Are you starting a career and must decide whether to choose between a sales job or a management job? Are you at a point in your career where you have the option to get into a sales field or a management field? Here are my reasons why sales jobs are more rewarding, better paying, and more captivating and why I would recommend them over management jobs:

1. With sales jobs your remuneration is higher and the potential for higher pay is directly related to your performance. Sales jobs typically pay commissions, bonuses, or a hybrid of salary plus commission. So if you want to earn more you can and it’s totally up to you. Your work directly affects how much you get paid so the motivation to work, and work hard, will always be there. This is not so with management jobs. Managers tend to earn a set salary so no matter what they do they will earn the same. So there’s no monetary motivation to do a better job.

2. Sales jobs are the most important jobs in any organization. Sales drive a company’s revenue and growth. Without a sales department there would be no revenue. With no revenue there would be no company and, hence, no managers.

3. Salespeople are the first point of contact for clients. So they hear directly from them what they respond to and what’s not working for them. This also gives salespeople an advantage to alter their pitch as opposed to Managers who advise of the big picture administrative objectives . Sales jobs, naturally, permit salespeople to perform market research through client interactions allowing them to pass on that information to management; managers end up relying on salespeople for information. Your role is a salesperson is more powerful than you think when it comes to your organization’s ultimate decisions and strategies.

4. Through sales prospecting, meeting with decision makers from other companies, meeting customers, and traveling sales work, especially outside sales jobs, deliver substantially more variety in your day-to-day activities. Salespeople are always doing something different, with different people, in different places. Managers commute to the same place every day, do the same things, with the same people. This tediousness often leads to boredom and an unsatisfying work life.

5. If you ever plan to start your own business in the future, sales experience will help you succeed more than would management experience. If you can sell you will be successful anywhere. You cannot learn to sell because that can only come with experience. Nobody can pick up and read a sales book and instantly become a top performer. Management is more about administrative and diplomatic duties. While important, this does not make or break how successful a business becomes and is more easily learned than it is to learn how to sell.

So, I would just like to say, if you are starting a career or if you find yourself at a crossroad and need to decide between a sales job and a management job, choose the sales job, that is, if you’re looking for higher pay and a more rewarding work experience.

Tino Buntic is a lifelong salesperson and is helping other business professionals generate sales leads with his website, TradePals.

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