MightyRecruiterWhen your company is hunting for a sales professional, you no doubt have a list of characteristics you would like to see in your ideal candidate. The key to filling a position with someone who meets your desires is to incorporate those desires directly into your listing. If you want certain capabilities and experiences from your applicants, you will find yourself poorly served by writing a job description that is vague or too general. Your goal shouldn’t be to attract as much interest as possible, but instead to attract the highest quality interest possible. The key to this is to imagine your dream applicant and tailor your employment announcement to him or her. Write about the role in such a way that only the best prospects could see themselves doing well in the position. Additionally, talk up your company in your listing. Underline the great benefits your organization provides. Highlight the business’ unique history and values. In short, you want every part of your posting to help prospective hires prescreen their backgrounds and abilities and reach their own conclusions about their suitability for the job and for your company. Refer to this sales representative job description sample to guide you as you write your own listing.
Sales Representative Job Summary
Glen Garry Electronics seeks motivated, hungry sales representatives to join our team of winners and conquer new markets! You will bring your proven track record of high-volume conversions to work every day with a fire in your belly for more. You are relentless, aggressive and always closing, yet you always leave a customer feeling taken care of instead of taken advantage of. No call is too cold for you. No lead is too tenuous. You understand that success takes hard work, the willingness to call every lead and the relentless drive to pursue every sale through to the close.
Glen Garry believes in taking care of our team, so we provide some of the best benefits in the industry:
• Salary plus commission. No draw here!
• Group health, dental and vision
• 401K with company match after 90 days
• Up to six weeks paid vacation
• Annual company prize picnic and other opportunities
• Tuition reimbursement
Sales Representative Job Responsibilities
- Generates and follows up on leads through personal contacts, provided lead lists, and interaction with the public
- Organizes daily schedule to efficiently pursue new accounts and service existing contracts
- Obtains orders and follows up with related departments and customers to ensure satisfaction
- Modifies sales approach and presentations quickly through observation and analysis of sales outlets, venues, and prospect needs and reactions
- Proactively studies existing and prospective partners to forecast sales opportunities
- Presents regular reports to keep management up to date on results of all planned and unplanned sales and lead-generation activities
- Keeps competitive through active monitoring of competitor initiatives and activities. Gathers information on products, merchandising tactics, delivery schedules and pricing.
- Makes recommendations to keep company competitive through evaluations of results and competitor activity
- Offers uncompromising customer service by taking ownership of any customer concerns through entire process, including after resolution
- Maintains records on sales area and performance for historical context and as required by law
Sales Representative Skills and Qualifications
- Minimum five years of high-volume sales of large-ticket items, investment vehicles or real property
- Finance experience preferred
- Cold-calling experience
- Closing ability
- Prospecting and lead generation
- Experience independently managing a sales territory
- Development and maintenance of client relationships
- Customer Service
- Negotiation
- Some experience with contracts
Company Profile
Glen Garry had a vision over 125 years ago, a vision of rotisserie turkeys that the whole family could enjoy on any occasion. His dream lives on in the modern day and our dedicated sales staff now represents a portfolio of amazing products and services from kitchen appliances to electrical motors and the support to keep them delivering on the promise of tomorrow. A drive to share innovation with everyone in the world has propelled Glen Garry Electronics to a dominant position in the industry and the future couldn’t be brighter.
Some Job Description Do’s and Don’ts
- Do use bullet lists to break up information for easier reading.
- Do present enough information for candidates to determine if the position fits their skills and values.
- Do keep it honest when talking about your company.
- Don’t use vague or evasive language to try to increase your applicant pool.
- Don’t stuff your listing with keywords. Search-engine optimization shouldn’t feel forced or make your content difficult to read.
Sales Representative Job Responsibilities
If you want to hire go-getter sales representatives, you need to take the same proactive attitude in writing an effective sales representative job description. A well-written job description makes the difference between an extensive pool of qualified candidates and the muddied waters of thousands of irrelevant job applications. Make your open jobs more attractive to the talent you need by revising your job description with a few proven principles.
Avoid the temptation to fall back on old habits by tossing your old job description entirely. Start from scratch with a bulleted list of the daily responsibilities involved in working as a sales representative for your organization. Call out your industry, the customers you target and how that impacts the job. Including this information increases your likelihood of attracting jobseekers with prior experience in your sector. Begin each sentence with action verbs to infuse them with energy and create a sense of active engagement.
Now trim that list to the top 10 essential bullet points, and you have the sales representative job description you need. Not sure how to apply this advice? Take a look at our example sales representative job responsibilities:
- Cold-call prospective B2B customers for placement of retail consumer goods in customer stores
- Research the territory market to identify viable potential clients and narrow down prospects
- Generate viable warm leads and transfer to account manager for further pursuit
- Provide prospects with extensive, knowledgeable information on products and benefits
- Respond to inquiries and complaints with proposed solutions
Sales Representative Job Specifications
Be as bold in stating what you want out of a candidate as you are in making a sales pitch. Enhance your sales representative job description further with a list of job qualifications to clarify the skills necessary in a potential candidate for the job. Keep this list short as well, up to six bullets maximum. If you can, narrow it down to four mandatory requirements and two desirables that are strongly preferred but not wholly necessary. Many jobseekers self-screen using these criteria, and each applicant who screens him or herself out based on this list is one less resume you have to review and reject.
If you’re not sure what skills to focus on, have a talk with your account managers. Ask about their best team members and what makes them successful. You can even review performance reports and management feedback on other sales representatives to identify consistent themes in the top performers. Use that to build the job qualifications section of your sales representative job description.
We’ve provided a sample of the sort of requirements you might see in sales representative job specifications:
- Prior experience as a #1 sales performer in a high-level environment with seven-figure quarterly targets
- At least 5 years of experience in B2B retail product sales
- Strong knowledge of customer market demographics for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)
- Expert problem-solving abilities; able to adapt quickly in the face of rapid change
- Previous work with major household brand names a plus
