I worked in media sales for 20 years. Made a boatload of money, but burned out early. I have been lucky to have had these last several years at home (mainly to recover from sales, LOL!) I am now ready to venture back in to the work world, and am looking for my new path. I will not go back to sales–I feel it is a young person’s sport.
DH has a finance degree and works in sales. He is a born salesman, not the stereotypical kind though. He works in an industry which requires cold calls, the personality who perseveres in the face of closed doors and slammed doors. It’s feast or famine, and you have to be almost delusional in your optimism to weather the down turns. I could NEVER do what he does. But if you are good at it, you can make into seven figures in a good year.
He even loves it when we have garage sales. He is totally in his element. He doesn’t understand my lack of enthusiasm and how I’m willing “to let a great sale walk right out of here!” He’ll see someone leaving, follow them to their car, and somehow they are back and buying that old set of chrome office furniture you were thinking you would have to pay someone to haul off. He’s amazing.
My father had his masters degree in engineering from Purdue. He continued to be a “sales engineer”. Most of the parts that we sell have been designed by our company by our expert “sales engineers” working with designers and engineers at the companies we sell to. Plenty of smart kids go into technical sales. They know what they are doing and they do more than just pitch a part out of a catalog.
My sister got a degree in elementary education. She taught for a couple of years but wasn’t happy. She managed to get an entry level sales position with a large textbook publication company. It became her career. She moved up the ladder and ended up being a national sales supervisor. She retired last year after more than thirty years with the company.
I majored in animal science and now own a pet store. People think of retail sales as something anyone can do (NOT!) but it’s actually helping the store customers solve their pet problems. The career step from retail sales associate is often up to the distributor or manufacturer rep, similar to the jobs the OP is talking about. From there – sales management, or product management. And upwards from that is a possibility.
The key is to overlook the fast talking guy in the plaid pants and think of the person helping others with what they need, using very specialized product and industry knowledge. If it was called “sales consultant” it comes off better than “sales person”.
In retrospect, I think that going after some of the industry rep jobs when I graduated might have been a good career step for me!