careernav.

Leading Companies & Markets

Sales cover all industries: consumer, industrial, telecommunications, IT, medical, health, retail, leisure and entertainment. The larger ‘blue chip’ multinational organisations tend to have larger sales forces, bigger infrastructure and better organised training programs. The ‘Employer of Choice’ reputation is highly sought after. Career progression is more structured, with more management layers. They also tend to be more rigid, a little slower to react, and less nimble than smaller medium sized enterprises, often with more office politics

The consumer, banking and healthcare markets tend to be higher paid than retail, industrial and telecommunications. Leading consumer goods companies include Unilever, Cadbury Schweppes, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Foster’s, Lion Nathan, Coca-Cola Amatil, Panasonic, Nike and Adidas. The ‘Big 4’ banks are attractive, so too are the industrial transport companies Toll and Linfox and the telecommunications companies: Telstra, Vodaphone and Optus. The larger insurance companies are AAMI and AMP.  In healthcare specialised medical product companies and pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Roche are well regarded.

Environment & Culture

Usually you work indoors sitting at a desk analysing numbers and information in an attempt find a competitive advantage and reason to make the customer call. There is always a good reason to call on the customer - new products, new promotions, new advertising, price changes and limited promotional deals. There is also product reviews, quarterly business reviews with senior management, marketing and customers. There is a certain level of entertainment in the occupation either as a reward for achievement or pitch for new business...

You travel to and from your key clients as required. It’s a flexible career, usually with professionally presented offerings. You need to be organised, efficient and disciplined to achieve sales targets. Your normal hours are 8.00am to 6.00pm week days. Large corporations are more structured, less flexible and move slower. Smaller companies make decisions quickly, are less formal and more personal. But they offer lower job security as they have less financial capital behind them.