How to choose right career in Sales

A successful sales career requires you to choose a role that fits in with your personality. It can be extremely varied and while one can keep you excited for the next day, another might just be the bane of your existence. Changing job roles frequently is risky, so why not use this guide to decide the perfect sales role for you? You need to know the specifications of each sales job right from the entry-level posts to more seasoned professionals, your responsibilities and prospects. So, let’s begin!

1. Sales Development Representative (SDR)

DESCRIPTION: Sales Development Representative is a great way to enter the sales genre, as hiring organisations don’t ask for previous experience. Thus, SDRs appeal to fresh graduates or those planning to modify career paths.

RESPONSIBILITIES: Being an SDR, you must reach out to potential clients, cold call, provide company information, start social media prospects, create proposals, lead qualification, etc.

REQUIREMENTS: Candidates must be ambitious, easy to learn, teamwork, positive, determined and eager. Most organisations are ready to hire a graduate with less work experience too.

2. Inside Sales Representative (ISR)

DESCRIPTION: Inside Sales Representatives (ISR) work with CRMs on a computer and have no field duties.

RESPONSIBILITIES: As an ISR, you’ll cold call, send and follow-up with proposals, qualify leads, finalise deals and store customer data.

REQUIREMENTS: You must be proficient in multitasking, customer relationship management, writing and phone engagement.

3. Account manager

DESCRIPTION: The account manager regulates the company-client relationship after a finalised sale; duties include product/service upselling, referrals and customer satisfaction.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You’ll have to identify potential sales opportunities among current and new customers, and cultivate fruitful relationships.

REQUIREMENTS: You must be approachable, helpful, good at follow-ups with customers, etc.

4. Outside Sales Representative

DESCRIPTION: Outside sales representatives meet prospective clients outdoor.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You must travel and meet clients, network with customers, attend corporate events, forecast sales and meet deadlines and targets.

REQUIREMENTS: You must enjoy travelling and stay calm under unpredictable circumstances. Also, be proactive and motivated, have top management and organisation skills, etc.

5. Sales Engineer

DESCRIPTION: Sales engineers incorporate the technical understanding of a software engineer and the business proficiency of a salesperson.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You will be required to connect with potential clients, answer product questions, communicate obstacles to the concerned teams, compose technical aspects of contracts and proposals and assist salespeople to give demonstrations.

REQUIREMENTS: Many organisations hire candidates with a Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science or a similar degree. But a five-year exposure in pre-sales profiles works too. Perfect for those who have the expertise and social skills to make presentations, communicate well and can handle the sales job.

6. Sales director

DESCRIPTION: A sales director is a seasoned member, and recruits and leads the sales team with decades of work experience in managerial roles. Of course, you are expected to have a strong sales background.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You will be at a senior position and will have the responsibility of recruiting and training new sales managers and their teams, forecast sales for the organization, generate sales strategies and motivate the teams.

REQUIREMENTS: You must have a decade-long experience in managing sales teams with forecasting and analytical expertise.

7. Business development manager (BDM)

DESCRIPTION: A BDM is perfect for business development jobs as they are the ones who present the company’s services, bring in new clients and handle existing ones.

RESPONSIBILITIES: You must identify and contact clients and inform them about the company and its services. Also, you should attend meetings, conference and other corporate events to interact with customers and the market. Apart from creating proposals and quotes, you must train the team and ensure targets for business growth.

REQUIREMENTS: As part of the business development job or role, you must be experienced in either sales or marketing with good organisational capabilities. You must have excellent IT and communication skills with special proficiency in Microsoft Tools such as PowerPoint, Word, Outlook and Excel.

That said, the success of your sales career hugely depends on the choice of your job. Choose your specialisation as per your educational qualification, soft skills and personality and watch as you soar to great heights.

Author Bio

Digvijay Singh Kanwar is a professional content writer and digital marketing expert and he loves to write about finance and tech based articles. For more details, you can contact him at [email protected].

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.