The Datum Report

Occupation 7115 · Sales and customer service occupations

Vehicle and parts salespersons and advisers

Half of full-time vehicle and parts salespersons and advisers in the UK earn more than £31,851 a year, and half earn less.

Vehicle and parts salespersons and advisers undertake vehicle sales, parts advisory and aftersales service advisory roles, selling new and used vehicles to the general public, and vehicle accessories and parts to garages, vehicle dealerships and the general public.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements for entry but some employers may ask for GCSEs and/or some previous relevant work experience. Apprenticeships may be available in some areas. Vehicle salespersons generally require a full, clean driving licence.

What the work involves

• discusses customer’s requirements, advises on most appropriate vehicle, explains its features and arranges test drive
• negotiates sale price including any ‘trade-in’ and extra accessories, works out finance arrangements and completes sales paperwork
• carries out pre-delivery inspection and formal hand-over of vehicle to customer
• updates stock record, orders new vehicles from manufacturer, buys in used cars
• receives orders for parts by phone, email or in person and checks availability on stock record
• obtains parts from store or orders from suppliers
• organises delivery of parts and handles payment
• orders new supplies, arranges storage and updates stock records

Also called

Car sales executive · Car salesman · Parts adviser (retail trade) · Parts technician

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for vehicle and parts salespersons and advisers, 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. 9 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

Pharmacy and optical dispensing assistants · Retail cashiers and check-out operators · Sales and retail assistants · Telephone salespersons