Five Key Skills to Start a Career in Sales
Five Key Skills to Start a Career in Sales
Healthy sales extend the shelf life of an organization. It also increases the relevance of a company in the market. Salespeople play a vital role in ensuring that the company draws consistent and healthy sales figures throughout its operation. They put their skills and expertise to use, embrace change, learn, and follow new market trends to stay relevant in complex business scenarios.
In this article, we will be looking at the skills required to start a career in sales. Later, we’ll delve deep into the sales positions’ skills, duties, and job descriptions.
Let’s begin with answering the question – when to start a sales career?
When to Start a Career in Sales?
Starting a career in sales and marketing is incomplete without understanding the meaning of sales and marketing. So, first things first – how would you define sales and marketing ?
Sales involve interacting with the prospect market, customers, etc., to persuade them to purchase a product. Meanwhile, marketing focuses on developing a loyal customer base by interacting with the general population and then forming a niche in the process.
The day you decide to pursue sales and marketing marks the ascend of your career in sales. To embark on this journey, aspiring candidates start with equipping skills and knowledge that provide them with a peek into the nitty-gritty of the field. You can take up one of the best sales certification courses to understand the field in-depth. In the following sections, we’ll take you through the skills required to start a career in sales.
What Are the Skills Required to Start a Career in Sales?
Positive attitude
Sales and marketing are result-oriented fields. Thus, having a positive attitude helps cope with regular failures and motivates sales representatives to grow leaps and bounds in the field. Moreover, a positive attitude in salespeople leads to an increase in confidence.
Resilience
The dictionary defines resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.” At the core, salespersons are problem solvers who have solutions to most problems. However, there will be times when salespeople will fail in offering a solution to their customers. Therefore, aspiring sales personnel must be aware that success is relative and changes with every situation. They need to be resilient and patient in difficult times and work on themselves to come out of the predicament quickly.
Active listener
It is often misunderstood that a salesperson’s job ends when a prospect becomes a customer; however, that is just one part of the process. A salesperson must continuously push boundaries to offer help and guidance a customer requires. Only an active listener can sustain sales because you need to listen to and comprehend customers’ requirements in the marketing strategy or products or services.
Personal connect
It is not a weekly or monthly conversation but everyday chats and exchanges that make salespeople the best at their job. Before starting a career in sales, be sure to undergo a comprehensive course inclusive of training sessions to understand how to connect with your customers personally. Just a quarterly or yearly follow-up doesn’t reap the benefits, whereas a training course will teach you different techniques and processes to connect with your customers personally.
Self-awareness
A salesperson’s most prominent critic is themselves. Rather than blaming the product, process, market, manager, or customer, they hold themselves responsible for failure or missing a sales target or responsibility. Self-awareness gives them an edge over other professionals, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. Working on them leads to a successful sales and marketing career.
Starting a career in sales is a multi-fold process that doesn’t end with completing an education qualification or endorsing specific skills. Instead, a sales career requires experience, training, and hard work to succeed. While you find out what it takes to start a career in sales, here are some in-demand sales job roles that will ensure bright prospects in sales.
Popular Sales Job Roles
More than 15 sales job titles have gained traction in the past few years. According to Ongig, an online portal, sales reps, sales consultants, sales managers, etc., are some of India’s popular sales job roles. Here are some popular sales roles in India that have dominated the industry in the past decade and continue to do so today.
- Sales representative
- Account executive
- Sales manager
- Business development manager
- Salesperson
- Sales Consultant
- Sales development representative
- Sales rep
- Sales Executive
- Account representative
- Chief revenue officer
Among the popular titles, sales managers and executives capture most of the employment market. Sales managers encapsulate 8.8% of the employment market. Meanwhile, sales executives have a 2.5% share in the employment market. Lastly, we will discuss the future prospects of these two sales jobs in India.
Sales Executive’s Job Description and Responsibilities
Sales executives are an inevitable part of the sales department as they oversee the business functions related to the sales or purchase of goods or services. Their main emphasis is on managing the team and creating profits for the company by offering their services and expertise.
Therefore, a sales executive should be trained with the required skills and knowledge related to the field. For this, you can take up different sales certification courses online. Read below the responsibilities of a sales executive.
- Maintaining relationships with the customers
- Paying attention to customers’ requirements and incorporating them into the product or service of the organization
- Following market trends and keeping an eye on competitors
- Sales executives need to perform price negotiation and delivery requirements, among others
- Sales executives maintain sales records and other sales and marketing activity paperwork
- Performing market research, interacting with clients, coming up with quotations for clients, etc.
Sales Manager’s Job Description and Responsibilities
The sales manager leads a team of sales executives and representatives. They provide guidance, training and allocate resources and responsibilities amongst all the team members. In addition to that, the sales manager also performs an array of responsibilities enlisted below.
- Developing a sales plan to forecast an organization’s sales and revenue figures.
- Monitoring and setting business and individual targets.
- Offering appropriate training and development programmes to sales executives.
- Drawing inferences from market research to track new trends in consumer behaviour, marketing plan, and product design.
- Undertaking and overseeing activities related to the promotion of goods and services.
The demand for sales managers is on the rise, and companies are seeking candidates who have experience in planning and implementing sales strategy, customer relationship management methods and techniques, monitoring and managing the sales team, etc.
If you are an aspiring sales executive planning to develop a successful career in the field, you must consider undertaking one of the sales certification courses online from Emeritus India . We have partnered with several well-renowned education institutes to offer the best sales certification courses to working professionals and other individuals wanting to attain a competitive edge over others. So, enrol yourself for a sales certification course to ensure a career that is filled with rewards and achievements.
