How To Become A Senior Sales Specialist: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior sales specialist and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Robin Akselrud

Senior sales specialists improve sales and overall business growth. They coordinate the sales team and help with recruiting and training new hires. They also provide product demonstrations to staff and clients and oversee the resolution of complaints. Furthermore, they conduct market research and analyze trends, sharing findings with the team. Additionally, they make sales forecasts and distribute resources, so targets are met. Also, they develop and implement strategies to increase the customer base, set sales targets, and implement incentives. Besides that, they manage a network of vendors and suppliers.

A minimum of a bachelor's degree in a related field is required to get a job as a senior sales specialist. Candidates must have at least three years of relevant industry experience. You must possess communication, analytical, organization, customer service, negotiation, leadership, and interpersonal skills. Their annual salary range ranges between $39,000 and $146,000. Annually, they earn an average annual salary of $75,629.

What general advice would you give to a senior sales specialist?

Robin Akselrud

Assistant Professor, Long Island University

Occupational Therapy is a wonderful profession, with so many different opportunities for graduates. My best advice as you start your own OT career path: Enjoy The Journey! Each practitioner ultimately has a different OT career journey. Try your best, invest your time and effort into learning and understanding the concepts and treatment approaches. Seek out a mentor that can guide you and that can answer any questions that you may have as you enter the field. At times you may feel stressed and you may be challenged, you may even fail at some points - but just "get back up" and learn from your mistakes. After all, a journey wouldn't be one without its "ups" and its "downs"! Good Luck!

ScoreSenior Sales SpecialistUS Average

Salary

5.8

Avg. Salary $74,361

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.6

Growth rate 4%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.8

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 5.22%

Black or African American 3.89%

Hispanic or Latino 14.58%

Unknown 3.72%

White 72.35%

Gender

female 46.52%

male 53.48%

Age - 48

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 48

Stress level

7.6

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.8

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.6

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior sales specialist

Explore senior sales specialist education requirements

Most common senior sales specialist degrees

Bachelor's

80.0 %

Master's

8.7 %

Associate

7.1 %

Start to develop specific senior sales specialist skills

Skills	Percentages
Customer Service	20.28%
Sales Training	9.81%
Customer Satisfaction	6.78%
Product Knowledge	6.15%
Account Management	5.89%

Complete relevant senior sales specialist training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior sales specialists learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior sales specialist based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior sales specialist resumes.

Research senior sales specialist duties and responsibilities

Manage contracts base on hospital GPO.
Manage the promotion of neuroscience portfolio to psychiatry and neurology offices, including long-term care facilities.
Manage GPO contracts, work with distributors to ensure supply chain efficiency; consult customer through full-product integration sales cycle.
Manage blood bank solutions for blood plasma expander as well as blood infusion for chemotherapy, emergency room, and trauma.

Get senior sales specialist experience

Generally, it takes 1-2 years to become a senior sales specialist. The most common roles before becoming a senior sales specialist include sales representative, sales specialist team lead and senior sales representative.

Prepare your senior sales specialist resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior sales specialist resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior sales specialist resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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