Sales & business development
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fastest hiring function
- Route in
- Typically Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA). 1 course lead here
What the work involves
Day to day
Finding customers and closing revenue - prospecting, pitching, negotiating and managing accounts after the sale. Performance is measured directly and publicly against a number.
Who this suits
Fit
Resilient, personable people who are motivated rather than paralysed by a target. Sales is the most reliable route into commercial leadership because revenue responsibility is visible from day one.
The honest reality
Read this one
Rejection is the daily experience and the target resets every quarter regardless of last quarter. A large part of income is variable, and a bad market punishes good performers. Job security tracks recent performance closely.
The route in, step by step
6 steps from where you are now.
Class 12, any stream Required
One of the most open doors in corporate work.
A graduate degree Required
BBA, B.Com or any degree. Communication matters more than the subject.
Take a field or inside sales role Required
FMCG, pharma, financial services, technology or industrial products. The first year is largely rejection and that is where most people leave - knowing it in advance helps.
Learn a sales process Required
Prospecting, qualification, objection handling and closing. Sales is a learnable process, not a personality trait, and the people who treat it that way outlast the naturals.
Build a track record Required
Consistent achievement against target is the only currency, and it travels between employers better than any qualification.
Area and regional management, or key accounts Optional
Team leadership and territory, or enterprise and key account sales, where deal sizes and cycles are both much larger.
Courses that lead here
1 mapped route into this career.
The roles this becomes
2 lanes out of the same starting point.
Common questions
The ones people actually ask about this work.
Is sales a real career or a fallback?
<p>It is a real career and it is treated as a fallback by people who have not looked at it. Business development is one of the few functions where performance is unambiguous, progression is fast for those who deliver, and the skill transfers to every industry and to running your own business. It is also the function most companies find hardest to hire well.</p>
What is B2B sales actually like?
<p>Long cycles, multiple decision-makers, and a great deal of listening. Enterprise deals take months and involve procurement, technical evaluation and finance sign-off. It is closer to project management and problem diagnosis than to persuasion, which surprises people who imagined it as talking.</p>
How is pay structured?
<p>Usually a fixed component plus variable pay linked to targets, and the ratio varies widely by industry. Understand the split, the target, and whether the target is achievable in that territory before accepting — a high on-target figure attached to an unreachable number is not the same as the money you will earn.</p>
What decides who succeeds?
<p>Persistence through rejection, genuine understanding of what you are selling, and follow-up discipline. Most deals are lost by not returning to them rather than by being outsold. The people who do well keep meticulous records of every conversation and never let one lapse quietly.</p>
Test this against your own priorities
Pay, hours and entry route matter differently to different people. Compare this against the alternative you are actually weighing, rather than against the average.