As Hong Kong moves up the ranks in achieving ‘Competitive Smart City’ status, businesses are looking to hire sales professionals with high technical aptitude on top of a keen business acumen. The sales role industry-wide has evolved to encompass not only business development, strategy, product development and market development, but also technological application and competency, according to recruitment experts Hays.
“For those operating in industrial sector sales, an understanding of how to apply new technologies to open up new revenue streams is imperative. Meanwhile, on the consumer side, candidates who have technological experience with big data, data analytics and consumer behaviour are keenly sought after for the new digitalisation era,” says Dean Stallard, managing director of Hays Greater Bay Area.
“Other than non-technical skills, there is a high expectation of candidates to possess other qualities such as being extremely goal-driven, owning an established network, and having bigger, long-term aspirations as opposed to short-term monetary goals. Language skills are particularly critical, and those who do are not fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese are seen as having little value to the business as those are the two most important languages spoken by customers and other stakeholders.”
Some key competencies desired in sales professionals include:
- Data analytics
- CRM management
- Marketing automation
According to the global recruitment firm, while the demand for these candidates is pronounced, the fast-moving nature of technological developments is outpacing the pipeline of skilled talent required by companies to thrive in the digitalised climate.
“Companies are finding that while there is a large supply of candidates proficient in sales, they lack the necessary skills to navigate the technology based conversations that are required in the modern sales environment, and the number of those who have achieved the required level of experience, is a long way off the demands of the market,” says Timothy Smith, manager of Hays Hong Kong.
“With the creation and development of new skills and roles needed in the industry, some traditional functions of sales professionals are on the decline. In Hong Kong, already three in five talents have felt the effects of automation, and sales talents are not an exception.”
“In fact, marketing automation is increasingly replacing traditional sales tasks such as cold calling or door to door sales while AI takes the manual workload off virtual banks. However, the silver lining is that many opportunities, in turn, arise from such developments. Sales professionals who constantly upskill and actively seek out opportunities to acquire working knowledge and experience in tech are in a better position to future-proof themselves.”
To read the full Inside Story on Sales Professionals in Hong Kong, please click here.
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Hays, the world’s leading recruiting experts in qualified, professional and skilled people.
Hays is located in Hong Kong at 6604-06, 66/F, ICC, 1 Austin Road West, West Kowloon, Hong Kong.
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About Hays
Hays plc (the "Group") is a leading global professional recruiting group. The Group is the expert at recruiting qualified, professional and skilled people worldwide, being the market leader in the UK and Asia Pacific and one of the market leaders in Continental Europe and Latin America. The Group operates across the private and public sectors, dealing in permanent positions, contract roles and temporary assignments. As at 31 December 2018 the Group employed 11,700 staff operating from 262 offices in 33 markets across 20 specialisms. For the year ended 30 June 2018:
– the Group reported net fees of £1.072 billion and operating profit (pre-exceptional items) of £243.4 million;
– the Group placed around 77,000 candidates into permanent jobs and around 244,000 people into temporary assignments;
– 19% of Group net fees were generated in Australia & New Zealand, 26% in Germany, 24% in United Kingdom & Ireland and 31% in Rest of World (RoW);
– the temporary placement business represented 58% of net fees and the permanent placement business represented 42% of net fees;
– Hays operates in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA