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Job description: Sales Trainee
Apart from retail sales, most sales today are between businesses. In this sector, you'll use problem-solving skills to understand, anticipate and meet your customers' needs, who can range from private individuals to governments and international businesses.
As a trainee sales professional, you'll find many opportunities to gain professional training, recognised qualifications and skills you can readily transfer from one industry to another.
You're likely to focus on building long-term relationships with customers rather than hitting one-off targets. You'll work closely with customers, acting as an all-round business consultant to identify how they can make their business more profitable.
Typically, you'll start out as a trainee sales executives or representative, selling products and services in a particular geographical area or business sector. You'll be responsible for developing existing customer relationships and finding new customers.
At first under supervision of senior staff, your specific duties are likely to include:
- Maintaining and developing relationships with existing customers via meetings, telephone calls and emails.
- Visiting potential customers for new business.
- Making accurate, rapid cost calculations, and providing customers with quotations.
- Negotiating the terms of an agreement and closing sales.
- Gathering market and customer information and providing feedback on future buying trends.
- Representing your organisation at trade exhibitions, events and demonstrations.
- Negotiating variations in price, delivery and specifications with your company's managers.
- Advising on forthcoming product developments and discussing special promotions.
- Liaising with suppliers to check on the progress of existing orders.
- Checking quantities of goods on display and in stock.
- Recording sales and order information and sending copies to the sales office.
- Reviewing your own sales performance, against targets as you gain experience.
You'll work alongside other team members, such as buyers and packaging experts, as in many companies sales is now a team process.
Hours and Environment
Generally, your hours will be quite long. In theory your working week may be 40 hours, but when travelling time is taken into account you'll be doing many more.
The pressure to hit targets also makes late finishes likely.
As a trainee, you'll be office-based, but will also travel to meet clients and prospects. As you progress, you could well be working from home, transmitting orders, reports and sales analyses to your office. In view of all the travel you're likely to do, it's important to have a driving licence.
Skills and Interests
To be a successful sales trainee you'll need to have:
- The ability and desire to sell.
- Excellent communication skills.
- Strong commercial awareness
- A confident and determined approach.
- Resilience and the ability to cope with rejection.
- A high degree of self-motivation and drive.
- The ability to work both independently and as part of a team.
- The capacity to flourish in a competitive environment.
- Fluency in a foreign language may also be helpful.
Entry
Personality, commercial awareness and communication skills are generally more important than academic qualifications, yet for some technical sectors a relevant degree is very useful.
If you're a graduate of any subject you can enter a company training scheme. Although, business/management, advertising or media studies and modern European languages are generally most useful, while for for pharmaceutical and medical sales subjects like life science, dentistry, nursing, medicine or pharmacy top the list. Similarly, if you're selling technical products, computing, engineering or technology are best. If you're selling financial products, you should show evidence of commercial awareness.
Generally, some experience in sales or customer service work could also be useful. Individual employers set their own entry standards and although many require a higher education qualification others welcome applications from people with all kinds of background.
Training
Your training will usually be in-house. You're likely to take a short induction course that covers the goods or services you'll be selling, as well as selling techniques and the methods used for sales administration. The skills training element may be organised by your employer or an outside specialist. After initial training, you'll 'shadow' an experienced representative and gradually take over some of their calls under supervision. You'll then be expected to get up to speed and to begin to meet your individual target.
You may undertake further training and development to support your career development. You should aim to complete the programme offered by the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management (ISMM), which will enhance your career and salary prospects. ISMM qualifications are suitable whether you're about to embark on a new career or are an experienced professional.
You could also work towards NVQ levels 3 and 4 in Sales, as well as qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and the Managing and Marketing Sales Association (MAMSA). See the appropriate websites for more details.
Although not imperative, professional qualifications can definitely help with your career development. Some senior sales professionals undertake postgraduate study in areas such as sales management, or take an MBA.
Opportunities
As a sales professional, the more successful you are, the more you will earn and the greater your chances of promotion. Career development includes sales management and senior sales-specialists posts.
Most companies have a promotion structure you could progress through, moving from trainee to sales executive, sales manager, regional sales manager and eventually sales director. Promotion is based on results, and rapid progress is a real possibility in sales. If you specialise in an area such as vehicle sales, you could become manager of a dealership.
Sales skills are transferable across sectors, and you could move industries, or into specialist areas such as financial and medical sales if you have appropriate qualifications. You could even move out of sales altogether, and go into training and education or recruitment. You could also move into related career areas, such as advertising, marketing and public relations (PR).
It's common to move companies for promotion or a higher salary. You could also set up your own company on the back of your sales skills.
Annual Income
Figures are a guide only.
- After basic sales training, typical starting salaries for graduate territory representatives are in the region of £17,000. The package for field or territory sales executives normally includes a car.
- Senior sales executives can easily have OTEs of between £50,000 and £100,000 or even more.
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