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Sales Representative Job Description: Top Duties and Qualifications

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Indeed’s Employer Guide helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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4 min read

A sales representative, or salesperson, promotes products or services to customers and builds relationships to help drive revenue growth. Duties you may want to include in your sales representative job description are: interviewing customers to discover relevant needs, demonstrating products and services and closing deals.

In this article, we discuss the education, experience and core skills for a sales representative role and how to feature them in your job description.

Sales representative duties and responsibilities

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Sales representatives connect customers with their desired products and services. They build relationships by offering solutions and supporting communication throughout every stage of the customer journey, including awareness, consideration, decision, retention and advocacy. Their work can directly impact company revenue and the business’s reputation.

Common duties include:

  • Maintaining in-depth knowledge about products and services
  • Identifying prospective customers and converting leads
  • Contacting existing customers to discuss ongoing needs or reactivate buyers
  • Demonstrating how products and services offer solutions for clients
  • Creating quotes and sales proposals
  • Negotiating prices, terms and other elements of sales agreements
  • Attending trade shows and networking events

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Sales Representative Job Description Examples

Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Guide helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

Read our editorial guidelines
Job Description Best Practices
Optimize your new and existing job descriptions to reach more candidates
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What does a sales representative do?

Sales representatives work for businesses selling a product or service. These professionals may be part of sales departments in a larger company or operate as a sole salesperson for a smaller organization. Sales representatives also reach out to leads, educate customers about products and build trust with customers that helps close deals.

They often work toward sales quotas, either based on revenue or activities such as demos, which can contribute to an organization’s financial success.

Sales representative skills and qualifications

Strong candidates often demonstrate excellent communication, customer service and interpersonal skills, which may be important for success in this role. Problem solving and organization are also valuable competencies that set top candidates apart.

Skills commonly listed in sales representative job description templates include:

  • Active listening to understand customer concerns, needs and preferences
  • Persuasion and negotiation skills to help overcome client objections. Knowledge of customer relationship management to support ongoing communications and build trust
  • Product knowledge and an understanding of regulations and specifications within the industry
  • Presentation skills for explaining products and services to individuals and groups
  • Self-motivation to support internal drive toward sales goals
  • Adaptability to pivot and adjust sales tactics

Sales representative experience requirements

Experience requirements depend on the level and duties of the position and how much in-house training your organization provides. For example, an entry-level sales representative role may require customer service or retail experience. Inside sales reps who work with complex services or goods may need to be familiar with those specific products.

Consider candidates with retail skills, customer service or marketing backgrounds, as they may have transferable skills necessary to succeed in a sales role.

Sales representative education and training requirements

Most sales representative jobs don’t require formal education. Skills-first hiring that evaluates an applicant’s knowledge and capabilities can help you find candidates with relevant backgrounds.

In some fields, degrees may be helpful. For example, sales representatives in the pharmaceutical or medical fields may need clinical knowledge to explain products to doctors or other healthcare providers. Similarly, a rep selling engineering equipment might be more successful if they have an education in engineering.

Sales representative salary expectations

According to Indeed Salaries, the average salary for a sales representative is $81,550 per year. Salary can vary based on business size, industry, commission structure and bonus opportunities.

Sales representative salary expectations

2026-01-0114000.0082599.12223000.00YEARLY
  • Common salary: 82599.12 YEARLY
  • Typical salaries range from 14000.00 - 223000.00 YEARLY
  • Find more information on Indeed Salaries

*Indeed data – 2026-01-01

Job description samples for similar positions

If this sales representative job description doesn’t fit your needs, you can review other job description samples for similar positions:

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Sales representative job description FAQs

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Job Description Examples

Need help writing a job description for a specific role? Use these job description examples to create your next great job posting. Or if you’re ready to hire, post your job on Indeed.

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