Professional Sales

Sales jobs seem vary a lot, what questions should I ask to make sure it is right for me?

• What are your objectives for the next 5 years?
• What is the typical sales value?
• Where do you sit within the marketplace?
• What is the typical sales cycle?
• Do I have to generate my own leads?
• What training do you offer?
• Is the role heavily commision based?

What skills do I need to have?

For IT and pharmaceutical sales, it is usually easier to find a job if you have had a degree in a related subject. However for most sales role, the most important factors are usually:

• Confidence
• Excellent communication skills
• Persuasiveness
• The ability to work on your own
• Persistence
• Organisation

Sales terminology

Business to business sales (B2B)

A lot of professional selling is done between businesses rather than directly with the public, this could range from dealing with distributors and retailers through to government agencies and other business services.

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline consists of a list of clients that you would like to do business with (prospects), accordingly the list will include company names, telephone numbers and the details of the decision makers. The sales pipeline will also include the prospective value of these accounts and when you expect to win the business, if managed properly this will allow you to forecast sales for the future.

Using a sales pipeline, gives you better control in understanding whether you are on track to hit your sales target and ultimately gain sales commission.

Sales Funnel

The process of working prospects through your pipeline, in practice this means that you may start of with a large number of prospects, but during the process of contacting them, many will not end up buying your service/product. The process of loosing prospects, can happen at any stage of engaging with the client, this includes : Cold calling, meeting the client or at the negotiation stage. So in practice you may start with 100 prospects, 30 will agree to a meeting, 10 commit to negotiations, but actually only 5 buy.

Lead Generation

Before cold calling, you must identify which companies would be most likely to buy your product/service, this is called lead generation.

Cold Calling

A big part of any tele-sales role, involves calling busineses that you have had no previous contact with.

Telephone Sales

Office based, this role usually involves an element of generating leads and then cold calling, depending on the business, this may lead to meeting the client face to face, for more technical roles, the face to face meeting may be carried out by a senior sales person.

Telephone sales are usually heavily commission based, this allows the best employees to make substantial bonuses, however the role can be more stressful as a result.

Field Sales

Most field sales persons, will spend the majority of the week visiting clients. The role is usually more relationship based, and more likely includes visiting existing clients, with the objective of increasing the value of exisiting accounts.

The basic salary for field sales is often higher than that in telesales, however the commission is typically less. Company cars, mobile phones and laptops are often part of the package.

Sales commission

Nearly all sales roles include commision, this can either be related to a set sales target, or as a percentage of an individual sale. Commision is usually paid monthly.

Some sales are heavily commission based, this means that the basic salary may be very low, this in turn increases the pressure to gain more sales, many people thrive in this environment but it is not suitable to everyone.

Sales territory

Due to the vary nature of field sales, it is the norm for indivuall to be given a territory to look after, this is determined by

1. number of sales people
2. geographic region
3. value of business in region

As an example a company wih five field sales representatives may split the country into four regions, N,S,E,W and have one sales representative focusing soley in London (see point 3).

Sales cycle

Simply put, the length of time from contacting the decision maker to closing the deal. This is a good question to ask when applying for a sales role, as it can indicate what level of knowledge and level of relationship you will need to have with decision maker and the product you are selling. For instance if a sale can be completed over the phone in a single phone call, then it is likely that the value order will be relatively low and accordingly a lot of sales will have to made to make substantial money. If the sales cycle runs into many months, it is more likely that the product/service you are selling is of high value and requires more technical knowledge and face to face meetings.

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