The majority of a manufacturer's sales come from present customers. Therefore, this group of customers cannot be ignored. As a salesperson, you would call upon these accounts on a regular basis to fill orders and arrange details of delivery and payment. At the same time, you would attempt to sell them more of the product and introduce them to new products or new benefits of existing ones. These calls are generally seen as service calls.
In addition to maintaining existing accounts, you would try to open new accounts with promising clients. This involves investigating the marketplace to find out about new businesses that need your products or any businesses that are receiving poor service from competitors. The more successful salespeople also look for opportunities to create demand where seemingly none exists.
After potential customers are identified, you will need to analyze the particular needs of each. Then you must develop a sales presentation tailored to these needs, contact the potential customer, and arrange a sales call. If your presentation is successful, you then service the customer's account.
Since salespeople are the ones in a corporation most in contact with customers, they can provide important information to management.
They are often in the best position to steer product development changes or suggest new products that will find market acceptance. Also, salespeople are often the ones most in touch with the competition and can judge when special opportunities arise.
The sales force can provide data used in the corporation's market analyses. Weekly or monthly sales figures provide information for tracking advertising and promotion effectiveness. Because this data is critical for market development, reporting is an important responsibility of sales representatives.
Since salespeople are the principal representatives of their corporations to most industrial customers, they must be able to maintain and enhance their organization's reputation. They must be knowledgeable about their customers' manufacturing needs and their products' applicability to those needs. To facilitate this, many companies put new industrial salespeople through training programs before sending them into the field.
Experience in sales is not necessarily important in getting an entry-level job, and many companies actually prefer to hire people with no experience, so that they can train them exclusively in their selling methods. Educational requirements vary by company, although a minimum of a bachelor's degree is necessary in many large organizations. Industrial sales of complicated technological products (e.g., conveyor belts, elevators, computers) requires special training; often people with technical bachelor's degrees are hired for these positions. It has become common to see people with MBAs selling high technology or high-priced items, because manufacturers feel that they are better able to analyze a customer's business needs and speak the jargon of business clients.
Positions in industrial sales are often viewed as good training for upper management positions. A large percentage of the presidents of American corporations have sales backgrounds. Salespeople who have the inclination and ability to manage as well as sell have excellent opportunities to move into sales management.
SECURITIES SALES
When investors want to buy or sell securities, they call on securities salespeople, known as stockbrokers or account executives. When stockbrokers receive such an order to buy or sell a security, they relay it through the brokerage firm's order room to the stock exchange where the security is traded. If it is not traded on an exchange, the order is sent to the firm's trading department, which buys or sells it in the over-the-counter market.
In addition to arranging for the execution of buying and selling orders, stockbrokers work as financial counselors for their clients. This can involve advising on the complete financial portfolios or merely supplying the latest price quotations for securities in which the client has an interest. As a broker, you would help clients make financial decisions by furnishing information on the advantages and disadvantages of an investment and the activities and financial position of the corporation represented.
Securities firms make commissions on the trades they execute on behalf of clients. Your income as a broker would be dependent on commissions from trades you arrange. Therefore, you would constantly try to be aware of opportunities that you could recommend to clients, either to expand their existing portfolio with attractive new securities or sell currently held ones and buy better ones. You should maintain a high awareness of the investment market to be able to spot attractive opportunities. For you to do this you will need good working relationships with business people outside the firm and colleagues in your firm (especially colleagues in the research department).
Stockbrokers often specialize in either small, individual clients or large, institutional clients. Individual investors are handled by brokers who specialize in "retail" trade. Institutional investors can be corporations, insurance companies, charity organizations, or other organizations with large amounts of money to invest. Brokers specialize so that they can better serve the needs of their clients. Different clients have different expectations from investments, and you have to be able to recommend securities to match these expectations.
Brokers often specialize also by the type of security sold, such as corporate common stock, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, commodity futures, or stock options, to name a few. By limiting attention to specific categories, a broker can more easily become an expert in a field. Having such expertise makes the information and advice provided to clients more valuable.
As a stock broker you must have highly developed oral communication skills. Most of the work you will do with clients will be over the phone, and you must be able to develop rapport without the benefit of face-to-face interaction. You must also be able to deal with substantial pressure. When there is a great deal of activity on the exchange, the pace quickens, and you act as a funnel for information between the financial markets and your clients.
Regardless of the pressures you face, you must be able to maintain and handle efficiently the details involved in buying and selling securities. You must be well organized to be able to analyze what security fluctuations mean to each of your clients and recommend trades when appropriate. While the buying and selling activity of your job occurs between 10:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M., successful brokers are alert to opportunities twenty-four hours a day.
Almost all states require that brokers be licensed. In order to obtain a license, you must pass an examination and register as a representative of the firm you work for, according to the regulations of the securities exchanges where your firm does business or of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). The examination, given by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the NASD, or the exchanges, assesses your knowledge of the securities business. It covers such topics as investment terminology and law, options, bonds, the SEC, and the Federal Reserve System.
Stockbrokers come from a variety of educational backgrounds, but people with business degrees are especially welcomed. MBA's are actively recruited by large security-brokerage firms, especially for work in institutional sales. Most large firms provide training for new brokers through formalized programs. During the training period, new employees are exposed to the securities market as a whole and its specialized segments. They are also trained in subjects needed in order to pass the state brokerage examination. These training programs last anywhere from four months to a year, depending on the firm.
INSURANCE SALES
Insurance salespeople sell various types of insurance policies, including life insurance, property and casualty insurance, health and accident insurance, annuities, and pensions. Customers of insurance policies include individual families and homeowners, corporations, and other large institutions. Because of the different needs of clients, insurance salespeople usually specialize in serving one client group.
Insurance salespeople can be either agents or brokers. An agent works for a single insurance company and sells only policies the company underwrites. A broker is not under exclusive contract with one company; he or she places policies with whatever company best meets client needs.
Insurance sales involve three main areas of activity: identification and solicitation of new clients, client-needs analysis, and client-policy servicing.
Much of an agent's or broker's time is spent trying to find new insurance customers. For salespeople who sell to individuals, this can be done by participating in civic affairs, keeping track of new community arrivals, and monitoring new home purchases. Those involved in institutional sales become aware of new prospects by following business trends in a specific area or industry. For instance, a salesperson would read trade and business journals to find out about new companies that might need group health insurance for an expanding work force or property insurance for new facilities. Once potential clients have been identified, the salesperson approaches them and arranges a sales presentation.
As an insurance salesperson, after having convinced a customer of a general insurance need, you would analyze specific needs. With individual customers this may involve no more than discussing existing financial constraints, future expectations, and finding appropriate prepackaged policies. With your extensive knowledge of the insurance field, you can often make customers aware of insurance gaps they may not know exist. With institutional clients, however, the process can be complicated, for policies are customized to fit their particular requirements. Insurance policies can be forms of investment as well as expense for clients, so sales personnel often need to give advice on the financial aspects of policies.
When a policy has been sold, your involvement with the client does not stop. You have to be available to answer questions, help in claim settlement, and provide detailed records of policy status on a regular basis. You also should continue to analyze the client's insurance situation to recognize new needs and recommend policy modification or extension. The service aspect of insurance sales is important, because existing customers represent an important source of new business.
Brokers receive commissions from the insurance company that underwrites the policies they sell. Most agents working for a single insurance company are kept on salary for a number of years, after which they receive commission alone. Therefore, as with most sales positions, income for insurance salespeople depends to a large extent on the amount of energy and time put into selling-and its success. The educational backgrounds of brokers and agents vary. Most companies look for mature individuals who are politely persuasive rather than overtly aggressive.
