From Retail Manager To Business Sales Career

How Eberechi Alozie found her career after feeling lost since high school graduation.

Age

Prior sales experience?

Professional background

Retail

The Challenge

In 2018, Eberechi graduated high school and felt lost on her future career direction.

She decided to forgo university and instead started working in hospitality at Rashays to gain some work experience.

In 2019, Eberechi made the move to retail and for the next four years, worked her way up to a Department Manager at Bunnings Warehouse.

Through this experience, Eberechi discovered her enjoyment of working with customers. More specifically, finding relevant solutions to their existing problems.

However, during her time in retail, she saw that there was limited career progression and felt uncertainty about where she would spend her time for the rest of her career.

She wanted to make the move into a more office based, full time position.

To begin, she turned to Seek and started applying for any role that allowed her to work with customers.

Customer service, business development, sales, account management.

However, when she interviewed for these roles, she was unsure on which roles would be the best for her.

Which one would give her the best career progression?

Which one had the best pay?

Which one had great job security?

She didn’t know where to begin.

The Solution

Eberechi came across business sales after applying for an Earlywork role.

After attending a Business Sales Group Interview, Eberechi knew that business sales was for her.

Her biggest reason?

She felt that the more relationship based nature of selling to other businesses better suited his personality and strengths more than selling consumer products like insurance or real estate.

Here’s more context.

In Australia, entry level business sales roles earn an average of $95k per year*.

Within 4-5 years of starting in business sales, you could be selling to 1000+ employee companies and have a total package north of $250k+ per year.

But why are packages in business sales so high?

It all comes down to what you’re selling - business-to-business software tools (ie: UberEats).

Sales is the second most in-demand role for most companies with clients that are businesses (behind product specialists) as reps are responsible for finding new business customers to adopt their tools.

Yet, there’s a distinct skill shortage as many job seekers think they require a business background or previous sales experience to get started - which simply isn’t true.

The Results

Eberechi was shortlisted for her engagement with the session activities during her Business Sales Group Interview

Eberechi was introduced to Peninsula, a global work health safety services company that was part of our Employer Network and started her business sales career.