Best Jobs For Former Sales Managers [2023]

It’s tough to be a sales manager nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a sales manager isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become sales managers in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many sales managers no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former sales managers to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former SALES MANAGERS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former SALES MANAGERS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Account Executive	2.36%
2	Sales Representative	2.3%
3	General Manager	2.23%
4	Store Manager	1.79%
5	Director Of Sales	1.74%
6	Account Manager	1.56%
7	Regional Sales Manager	1.3%
8	Sales Associate	1.22%
9	Vice President	1.22%
10	Manager	1.09%
11	Sales Consultant	1.08%
12	Owner	1.06%
13	Business Development Manager	1.04%
14	Operations Manager	1.03%
15	Business Developer	0.93%
16	Customer Service Representative	0.82%
17	Assistant Manager	0.69%
18	Project Manager	0.63%
19	District Sales Manager	0.61%
20	Office Manager	0.59%
21	National Sales Manager	0.57%
22	Director Of Sales And Marketing	0.55%
23	Assistant Store Manager	0.54%
24	General Sales Manager	0.5%
25	Sales/marketing	0.49%
26	Consultant	0.49%
27	President	0.48%
28	Owner/operator	0.46%
29	Administrative Assistant	0.45%
30	Territory Manager	0.43%
31	Marketing Manager	0.43%
32	Senior Account Executive	0.4%
33	Senior Sales Manager	0.36%
34	Product Manager	0.35%
35	Director	0.34%
36	Marketing Director	0.33%
37	Territory Sales Manager	0.33%
38	Sales Specialist	0.32%
39	Finance Manager	0.32%
40	Branch Manager	0.32%
41	District Manager	0.3%
42	Sales And Marketing Manager	0.3%
43	Senior Account Manager	0.29%
44	National Account Manager	0.29%
45	Senior Sales Representative	0.28%
46	Regional Manager	0.27%
47	Team Leader	0.25%
48	Business Manager	0.25%
49	Operations Director	0.25%
50	Chief Executive Officer	0.24%
51	Program Manager	0.24%
52	Recruiter	0.23%
53	Service Manager	0.23%
54	Sales Person	0.22%
55	Specialist	0.22%
56	Principal	0.22%
57	Sales Account Manager	0.22%
58	Realtor	0.22%
59	Supervisor	0.22%
60	Insurance Agent	0.22%
61	Sales Engineer	0.21%
62	Server	0.21%
63	President/owner	0.2%
64	Outside Sales	0.2%
65	Sales Agent	0.19%
66	Senior Manager	0.19%
67	Substitute Teacher	0.19%
68	Teacher	0.19%
69	Key Account Manager	0.18%
70	Sales And Operations Manager	0.18%
71	Internship	0.18%
72	Finance Advisor	0.18%
73	Vice President, Business Development	0.18%
74	Managing Director	0.18%
75	Property Manager	0.17%
76	Area Manager	0.17%
77	Outside Sales Representative	0.17%
78	Managing Partner	0.17%
79	Purchasing Manager	0.16%
80	Agent	0.16%
81	Owner/manager	0.16%
82	Human Resources Manager	0.16%
83	Marketing Consultant	0.16%
84	Internet Sales Manager	0.15%
85	Retail Sales Consultant	0.15%
86	Retail Sales Manager	0.15%
87	Human Resources Coordinator	0.15%
88	Customer Service Manager	0.15%
89	Inside Sales Representative	0.15%
90	Executive Assistant	0.15%
91	Regional Accounts Manager	0.14%
92	President/chief Executive Officer	0.14%
93	Broker	0.14%
94	Executive Director	0.14%
95	Business Development Executive	0.14%
96	Senior Sales Executive	0.13%
97	Representative	0.13%
98	Partner	0.13%
99	Driver	0.13%
100	Cashier	0.13%

Most Common Jobs For Former SALES MANAGERS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a sales manager would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former sales managers to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former SALES MANAGERS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed sales manager under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a sales manager, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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