First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers
Directly supervise and coordinate activities of sales workers other than retail sales workers. May perform duties such as budgeting, accounting, and personnel work, in addition to supervisory duties.
🎬Career Video
📋Key Responsibilities
- •Monitor sales staff performance to ensure that goals are met.
- •Provide staff with assistance in performing difficult or complicated duties.
- •Direct and supervise employees engaged in sales, inventory-taking, reconciling cash receipts, or performing specific services.
- •Listen to and resolve customer complaints regarding services, products, or personnel.
- •Keep records pertaining to purchases, sales, and requisitions.
- •Hire, train, and evaluate personnel.
- •Confer with company officials to develop methods and procedures to increase sales, expand markets, and promote business.
- •Plan and prepare work schedules, and assign employees to specific duties.
💡Inside This Career
The sales supervisor outside retail manages sales teams—directing account representatives, setting targets, coaching performance, and ensuring that sales teams meet revenue goals in wholesale, business-to-business, or service sales environments. A typical day blends team management with sales involvement. Perhaps 45% of time goes to team oversight: reviewing pipelines, coaching representatives, addressing account issues, facilitating deals. Another 35% involves strategic work—setting goals, planning territories, reporting to leadership, recruiting. The remaining time addresses personal sales involvement, customer relationship management, and cross-functional coordination.
People who thrive as sales supervisors combine personal sales ability with leadership skills and the strategic thinking that optimizing team performance requires. Successful supervisors develop expertise in their industry's sales process while building the coaching abilities that improve representative performance. They must balance pushing for results with supporting their team. Those who struggle often cannot make the transition from individual contributor to manager or find the accountability for others' numbers frustrating. Others fail because they cannot handle the pressure of missed targets.
Non-retail sales supervision spans industries from technology to manufacturing to financial services, with supervisors leading the teams that drive business revenue. The field offers significant earnings potential tied to team performance. Sales supervisors appear in discussions of sales management, revenue leadership, and the managers who build and direct revenue-generating teams.
Practitioners cite the earnings potential and the leadership impact as primary rewards. The compensation at effective sales organizations can be substantial. The ability to develop sales talent is meaningful. The strategic involvement is intellectually engaging. The clear success metrics are satisfying. The industry knowledge becomes valuable expertise. The career path to sales leadership is defined. Common frustrations include the pressure and the dependency on team performance. Many find that the accountability for others' results is stressful. Top performers may resist supervision. The constant pressure for more is exhausting. Turnover among sales staff is typically high. The numbers orientation can overwhelm relationship building. Pipeline and forecast management is tedious.
This career requires demonstrated sales success and leadership ability. Strong coaching skills, strategic thinking, and performance management capabilities are essential. The role suits those who want sales leadership and can handle pressure. It is poorly suited to those uncomfortable with accountability for others' results, preferring individual contribution, or wanting predictable compensation. Compensation includes base plus commission on team performance, potentially substantial.
📈Career Progression
📚Education & Training
Requirements
- •Entry Education: Bachelor's degree
- •Experience: Several years
- •On-the-job Training: Several years
- !License or certification required
Time & Cost
🤖AI Resilience Assessment
AI Resilience Assessment
High Exposure + Stable: AI is transforming this work; role is evolving rather than disappearing
How much of this job involves tasks AI can currently perform
Likelihood that AI replaces workers vs. assists them
(BLS 2024-2034)
How much this role relies on distinctly human capabilities
💻Technology Skills
⭐Key Abilities
🏷️Also Known As
🔗Related Careers
Other careers in sales
🔗Data Sources
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