Not all accounting jobs are for doing income taxes. Although there is also a high demand in that field, there are also many job vacancies in sales account management. Most businesses are involved in sales, in one form or another. Most people think of sales only in the form of retail stores, such as a clothing outlet store or a supermarket for buying groceries. But behind the scenes of everything you buy there a considerable amount of sales going on. All of this commerce has to be kept track of, and the balance sheets tabulated and accounted for. This requires the services of a Sales Account Manager, and they are currently in short supply.
Before a product that you buy ends up for sale on a store shelf, it has been sold several times already. A wholesaler purchased the item in bulk from a manufacturer. A Sales Person then sold it, usually by a long term contract, to a Buyer for the retail outlet. A Sales Account Manager for a wholesale company keeps track of the volume of goods sold and shipped. In accounts receivable they keep track of the money that is owed to them by their buyers, the retailers. In accounts payable they keep track of the money they owe to the manufacturers from whom they purchased the goods.
The manufacturers don’t want to be troubled with the business of selling their product in small amounts to many individual consumers. This is not their area of expertise. Their area of expertise is in industry. They manufacture the product. They of course are still involved in sales. It does them no profit to manufacture goods, if nobody buys them. So they advertise on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, bill board signs etc. Most large companies also employ salesmen who go to the wholesalers, and on contractual basis sell large bulk quantities of their goods. This Sales Person may be on salary, or might receive a commission for the sales.
The wholesaler buys different types of goods, from several different manufactures. They in turn employ a Sales Person, who contacts various retailers and contracts with them to buy large quantities of the various products they are in the business of wholesaling. The retailer buys even a larger variety of products from different wholesalers. Most items are sold to the consumer for many times the cost of actually manufacturing the product. The manufacturer sells it to the wholesaler, for more than it costs to manufacture it, allowing for commissions for their sales people, the cost of advertising, and a profit for the company. The wholesaler sells it to the retailer for more than they paid to manufacturer. This covers the cost of shipping and warehousing, as well as the sales commissions and profit. The retailer again marks up the price before it reaches the consumer. This covers the cost of shipping from the wholesale warehouse, the overhead of the physical store building, parking, cashiers, stock persons and management, and also allows for a profit for the company.
For example, let’s suppose that Company A manufactures ten thousand widgets at a cost of one dollar each. This is the cost of the industrial plant, its employees and management. They add to that their cost of advertising, and sales commissions, which might bring the cost up to a dollar and fifty cents for each widget sold. They sell one thousand widgets each to ten different wholesalers at a cost of two dollars each. They have made a profit for the company of 50 cents for each widget sold. The wholesaler sells one hundred widgets each to ten different retail stores. They have to ship the product, store it in warehouses, sell it to retailers, and ship it to the retailers. They incur expenses in shipping, for the trucks and fuel, for the cost of the actual property and building where the goods are stored, and for the employees who drive the trucks and the fork lifts, and the Sales Account Managers who manage all the accounts. They have bought the widgets for two dollars each, and let’s suppose that all of these expenses add up to about a dollar each. They could sell the items to the retail store for three dollars each, and break even. But to allow for sales commissions and a profit for the company, they sell it for four dollars each. It takes a sales account manager to determine what the actual price needs to be. If they price it too low, the company will not make a profit. It will not be able to give a return to its investors, and they will choose to invest somewhere else. The wholesaler might not even break even, and they won’t be able to meet their employee payroll, or pay the mortgage on their buildings and equipment. If on the other hand the price is too high, they might make a large profit, but because of competition, the retailers will choose to buy the product from a different wholesaler, for a cheaper price. So you can see how it is extremely critical that accurate tracking and accounting of the costs of purchasing, storage, shipping and sales be accomplished for the company. This is the job of a Sales Account Manager.
In our example, the retail store has purchased one hundred widgets from a wholesaler for four dollars each. They have to pay their expenses and make a profit, so they sell the items, one at a time to individual consumers for eight dollars each. The consumer has paid eight dollars for something that only cost the manufacturer one dollar to build. However he has purchased more than just the widget. He or she has purchased the services provided by the truck drivers and fork lift operators, the sales people, the accountants, the managers, and everything else involved in process between actually building the product and getting it to the store shelf. And he paid for education he has received, in the form of advertising and sales, to know that the product is available, and what its virtues are, that he is willing to pay eight dollars for. And, because the manufacturer has a streamlined process of mass producing large quantities of their product, it can build the widgets much more inexpensively than the individual person could. For example a lamp that is mass produced in a factory, might cost a consumer twenty dollars. Through mass production at the factory, it might only cost the factory two dollars each to make the lamp. After going through the process described in this article, the final retail price is twenty dollars. If the consumer were to build the lamp themselves it would take them days, perhaps weeks to build a similar lamp, and it might even be impossible for them to make one that has the same quality. But if they have even a menial job paying eight dollars an hour, in two and a half hours they could earn the money to go to the store and purchase that lamp.
All of this is the virtue of our complex but wonderful modern economic system. And you can see that it would be impossible without the critical services of Sales Account Managers. And because of this, they are in high demand and there are many high paying employment opportunities for them.
