The Datum Report

Occupation 3556 · Associate professional occupations

Sales accounts and business development managers

Half of full-time sales accounts and business development managers in the UK earn more than £57,625 a year, and half earn less.

Sales accounts and business development managers plan, organise and undertake market research to meet the requirements of an organisation’s marketing and sales policies.

How people enter it

Entrants to the professional qualifications of the Chartered Institute of Marketing require GCSEs/S grades, A levels/H grades, a BTEC/SQA award, a degree or equivalent qualification and/or relevant experience. Qualifications in sales and from other relevant professional bodies are available.

What the work involves

• liaises with other senior staff to determine the range of goods or services to be sold, contributes to the development of sales strategies and setting of sales targets
• discusses employer’s or client’s requirements, carries out surveys and analyses customers’ reactions to product, packaging, price, etc.
• compiles and analyses sales figures, prepares proposals for marketing campaigns and promotional activities and undertakes market research
• handles customer accounts
• recruits and trains junior sales staff
• produces reports and recommendations concerning marketing and sales strategies for senior management
• keeps up to date with products and competitors

Also called

Account manager (sales) · Area sales manager · Business development manager · Product development manager · Sales manager

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for sales accounts and business development managers, 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. 11 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 · Business sales executives · Buyers and procurement officers · Estate agents and auctioneers · Events managers and organisers · Merchandisers