A complete guide to jobs in the sales industry

There are a whole range of jobs in the sales industry, and not all of them require the experience you might expect. There are a number of roles in sales you may not have known about, that can make highly rewarding careers.

We’ve put together this guide of sales jobs to help you decide which roles might be a good match for your skills. We take you through the responsibilities of each role, what qualifications and skills you’ll need, and the salary you might expect to take home.

The salary information has been taken from the 2018 sales salary guide completed by Morgan McKinley.

Sales Management

What does a Sales Manager do?

Sales Managers drive a company’s revenue engine. They create and nurture high performing sales teams, and guide them in customer service, and lead then to generate hit revenue forecasts.

Responsibilities

A Sales Manager will ultimately play three key roles:

1. Managing other people who they will recruit, build and nurture into an ambitious, sales generating team
2. Managing customers to increase engagement and service standards
3. Managing the relevant business, steering it in the right direction to increase growth and revenue

Other responsibilities might include:

• Setting targets;
• Planning and implementing sales programs;
• Counsel support and discipline sales reps;
• Developing a scalable sales process and ensuring reps adhere to it.

Qualifications

Typical qualifications for a Sales Manager will include:

• Demonstrated track record of meeting/exceeding goals as an individual contributor;
• Successful experience building a territory from little or nothing;
• Skilled at building rapport, opening doors, and understanding business requirements of senior decision makers.

Skills

The types of skills that would be relevant to a Sales Manager role might include:

• Having an ambitious, high-achieving and results-oriented attitude;
• Innovative and problem solving with lots of ideas;
• Strong decision maker, basing your decisions on fact, figures and data analysis
• Following the rules set out to you;
• Attention to detail, methodical and organised;

Average salaries

Morgan McKinley set out the typical salary in 2018 for a Sales Manager working in London. The table below shows how the salary could vary depending on experience:

Business Development – Field Sales

What would I do in this role?

Those working in Business Development would work towards improving company growth through generating leads. You will work to generate new business opportunities and search for potential opportunities too. You will have sales targets to stick to so you should ideally be self-motivated and ambitious.

Responsibilities

• Researching potential client opportunities;
• Developing client contact strategies;
• Identifying and acquiring company commercial data for marketing purposes;
• Contacting prospective clients by telephone, mail and email;
• Generating new business opportunities and appointments;
• Meeting realistic sales targets;
• Attending relevant in-house training sessions.

Qualifications

• Experience in a B2B sales role;
• Successful (and proven) sales track record;
• Professional individual.

Skills

• You should be a target-oriented, ambitious individual;
• You must have excellent communication skills;
• You must be proactive;
• You should be self-motivated.

Average salaries

For Business Development Field Sales, the average salary in London in 2018 was based at:

Account Management

What does an Account Manager do?

An Account Manager will support its clients and work to manage their expectations and needs. You will be responsible for developing existing relationships and identifying areas of growth.  

Responsibilities

• You will be selling a wide range of business products and providing account management for all your clients;
• You could be dealing with other businesses daily ensuring the highest level of customer service possible;
• Building rapport with your client base;
• Generating new business by cold calling;

Qualifications

• Target driven and able to work to deadlines;
• At least 1 years experience within B2B Sales/ Account Management;
• Excellent customer service and communication skills;
• Experience working within the industry in question (desirable).

Skills 

• Experience as an account manager;
• Excellent customer service skills;
• Excellent communication skills;
• Motivated;
• Ambitious;
• Ability to multitask.

Average salaries

The average salary for an Account Manager in London in 2018 was based at:

Key Account Management

What would I do in this role?

A Key Account Manager will oversee relationships of a company with its most important clients. You would be responsible for obtaining and maintaining long term key customers by comprehending their requirements.

Responsibilities

• Develop trust relationships with a portfolio of major clients, ensuring they aren’t turning to competition;
• Having a thorough understanding of key customer needs and requirements;
• Expanding relationships with existing customers by continuously proposing solutions that meet their objectives;
• Ensuring the correct products and services are delivered to customers in a timely manner;
• Serving as the link of communication between key customers and internal teams;
• Resolving any issues and problems faced by customers and dealing with complaints to maintain trust;
• Playing an integral part in generating new sales that will turn into long-lasting relationships;
• Preparing regular reports of progress and forecasts to internal and external stakeholders using key account metrics.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a key account manager;
• Experience in sales and providing solutions for customer needs;
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with aptitude in building relationships with professionals of all organisational levels;
• Excellent ability to negotiate and problem solve;
• BSc/BA in business administration, sales or relevant field.

Skills

• You should already be skilled as a Key Account Manager;
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills;
• Excellent planning ability;
• Good IT skills;
• Flexible attitude;
• The ability to generate ideas;
• Be able to prioritise and manage expectations;
• Excellent negotiation skills;
• Excellent understanding of client care;
• Be able to thrive in high pressure situations;
• Good organisational and administrative skills.

Average salaries

The 2018 average salary in London is currently based at:

Channel Management

What do we do?

The Channel Manager wins, maintains, and expands relationships with assigned channel partners. Assigned to channel partners based on geography, channel, or market, the Channel Manager is responsible for achieving sales, profitability, and partner recruitment objectives. The Channel Manager represents the entire range of company products and services to assigned partners though may focus on a specific solution or product set if focused in a partner vertical market.

Responsibilities

• • Establishes productive, professional relationships with key personnel in assigned partner accounts;
  • Coordinates company personnel (support, service, and management resources), in order to meet partner performance objectives and partners’ expectations;
  • Meets assigned targets for profitable sales volume and strategic objectives in assigned partner accounts;
  • Proactively leads a joint partner planning process that develops mutual performance objectives, financial targets, and critical milestones associated with a productive partner relationship;
  • Assesses, clarifies, and validates partner needs on an ongoing basis;
  • Sells through partner organisations to end users in coordination with partner sales resources;
  • Manages potential channel conflict with other firm sales channels by fostering excellent communication internally and externally, and through strict adherence to channel rules of engagement;
  • Leads solution development efforts that best address enduser needs, while coordinating the involvement of all necessary company and partner personnel;
  • Ensures partner compliance with partner agreements;
  • Drives adoption of company programs among assigned partners.

Qualifications

• • Four year college degree from an accredited institution;
  • Minimum ten years (usually) of channel sales experience in a business-to-business sales environment);
  • PC proficiency.

Skills

• Innovative and creative – outside the box thinking;
• Commitment;
• Business acumen;
• Excellent relationship skills;
• Flexible delivery;
• Disciplined in measuring and monitoring.

Average salaries

The 2018 average salary for a Channel Manager is as follows:

Pre-Sales

What would I do in this role?

Pre-Sales roles play an important part in a sales team. They act as a subject matter expert (SME) in a particular field. They add value to an organisation by providing expert advice throughout the sales process and ultimately influencing sales.

Responsibilities

• Accompany salespeople on visits to clients;
• Deliver presentations and product demonstrations that require more in-depth or credible knowledge than the salesperson is able to provide;
• Liaise with Product Managers to provide feedback from clients about product requirements; or ideas to help them innovate or stay ahead of where the market is going;
• Carry out research to stay ahead of their particular area of expertise – including understanding the current & future market, product and competitor landscape;
• Manage the sales bid process, responding to RFI’s & RFP’s when a client or prospect puts an opportunity ‘out to tender’;
• Respond to technical questions about the product or related infrastructure.

Qualifications

• Previous experience working within a technical pre sales position;
• Must be a subject matter expert with extensive software systems experience;
• An ability to communicate technical information to non-technical staff in a way that is easy to understand;
• Previous experience working for a competitor in a similar position would be a strong advantage.

Skills

• • Subject matter expertise in a required field (ideally gained working within the market they are now ‘selling’ to);
  • Strong client-facing skills, e.g. meeting & presenting to clients (ideally with experience dealing with similar types/levels of contact);
  • Strong commercial skills including an understanding of the sales process (ideally gained within a similar, commercial environment);
  • Strong communication skills, written & verbal;
  • Strong problem solving skills including an ability to think ‘on their feet’ when faced with challenging questions in the sales environment;
  • Experience managing the bid or proposal process including responding to RFI’s/RFP’s;
  • (Technical Pre-Sales Roles Only) Technical skills.

Average salaries

The average salary for a Pre-Sales position in London this year is:

Business Development – Internal

What would I do?

An internal Business Development role usually involves focusing on not only new business development but maintaining business relationships and streamlining the process.

Responsibilities

As the Business Development Manager, you will be:

• Able to convert and manage leads provided by internal teams;
• Research new prospects – lead providers and brokers;
• Arranging new business meetings with lead providers;
• Expected to dependably hit your targets to a high standard;
• Always promoting the business to enhance reach;
• Working closely with internal teams to maximise business;
• Develop strong relationships at all levels within the current account as well as new accounts;
• Assisting all partners through the initial signup and education stage;
• Focused on building high value pipelines working in partnership with Business Development Managers and manage assigned partners in territory;
• Develop proficiency and knowledge of products and solutions with the ability to clearly communicate appropriate recommendations to address customer needs;
• Actively uses metrics to monitor performance and understand results and drivers;
• Demonstrate proficiency in using all appropriate systems, tools, and processes;
• Collaborate closely with other team members and a set of cross-functional business unit colleagues to drive result.

Qualifications

• Previous sales experience is ideal;
• Consistent achievement of sales quota;
• Consistent achievement of forecasted revenue and unit targets (i.e. achieving consistent forecast accuracy);
• Exceptional communication and organisation skills – and the ability to follow through and manage a large workload;
• Excellent customer service skills with a customer first attitude;
• Ability to present and demonstrate on live Webinars;
• Strong problem-solving and analytical orientation;
• Clearly communicates, outlining problems, targets, results and key insights;
• Track record of excellent partnering, collaboration and influencing across company functions;

Skills

• Builds strong professional relationships with our external partners;
• Thrives on change and has an infectious ‘can do’ attitude;
• Self-motivated, tenacious and balanced individual who brings ‘can do’ motivation to work every day;
• Positive attitude.

Average salaries

The average salary in 2018 for an internal business development role in London is as follows:

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