What is Sales Executive and It’s Types?

By: Job Hai | September 19, 2022 6 min read
What is Sales Executive and It’s Types?

The sales domain is dominating the market. Maximum students are now opting for sales jobs as it offers high rewards and a great career opportunity. However, becoming a sales executive is not easy. You need some real effort to convince people to spend their money. Read ahead if you want to know more about the sales executive job. 

Table of Contents

What is a Sales Executive?

Sales executives play a vital role in every industry, whether healthcare, media, or many more. It is crucial for a sales executive to maintain a good relationship with existing clients and gain repeat business wherever possible. Sales executives address customer needs by analyzing the data and pricing the budget to manage the teams within the organization.                

1.  Completing a bachelor’s degree in business or marketing.

2.  Develop work experience towards your degree by working in a part-time sales or customer service role.

3.  Strengthening your skills by working with many companies that provide training, including on-the-job training and by taking guidance from other successful salespeople.

What are the different types of Sales Executive roles?

Also known as sales representatives, sales coordinators, sales managers or business development representatives, sales executives are of different types as mentioned below-

Business to business (B2B) Sales Executive

A business-to-business sales executive is responsible for dealing with assets, products, or services between two businesses. They can work for manufacturers that sell to wholesalers or for a company that sells products or services directly to the customers.

Business to customer (B2C) Sales Executive

Business-to-business sales professionals are the ones that work directly for selling to customers who may require, need, or want their product or services. If the products appeal to a person, they become the targeted audience for the seller

Door to door (D2D) Sales Executive

This is the third type of sales executive who are directly involved in personal selling and must interact face-to-face with the customers. They prepare a two-way dialogue, immediate responses to the expectable questions of the customers and fluency in language to get the best out of their selling process.

Missionary Sales Executive

Also known as “hunters”, these types of sales executives are the ones that are on a mission, as the term says, to create new customers and new sales categories. They are responsible for client acquisition. Building new customers is considered a very difficult job, but missionary sales executives are on a mission to expand the audience of the company or organization.

The responsibilities of a sales executive can be understood depending upon the type of sales executive.

What are the responsibilities of Sales Executives?

For the B2B sales type, a sales representative should:

  • Build professional working relationships
  • Acknowledge the needs of your business customers
  • Research the market and related products
  • Present the product or service in a structured professional method

For B2C sales type, a sales representative should:

  • Concentrate on customer requirements and appropriately to make a sale
  • Being answerable to the customers through phone or emails
  • Be a link between a company and its potential markets
  • Negotiate the basis of an agreement
  • Collect market and customer information
  • Challenge any objections in order to make the customer buy the product
  • Take note of upcoming product developments and discuss special details
  • Make official proposed documents as part of a formal bidding process, which the prospective customer largely rules
  • Ensure the number of goods on display and in stock
  • Be quick with the calculations and provide customers with quotations.

In general, a sales representative should:

  • Debate on costs, delivery, and specifications with buyers
  • Record sales
  • Send copies to sales office, or analyzing data into a computer system
  • Showcase the company at trade exhibitions and demonstrations
  • Feed upcoming buying trends back to employers

Qualifications for becoming a Sales Executive

It is a very broad category which is open to all graduates but having a degree in the below listed subjects can help you gain an advantage over the aspiring sales executives. The subjects are as follows:

  • business or marketing
  • technical subjects as computing, engineering
  • advertisement and media sales
  • language studies like modern European or Asian languages

Skills for becoming a Sales Executive

  • experience in sales
  • fluency in language
  • operational knowledge of MS Office and CRM software
  • adapting and growing in a competitive environment
  • being able to deliver your point in a debate
  • understanding of marketing skills
  • determined, goal-oriented and passionate about sales

What are different job opportunities for Sales executives?

There is a plethora of job opportunities available for sales executives/ representatives. They can work under various industries such as:

  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Healthcare
  • Publishing
  • Skincare and makeup brands
  • Manufacturers
  • Retailers
  • Charities
  • Service industries
  • Industrial organizations 

What is Sales and Marketing?

We have already discussed what is sales, but one thing that you should know is that sales and marketing is important to each other. Marketing is building brand awareness and building an audience, while sales is converting that audience into consumers and bringing in profits. Both of these aspects are important for higher profits.

What to expect:

  • Being a target driven the work can sometimes be demanding and pressurized so the working hours can also vary.
  • Place and work conditions vary widely according to the field in which you operate. Sales executives could be based overseas and may work from an office base, or office at their home or use hotels as their office.
  • Sales executives are usually expected to look professional, particularly when dealing with clients.
  • The working environment created by colleagues can often be competitive.

The sales domain is expanding, and there is an opportunity for everyone. You can check out the latest and relevant job openings at Jobhai.com and apply as per your requirements. With an extensive recruiter network, you can easily find a job to launch your career as a Sales Executive.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the industry salary for Sales Executive?

The salary for sales executives in India can range from INR 1.1 Lakhs to INR 4.6 Lakhs. As per the data collected, the current average annual salary is INR 2.2 Lakh.

What makes a good Sales Executive?

A good Sales Executive’s traits are ability to influence and negotiate with different parties, optimism, and a sense of responsibility towards the company. The most important is empathy, as it is required to identify with customers and assist them with the challenges they are looking to resolve.

How long does it take to be a good Sales Executive?

For a new seller, it takes an average of three months to be ready to interact with buyers, nine months for them to be competent to perform, and around 15 months for them to ace this field by their knowledge of sales.

What does a Sales Executive do?

A Sales Executive must ensure that all the business’ profit-turning needs are met. They go through the departments that provide goods and services, for example retail stores, to gain companies profit through sales. It’s their duty focus more on management than buying & selling because the main goal is making everything set up correctly- not necessarily dealing directly with the consumers.

What is the working time for Sales Executive?

The sales executives are expected to work around 40-45 hours per week which comes down to around 9 hours a day because of the high responsibility for ensuring that the core business functions efficiently. The working hours may also vary depending upon different types of projects on which the executive is working.