Sales and customer service

Valerie Wong is a graduate analyst frontline supervisor at APRA. Jump to pages 56-57 to read Heidi’s day in the life.

What is sales and customer service?

Let’s face it – without sales, organisations wouldn’t exist. Being able to sell your product or service is crucial for almost all organisations.

A career in sales and customer service means being at the front line of an organisation, where you interact directly with potential customers. It’s the art of convincing people they need whatever it is you have to sell. This is by no means an easy feat.

Being in sales means being able to handle rejection often. It means finding a hook or angle that will resonate with your customer. It means knowing your potential customer intimately – what they want, what they need and what they fear. It also means knowing your product or service inside out so you can confidently answer any questions.

Once a customer has bought a product, it’s the role of customer service to continue engaging with the customer. Indeed, we all have memories of excellent and terrible customer service. Being on the front foot and training employees to manage customers – and keep them happy – is important for every organisation.

Sales and customer service jobs are commonplace in Australia, with almost all organisations requiring staff with these skills.

What is the graduate experience in sales and customer service?

Depending on where you work, you will often find that sales and marketing are bundled together and included in graduate rotations. This is particularly the case in larger corporations such as Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Caltex, Mars and L’Oreal.

Outside of these larger organisations, your experience will depend on the organisation itself. While official graduate programs may not be available, you will find most organisations are always on the lookout for sales and customer service talent.

Sales teams are driven by targets, which result in additional financial rewards such as commission or a percentage of sales. Because of this, the pace for sales teams can be demanding and intense. You might be regularly ‘on the road’ meeting with customers and giving them presentations.

Failing to regularly meet targets may be harmful to your continued progression within an organisation. Having a thick skin and the tenacity to push forward, often seemingly against the odds, is important and immensely valuable for future career endeavours.

While the pace of a customer service role may not be as demanding, it is still an opportunity to develop your ‘grit’. These roles help you learn how to be more compassionate and understanding – skills that will help you build professional relationships in the future.

Customer service can be an exciting career, as you never know what each day will bring or who you might meet. If you’re intent on helping people and love making connections, customer service can be a very rewarding choice.

What are your career prospects in sales and customer service?

As you progress in sales, you may shift from being a front line salesperson to managing a sales team. Being a natural peopleperson will help in this regard, as you look to motivate and monitor performance. You may also choose to enter into more formal business development roles, which might require greater analytical thinking and perhaps even number crunching, to find broader sales opportunities for your organisation.

Many customer service jobs are increasingly being outsourced either off-shore or through technology. We only have to look at our nearest supermarket to see the rise of the self check-out as an everyday example.

Choose this if you have:

■ Excellent communication and interpersonal skills ■ A love of confronting challenges and solving problems ■ An ability to work independently and in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

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