FlightWay / Careers / Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products

Business & Finance

Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products

Sell goods for wholesalers or manufacturers to businesses or groups of individuals.

Sector: Business & Finance
Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
O*NET code: 41-4012.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Selling or Influencing Others

central to the job — rated 97/100 for importance.
Getting Information

central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

central to the job — rated 85/100 for importance.
Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge

central to the job — rated 85/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

a major part of the work — rated 82/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.

Sell goods for wholesalers or manufacturers to businesses or groups of individuals. Work requires substantial knowledge of items sold.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Persuasion

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Negotiation

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Social Perceptiveness

Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Sales and Marketing

Needed at expert level (75/100), and rated 98/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at expert level (78/100), and rated 96/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a high level (67/100), and rated 84/100 for importance.
Mathematics

Needed at a high level (61/100), and rated 74/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Speech Clarity

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Speech Recognition

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A four-year bachelor's degree is the usual entry ticket.

Experience

Two to four years of related work, internships or research on top of the degree.

Training

Most of the learning happens before you are hired, not after.

What it pays

These are typical business compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Fortune 100 Corp Track

$130k – $300k

Mid-size Companies

$80k – $135k

SMBs & Local Biz

$55k – $90k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
The work is physical — you are on your feet and handling things, not sitting still.From “Performing General Physical Activities”
You are in front of the public, so the job is partly performance.From “Performing for or Working Directly with the Public”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.