Skip navigation

Sales Managers

Also called: Sales Manager, Vice President of Sales, Director of Sales, District Sales Manager

What they do:
Plan, direct, or coordinate the actual distribution or movement of a product or service to the customer. Coordinate sales distribution by establishing sales territories, quotas, and goals and establish training programs for sales representatives. Analyze sales statistics gathered by staff to determine sales potential and inventory requirements and monitor the preferences of customers.
On the job, you would:
  • Resolve customer complaints regarding sales and service.
  • Oversee regional and local sales managers and their staffs.
  • Plan and direct staffing, training, and performance evaluations to develop and control sales and service programs.

Knowledge

Business
  • sales and marketing
  • customer service
Arts and Humanities
  • English language
Math and Science
  • psychology
  • arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, or statistics
Education and Training
  • teaching and course design

Skills

Basic Skills
  • talking to others
  • listening to others, not interrupting, and asking good questions
Social
  • understanding people's reactions
  • talking people into changing their minds or their behavior
Problem Solving
  • noticing a problem and figuring out the best way to solve it

Abilities

Verbal
  • listen and understand what people say
  • communicate by speaking
Ideas and Logic
  • notice when problems happen
  • come up with lots of ideas
Math
  • add, subtract, multiply, or divide
  • choose the right type of math to solve a problem
Memory
  • remember words, numbers, pictures, or steps

Personality

People interested in this work like activities that include
leading, making decisions, and business.
They do well at jobs that need:
  • Integrity
  • Dependability
  • Achievement/Effort
  • Leadership
  • Initiative
  • Persistence

Technology

You might use software like this on the job:

Customer relationship management CRM software
  • Eden Sales Manager
  • FrontRange Solutions Goldmine software
Electronic mail software
  • Email software
  • IBM Lotus Notes
Data base user interface and query software
  • Data entry software
  • Microsoft Access

Education

Education: (rated 4 of 5)
bachelor's degree or
master's degree
usually needed

Get started on your career:

Find Training Find Certifications

Job Outlook

Bright Outlook
New job opportunities are very likely in the future.
Salary
$101,640
per year, on average
Check out my state Local Salary Info Find Jobs

Explore More

See more details at O*NET OnLine about sales managers.