This article – The Hottest Industries For Sales Jobs – comes from the daily SM&M Magazine enewsletter. The market demand for salespeople is strong right now (we can attest to that fact) and is going to remain high:
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.
And now for the hottest topic in hiring:
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 medical market is not lost on the younger generations. A good majority of the younger sales candidates we encounter mention an interest in the medical market. The boomer generation will definitely push that market to a new level within the next 10 years.
“Companies are in a very strong recruiting mode for every level of salesperson,” he says. “We’re seeing a talent war at every level.”
We are seeing that war also. I think this war is always taking place since talented salespeople are always difficult to find and hire. That issue is probably accentuated by the currently booming economy’s demands for more salespeople.
One note about the present situation – sales candidates typically do have more than one opportunity they are considering. The Rock Star mentioned this yesterday and it is crucial in this market. If you identify a strong sales candidate, it is imperative that you keep your hiring process moving at a decent clip. Any stalls, oversights or delays provides your hiring competition a window to close the deal with your candidate.
One final note from the article regarding a predicted decline in manufacturing employment:
The sales industry has shifted to the service side, Hazen says. “It’s about solution selling, not catalogue selling.”
We can confirm this from some of our manufacturing clients. Hiring doesn’t have to stop when a sector has declining employment. Instead, it is important to make sure the current team consists of strong, solution-selling sales reps. An upgrade of the salesforce may be in order if the revenue numbers are simply not there. You do not want to be selling in an increasingly difficult market with an inferior team – sounds harsh but it is the truth.