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Business & Finance

Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products

Sell goods for wholesalers or manufacturers where technical or scientific knowledge is required in such areas as biology, engineering, chemistry, and electronics, normally obtained from at least 2…

Sector: Business & Finance
Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
O*NET code: 41-4011.00

What you'll actually do

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

Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

central to the job — rated 86/100 for importance.
Getting Information

a regular part of the work — rated 67/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

a regular part of the work — rated 63/100 for importance.
Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work

a regular part of the work — rated 63/100 for importance.
Communicating with People Outside the Organization

a regular part of the work — rated 61/100 for importance.
Selling or Influencing Others

a regular part of the work — rated 59/100 for importance.

Sell goods for wholesalers or manufacturers where technical or scientific knowledge is required in such areas as biology, engineering, chemistry, and electronics, normally obtained from at least 2 years of postsecondary education.

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

Persuasion

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Negotiation

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

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Customer and Personal Service

Needed at a high level (65/100), and rated 86/100 for importance.
Sales and Marketing

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 83/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a solid working level (52/100), and rated 67/100 for importance.
Administration and Management

Needed at a solid working level (51/100), and rated 54/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Expression

Needed at a high level (66/100), and rated 88/100 for importance.
Oral Comprehension

Needed at a high level (64/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Speech Clarity

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

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

Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”

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, 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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Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

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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.