This really is unlike any other sales role. In essence, you will be selling a concept rather than a product: how to get the best out of an organisation’s people and give strategic, professional advice on a consultancy basis. In practice this is a solutions-based proposition that is aimed to increase your clients’ productivity and sustain competitive advantage.
For example, you may be approaching a client who has struggled to remain competitive during the recent recession and has lost ground to its rivals. Your job is to go in and see what’s happening, give the big picture, analyse the issues being faced by the client, recommend a solution and provide expertise to solve specific business issues. As varied as it is interesting, the role of business sales executive is stimulating, challenging and never boring. You will work with colleagues across a range of professions, from accountancy and administration to marketing and personnel. But the main focus of your job will be to increase sales, identify potential areas of growth and push yourself to achieving your goal of forging a long and successful career.
Hours and environment
The role of a business sales consultant can be very demanding, and that reflects in the time spent doing the job. Many consultants work beyond 9 to 5 with much of their time spent out of the office visiting clients at their place of work. However, most employers have introduced flexible working schemes enabling their employees to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Skills and interests
To succeed as a business sales consultant you will need to provide evidence of a number of key skills and attributes. The list is inexhaustible, however, here are the most important qualities:
- Commercial awareness and a broad understanding of business issues
- Confidence and strength of character
- Interpersonal and communications skills
- Good presentation skills
- Problem solving ability and solutions provider
- Numerical and analytical skills
- Skilled at prioritorising tasks
- Creative and innovative
- Ability to work as part of a team and on your own initiative
- Diplomacy and a capacity to cope well under pressure
- Flexibility
- Leadership skills
Industry
As we have already seen, the business sales sector spans a wide cross-section of sub-sectors, with some more significant than the other. It is quite literally extraordinarily diverse and includes accountancy, HR consultancy, engineering consultancy and management consultancy.
Taking the latter of these as an example, this is one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK and one of the largest in the world, second only to the United States, and worth an estimated £10 billion.
Accountancy is another key sub-sector, with over 20,000 specialist firms, while the recruitment industry employs around 96,000 people and generates a staggering £22 billion for the UK economy each year.
Such is the size of the business services sector that it now employs one in five workers in the UK compared to 1 in 10 in 1981, and forecasts suggest that employment within the industry is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
But the sector has not been immune to the turmoil in the financial markets and economic slowdown. Growth had slowed down and many experts predicted a significant decline in 2009. But the industry as a whole has responded very positively to the new needs, with the sector beginning to emerge in good shape.
Indeed, demand for business services to help companies to improve their business performance and efficiency is still prevalent and many UK-based consultancies are increasingly finding new markets abroad – particularly in the Middle East, emerging markets in central and Eastern Europe and, increasingly, Latin America, as well.
Entry
This is not a job you can normally walk into straight from university, although Chelsea Clinton managed to do exactly that upon completion of her Masters from University College, Oxford in 2003 – friends in high places we expect. That said, Clinton’s appointment appears to have set a precedent (no pun intended) with direct entry straight from university becoming possible and increasingly common, without gaining prior experience ‘in the field’, as it were.
But what qualifications you have must be good, with at least a 2:1 in your degree if you are to make any headway. And it goes without saying that if you happen to have an MBA then your chances are significantly increased.
Training, other qualifications and advancement
Even if your dad isn’t a former president of the United States, most – if not all – employers will provide you with an initial induction backed up with on the job training. As you start your new role, you will likely take something of a backseat role supporting a more experienced, senior sales executive. This will enable you to understand the somewhat complex nature of the role you will be performing and get a feel for the processes involved.
Once you graduate from being a trainee, you will move on to managing your own territory by maximising sales opportunities through new business development and account management before being positioned to move into a more senior role such as business sales manager.
To be considered for promotion, you need to demonstrate a successful track record in identifying and presenting appropriate solutions to prospects and existing customers, exceeding sales targets, and a high level of business acumen.
But unlike sales jobs in many industries, the complex nature of your role will mean that career progression may take slightly longer. However, there is some solace in knowing that the financial rewards to be gained in the field of business sales far exceed those elsewhere.
From business sales consultant your next move will be as a senior consultant. Beyond that, opportunities will present themselves for those consultants who show initiative and strong business development skills.
Indeed, this is a highly lucrative and equally competitive sales career, so employers can afford to cherry pick the best candidates when the next round of promotions come. To stand out from the crowd you must possess strong motivation, presentation and planning skills, together with confidence, enthusiasm and tenacity.
This is not a career in which you can simply ‘get by’, so you’ll need to add as many strings to your bow as possible. One of those strings could be in the form of continuous professional development, such as the management consultant certificate or an MBA for those who do not already have one.
Top employers
In an industry that accounts for around one in five workers in the UK, it is no surprise to learn that there are literally thousands of employers to choose from. But some of the players within the sector include:
- Arup
- Cap Gemini
- Deloitte
- Bain & Company
- Ernst & Young
- PA Consulting group
- Mouchel
- Watson Wyatt
- BT Global Professional Services
- Change Management Group
- IBM Global Business Services
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Professional organisations
With a plethora of professional organisations operating under the general umbrella of business sales, it would be impractical to list all of them here. Instead, we have broken the sector down into the four key areas represented by the sector and highlighted the leading professional organisations within each:
Management consultancy:
Financial:
IT:
HR: