Sales Director Career Information

As a Sales Director, you’re more than just a [career_link salesperson]. You run a group of employees to make sure your department gets work done. Often both regular employees and [career_link sales-managers] will report to you. From hiring to firing, you, the Sales Director, lead the group and turn its employees into skilled team members who get the job done. You also sell new products to high-profile clients and deal with any dissatisfaction or problems that arise.

This position calls both for good people management skills, and a quantitative aptitude. On a daily basis you monitor employee progress and assign jobs to the people working in your division at the company. A lot of the Sales Director’s instructions will be based on the financial reports both received and analyzed. You review these sales plans for the future and use the current progress as a gauge for if your department is doing well, and where they can improve.

When it’s time to hire new employees, you’re in charge of finding the best choices and training them once hired. Then you keep an eye on performance and offer guidance to those who aren’t doing such a hot job. In tough circumstances you may need to fire someone, but often a little pep talk can get your employees back on track.

Outside your daily tasks, you also try to predict upcoming sales trends and prepare for them. When your company creates a new product or service, you plan strategies for selling it both in the short and long term. If a hot product is selling rapidly, it’s because a talented Sales Director such as yourself is making it fly off the shelves.