Description

Sales personnel deal with the market directly and personally.  Other marketing people seldom see the customers that they influence.  Good salespeople don’t just sell to the customer.  They help the customer buy.  The salesperson does this by understanding the customer’s needs and problems and presenting the advantages and disadvantages of their products.  Typical sales tasks are order-getting, order-taking and supporting the sales function in the organization. 

Career Opportunities

Sales and sales management opportunities exist in a wide range of product and service organizations, both for profit and not for profit.  Industrial and commercial sales and sales management positions offer increasingly challenging and rewarding opportunities, commonly involving systems selling and being a member of a sales team.  The wide range of product and market opportunities, and the variety of interpersonal situations faced by sales personnel, suggest the importance of carefully matching one's background, interests, technical skills and academic training with available career opportunities in sales and sales management. Personal selling usually involves participation in a company’s sales training program.  Training programs vary greatly in form and length, ranging from a few weeks to two years. Career paths in sales are not the same in all organizations, and need to be explored with each prospective employer.

Entry Level Positions

Trade Sales: These are positions that involve order getting and order taking.  Order getters work for producers, wholesalers, and retailers.  They establish relationships with new customers and develop new business.  Order takers sell to established customers.  They are responsible for completing the sales transaction and maintaining relationships with customers.

Missionary Sales: These are manufacturer's representatives who call on middlemen and their customers to convince them to carry the manufacturer's products. Missionary salespeople "preach the gospel" of their company's products, but they do not close sales. A typical example is the drug company pharmaceutical sales rep who calls on physicians to give them information and to persuade them to prescribe the company's brand of drugs. Producers of grocery products and other products found in retail stores often employ missionaries to visit retailers.

Technical Specialists: These salespeople provide technical support to order getters.  They often have science or engineering degrees, an understanding of product/service technical details, and the know-how to solve customer problems.

Requisite Personal Qualities

Personal selling, by definition, involves persuasive two-way communication with potential buyers. Thus, it is helpful for the salesperson to enjoy people and to get on well with them. But, more than being sociable is required. The salesperson must know the existing and future problems faced by customers and the products that he or she represents. Competing products must also be understood. The basic sales task is to understand the buyer's wants and needs and to match these with the organization's products.  It also helps to be highly motivated and well organized, because selling, more than most positions, requires individual initiative, unsupervised by managers. Furthermore, salespeople should be capable of full, careful, and accurate analysis in terms of both statistical performance measures and financial outcomes of a particular purchase by a given customer.  

Academic Preparation

Beyond introduction to marketing and the sales management course, students interested in a career in sales should take the marketing research course as well as an upper level marketing management or marketing strategy course.  Beyond that, the aspiring salesperson might select additional marketing courses that reflect special interest. Those interested in marketing to consumers, or marketing consumer goods to the trade, will want to take consumer behavior and advertising.  Outside of marketing, courses that provide insight into the human condition are recommended: psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.  Analytical courses, such as cost accounting, computer science, and statistical analysis are increasingly helpful. Courses that aid in communications, e.g. speech, drama, and creative writing are valuable. Finally, courses that are related to a student's special interest should be selected: language courses, if one is interested in international marketing; engineering or physical science courses for those interested in technical selling, biology courses for medical and pharmaceutical sales, etc.