B2b Sales Specialist

A B2B ("business-to-business") sales specialist sells products or services to other companies and organisations rather than to the public — things like software subscriptions, recruitment services, industrial equipment, logistics, packaging, financial products or professional services. The job is a mix of finding potential buyers, understanding what problem they're trying to solve, running meetings and demos, and negotiating commercial terms until a contract is signed. You usually work to a quota (a revenue target for the quarter or year) and are paid partly on results.

Approximate graduate salary

Base salaries for graduate-level B2B sales roles are typically around GBP 24,000–32,000 to start, with total on-target earnings often quoted somewhere in the GBP 35,000–50,000 range once commission is included. This varies a great deal by sector and location — enterprise software and some financial services sit at the higher end, London pays more than most regions, and commission is variable by definition, so treat any OTE figure in an advert as a target rather than a guaranteed amount.

What you'd actually do

Prospecting: building lists of companies that might buy, finding the right person inside them (often via LinkedIn, company websites, trade press or a data tool), and contacting them by phone, email and LinkedIn message. Early in your career this is often the single biggest chunk of your week.
Running discovery calls — a structured conversation where you ask a prospective buyer about their current setup, what's going wrong, who else is involved in the decision and what budget exists. The point is to qualify, i.e. work out whether this is a real opportunity worth spending weeks on.
Demonstrating or presenting the product, sometimes alongside a technical colleague (a 'sales engineer' or 'solutions consultant') who handles the deeper technical questions.
Writing proposals, pricing quotes and tender responses, and chasing the buyer's procurement, legal and finance teams through contract review — B2B deals often involve several people who each have to say yes.
Updating the CRM (customer relationship management system such as Salesforce or HubSpot) with call notes, deal stages and forecast dates. Tedious but non-negotiable: your manager's forecast is built from it.
Weekly pipeline review with your manager, going deal by deal through what will close, what's slipping and why, and what you'll do about it.
Attending trade shows, industry events, customer site visits or client lunches — frequency varies hugely by sector; in some field sales roles you're on the road most of the week, in others you never leave your desk.

How graduates get in

Direct application to a junior sales role — commonly advertised as Sales Development Representative (SDR), Business Development Representative (BDR), Graduate Account Executive or Inside Sales Executive. This is by far the most common entry point, especially in tech and recruitment, and these roles are advertised year-round rather than on a graduate-scheme cycle.
Formal graduate sales schemes at larger manufacturers, telecoms, logistics, media and industrial companies — usually a structured 12–24 month programme with rotations through marketing, customer service or product before you get your own territory.
Sales academies run by sales training providers and some tech firms, which combine a short intensive training course with placement into a company. Legitimate ones pay you from day one; be cautious of anything asking you to pay for training or promising uncapped earnings with no base salary.
Moving sideways from customer service, retail, hospitality or an internal account-support role. Employers genuinely do hire this way — demonstrable experience of talking to customers and handling rejection counts for a lot.
Sector-specific technical routes: medical device, scientific instrument, engineering and pharmaceutical sales often recruit people with a relevant science or engineering degree and train them on the selling side. Less common overall but a strong route if your degree fits.
Placement years and summer internships in sales or 'commercial' functions, which often convert into graduate offers.

What employers ask for

Degree subject usually doesn't matter at all for general B2B sales. Many employers accept any discipline, and some don't require a degree — plenty of successful salespeople came in without one.
Where it does matter: technical and scientific sales (medical devices, lab equipment, engineering components, some enterprise software) often ask for a relevant science, engineering or computing degree because you need to hold a credible conversation with technical buyers.
Grade requirements are generally looser than in law, finance or consulting. Some large graduate schemes ask for a 2:1; many direct-entry sales roles ask only for a degree, or simply for evidence you can do the job.
Evidence of resilience and drive is what's actually being screened for — commission-based part-time work, fundraising, competitive sport, running a society or a small business, or any role with a target attached.
A full UK driving licence is frequently required for field sales roles covering a geographic territory. For office- or remote-based 'inside sales', it usually isn't.
No mandatory professional qualification exists. Optional credentials include Institute of Sales Professionals membership and apprenticeship-linked sales qualifications; employers rarely ask for them but they can help if you have little experience.

Skills that matter

Structured questioning and listening

The deals you win come from working out what the buyer's actual problem costs them, which only happens if you ask precise follow-up questions instead of talking through a pitch.

Handling rejection without it changing your behaviour

Most outbound contacts go nowhere, and the people who last are the ones who make the same number of calls on a bad week as on a good one.

Commercial numeracy

You need to be comfortable with margins, discount structures, contract value over multiple years and what your own commission plan actually pays, because badly priced deals get rejected internally.

Written clarity in short formats

A cold email, a follow-up summary and a proposal executive summary all have to make a point in a few lines to a busy person who doesn't know you.

Stakeholder mapping

B2B purchases are usually approved by several people — a user, a budget holder, procurement, sometimes IT or legal — and deals die when you only ever speak to one of them.

Disciplined self-management and CRM hygiene

Nobody checks your diary, so your results depend on whether you actually do the unglamorous admin and follow-up that keeps deals moving.

Where it leads

Sales Development / Business Development Representative: generating and qualifying leads for more senior colleagues. Often 9–18 months, though this varies and some companies start graduates with a small territory straight away.
Account Executive / Sales Executive / Territory Manager: owning deals end to end and carrying your own quota. This is where earnings start to move significantly if you hit target.
Senior Account Executive, Enterprise Account Manager or Key Account Manager: fewer, larger, longer deals with major clients, or responsibility for growing existing accounts rather than winning new ones.
Branch into management (Sales Manager, then Head of Sales or Sales Director) or stay individual-contributor on large accounts — both are respected and the second often pays comparably. Timelines vary enormously; some people manage a team within three or four years, others never want to.
Common sideways moves: sales operations, revenue operations, partnerships, customer success, product marketing, or starting your own business. Sales experience also transfers unusually well between sectors, because the process is similar even when the product isn't.

What people get wrong

“It's about being a confident, charming extrovert who can talk anyone into anything.”

Modern B2B selling rewards preparation, research and asking good questions more than charisma. Quiet, methodical people often do very well, partly because they listen and follow up properly; persuasive talkers who skip the research tend to waste months on deals that were never going to close.

“You make a sale, get the commission and move on.”

B2B sales cycles commonly run for weeks or months and involve multiple decision-makers, procurement processes and legal review. Much of the job is project-managing a slow internal process inside someone else's company, and a lot of your time goes on deals that ultimately don't happen.

“Pay is uncapped so graduates earn huge sums quickly.”

Packages are usually split into a base salary and variable commission (often described as OTE — 'on-target earnings' — meaning what you'd earn if you hit 100% of quota). OTE is a projection, not a promise, and many people don't hit it, particularly in their first year. Always look at the base salary first and ask how many of the team hit target.

“It's a fallback for people who couldn't get into a 'proper' graduate scheme.”

Commercial roles sit close to the revenue in most businesses, which is why sales backgrounds are common among senior leaders and founders. In technical and enterprise sales the bar on product knowledge is genuinely high.

Where this varies

The job differs sharply depending on what you sell. Software and tech sales are usually office- or remote-based, heavily metric-driven (call and meeting counts tracked weekly), with a well-defined SDR-to-Account-Executive ladder. Industrial, manufacturing, construction-supply and medical sales are often field-based with a geographic territory, long-standing customer relationships and far more travel and site visits — the pace is slower but technical knowledge matters more. Recruitment sales is a sector of its own, with very high activity volumes and a strong commission weighting. Deal size matters too: 'transactional' selling means many small deals closed quickly, while 'enterprise' selling means a handful of large, slow, committee-approved contracts a year. Culture also varies from supportive and coaching-led to bluntly target-driven with public leaderboards, so it's worth asking in interview how performance is managed and what happens to people who miss target.

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.