Dominic Carter: hectic life.

Their role is all about communication – with colleagues, customers and the team – as well as leadership, and meeting targets

Sales management is also increasingly a graduate profession, though there are plenty of opportunities for entry at all levels of academic qualification and an increasing number of vocational degree courses for employees already into their careers.

Case-study 1: Dominic Carter

Dominic Carter, who began his career as a telephone sales executive in publishing during the 1980s, has just been appointed to the top job at News International’s new merged media sales organisation; this generates revenue across Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers (publisher of ‘red-tops’ the Sun, News of the World and Page3.com).

His is one of the most powerful positions in media sales and life for Carter is ‘about to get very hectic’, he told ModernSelling.com this month.

Carter recently ran the Times Media trading department, Carter and returned to News International in Wapping in 2006, following a lengthy stint at Mirror Group Newspapers.

Interestingly, Carter began his sales career working for ModernSelling.com publisher Neil Warren in the 1980s working on the business magazine Sales Direction. The magazine, edited by ModernSelling.com editor Nick de Cent, was something of a hot-bed of talent employing Jeremy Clarkson as freelance motoring writer and Independent columnist Deborah Orr as a staffer.

Running a team

Sales managers tend to operate at the intermediate level between members of the sales team and senior management – usually the sales director, sales & marketing director or general manager. Depending on the company’s organisation structure, sales managers either run teams of salespeople across a defined geographic area or within a specific product sales group. 

An important part of their job is mentoring and providing motivation to individual members of their sales team with a focus on ensuring that daily, monthly, and quarterly sales targets are achieved. They may well engage in some selling activity themselves, but their function is not to be the best salesperson on the team; on the contrary, it’s to help others succeed with their own sales activity. However, rather like football managers who almost invariably have prior professional playing experience, sales managers will usually have achieved some sort of sales success themselves if only to cement their credibility with the team.

Saira Khan: media spotlight.

Case-study 2: Saira Khan from the ‘Apprentice’ series one.

Saira Khan (born 1970 in Derbyshire) was runner-up in series one of the Apprentice. Before applying for the show, Khan worked as sales manager for an online recruitment company. Her qualifications include a BA in Humanities and an MA in environmental planning.

She has been a TV presenter on BBC’s Temper Your Temper and Desi DNA while hosting her own programme Beat the Boss. Her column ‘Saira Shouts’ appears in the Daily Mirror, and she has become a regular panelist for BBC Radio Five Live and has appeared on a number of other stations including BBC Radio 4 and the BBC Asian Network, as well as running her own baby skincare company.

Keeping in touch

An average day for a sales manager involves a variety of meetings and phone calls with sales team members, fellow sales managers, and senior managers about company goals and new products. They may also work closely with the marketing department, attending new product briefings so they can keep their teams informed of developments and also feed back customer views from the field.

Their role also involves disseminating other areas of company policy to team members, though this is usually supported with a range of media like the company intranet, in-house magazine and other employee communications channels.

Naomi Lay: advertising.

Creative solutions

Responsibility for supporting the day-to-day selling activities of individual sales team members means sales managers tend to keep a close eye on other managers within their organisation as well as on competing companies as they come up with creative solutions to common sales problems.

Case-study 3: Naomi Lay from the ‘Apprentice’ series 3

Naomi Lay, 27, from Cornwall, was originally a PA and then became a sales manager. Asked to describe herself, she says: ‘People that know me would describe me as loud, motivated, fun, determined, compassionate and energetic.’

Lay graduated from University College London with a 2:1 in Modern European studies and is fluent in both French and Spanish after spending time studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Complutense University of Madrid. She has worked as an English language teacher, a tour guide and a photographer before climbing to strategic sales director at Advertising.com, managing a team of people who were all older than her.

Following the Apprentice, Lay had some minor media success in her native Cornwall. She was one of the judges on the BBC Radio Cornwall Singing Sensation competition at the Royal Cornwall Show and had a spell co-hosting on Radio Cornwall. She also modeled for photo shoots in The Times and Hello magazine.

In December 2007, Trader Media Group, which owns Autotrader, appointed Lay as its new head of online display advertising, managing the publisher’s display advertising team and reporting to the organisation’s ecommerce director. She has also launched Naomi Lay Consulting.

Industry-specific knowledge

Sales roles across different areas of industry have much in common at the fundamental level and this can mean that experience gained in one sector is both relevant and welcomed in another. However, industry-specific knowledge can also be important, so young professionals interested in becoming sales managers need to look for specific industries of interest and relevance rather than applying haphazardly.

For instance, graduates with some technical experience might consider working in the medical, pharmaceutical, information technology or telecommunications industries, amongst others. If you are numerate you might consider financial services (though this is a tough area right now – Ed).

Graduates with an arts degree might be suited to a position with a publishing firm or media organisation; languages are in great demand within export sales departments, while good business studies graduates tend to be welcomed almost anywhere.

It is vital to choose an area of industry that you will enjoy, as it is almost impossible to sell effectively if you don’t like what you do. Other considerations, of course, are potential future earnings, quality of training offered, organisational size and culture, and prospects for advancement.

There is a shortage of good-quality applicants for sales positions at all levels, with demand far outstripping supply (does Britain still look down on ‘sales’ – Ed?). It is relatively easy to find a sales job, the risk being that you end up in some dead-end role in a company going nowhere. For the more in-demand positions, expect to face a rigorous application process.

Adrian Hayes: sold almost 200 Airbus aircraft.

Leaders

Companies are looking for natural leaders in their sales managers, with strong ‘people’ skills, and a ‘can-do’ attitude that can make an impact from day one in the workplace. Applicants able to distinguish themselves as organised, articulate, and committed to excellence will stand the best chance of succeeding.

Case-study 4: Adrian Hayes

Adrian Hayes is an adventurer and only the 15th person to reach the planet’s three extremes – the North and South Poles and the summit of Mount Everest. The former special forces soldier became a sales director for Airbus in the Middle East and sold almost 200 aircraft.

Hayes is now a Dubai-based professional team and executive coach, and motivational speaker. In business, Hayes has been in senior positions in a variety of industries, while his move into coaching stemmed from 14 years’ studying personal development that started with a thesis written on appraisal systems for his MBA.

Throughout a colourful and varied career Hayes has tackled anything from being a British bricklayer to a sheep farmer in New Zealand, a hotel manager in the UK to a vegetable farmer in Norway, and a rock singer/guitarist in the United Aran Emirates to a diver in the Pacific.

A resident of Dubai, Hayes has lived and worked in eight countries, visited 100, and speaks three languages – Arabic, Nepalese and Malay – in addition to English.

Extensive training

Typically, companies provide extensive training for new hires as there are many basic selling skills and management techniques to learn. Graduates can expect induction classroom training covering company policies, products, and the competition, followed by further on-the-job training under the guidance of experienced sales staff. They may attend specialist training in basic selling skills and presentation techniques, with more advanced courses on offer as they progress.

With the aim of seeing a relatively quick return on their investment, employers like to see graduates making a contribution within weeks or months depending on the complexity of the industry in which they’re operating.

Pay

The rewards for this quick learning curve and hard work can be considerable, with typical salaries in the mid-£30,000 to low-£40,000 range, depending on company size. Sales managers are rewarded with an extensive package of remuneration, with commission (for achieving sales targets) an important extra salary component, while a company car, mobile phone, and the usual healthcare and fringe benefits are pretty standard across the profession.

This month’s Croner Sales Rewards 2008-2009 survey found that sales professionals’ average basic pay exceeded that of their colleagues in marketing, finance and human resources (HR) across most levels of seniority, in some cases by as much as 10% at junior manager level. The average basic salary for a middle manager in sales is just over £37,000 – 8.5% higher than the average for middle managers nationally.

For a head of function position (head of sales, sales director) average basic pay lagged slightly behind those of professional colleagues in marketing, finance and HR, but remained 1.5% above the national average for this level at just under £54,000. In addition, there is usually a valuable additional bonus element to the salary which kicks in when the team has hit its targets.

Highest levels

Sales and sales management is becoming an increasingly attractive area of employment for graduates and one that is full of opportunity for the right candidate. Applicants who can demonstrate a management track-record backed by consistent sales achievement will never be short of job opportunities and will progress to the highest levels in business. 

Case-study 5: Mark Lendon

Sales director Mark Lendon has just celebrated ten years with assessment, placement and training company Pareto Law in a career that has seen him mirror the agency’s normal approach on behalf of clients. Lendon joined Pareto Law in 1998 when the company had just eight employees, a turnover of less than £1m and a single office in Wilmslow. Today the company has seven regional offices with revenues of £6.8m for the year 2006/07.

Mark Lendon: from zero to hero in ten years.

Lendon graduated from Salford University with a degree in construction management, Lendon attended a Pareto assessment day in London and was offered a role within the company. He started with a two-week training programme, and spent his first three months recruiting other graduates for assessment days.

Within six months, he was promoted to a business development executive role and was one of just two employees to start the Pareto London office in 1999. By 2001, Mark was southern sales manager and heading up the London office, which then moved to larger premises in Chiswick with its own training and assessment centre.

At the end of 2004, Lendon was made a board director and now manages the sales teams across the Pareto Law operations. Over the last ten years he has been instrumental in the growth of the company, securing agreements with major brands such as Dell, Computer Associates and Fujitsu Siemens, together with specialist companies such as Capscan and Mitel.