Becoming a sales staff, you will have a high salary and experience in a dynamic working environment. However, don't find jobs at will. Instead, it's necessary to objectively assess the opportunities and requirements of this profession and see if they are suitable.
The sales staff job is no longer strange to everyone. Anyone can become a sales staff in a certain field. However, not everyone can achieve success. Thus, let's explore the information below to see if you thoroughly understand what a sales staff is, detailed job description, and requirements to be successful in this profession.
1. What is a sales staff?
Sales staff are those who perform duties related to selling products/services of enterprises to customers to promote sales, expand markets, maintain relationships with customers, and contribute to the business development.
Find out the concept of sales staff
2. Sales staff job description
In a volatile business market, besides selling, sales staff must perform many other duties:
Research market, look for potential customers
Sales staff must research and analyze the market to identify potential customer groups for the products and services of the business. Afterward, they classify customers based on criteria including needs, geography, industry, and income level to have a big picture of the market and competitors and open more opportunities to contribute to business development.
With the information obtained, sales staff proceed to make a specific plan and strategy to reach the target customer. This includes creating contact lists, making calls, sending marketing emails, or attending other industry events to meet and get to know customers.
Consult and persuade customers
Consulting and persuasion are prime tasks of sales staff. During a product and service consultation, sales staff must use their expertise and skills to make customers believe your product or service is the best choice. They must provide customers with information about the functions, benefits, and unique strengths of products and services that only their business owns.
Maintain good relationships with customers
Maintaining relationships with customers who have chosen the products and services businesses provide is a critical task of sales staff. After making a sale, sales staff must continue to keep in contact with customers to ensure they are satisfied with the product or service and resolve any issues that arise.
Sales staff should keep in mind that each appointment with a customer not only ends with a signed contract but also the beginning of a long-term relationship and connection between the business and a group of potential customers.
Sales staff need to keep in regular contact with customers, build trust and connection, learn about the customer's desires and problems, assist customers in using the product, resolve complaints, introduce new products, and collect feedback.
Analyze and report results to management
Analyzing data and reporting results periodically helps sales staff self-assess their work performance and is the basis for management to grasp employee work performance and business situation. Thereby, managers can make reward decisions and plan future business strategies.
Perform other duties
Besides the above main tasks, sales staff must also ensure other ones such as:
- Process contract: After the customer agrees to buy products and services, you must promptly complete the contract. For products that do not require a contract, sales staff need to add other forms such as receipts, purchase invoices, and store customer information on the business's sales software.
- Maintain customer data: Include contact information, transaction history and feedback, create related notes to improve relationships with customers.
- Coordinate with other departments in the business: Sales staff must work closely with other departments such as marketing, accounting, product development, and engineering to ensure the sales process and debt collection proceeds smoothly.
- Guide work for new sales staff: Experienced sales staff will guide work for new employees.
Required duties
3. KPIs of sales staff
The results of sales staff are not only shown through the number of contracts signed but also through work progress and performance. Below are the common KPIs of sales staff:
- Target revenue
- Monthly revenue growth
- Average profit margin
- Customer retention rate, cancellation rate
- Order success rate
- Number of potential customers
4. Current salary of sales staff
Sales staff often receive a relatively low salary. But in return, once they sell products, they receive a higher commission percentage than other departments. Enterprises apply this salary and bonus regime to motivate the business department to maximize work efficiency and achieve actual revenue to grow the business.
Basic salary
Depending on the number of years of experience, a sales staff has an average salary ranging from VND 5 to VND 12 million per month.
Commission policy
The commission policy at each company, enterprises, and field will be different and is associated with certain KPIs. Normally, businesses apply the following commission policy:
- Fixed commission percentage
- Commission by level
- Commission based on a percentage of the business project
- Commissions based on condition
- Percentage by position and seniority
The actual income of sales staff has differences. Thus, it is hard to give specific numbers as it depends on many factors such as industry, rank, salary and bonus policy, skills, and work performance. Therefore, the income of sales staff is unlimited. The more capable the sales staff is, the higher the salary he gets.
The total income is incredibly high
5. What skills do sales staff need?
A professional sales staff needs to have a deep understanding of products, services provided, and target customers. In addition, the sales staff must feature the following skills:
Communication and listening skills
Communication skills are essential for sales staff to introduce products to customers, consult to help them understand the need and use of products, and make them feel that the product is appropriate for their needs. Furthermore, sales staff must listen to accurately know customers' needs and desires and master customer empathy to make the consultation attractive and build a close relationship in the sales process.
Negotiation skills
To successfully convince customers, sales staff must have a deep knowledge of the products and services offered and the ability to link them with the customer's desires. Some customers often make shopping decisions based on emotions and then look for information to confirm their decisions. Therefore, sales staff must connect with customers at the highest emotional level by using stories that describe how the product or service improves customer needs or paint a vivid picture of benefits received in the future.
Negotiation skills
To be successful, sales staff need to know how to flexibly use negotiation strategies such as creating alternatives, finding the common, and handling conflicts. Another negotiation skill is the ability to resolve conflicts. Sales staff need to know how to handle disputes that arise, find a win-win solution, and make sure both parties are satisfied with the final decision.
Presentation skills
In meetings and discussions, sales staff must demonstrate presentation skills to raise opinions, propose products, and negotiate requirements and prices. To deliver an attractive presentation, sales staff must define goals, shape content, organize information logically, and create stories that touch customers' emotions to convince them to choose your products and services.
Time management skills
With the flexible nature of work, sales staff must also have time management skills. Break your work down, list prioritized tasks, design a specific work schedule, or use time management tools and software. Effective time management ensures that sales staff make the most of their work productivity, build good relationships with customers, and create opportunities for their career development.
Market research skills
Market research includes collecting information on the market, customers, competitors, and industry trends. After analyzing the data, sales staff will know the needs, preferences, and customer behavior to have reasonable sales methods, optimize the approaching process, and enhance interaction with customers.
Market research also helps sales staff identify new trends and potential business opportunities to propose plans to superiors to adjust product and service development strategies to suit market requirements for expanding competitive advantage.
Skills in using tools
Grasping new technology trends and mastering tools will help sales staff handily manage customer information, improve work efficiency, find sales opportunities, and adapt to the business environment full of fluctuations.
Some popular tools that sales staff need to know include customer management systems (Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, etc), project management tools (Trello, Asana, Jira, etc), marketing automation tools (HubSpot, Mailchimp, etc), data analysis tools, market research (Google Analytics, Google Trends, etc), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Zalo, Tiktok, etc, office suite(Microsoft Office, Google Workspace).
Confidence
Confidence is also a necessary factor for the sales staff to express attractively, capture the customer's interest, and successfully persuade customers.
Skills required in the profession
6. Job opportunities for sales staff
The personnel demand for positions in the business field in general and sales staff positions in particular is always high. Even when the economic and social situation has many complicated developments, organizations and businesses still need to recruit sales staff to ensure business operations run smoothly. Therefore, job opportunities for sales staff are open to those who are passionate about this profession.
7. Promotion roadmap for sales staff
The promotion path for sales staff is different depending on the specific business and industry. Below are common advancement paths:
- Sales staff: Duties of this position are approaching customers, building relationships, implementing sales and achieving sales goals.
- Senior sales staff: Based on their ability and achievements, sales staff can be promoted to higher ranks such as sales specialists, sales representatives, sales supervisors, and sales executives. This role requires managing more significant business projects, handling complex issues with customers, and having the ability to make decisions related to strategic sales and business development.
- Sales team leader: With practical experience and leadership ability, sales staff can advance to the position of sales team leader with the responsibility of orienting strategy, assigning work, and training new employees.
- Sales manager/ Head of sales: The position of sales manager and head of sales involves managing the entire business of a department or specific project, proposing business strategies, and tracking sales goals.
- Deputy sales director: Duties of this position are operating and managing all activities related to product consumption and customer care. They are the effective supporters of the sales director, contributing to the development enterprise-wide development.
- Sales director: With success and extensive experience in business management, there will be the opportunity to advance to sales director. This position has great responsibility in building and implementing business strategies, managing business departments, and making major decisions on the comprehensive development of the organization.
- National sales director: The position requires professional and excellent management skills to run the nationwide branch system even while sitting at the business office.
If you do not develop your career according to the above roadmap, you can develop in other directions such as: sales specialist, business technician or move to another management position in marketing or product.
The promotion path of sales staff
8. Evaluation criteria of an outstanding sales staff
Managers can evaluate a potential sales employee based on:
- Professional knowledge: Level of understanding of products, core value of the business, proficient use of work support tools.
- Business results: Number of contracts signed, revenue achieved, customers' satisfaction level.
- Attitude at work: Discipline, initiative, progressive spirit, creativity, interaction and colleague support, attitude towards work and customers, etc.
Evaluating and recruiting an excellent sales staff is a challenge for any organization or business. Besides, with many different recruitment solutions, leaders and recruiters must choose the most appropriate and effective method for their organization.
In particular, recruitment through a reputable headhunter company is the leading solution. Navigos Search is currently considered the market leading company in providing headhunter services.
Featuring a massive amount of data of 375,000+ senior candidates and 85,000+ senior management candidates has become an advantage for Navigos Search headhunters to successfully support recruitment for sales staff positions or any profession.
Besides, experienced consultants who deeply understand each core industry and a strict working process ensuring the best quality information have helped Navigos Search reach new heights in customer service quality, leading middle and senior-level personnel recruitment in Vietnam.
Navigos Search - Vietnam's leading middle and high-level "talent hunting" company
Our recruitment solutions are as follows:
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Experienced consultants at Navigos Search
With more than 20 years of experience in the profession, we are proud to have supported many businesses and corporations across Vietnam to obtain the best quality personnel and accompany them throughout the process of "success after joining".
If your business needs to recruit sales staff or looks for talent for any other middle or high-level position, don't hesitate to contact us to have suitable and potential candidates!
Navigos Search - Vietnam's leading middle and high-level talent hunting company