Sales director salaries soar as talent shortage continues

Base salary for sales directors has risen 60 per cent this year, recruiter claims

Sales directors at resellers have seen a 60 per cent increase in their basic salary this year from their previous level in 2017, according to research conducted by Robertson Sumner recruitment agency.

Sales managers at resellers have also seen a 12 per cent increase in their annual earnings, according to the survey.

Marc Sumner, founder of the channel recruitment agency, attributed this salary rise to the skills gap, stating that channel companies are raising their salaries in order to attract appropriately experienced candidates to their organisations.

"There are more vacancies than people and that is a real worry for businesses," Sumner told CRN.

"They have to be creative and look at ways to attract people - salaries are on the rise for people with experience.

"There are no reseller candidates on the market looking for jobs; they are either happily employed or they are looking to work for vendors."

The survey was conducted across 3,000 candidates over a six month period this year, and the results indicate that senior sales positions at vendors also saw salary increases of between seven and 12 per cent.

Sumner warned that vendors are a threat to a reseller's recruitment strategy, often using their partners as a "fishing pool" from which to draw talent.

"A lot of vendors are now targeting their own partners to get people from them," claimed Sumner.

"Many vendors have agreements with some of their partners that they can't poach staff, but there are still lots of partners out there that they can approach [to recruit their staff]."

The same cannot be said for sales positions at distributors, where sales salaries remain stable.

Sumner believes that there is a sufficient supply of skills among distributors so they do not need to raise salaries to attract candidates, but that this may be to their detriment as these candidates look to the more lucrative packages offered by vendors and resellers.

"If you are in distribution, you normally stay there," he explained.

"You don't usually see people in distribution move to a reseller - the next logical step would be to go to a vendor. But they are certainly falling way beyond reseller and vendor packages, that's for sure."

The onus is on channel companies to solve the skills gap, according to Sumner.

He credits Softcat and CCS Media as organisations that have run good recruitment campaigns for graduates and apprenticeships.

"Softcat were in front of the curve; they started really investing in graduates five to six years ago and now they are market leaders," he said.

"They saw that there wasn't enough people in the market for their growth, invested in graduates, and now a lot of other companies are following suit."

Recruiting salespeople from other sectors is also an option for businesses feeling the pinch of the talent shortage, said Sumner.

"I think people will have to wake up and look at alternative options which are either recruiting graduates or bringing in experienced salespeople who haven't sold in IT before," he explained.

"Tech is growing at such a fast pace that there just isn't the number of people to fuel the growth - something has to give."