VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) expert for the call on Sales as a career was Sailesh Iyer, who is currently the Head of Sales and Marketing (Gujarat circle) for Reliance Infocomm. He has over 21 years of experience in sales, starting out with a stalwart in the Indian sales field – Xerox. (Xerox is pretty much the company everyone who got into sales two decades ago used to join.)
Listen to VoiceTAP Sales as a career call by clicking here
Sales as a career in a nutshell
‘Sales’ and ‘marketing’ are confusing terms, so let’s first clear this confusion. Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin – but with a few distinctions. Marketing focuses on the pre-sales stage of a product / service; it involves, among other things, customer/competitor behaviour analysis, researching whether a market exists for a product, product positioning, user feedback on what a product should be priced, past/present/future of the target audience, etc. Sales, on the other hand, focuses on customer acquisition, selling a product to the customer, customer retention and customer support. Sales requires on-ground experience and more direct interactions with a customer, be it an end-user, distributor or channel partner.
Sales is both an art and a science. It’s not just about “convincing people”. Nothing is haphazard – there is a specific methodology involved. To be a good salesperson it is vitally important to be aware of the organizational set-up and aspirations of a customer organization (for B2B sales). Further stages involve negotiating an agreement so that both the company and the customer are satisfied with the terms.
Remuneration in the sales field is mostly variable-pay based, but this not something to be distraught over. If your performance is good then there’s no stopping you from taking home a fat paycheck. But the important point here is being dedicated and willing to work the hours.
Sales invariably requires a person to spend time at the ground-level for a few years. Nobody can become a marketing manager overnight. On-ground experience, however, taxing it might be teaches valuable lessons that are useful later on in career. The important thing is to learn ‘to learn’ – and not start preaching to customers / distributors. Sales is an excellent path to top managerial positions (it’s true for many companies) because an employee who started off with sales has a working knowledge of other aspects of an organization such as financials, marketing etc.
Bottom Line
Many MBA graduates do not consider sales a ‘glamorous-enough’ career when compared to areas such as marketing, financial, advertising etc. The fact is that competitive people willing to work often find it easier to rise higher up the ranks with a sales background.
