Sales Manager Career Assessment

2What is a Sales Manager?

A sales manager decides who sells what, to whom, and where. You set territories and quotas. You hire salespeople and you replace the ones who do not make it, which is more often than anyone likes to admit. You ride along on calls, listen, and coach afterward. You look at the pipeline every week and know which deals are real and which are wishful thinking. You set pricing within your limits and you get pulled into the deals that are too big or too stuck for your rep to close alone. And at the end of the month, the quarter, and the year, somebody asks you why the number is what it is, and "the market was soft" is not an answer anyone accepts twice.

The Reality: Read this part twice. Sales managers were salespeople. Almost without exception. Employers promote the person who hit their number and can explain how, because a sales team will not take coaching from someone who has never carried a bag. The road is usually three to seven years selling, then team lead or senior rep, then manager. Now the two honest things. First, the turnover: sales has the highest quit rate of any job in this series, and a chunk of your week is recruiting and training replacements, forever. Second, the number follows you home. Your pay is usually partly tied to your team’s results, so a bad quarter is not only a bad review, it is a smaller paycheck. In North Dakota add the windshield time — territories here are measured in hours of driving, and winter does not reschedule your customers.

Your Responsibilities:

• Set territories, quotas, and sales targets for each rep
• Hire, onboard, coach, and replace salespeople
• Ride along on sales calls and coach afterward
• Review the pipeline weekly and forecast what will actually close
• Step into big or stuck deals and help close them
• Set pricing and approve discounts within your limits
• Report results to leadership every month and explain the gaps
• Work with marketing on leads and with operations on what was promised

You own a number, and so does everyone who works for you.

3A Day in the Life

7:00 AM — Coffee and the pipeline report. Two deals slipped out of this month. Call those reps first.

8:00 AM — Team call. Go through each rep’s week. Ask the hard question about the deal that keeps moving.

9:30 AM — In the truck. Two-hour drive to ride along with a newer rep in a rural territory.

12:30 PM — Joint sales call at a customer’s shop. You listen and let the rep run it.

1:30 PM — Coach in the parking lot. Two things they did well, one to change next time.

3:00 PM — Phone interview with a candidate while you drive back, hands free.

4:30 PM — Approve a discount, then rework the month’s forecast with the slipped deals removed.

6:00 PM — Dinner with a big customer, because that is how the relationship stays yours.

Windshield time, coaching, and a number that resets every month.

4Training in North Dakota

Sell first. Nobody hires a sales manager who has not carried a quota. There is no license and no required degree. What every employer wants is a person who hit their own number and can teach someone else to hit theirs. A business or marketing degree helps you get hired at larger companies and it helps you move between industries, but a strong selling record with a degree half-finished will beat a fresh degree with no selling record, every time. The most useful thing you can do while you are still selling is to start training the new reps voluntarily, because that is the skill the manager job is actually made of.

Training Pathways:

• Sell, then lead (3 to 7 years): Get a sales job, hit your number consistently, then take the senior rep or team lead role. Volunteer to onboard new hires. This is how nearly every ND sales manager got there.
• Degree while you work (2 to 4 years, often online): A business, marketing, or management degree, most of them online in North Dakota, opens larger employers and makes you portable across industries. NDSCS has a two-year Marketing, Sales and Hospitality Services option that costs far less than a university.
• Sideways from product knowledge (2 to 5 years): Technicians, parts people, agronomists, and lenders move into sales all the time because they already know the product and the customer. Learn the selling process and the pipeline discipline, and the manager road opens the same way it does for anyone else.

Where to Train in North Dakota:

• ND State College of Science (Wahpeton and Fargo) — Business Management AAS with a Marketing, Sales and Hospitality Services option, plus Administration and Finance and Business Technology Management options; the Business Technology Management option is a third year for people who already hold a two-year technical degree (catalog.ndscs.edu/business-management)
• North Dakota State University (Fargo) — Marketing B.S., Management B.S., and Business Administration B.S., all three available 100% online (ndsu.edu/business/academic-programs/undergraduate)
• University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) — Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship majors in the Nistler College of Business & Public Administration, plus an AACSB-accredited MBA (business.und.edu/academics)
• Bismarck State College (Bismarck) — Management AAS and Management certificate, online or on campus, plus a stand-alone Leadership certificate that requires no prior coursework and stacks toward a degree (catalog.bismarckstate.edu/catalog/degrees/career-technical-education/management and bismarckstate.edu/academics/programs/Leadership)
• Minot State University (Minot) — Management B.S. and a Master of Science in Management (minotstateu.edu/business)
• University of Mary (Bismarck) — B.S. in Business Administration, an online B.S. in Business Management, and an online MBA (umary.edu/academics/schools/gary-tharaldson-school-business)
• Valley City State University (Valley City) — Business Administration B.S., online or face to face (catalog.vcsu.edu/undergraduate-catalog/departments/business)
• Dickinson State University (Dickinson) — business degrees and an MBA, fully online (dickinsonstate.edu/academics/fields-of-study/sobe)

Before You Start: A good driving record, because you will live in a vehicle. Comfort with rejection, which cannot be taught. Enough math to work a margin and a commission plan. Knowledge of whatever you sell, which usually comes from having sold it.

Tip: Start with financial aid, scholarships, and any help an employer offers — that is where the money starts. After that, ask a career counselor or Job Service North Dakota whether WIOA or other programs can help with what is left over, like training, tools, work boots, or exam fees. What can be paid for depends on the program and on your own situation, so ask before you sign up rather than after. Registered apprenticeships let you earn a paycheck while you learn — see jobsnd.com/job-seeker/apprenticeships for ND programs.

5Certification & Licensing

No license, no required certificate. Your sales record is the credential. Nothing licenses a sales manager. In an interview, what gets looked at is your own numbers — did you hit quota, by how much, and for how many years running — and then whether you can explain how you would teach it. A few industries require their own licenses for the product being sold, and those are real requirements, but they belong to the product, not to the management job.

What Matters to Employers:

• Your quota history — percent to plan, year over year. Write it down now, while you still have the records, because you will be asked for it
• Industry product licenses — insurance producer, securities, real estate, or pesticide and agronomy licenses, depending on what your team sells. These are required by law for the product and are separate from managing
• A business or marketing degree — not required, but it is what larger employers ask for and it makes you portable between industries
• CRM skill — real fluency with the pipeline software your company uses. Managers who cannot pull and read their own reports are at a serious disadvantage
• Project Management Professional (PMP) — uncommon in sales and worth it mainly if you run large multi-team accounts. With a bachelor’s it takes 3 years of project management experience plus 35 hours of training (pmi.org)

The Exams: There is no exam for sales management. If your industry licenses the product — insurance, securities, real estate — that exam belongs to that license and is set by its own board or regulator.

Cost: Nothing is required, so school is the only real cost if you choose it, and a ND two-year business degree is far cheaper than a university one. Product licenses have their own fees set by their regulators, and employers usually pay for the ones they require. Ask your employer about tuition help before you enroll, not after.

Keeping It Current: Nothing to renew for the management job. Product licenses renew on their own regulators’ schedules with continuing education. What actually keeps you employable is a recent record of teams that hit their numbers.

6Salary & Job Outlook

North Dakota Sales Manager Pay (May 2025):

• Starting out (bottom 10–25%): $38.28–$44.84/hour ($79,610–$93,280/year)
• Middle (median — half earn more, half earn less): $57.69/hour ($119,990/year)
• Experienced (top 25–10%): $76.79–$94.85/hour ($159,710–$197,290/year)

What that means: The middle sales manager in North Dakota earns about $119,990, against a national middle of about $148,270. But look at the bottom: the ND tenth percentile is about $79,610 while the national tenth percentile is about $73,170. North Dakota pays its entry-level sales managers better than the country does and its top ones worse — the ND top tenth is about $197,290 against a national top tenth of about $290,540. There is one more thing the table does not show, and it matters more here than in any other job in this series: most sales manager pay includes commission or bonus tied to the team’s results. The numbers above are total pay, so a good year can land well above your band and a bad one well below it. Ask any employer exactly how the plan works and what percentage of the target is at risk before you take the job.

Jobs in North Dakota: About 450 people do this work in ND today. By 2034, that should be about 460 (about 4% growth). Expect about 40 job openings every year in ND from growth and people retiring or changing jobs. Across the U.S., the change is about 5% growth.

Outlook: Steady and realistic. O*NET shows North Dakota going from about 450 sales managers in 2024 to about 460 in 2034, about 4% growth, with roughly 40 openings a year. Nationally the job grows about 5%, so ND runs a little behind but not by much. Forty openings a year is not huge, but it is double the marketing manager number and double the architectural and engineering manager number, and — unlike almost everything else in this series — these jobs are spread across the whole state rather than clustered in Fargo. Ag equipment dealers, implement and truck dealers, building supply, energy services, insurance, banking, and food distribution all need sales managers in places like Jamestown, Devils Lake, Dickinson, and Williston. Turnover is high in sales, which is hard on you as a manager but does mean seats open more often than the growth rate alone suggests.

Who Hires in ND: Ag equipment and implement dealers, truck and auto dealers, building products and lumber suppliers, energy and oil field service companies, food and beverage distributors, insurance agencies and carriers, banks and credit unions, manufacturers with outside sales forces, technology and software companies in Fargo, and telecommunications and media companies.

Work Setting: A vehicle, a customer’s office or shop, and your own office in whatever time is left. Expect 50 or more hours a week and serious windshield time — a North Dakota territory can be a three-hour drive wide. Overnight travel is common. Winter driving is part of the job, and so are customer dinners and trade shows on your own evenings.

Physical Demands: Low to moderate. The physical strain is driving, long days, and irregular meals. If you sell equipment or industrial products you will walk shops, yards, and fields, and you will be outdoors in ND weather. Winter road conditions are a genuine safety issue in this job and it is worth saying out loud.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, North Dakota, May 2025 (SOC 11-2022); North Dakota and U.S. long-term employment projections 2024–2034, via O*NET OnLine. Numbers are rounded.

7Where This Leads

Path 1: Inside Sales or Sales Support — Quotes, orders, and customer calls. A common way in without a territory.

Path 2: Outside Sales Representative — Your own territory and your own quota. This is the job you must do first.

Path 3: Senior Rep or Team Lead — Top accounts, plus you start training the new people.

Path 4: Sales Manager — A team, their territories, their quotas, and your own number on top.

Path 5: Regional Sales Manager — Several teams across a bigger territory, and the managers running them.

Path 6: Director or VP of Sales — The whole sales organization, the pricing strategy, and the plan.

8The Real Talk

What's Great:

• About 40 openings a year — one of the better numbers in this series
• Jobs are spread across the whole state, not just Fargo and Bismarck
• You can get here without a degree if your sales numbers are strong
• The bottom tenth of about $79,610 beats the national bottom for this job
• Commission and bonus mean a great year really does pay you more
• You are out with customers instead of stuck at a desk

What's Hard:

• The number resets to zero every single month
• High turnover means you are recruiting and training almost constantly
• Part of your pay is at risk, so a bad quarter costs you money
• Serious windshield time, in North Dakota winter
• Nights and weekends for customer dinners, trade shows, and travel
• ND top-end pay is about $93,000 below the national top tenth

Be Honest: Can you carry a number that resets every month without it eating you? Can you tell a rep you like that they are not going to make it, and mean it? Can you drive three hours each way in February to sit in on somebody else’s sales call? And are you willing to sell yourself first, for years, before anyone gives you a team?

9Part 1: What Attracts You?

10Part 2: Are You Ready?

11Part 3: Your Next Move

Your Sales Manager Assessment Results