Welcome to an Exciting Marketing Career!

Sales and Sales Management

Description

Sales professionals interact directly with current and prospective customers. Through salespeople, marketing becomes concrete and meaningful. As the old saying goes, "Nothing happens until something is sold." Similar to students' perceptions of retail management careers, many students have very inaccurate perceptions of sales jobs and careers. That is, selling often evokes images of pathetic characters like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. As you will learn, such images are highly inaccurate and incomplete.

Sales is an exciting professional career with tremendous responsibilities. Today, professional sales representatives concentrate on developing and nurturing relationships with customers. Most personnel in an organization seldom come in contact with the customers they influence; so the role of the salesperson is critical to the company's success. In most organizations personal selling is the typical entry-level, management-track position. As a salesperson, valuable product, industry, customer and competitor knowledge is learned. Perhaps the most important function of the salesperson is to identify customers' problems and to creatively present products and services as solutions. In the process, salespeople generate virtually all of the company's revenues.

Career Opportunities

Sales and sales management opportunities exist in a wide range of profit and not-for-profit organizations. Industrial and commercial sales offer increasingly challenging and rewarding opportunities commonly involving systems selling and requiring a broad range management, and in some cases, technical training. Sales trainees quickly become full-fledged salespersons. Consequently, advancement is typically rapid, with movement through such positions as territory sales manager, district sales manager, national sales manager, and upward. Without a doubt, the demand for motivated graduates with leadership capabilities is tremendous in sales organizations.

Educational Background

The wide range of product and market opportunities and a variety of interpersonal situations faced by sales personnel indicate the need for carefully matching one's background and interests, technical skills, and academic training with available career opportunities in sales and sales management. Careful career planning early in your academic training can guide you to a set of courses that will make you an attractive candidate to sales recruiters. Course work in leadership psychology, oral communication, persuasion, English, time management, effective listening and personal goal setting are helpful.

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