Career Focus: Sales

To start a career in sales, you’ll need to tick the following boxes:

• Money and success-driven
• Not afraid of putting yourself out there
• Confident talking to people at different levels.
• Naturally persuasive
• Resilient and determined to succeed
• Never give up attitude

With all products and services being sold in different ways, there are a variety of sales roles and team structures. We’ve compiled a handy guide to help you navigate job titles while searching for your next role.

What does that sales job title mean?

Lead Generator

Working as a Lead Generator is a great start to a career within sales.  The purpose of this role is to verify key information needed further up the sales chain to enable a successful sale to be achieved.  This role will usually involve an element of online research as well as some high volume outbound calling to potential business customers, along with database cleansing and upkeep.

Appointment Booker

As an appointment booker, your work may involve some lead generation or may use the leads pre-qualified by the lead generators. Your main duty would be to book appointments with leads for the sales team to then go through the individual company’s sales process, pitch and close the sale.

Telesales Executive

Telesales executives are predominately phone-based and are normally required to cold-call businesses and consumers.  The purpose of this role is to sell a product or service over the phone. Normally, Telesales roles tend to be selling products that a customer would happily purchase over the and wouldn’t require a face to face interaction.  This role exists in both B2B (business to business) and (B2C business to consumer) environments.

Business Development Manager

Although the title can be misleading, this role is generally not required to directly manage any staff. Instead, their role is to manage the development of the relationship with a customer and the sale that should follow. Commonly found in business that have a longer sales process, their responsibility is to take a prequalified lead through the sales process. The products they are selling are less transactional and can take months to develop, sometimes including liaising with multiple decision makers.  This role would usually involve maintaining the customer relationship moving forwards.

Account Manager

The account management team isn’t responsible for the initial sale at all. Instead, their role comes into the process after the initial sale has been made. Sometimes ensuring delivery is made, customer satisfaction has been met and then developing sales in the future with that account. They are the first point of call for current customers, in businesses where relationships last longer and regular, frequent contact is required.

Sales Executive

Sales executive roles are typically found in businesses that do not have large sales teams. They will often incorporate the full sales process and all the responsibilities that come with it. From generating leads, through to managing the post-sale care and order processing. Often sales executives are a mix of all of the roles in this article.

Senior Sales Executive

The next step up from a sales executive. As the name suggests, they are often more experienced in sales and have demonstrated a continuous performance. Dependant on the organisation, this role may involve being directly responsible for the performance of the sales team, whilst still doing some sales. Alternatively, it may just be a recognition of a solid sales record and vast experience.

With every business having a different sales department structure and sale development length, there are numerous variations of those listed. A career in sales can be very rewarding, if you are cut out for it!