Many JMOs select sales careers even though their initial thoughts of sales are negative. The negative thoughts usually stem from popular, but untrue myths of the door-to-door, straight commission sales person selling something people don’t want or need. Professional sales involves selling to businesses and depends on successfully impacting those businesses. In other words it is the sales person’s ability to analyze problems, provide solutions, and make a difference that determines success.

It is a myth that sales is all straight commission. The reality is that professional sales representatives do have incentive based compensation packages, but on top of a solid base salary that is usually higher than your military base salary. Rather than making cold calls to individuals and “high pressuring” such as (cars, life insurance, stock market, home appliances, etc.), professional sales involves long term relationship building, assessing and meeting customer needs, and helping the customer solve problems over an extended time. While you should have a reasonably pleasant outgoing personality, the skills that successful sales people most need are listening skills, problem solving skills, trustworthiness, and likeability. Successful sales reps are excellent at finding out what a customer needs and then showing the customer why their solution is the most logical. Travel depends on the territory and industry, but rarely involves more than 2 nights / week away from home.

Most professional sales people are seen as being energetic, competitive, likeable, good listeners, well organized, creative, and autonomous.

Your career path will usually look like this:
Sales Representative
National Accounts Rep
Product Marketing Manager
Regional/District Sales Manager
National Marketing Manager
Vice President of Sales & Marketing

Sales appeals to people who like the idea of working independently, who are competitve, who genuinely like public interface, and who want to clearly measure where they stand. Typical types of Professional Sales:
a) Pharmaceuticals: You would be a subject matter expert on 3 – 5 drugs and deal with physicians. Little to no travel.
b) Medical Products: Everything from disposables (gauze, gloves, etc.) to equipment and lab products. You would call on hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and deal with department heads and materials managers.
c) Industrial Products – Can be everything from chemicals, parts, equipment, packaging, etc. that is used in or by a manufacturing plant. Those who have technical or mechanical interests generally enjoy this type of selling.
d) Technology – can be hardware or software and is sold in virtually every setting. An aptitude and interest in technology and a very competitive outlook is necessary.