Sales Manager Career Path
All the insights below are based on Jobtrees users’ actual career paths, aggregated together, instantaneously, to show you the real and unique most common career progression for each role. Use this as inspiration for your next job and to re-calibrate expectations for what success is in your next career step. After you search, toggle over to the Family View to see what roles are in the same job family. Use this to get a sense of the hierarchy of roles within this job family and inspiration for other jobs you can target.
The career path for a
Based on 809 Jobtrees users who were a Sales Manager in their career, on average, they have 3.68 years of experience and 2 jobs prior to this one. They have spent a significant amount of time in this job before moving on 4.7 years on average and earn $64K per year on average in this more senior role.
7% of Jobtrees users moved to another job with this same title in their next career step. The most common career steps after Sales Manager are Sales Representative, Regional Sales Manager and Business Development Manager. While Sales Representative is from the same job family, Sales - General, there are other common opportunities outside this discipline that Jobtrees users are taking as shown by Regional Sales Manager, also being a common career path from Sales Manager.
If you are looking for more ideas on potential career paths from this job, you should also consider Account Manager, Business Owner and Account Executive as they commonly lead to Sales Manager as well. Find more insights below about this specific career path based on our Jobtrees users' experience.
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The roles above are the most common next steps in our users’ career paths.
Use the + button and watch the ‘branches grow’. It adds another level of potential career steps based on the most common paths taken by Jobtrees’ users.The roles below are the most common previous steps in our users’ career paths.
Use the + button and watch the ‘roots grow’. It adds another level of potential previous career steps based on the most common paths taken by Jobtrees’ users.Read insights on these paths here
Understand more about the career path
How can I become a
The most common career steps to get to Sales Manager are Sales Representative, Business Development Manager and Regional Sales Manager based on actual career paths reported to Jobtrees.
Sales Representative, the most common step before Sales Manager, is a more senior role which is common to see in career paths. This is a natural and common career progression as titles aren't synonymous across companies so a higher title doesn't always mean higher pay and larger scope. Focus more on the scope of the next role than title progression in building a path to Sales Manager.
While Sales Representative is the most common, there is no specific role leading to Sales Manager that is an overwhelmingly common path. Another characteristic of the Sales Manager career path is that experience within the same job family as this role isn't common and as a result likely not necessary. This shows there are many potential paths to becoming a Sales Manager so focusing on translatable skills is likely more important than a specific role.
While Sales Representative isn't from the same job family as Sales Manager, Sales - General, it can help to have direct experience in this discipline shown by Business Development Manager also being a common career path to Sales Manager.
What should I know about the career path
Career paths aren't linear with people often returning to a prior role which is what you see with Sales Representative being the most common role to and from Sales Manager. This is common when people move to companies of different sizes or choose to return to a function they fit well with. Career paths aren't linear with people often returning to a prior role which is what you see with Sales Representative being on the path to and from Sales Manager. This is common when people move to companies of different sizes or choose to return to a function they fit well with.
Sales Manager is part of the Sales - General job family which has a variety of unique role within that discipline. Choosing to pursue a role within this family likely will mean that you will need to look outside of your discipline to find new roles and so should focus on related skills as part of that search.
Other common titles that have similar job requirements and career paths as Sales Manager are Application Sales Manager, Branch Sales Manager, Distribution Sales Manager, Field Sales Manager, General Sales Manager, International Sales Manager, Marketing And Sales Manager, Outside Sales Manager.