The Datum Report

Occupation 3552 · Associate professional occupations

Business sales executives

Half of full-time business sales executives in the UK earn more than £37,924 a year, and half earn less.

Business sales executives provide advice to existing and potential customers, and receive orders for specialist machinery, equipment, materials and other products or services that require technical knowledge.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements, although entrants usually possess academic qualifications and/or relevant experience in a particular profession or speciality. Training is usually on-the-job. Professional and vocational qualifications at levels 2 and 3 are available.

What the work involves

• discusses customer requirements and advises them on the capabilities and limitations of the goods or services being sold
• quotes prices, credit details, delivery dates and payment arrangements and arranges for delivery and installation of goods if appropriate
• makes follow up visits to ensure customer satisfaction and to obtain further orders
• stays abreast of advances in product/field and suggests possible improvements to product or service
• maintains records and accounts of sales made and handles customer complaints

Also called

Corporate account executive · Sales agent · Sales consultant · Sales executive · Technical representative

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for business sales executives, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Advertising and marketing associate professionals · Buyers and procurement officers · Estate agents and auctioneers · Events managers and organisers · Merchandisers · Sales accounts and business development managers