Opportunities to further your career within the Sales industry

The demand for salespeople within the digital economy has continued to increase year-on-year with organisations paying more than ever competitive salaries and packages to secure the right Sales talent.

Sales salary overview for the South African market

Recent Changes

Due to customers becoming concerned that Sales professionals would be more interested in earning their commission than providing value, the role of the salesperson has had to adapt to changing times. Therefore, companies try to replace the customers’ suspicion with a relationship-building sales process which in the long term leads to retained custom, rather than a one-off. The customer experience and longevity of sales are now in the center of all good sales activity. Key account management is central to all business development.

• Future Prospects

  Sales companies or departments usually have a very rigorous promotion structure. In most cases, you start off as a sales executive, move on to an area sales manager and then to a national sales manager role, and at the end, you become a sales director. Within sales, you can get easily promoted as long as you deliver the right results. Promotions do not only lead to better salaries but also to better customer accounts and more responsibility.

   

• Salt's Advice for Getting a Job in Sales

  Employers’ Requirements

  Employers usually have a high expectation of the salespeople in their company. They expect, for example, that Sales professionals not only maintain the relationship with current customers but also establish new ones, agree on terms and conditions with clients, regularly close sales and advise on future product developments. Furthermore, Sales experts are expected to create detailed proposal documents, and constantly gather market and customer information.

  CV Requirements

  The core competencies for an excellent salesperson are great communication skills, the ability to sell products and services (which might be relatively complex sometimes), the capability to cope with a high level of competitiveness, and good team working skills. Relevant industry experience and a passion for the product goes a long way. Furthermore, it is beneficial to know one or more foreign languages as businesses increasingly operate on a global level and need employees who can communicate with the different markets.

  Sales Job Interview Preparation

  In Sales, personality plays such an important role, interviewers tend to ask you questions which help them to find out more about your personality, including their strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, and preferences. Some of these questions are:

  1) What’s worse for you: not meeting your targets or not having happy customers?
  2) How would you describe this company’s target market?
  3) What do you dislike most about the sales process?
  4) Please name three nouns which a former client would use to describe you.
  5) What do you think our company could do better with regards to sales?

  Educational Requirements

  Generally speaking, personality (e.g. excellent communications skills, commercial awareness) is considered more important by hiring managers than academic qualifications. If you have a degree, the following subjects could increase your job chances: business, marketing, media, technology, or engineering. Large sales organisations usually organise graduate schemes, for which you need an upper second-class degree or above.