[fusion_builder_container type=”flex” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”true” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_sizes_top=”” border_sizes_bottom=”” border_sizes_left=”” border_sizes_right=”” first=”true”][fusion_text]
Sales Overview
What areas of Sales can I work in?
Image source: boxcryptor
In this sales overview, we will explore employment opportunities within the sales industry, and they are often grouped into:
- Business-to-business
- Business-to-consumer
- Customer service
- Direct/field sales
- Export sales
- Fast-moving commodity
- IT sales
- Media and advertising sales
- Medical/pharmaceutical/scientific sales
- Online sales
- Retail motor sales
- Telesales.
In the sales overview, we will now explore the Sales roles, which are often found in industries, including retail, finance, transport, and manufacturing. you’ll also consider estate agents, travel agents, and recruitment consultancies for other sales-related jobs. counting on your interests and area of specialism, you’ll be selling medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, IT software, a holiday, a car, or a house.
Main sales recruiters
Many large companies – from car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, to IT, electronics and television, broadband, and mobile services – employ graduates in sales and customer service roles.
These leading employers, according to the overview, include:
- Amazon
- AstraZeneca
- Bloomberg
- BT
- Coca-Cola
- Danone UK
- EE
- Ford UK
- Fujitsu
- GSK (GlaxoSmithKline)
- KPMG
- Mars UK
- Mercedes-Benz
- Microsoft
- Mondelēz International
- Nestlé
- Nissan
- Philips
- Samsung
- Schroders
- Softcat
- Unilever
- Virgin Media.
In this sales overview, let’s explore what is it like working in sales?
Graduates can expect:
Varied working environments as sales departments are target-driven, challenging, and really busy, while fieldwork or medical sales involve long hours far away from home, and telesales involves regular office hours or split shifts.
A basic starting salary of between £20,000-£30,000 for a sales executive, with the prospect to earn more for meeting targets – especially because in some companies the extent of commission which will be earned is uncapped so there’s the potential for top overall earnings for talented sales employees
An emphasis on creating, building, and maintaining profitable customer relationships, which needs a mixture of sentimental skills including communication, diplomacy, confidence, and therefore the ability to affect rejection to be judged by your results.
Sales Overview in skills demanded by employers
Recruiters typically search for candidates with:
Excellent communication skills
Effective time management
Honed presentation skills
Confidence, resilience, and persistence
Good customer service skills
Ambition and drive (to meet targets)
Networking and relationship-building abilities
Initiative to figure independently, also as being a part of a team.
Where can I get sales work experience?
Any work experience that permits you to develop your customer service skills and skill to speak are going to be valued by employers taking over staff. Jobs in retail, hospitality, or telesales are widely available on a part-time basis – for instance, working as a retail sales assistant.
Some larger companies, like Microsoft, Nestlé, Nissan, and Unilever, offer summer placements or one-year industrial internships in sales or customer management. Other recruiters offer sales, marketing, or general management internships which will provide a fast-track to graduate sales positions for successful applicants.
Finding a Graduate Sales Job
Large companies across a selection of industries offer sales graduate schemes, including Microsoft, Softcat, and Nestlé. Other companies offer sales, marketing, or general schemes where you’ll tend the prospect to rotate between the varied departments. you ought to check employer websites for details of the way to make a web application.
You can find graduate sales positions, like that of a sales executive, through specialist sales recruitment agencies or job sites. For instance, if you’re finding out a medical sales position in pharmaceuticals or health care then head to CHASE.
If you have the characteristics of a salesman, like the power to be decisive and multitask, you’re results-orientated and have many business ideas, self-employment is a choice. While being an entrepreneur has its challenges, those with sales skills and an abundance of self-belief may find this route fits in perfectly with their ambitions.
Sales Overview in key issues within the Sales Industry
Online shopping and globalization have given the customer more choice and successively greater power. This has pushed customer care to the forefront of any successful organization and resulted in salespeople wanting to come up with new ways to sell their products.
This has also led to an increased demand for graduates with digital marketing and relationship-building ability. You’re more likely to need skills in relationship management and consultative selling – a personalized service resulting in repeat sales – as against counting on strong negotiation, resilience, and persistence tactics to clinch deals.
Also, with social media having such an enormous impact on society, customers are taking to popular sites like Twitter and Facebook in significant numbers and raising complaints via these channels. The sensitivity and diplomacy required in responding so publicly involve customer service professionals with digital skills and thus the power to resolve issues quickly and professionally.
Top 5 skills for a career in sales covered in this sales overview:
Confidence – maintaining a positive attitude
You’ll suffer all manner of rejections by prospective customers throughout your career, then you’ll require a high level of confidence, positivity, and tenacity. Having this unwavering faith in yourself and therefore the product you’re pitching, beat the face of resistance and rejection, is vital. Chet Patel, director, Commercial, Global, BT, says the simplest salespeople remain self-assured.
‘You need to be able to transfer belief in yourself and your product to the customer if you’re getting to achieve success, he says. ‘But never, ever confuse confidence with arrogance.’
Resilience – communicating with conviction
Chet also believes that reacting positively to knock-backs is vital. Each sale is usually crammed with obstacles, so you would like to possess the idea to beat any challenges thrown your way.
‘You may have put tons of your time and energy into trying to land a deal, but it didn’t compute,’ he adds. ‘You need to be resilient and mud yourself off, and believe that you simply will land a subsequent one.
‘Communicating with conviction can help transmit your passion for sales in an interview. Researching the industry, the corporate and therefore the role will allow you to emphasize how your strengths and experiences cause you to be the perfect candidate. With different sales roles and areas you’ll add, it’s worth exploring the UK’s sales industry.
Active listening – understanding the customer’s needs
Communication is prime in building trust and creating a rapport with customers, believes Mark Denton, director of Riverside Motor Group. He says, ‘It’s important that salespeople are confident and knowledgeable when advising customers, but the price of listening can easily be overlooked.
‘Through all business transactions, Mark explains how it’s vital to avoid personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs. This is often because the customer has the simplest understanding of their own wants and wishes, then the salesperson must listen carefully to possess the best understanding of this.
‘The best because of ensuring complete coherence is to ask clarifying questions and summarise what you’ve been told,’ suggests Mark. ‘A major part of active listening is to treat others with the respect and a spotlight you want to receive during a conversation so that they feel their requirements are understood and can be adhered to.
‘Claire Snell, global head of HR for the venture between Unilever and PepsiCo, also feels that sales graduates should move listeners during the recruitment stage of applications.’ There’s a standard misconception among graduates at assessment centers that it’s all about talking, especially in group exercises,’ she says. ‘But it’s often the applicants who listen well, summarise and lead the group to a choice that impresses us most.’
Rapport building – selling your personality
Unleashing your personality is equally valuable when it involves developing your customer service skills. Seeing as authentic and interesting will endear you to others and gain their trust. Building a strong rapport with customers is significant as you’ve to convince them that you simply are the simplest person to sell them a product. there is no better time to means these skills than in your job interview as this is often the last word sale. You’re selling your talents but, even more importantly, you’re selling your personality.
Entrepreneurial spirit – Continual self-improvement
The top sales candidates possess genuine entrepreneurial drive and spirit, claims Claire. Something as simple as trading on eBay can go a surprisingly great distance in showing you’re able and agile enough to form your own breaks.
‘By having the power to demonstrate that you simply simply can craft opportunities where they’ll not obviously exist and see these through to execution and delivery, you’ll show that you simply have a natural talent for selling,’ she says.
For those with these attributes, working for yourself and starting your own business could also be something to think about either now or within the future. Explore self-employment and what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Rising to challenges and possessing an appetite for self-improvement also are important. Be comfortable with critically reflecting on past experiences.
For more information: click here
Looking for help? Get in touch with us
[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]