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The Hottest Industries for Sales Jobs
October 27, 2006
By Rebecca Aronauer
It's a good time to be in sales. With the economy on an upswing, virtually every industry is looking for competent, dedicated professionals to keep business going. Technology, legal reforms and demographic changes have added to the need for professionals in virtually every industry for sales.
"It's a very vibrant market. Within executive recruiting, we're seeing a boom that really mirrors the late '90s," says John Meeks, the Vienna, Va.-based president of professional services for Vedior, a staffing firm. When the Internet bubble burst and following the recession after 9/11, some sales jobs were cut. But now sales departments are bulking up their lean staffs.
The trend for hiring shows no signs of stopping, according to Cindy Hazen, the founder of Sales Executives, a recruiting firm based in Nashville, Tenn. "We have been booming for the last two years in sales and project to be booming for the next five," she says. A survey released by ExecuNet, an executive recruiting company based in Norwalk, Conn., in July of this year revealed that sales was the fastest-growing field for executive jobs.
Technology has changed the lives of salespeople and their customers. Consumer demand for network security, IT infrastructure and software is huge. "Right now a hot, hot trend is network security software solutions," says Kathleen Steffey, the director of national recruiting for Naviga, a business services firm based in Tampa, Fla. Online shopping also has changed the way clients buy. Since customers can now purchase directly from the manufacturer, they expect advice from sales reps. "Salespeople need to raise their level of salesmanship to a consultant level," Hazen says.
This evolution has increased the need for salespeople in consulting and professional services, and in the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, demand for accountants has never been higher. "The strongest areas for sales and marketing people have been the financial services area and the business services area, which would be consulting," says Mark Anderson, the president of ExecuNet. "We definitely see sales as a growth area. ... Overall, the market has been very strong since the middle of 2003."
The aging U.S. workforce is also changing the sales profession. Companies soon will need to replace a generation of baby boomer salespeople. For the pharmaceutical and medical industries, this also means a growing market for their services.
The future looks promising in virtually every industry of business-to-business selling. In the next eight years, sales jobs for software, consulting, professional services, pharmaceutical and insurance are all expected to grow. But the pool for these jobs has not grown accordingly. Now finding a talented and resourceful salesperson is the biggest challenge.
"There are a lot of jobs, but there is a glut for talent," Meeks says. While once salespeople interviewed at a few places and hoped for a call back, now salespeople are given multiple job offers. Dave Molnar, the president of the National Register, a sales recruiting frim based in Columbus, Ohio, agrees. "Companies are in a very strong recruiting mode for every level of salesperson," he says. "We're seeing a talent war at every level."
A good salesperson can find a position in almost any industry, so keeping the best agents happy is crucial, Hazen says. "When you have a superstar, make sure they know they're valued. If not, your competition will be looking at them."
Software, technology consulting, professional services, pharmaceuticals and insurance are all leading the hiring boom.
SOFTWARE
If Naviga Business Services is any indication, the software industry is hot. In the first half of 2006, the company has placed twice as many salespeople in software jobs than they did in all of 2005. "High tech has definitely rebounded from the recession of 2003," says ExecuNet's Anderson, who has also seen his company place many people in the software industry. On track to quadruple its placement results this year, Naviga is only one company benefiting from the second surge of the Internet.
In modern business, almost everything except the handshake takes place online. This means network security is crucial for maintaining trade secrets and privacy. "There's a huge market for organizations to protect other companies," Steffey of Naviga says. "It's becoming more of an issue because technology is dominating what we do today."
The nature of business-to-business software sales is consultative, which means designing creative solutions is encouraged. It also means that companies invest heavily in their sales agents. In part because of the demand for software salespeople and the knowledge base required, it is one of the more lucrative industries for sales. "Both [IT and software] are paying well above average," says Simon Bradstock, the Princeton, N.J.-based director of product management at FactivaSales Works, a news aggregator for the sales industry.
Software sales also involve collaboration with clients, which is appealing to some. "It's an opportunity to create solutions," Bradstock says. Software salespeople are not just selling a product; they're selling a service around a customer's needs.
TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING
The growing dependency on online services also has been a boon for the consulting industry. With more technology being pushed out to users, there is more of a need to protect company information, according to Phil Harris, the vice president of Akibia, an IT infrastructure and solutions company based in Westborough, Mass. "Network solution security is about a third of our business, and it's growing," Harris says. "I honestly don't see anything impeding this growth in the coming years."
Recent legislation is also making consulting a hot industry for sales jobs. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 in reaction to the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom scandals (see box below). The law raised the level of accountability for books to the senior level and forced companies to record all communications. These regulations have required companies to invest in technology to track their spending, e-mails and instant messages. That trend has led to the growth of companies that provide these services, which in turn has led to demand for representatives to sell these products. "All of those non-compliance concerns put pressure on IT departments requiring technology solutions," Harris says. "It's a trickle-down effect that puts pressure on us to provide salespeople and service people to support the client base." Akibia itself is expanding in the United States and Europe.
Although there is demand for sales consultants, Harris warns that the consulting industry, especially on the IT side, demands a strong command of sales and technology. But for those who work hard, there are various ways to succeed. "The [industry] lends itself to a number of different opportunities for aggressive folks," he says.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
The professional services industry also has benefited from Sarbanes-Oxley-mandated changes. The new laws raised the level of responsibility to the senior level and put scrupulous accountants in high demand.
"A good accountant with a good background can name their price," says Hazen, the owner of Sales Executives.
The demand for services such as accounting has created a demand for salespeople in professional service firms, as companies want to establish themselves in this burgeoning market, according to Meeks of Vedior. "Sarbanes-Oxley is a driving factor for why people are hiring in the accounting sector," he says. "There is a huge demand for qualified people."
With consumer confidence up and the economy doing well, it is no surprise that the sales side of professional services is doing well. The demand for accountants is up, and so is the demand for the selling of their services.
"Sales in particular drives the bottom line, and with a robust economy, many different industry sectors are looking to extend their footprint in this very hot market," Meeks says.
The one segment of professional services that is going down, according to Meeks, is temporary hiring. With the shortage of talent, his clients want permanent labor. "We don't have the volume that we would in a different kind of market," he says. "If you want the talent, you have to be willing to take them on full time."
PHARMACEUTICALS
While sales as a whole is dependent on the economy, pharmaceutical sales are nearly indestructible. There has always been a need for drugs and there will always be new innovations. Dan Kerr, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based vice president of recruiting for Personnel Solutions, a human resources provider specializing in medical and pharmaceutical sales, says he has never seen much of a slowdown in hiring. "The nice thing about pharmaceuticals is that it's recession-proof," he says. "Unlike the IT industry or the industrial industry, which are so volatile to market trends, there's always going to be a need for the pharmaceutical industry."
The few concerns of the industry such as expiring patents, mergers and FDA rejection are small compared with the growing demand for drugs. With baby boomers aging, the need for pharmaceuticals only will increase. "The medical market is an expanding gross market," say Doug Cain, owner of the Sales Recruiting Network, based in Pittsburgh. Despite the negative image that pharmaceutical companies have for pushing designer drugs and influencing medical professionals, working with doctors has a kind of glamour, and the service is people oriented. "You're truly helping people," says Hazen of Sales Executives.
MANUFACTURING
In the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics study by industry, manufacturing was the only segment of sales covered here that had a predicted decrease in employment from 2004 to 2014.
There are two causes for this trend, according to Hazen of Sales Executives: online buying and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Tangible goods can be ordered directly online without the aid of a salesperson.
The sales industry has shifted to the service side, Hazen says. "It's about solution selling, not catalogue selling."
The second problem for manufacturer sales is NAFTA. Since there are no trade tariffs between America and Mexico, many factories have relocated to Mexico for its low labor costs. Those sales jobs often go with plant jobs. "Less manufacturing plants [means] less sales reps for manufacturing plants," Hazen says. And she should know: Before starting Sales Executives, Hazen was a manufacturer's salesperson in the 1980s. Her former company is now out of business.
INSURANCE
Like pharmaceuticals, insurance is a steady industry. People will always need insurance, and companies need agents to sell it. And like pharmaceuticals, insurance suffers from a bad image. One of the industry's biggest problems is finding talent.
"It's hard to attract new salespeople into the insurance industry," says Marty Murphy, the vice president of professional recruiting for the Jacobson Group, based in Atlanta. "It's not a sexy business."
Added to that, insurance salespeople have a reputation for overselling, and the industry as a whole is sometimes seen as stingy for taking a long time to settle claims. Though Murphy believes that things are improving, he admits, "there's kind of a stigma to the industry that's a little bit challenging to overcome."
But that perception, coupled with the retirement of a generation of industry sales reps, means demand is high for people interested in building a career in insurance. The demand for people has made insurance companies realize that they can't afford high turnover, and the industry has become long-termcareer oriented. "I think people can really build a career out of it," Murphy says. "There are a lot of opportunities for personal and economic satisfaction from the job."
SIDEBAR: GET IN THE ACT: Sarbanes-Oxley
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002, with key legislation going into effect in November of 2004. The premise of Sarbanes-Oxley (named for the two U.S. representatives who sponsored the legislation) is to avoid another Enron-like fiasco. The law established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which oversees the auditors of public companies. In addition, accountability for financial records was raised to the senior levels of the company. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act prohibits personal loans from a company to senior executives. The law also requires the archiving of all communications and the creation of an auditable system of recorded transactions and business correspondence.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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