---
title: "Sales Manager"
description: "Plan, direct, or coordinate the actual distribution or movement of a product or service to the customer. Coordinate sales distribution by establishing…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Sales Manager

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-2022 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-2022.00

Plan, direct, or coordinate the actual distribution or movement of a product or service to the customer. Coordinate sales distribution by establishing sales territories, quotas, and goals and establish training programs for sales representatives. Analyze sales statistics gathered by staff to determine sales potential and inventory requirements and monitor the preferences of customers.

Also advertised as: District Sales Manager; Fractional Sales Executive; National Sales Manager; Regional Sales Manager; Sales and Marketing VP (Sales and Marketing Vice President); Sales Director; Sales Manager; Sales Operations Manager (Sales Ops Manager).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $148,270 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $71.28/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $73,170 to $290,540, with the middle half between $100,360 and $207,340
- **Total US employment:** 637,080
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.7% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 49,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 41/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 637,080 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $73,170 |
| 25th | $100,360 |
| 50th (median) | $148,270 |
| 75th | $207,340 |
| 90th | $290,540 |
| Mean (average) | $164,350 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NY | $217,640 | $201,666 | 38,510 |
| MA | $191,200 | $180,792 | 15,010 |
| VA | $191,130 | $189,043 | 9,670 |
| CO | $180,850 | $175,494 | 8,780 |
| WA | $174,000 | $162,597 | 10,030 |
| NJ | $173,020 | $159,018 | 20,090 |
| CT | $162,110 | $156,462 | 8,560 |
| KS | $159,990 | $177,632 | 6,820 |
| GA | $159,890 | $166,045 | 17,690 |
| ME | $158,660 | $163,483 | Not published by BLS |
| OR | $155,810 | $150,744 | 5,260 |
| IL | $155,280 | $155,345 | 32,240 |
| RI | $154,970 | $151,515 | 1,120 |
| MN | $151,670 | $153,791 | 11,240 |
| NC | $150,470 | $159,521 | 16,920 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/sales-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 619,500 in the 2024–2034 base year to 648,500 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 29,000 jobs, or +4.7%. Faster than average: 4.7% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 49,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 71.4% |
| Some College Courses | 19.1% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 4.8% |
| Master's Degree | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Monitor customer preferences to determine focus of sales efforts.
- Plan and direct staffing, training, and performance evaluations to develop and control sales and service programs.
- Direct and coordinate activities involving sales of manufactured products, services, commodities, real estate, or other subjects of sale.
- Represent company at trade association meetings to promote products.
- Oversee regional and local sales managers and their staffs.
- Resolve customer complaints regarding sales and service.
- Review operational records and reports to project sales and determine profitability.
- Determine price schedules and discount rates.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Negotiation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 5.53 |
| S — Social | 3.37 |
| I — Investigative | 1.67 |
| R — Realistic | 1.49 |
| A — Artistic | 1.36 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 79.1 |
| ESFJ | 78.7 |
| ENTJ | 66.7 |
| ENFJ | 64.7 |
| ESTP | 60.3 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Marketing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marketing-manager) — median $166,790
- [Sales Representative of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-representative-of-services) — median $69,990
- [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) — median $78,760
- [Advertising and Promotions Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-and-promotions-manager) — median $133,660
- [Wholesale and Retail Buyer, Except Farm Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wholesale-and-retail-buyer) — median $77,710
- [Purchasing Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/purchasing-manager) — median $148,080
- [First-Line Supervisor of Retail Sales Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-retail-sales-workers) — median $48,520
- [First-Line Supervisor of Non-Retail Sales Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-non-retail-sales-workers) — median $87,520
- [General and Operations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-and-operations-manager) — median $105,770
- [Advertising Sales Agent](https://nuecareer.com/careers/advertising-sales-agent) — median $64,820

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/sales-manager