.
The work environment is a very intense one, one that requires you to be on top of your game at all times. As said in a job description from Monster.com, “Enjoy an exciting, fast-paced work environment with excellent benefits and great pay.” (http://jobsearch.monster.com/Utah/Sales-Manager/get-jobs-15.aspx)
While I highly doubt a job that is based on your ability to get as many sales as possible would ever be “dull or boring,” you do see on T.V. shows such as The Office that depict it as such. To be honest I have yet to see anywhere in all the looking I have done that any one describes the job as it is shown on that show. Nor have I seen anyone say it was as such either. This to me is really good news because as I’ve stated before in other reports, I can’t stand a boring and slow work environment. It would eat me alive and I doubt I could work that career.
The skills needed are as follows: “As a Sales Manager you must be a strong leader, powerful motivator, efficient organizer, accurate forecaster, numerate budgeter, and inspired speaker, whilst being a successful salesperson!” This was from http://www.allconferences.com/conferences/2008/20080722210717/ regarding essential skills needed for a sales manager.
As can be seen, the skills required are what one would assume be needed from the job description. You must be a strong and powerful leader, and for the large part, very good with people and competent. While this may pertain to a certain job for a certain business, I’d presume with a certain amount of certainty that this would be a very common description of the skills needed, as I’ve seen very similar language in other job listings.
You will need at least a college degree in business administration with a concentration in sales/marketing. This can be obtained from most universities with a business college. Along with that, most businesses will require a certain amount of training required for you to become a manager. Usually, if you’re coming straight out of college, you will start as a sales person, then move up to a manager, unless otherwise qualified. The training usually involves off site training from specialists in marketing for your specific business. This is usually because there must be a certain amount of knowledge about the product or goods you’re selling to the public. For instance, if you are selling knives, it would be wise to know about the knives you are selling so that when a customer requests information regarding the knives, you have the ability to answer the question. The large majority of this information came from http://www.careeroverview.com/sales-manager-careers.html which gave in great detail information regarding sales manager careers and all the things required of you to get a career in this area.
The income level for an entry level sales manager starts out at 51K (http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=District_Sales_Manager/Salary). This is of course only a district manager, not an executive, which is all the way up to 250K plus commissions, though this was from a job listing that I named above, not a salary site. Though according to The Career Fitness Program, Vice Presidents of Sales can make over 750K a year. All in all this is very good money, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a job that makes that kind of money, both in your entry level years and your more advanced years.
Professional associations would be a big one. Most companies require a sales department if they are going to be selling something, maybe with the exception of companies that are purely R&D. One of the big names that comes to mind is Google. They are possibly one of the world’s largest sales and marketing firms. All though many people don’t really attribute the search engine company to being a sales firm, that is essentially what they are. They promote other companies by having their names and products come up on their search engines or on the advertising on the side banner. Considering Google has two thirds of the market in search engines, they are quite the powerhouse. The pure traffic the website sees daily must be insane. I know I use it at least 3 or 4 times a day. It even came in great help writing this report.
Following a career path like this would require me starting at a low level entry position at a big company. Luckily or unluckily where I live there are huge firms all over the place: Apple, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft just to name a few. Actually even before that I’d have to get my business degree with a concentration in sales and marketing or even a marketing degree, yet I don’t know how well that blends into sales to be completely honest. Once the degree is acquired I’d have to start the job search. The first places I’d start would be those up there. Odds are that I wouldn’t land a job there and would have to go for something a little more on the small side, just so I could get some years of experience under my belt. Ultimately though, I‘d like to end up working for one of those companies if at all possible.
One thing that really stood out for me as being something I had never seen before was the starting salary for a district sales manager; wow that is good money. For this area you could have a nice starting life on 50-60K a year. Though I wouldn’t think you could raise a family on it, it would be a nice starting salary for someone coming right out of school. A lot of the rest was kind of a given, including the skills needed. It wasn’t that surprising to hear that you needed people skills and had to be a strong confident leader, since both of those parts are requirements for being a manager by itself. The schooling is no surprise either since I’ve been learning about it since I was in the 11th grade, though I will admit it does confirm what I thought I knew, and does give me a little more detail into everything.
My overall interest level has increased a little because of the pay, though the main reason I was looking into it was because of the work environment. As I’ve said in the past, a dull and boring work environment would just be suicide for me. I’d take a lower paying job that was more fun and intense over a job where I wanted to hang myself at every waking moment during it.
References
- http://www.payscale.com/Job_Description/Sales_Managers
- http://www.careeroverview.com/sales-manager-careers.html
- http://www.allconferences.com/conferences/2008/20080722210717/
- http://www.salescareersonline.com/articles/article_08132006_2.html
- http://jobsearch.monster.com/Utah/Sales-Manager/get-jobs-15.aspx
- http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1650225/business_management_career_paths_pg2.html?cat=3
- http://www.careerexplorer.net/jobchoices/business-administration.asp
- The Career Fitness Program (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey)
[Thanks to Dillon for sharing the career research report on how to become a sales manager and related occupational information.]
Related posts:
