Regional Sales Manager Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a regional sales manager. Feel free to use our job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a regional sales manager.
Who is a Regional Sales Manager?
A Regional Sales Manager is in charge of selling a company’s products or services in a certain region or geographic area. A regional sales manager’s responsibility is to oversee and support the various sales teams in their territory, ensuring that they meet their sales goals and stay motivated. Although an understanding of business, customer service, and past retail experience is required for this position, most regional sales managers do not need a college diploma. The regional sales manager is frequently promoted from a managerial position in one store or as an assistant regional manager inside a company to guarantee that the person has an exceptional understanding of the organization’s culture, rules, and standards. The regional sales manager provides his or her reports to the zonal sales manager as part of his or her administrative duties.
The distinction between Regional Sales Manager (RSM) and Area Sales Manager (ASM) is evident. The following are the distinctions: A regional sales manager is a second-line sales manager, whereas a front-line sales manager is a regional sales manager. Secondly, a Regional Sales Manager oversees a team of Area Sales Managers, whereas a team of medical representatives is overseen by an Area Sales Manager. Thirdly, a regional sales manager’s territory is larger than that of an Area Sales Manager and last but the least, a Regional Sales Manager’s primary responsibility is sales team management, whereas an Area Sales Manager’s primary responsibility is simply sales.
Regional Sales Manager Job Description
Below are the regional sales manager job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a regional sales manager job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
Taking on the role of a Regional Sales Manager can be multifaceted and hard, but it can also be quite rewarding in the end. A regional sales manager is fully responsible for the following responsibilities:
- Plans and reviews compensation actions and enforces policies and procedures to execute them
- Contributes to regional sales data and makes recommendations to strategic plans and reviews.
- Creates and implements action plans.
- Implements production, productivity, quality, and customer-service standards.
- Determines regional sales system improvements and implements change.
- Forecasts requirements, prepares an annual budget, schedules spending, analyzes discrepancies, and takes corrective action to meet regional sales financial objectives.
- Establishes sales objectives for districts by developing a sales plan and quota in support of national goals.
- Counsels district salespeople, builds and maintains rapport with important customers, and identifies new customer opportunities to maintain and develop a client base.
- Recommends product lines by finding new product opportunities and product, packaging, and service adjustments as well as assessing customer wants and trends and keeping watch of rivals and competitors.
- Publishes tracks and evaluates trade spending in order to implement trade promotions.
- Participates in educational programs reads professional periodicals and maintains personal networks to keep job knowledge current.
- Completes related results as needed to achieve sales and organizational goals.
- Holds monthly meetings with the various sales teams within a region to assess sales.
- Provides recommendations and handles difficulties.
- Creates and implements training programs for sales employees.
- Creates unique efforts such as consumer discount campaigns.
- Forecasts product and pricing trends through the study of sales performance data and statistics of current trends.
- Evaluates store and individual performance of his workers.
- Forecast quarterly and annual earnings.
- Prepare and review the area of responsibility’s annual budget.
- Analyzes regional market trends and looks for fresh growth prospects.
- Addresses potential problems and suggests prompt solutions.
- Participates in expansion or acquisition decisions
- Suggests new service products and innovative sales techniques to increase customer satisfaction.
- Makes monthly visiting plan for all area sales manager (ASM) team members and implements it effectively by regular follow-up and discussions with team members
- Maintains relationship with distributors, the appointment of distributors, and settlement of claims
- Maintains healthy communication and relationships with team members
- Meets all of his team’s needs
- Meets monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales targets
- Does market review of new products and services
- Attends monthly, quarterly, and annual corporate meetings on a regular basis
- Stays up-to-date on company goods, services, and schemes
Qualifications of a Regional Sales Manager
The following are the qualifications needed to be qualified for the post of a regional sales manager:
- A bachelor’s degree in sales, business administration, or a related discipline is required.
- Proven work experience as a Regional Sales Manager, Area Manager, or similar senior sales function which usually involves return on investment as well as key performance indicators.
- Experience with customer relationship management (CRM) software.
- Ability to assess and analyze key performance indicators.
- Knowledge of how stores operate.
- Ability to encourage and lead a high-performing sales team.
- Outstanding communication abilities.
- Excellent organizational skills and a problem-solving mindset.
- Willingness to travel as needed.
- Multitasking ability.
- Outstanding client service.
- Ability to work well as part of a team.
- Excellent networking skills
- Excellent knowledge of the particular area and region of business operation.
Essential Skills
To successfully negotiate the challenges of the position, regional sales managers require a diverse set of skill sets and these are some of them:
- Ability to lead
One of the most crucial components of a regional sales manager’s work is motivating their sales teams to perform at their best and meet their sales goals. So as a regional sales manager, you have the obligation of training your sales team so that they can establish their own projects as a leader.
You can, for example, keep your team energized and motivated by planning events, sending them to workshops, and ensuring that they continue to receive training. As a sales manager, you should strive to maintain contact with your team members and offer additional help and mentoring as needed.
- Ability to organize people to achieve a collective goal
Budgeting, forecasting, planning, and training are just a few of the critical responsibilities of a regional sales manager. As a regional sales manager, you must also coordinate, mentor, and support different sales teams located throughout a territory. This means prioritizing and scheduling weekly and daily chores are essential as you are required to set an example for your sales team members if you stay organized.
- Ability to communicate
Working with team members, senior management and clients is an important element of a regional sales manager’s job. These professionals may also have to handle conflicts among team members or deal with difficult clients in their roles as managers. As a result, as a regional sales manager, you must possess excellent communication and interpersonal abilities.
- Strategic planning abilities
Regional sales managers are in charge of ensuring that their territories reach sales targets and corporate objectives. To maintain sales you will need to establish fresh methods and devise novel initiatives on a regular basis.
- Finance knowledge is useful.
Sales managers need a strong understanding of finance and the ability to comprehend and deal with financial calculations because they are often responsible for the eventual profitability of a sales region.
Steps to Becoming a Regional Sales Manager
A mix of experience, education, and skills is often required to become a regional sales manager. If you want to be a regional sales manager you should have the following abilities and qualifications:
- Education and Experience
A degree in sales, marketing, statistics, management, and finance with coursework or in these topics are well-suited to this position. Many organizations will look for regional sales managers with a solid sales background and three to five years of relevant experience. Some businesses may prefer to hire someone with prior experience as a departmental or district-level sales manager because this is a managing position.
- Training
Although many regional sales managers begin their careers as sales representatives, you will require extra abilities to successfully carry out your managerial responsibilities as a regional sales manager as such; you should pursue professional training in areas where you can benefit from greater expertise because you rarely obtain on-the-job training.
To build a complete set of applicable abilities as a regional sales manager you can choose from a variety of in-person and online courses. The American Management Association (AMA) for example, offers a variety of sales management training courses with varying prices and durations. These workshops will teach you a variety of management skills, such as communication, leadership, team building, and time management.
- Certification
A professional certification is an excellent approach to developing your sales manager job. This will not only aid in the development of your sales strategies and skills but will also impress prospective employers. The following certificates are useful in this field:
Professional Sales Leadership Certification
This credential from the National Association of Sales Professionals is aimed at sales managers, sales directors, and small business owners. The six-week training helps experienced sales professionals improve their leadership skills so that they may better encourage and lead their teams. You must pass an exam at the end of the course to receive this certification.
Certified Sales Professional
Sales and Marketing Executives International offers this certification, which is also meant for sales managers and top-level executives. It’s a four-part online course that covers ethics, sales and marketing, organization and management, and personnel. The exam must be completed within a year of registration, and you can prepare for it by using the e-textbook and quizzes. The certification must be renewed annually.
Where to Work
Wholesale, manufacturing, IT and computer services, and retail are just a few of the industries and business areas where regional sales managers work.
Regional Sales Manager Salary Scale
In the United Kingdom, the national average income for a regional sales manager is £50,688. However, in the United States, their salaries range from $30,100 to $129,729 annually.