What Does Sales Person Mean?

The sales person position is practically a mandatory job for many different businesses. They are an essential part companies since they have the responsibility of generating revenues and finding new customers, while keeping healthy relationships with older ones.

In some cases, they also have other assigned tasks such as supervising the proper display of the merchandise, following up with receivables and gathering recommendations for potential clients. This job position is normally compensated through a fixed salary plus commissions and other incentives. The size of the commissions varies depending on the industry and they could also be tied to certain accomplishments.

On the other hand, some companies also assign vehicles, expense accounts or allowances for gas or meals. Most salesmen work alongside with a sales team that is managed by a district, region or national sales manager in the case of corporations or floor supervisors if it is a store.

Example

Bell Food Co. is currently hiring three people for a new district sale’s team. The company is looking to hire experienced individuals who have at least a high school degree. They must have at least 6 years of relevant experience working in the food industry and great job references. The candidates will be interviewed and hired temporarily for three months to see if they are a good fit for the job.

Their main function will be to visit clients to take orders, keep them updated about the current status of their pending payments, supplying branding and advertising materials and to keep products adequately displayed in each of the stores assigned to them. Finally, they will report to the District Sales Manager who will keep track of their performance. Commissions will be 2% of net sales.

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What Does Managing Partner Mean?

This term intends to differ from other types of partners that are not involved in the day-to-day running of the company. Depending on the firm, other partners could be named as junior partners, passive partners, capitalist partners, etc.

The Board of Directors or the majority partner could propose one of the partners to perform the managerial role, usually as general manager or top executive. This partner must be properly qualified for the job but, besides his professional abilities, he has higher incentives to perform exceptionally because the company is his business. Due to his partner role, this manager has a broader range of responsibilities.

He is assumed to have a strategic approach when analyzing all topics and decisions thanks to his vision as owner. Also, he must productively link other partner’s views with the management level and guarantee an adequate functioning of the governance structure. The managing partner should also be the most relevant voice of the company to outsiders. Thanks to his double role.

Example

Hats For All is a firm specialized in manufacturing hats. Mr. Gordon, the founder, has been the sole proprietor for two decades. He recently convinced several friends to invest in the company with the purpose of expanding its production capacity to enter the online sales market.

Once the friends became partners, with a similar number of shares each, Mr. Gordon was only one of the owners. A new Board of Directors was then elected with some of the new partners and also external experts. They decided that Mr. Gordon would be the managing partner. He had experience and business knowledge as well as excellent technical qualifications. Mr. Gordon, as the managing partner, will be accountable for its performance with the Board of Directors.

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What Does Assistant Manager Mean?

This occupation was established to provide assistance to key executives in order to keep work and activities flowing according to expectations. These assistants have authority and leadership over other staff and they normally delegate and follow up the fulfillment of the pending tasks within the department, office or business. They commonly serve as a substitute figure when the Senior Manager is out of town, sick or just physically unavailable. Since these individuals are often closely trained by Senior Manager they are often promoted to more complex positions within the corporate structure due to the skills and training obtained in their previous position.

Candidates aiming to fulfill such positions must possess proper interpersonal skills, they should be goal-oriented, highly capable and should have the academic background and experience to satisfy the demanding requirements of replacing the manager temporarily. In the U.S. Assistant Managers earn an average of $35,000 a year and the position frequently include sales incentives, health benefits and other non-monetary benefits offered by companies.

What Does an Assistant Manager Do? – Example

Mary is currently looking for a full-time job position, as she recently graduated from a renowned business school. She describes herself as an entrepreneurial kind of person and it is obvious to her teachers that she possesses leadership skills. Her college mentor advised her to pursue a career as a business executive, but in order to do so she needs to start training in the work field in a subordinate position.

She identified the Assistant Manager position as the one that suits this path the best. She started looking for similar jobs and found one in a local mattresses’ factory. There’s an available position for an Assistant Manager to the Marketing Vice President. Since she had awesome grades, college recommendations and a few years of experience working as a Store Manager she was able to secure the job position. Mary is now learning management skills in a dynamic work environment and she is developing her abilities to become a highly effective Senior Manager.

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What Does Serial Entrepreneur Mean?

Traditional entrepreneurs are individuals that conceive, plan, organize and execute a given idea and work on it on a day-to-day basis either until the business is properly consolidated or they remain there as senior managers the entire time. Contrary to that, a serial entrepreneur is a person that pursues a business idea but doesn’t dedicate entirely to it for a long period of time, instead of that he designates someone else to oversee most of the day-to-day operations and devotes his time to the next idea. They normally have many ongoing projects in different life stages and it is their purpose to empower someone else to take over and develop the idea.

Serial entrepreneurism has been studied as a business phenomenon and it is a tendency that many are following. Renowned business people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk are serial entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there are dangers in being a serial entrepreneur if leadership skills are not good enough to empower others to do the day-to-day work properly, or if there’s no checks and balances system. Also, people with the tendency to be undisciplined or distracted might lose focus and all businesses might end up badly because of a lack of attention in the development stages of each.

Example

Phil is a marketing expert with more than 15 years working for the advertising industry. His in-depth knowledge of how the industry functions have given him great ideas for new businesses. Phil considers himself a entrepreneur and he had already started three businesses.

The first one is a digital marketing agency, that focuses on social media management and content writing.

The second one is a BTL marketing agency that focuses on creative advertising and the third one is a marketing consulting company. Phil is a serial entrepreneur so these will not be the only businesses he will develop, but in order to grow them he hired three experienced individuals to manage each of them and make them grow.

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What Does Retroactive Pay Mean?

Retroactive pay, also called “retro pay”, is different from back pay, which is a payment issued to honor past commitments that for some reason weren’t fulfilled timely. A retroactive pay takes place when an employer has to pay a difference from past wages because of a newly set wage rate that affects those previous periods. This situations often happen when wage negotiations are taking place and past contracts are due, the negotiations might keep going for a while and when an agreement is reached the employer must honor the newly agreed rate retroactively.

In other cases, employees that got an illegal wage reduction can also apply for a retroactive pay. Normally, disputes over wage rate changes can be solved between the parties but in other cases employees can hire employment lawyers or have a government agent to review the case to see if there’s an illegal or unfair situation going on.

Example

Karla is an employee in a big supermarket that is located close to where she lives. The company’s workers decided to form a union to negotiate better wages and working conditions. Karla signed up for the union and they are currently discussing wage increases. Her contract expired two weeks after the negotiations started and she had to sign a contract with her old wage rate, since the new one hasn’t been settled yet.

After a few months, the union got a 12% wage increase to all workers like Karla. Since the contract negotiations started before her contract was renewed, the company had to pay her a retroactive pay for all the time that has passed since the negotiations started until this day.

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What Does Gross Salary Mean?

Gross salary is determined by the employer when the job is offered. This gross salary might come from different sources such as wage, commissions, tips, bonuses and any other economic incentive received as part of the wage and it is the baseline for any calculation made regarding the employee’s income.

The gross salary doesn’t take into account deductions or taxes that are taken out after the payment is issued, because it is the pre-negotiated amount of money stipulated at the job contract. Later on, the gross salary will be reduced by these deductions, to comply with federal or state laws or also, to pay for any other financial commitments taken by the employee that are directly taken off its gross income.

The gross salary figure helps the employee compare its level of compensation with the market average to see if his salary is competitive and rewarding, in relation to similar industry peers. On the other hand, gross salary serves as a measure to determine the employee’s payment capacity, to engage in any debt commitment.

Example

Mr. Lemon is a Graphic Designer at an online shop called Sportgear.com. The company offers fitness and sport products online to customers all over the world. Mr. Lemon’s job is to design the product images that go into the website and when he accepted the job he negotiated a salary of $3,500 a month.

Last month, Mr. Lemon approached the Human Resources Manager to ask why he got paid $2,950 instead of the $3,500 that he signed up for. The manager explained to Mr. Lemon that even though his gross salary was $3,500, this figure is reduced by a charge of $350 a month for tax purposes and another $200 are deducted for health insurance.

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What Does a Professional Mean?

Professionals are highly knowledgeable and skilled individuals, trained to perform a particular activity. They have done a particular set of studies or have specialized in a particular area of business or academics to perform its duties with confidence.

In business, there are some special fields that require a professional-level individual. For example, accountants are professionals since they provide a particular service that require in-depth knowledge about the accounting field.

On the other hand, consultants are also professionals, regardless of their area of expertise, since they offer expert-level advice to companies to enhance their results. This “professional” status might come from academic degrees or licenses obtained by the individual, to certify their training. Nonetheless, people with extensive experience in a given field might also be considered professional, either if they hold a degree or not. But this will not be a common thing in highly-specialized fields like accounting, medicine, law or economics.

Example

Mr. Garret is a 43 years old individual living in New England. He has 10 years of experience practicing mercantile law and he currently works independently providing legal consultation to small business all around the city. He holds a Bachelor in Business Administration and a Law degree from a state university. His services include writing legal documents, defending clients from lawsuits and drafting contracts, among many other services he provides as a lawyer.

According to our concept, to be considered a professional, Mr. Garret must be able to provide an expert-level service to the organizations he serves. As we can see from this description, both his academic background and work experience show enough evidence to consider that he is able to provide such level of service.

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What Does Manager Mean?

The concept or figure of a manager is mostly related to business environments. Nonetheless, the managing function can be extended to different spheres by applying the underlying concept. A manager is someone that has the responsibility of getting things done. He normally manages both people and resources (physical resources or economic resources, among others). He has to plan, organize, execute and control all the activities he has been delegated with by using all available resources to do it effectively. Managers normally have enough authority to require and dispose resources as needed.

They can hire or fire employees, ask for supplies and equipment and organize teams depending on the nature of the tasks. Companies normally hire managers with professional background and experience or train their current employees to become managers. Broadly speaking, managers within an organizational structure can be classified as operational, tactical and strategic, depending on the nature of their responsibilities.

Operational managers are in charge of day-to-day activities such as a production-line supervisor; on the other hand, tactical managers deal with whole departments such as a marketing manager or a plant manager; and finally, strategic managers are those with the responsibility of guiding the organization to achieve expected results, for example a Chief Executive Officer.

Here’s an example.

Example

Big Watches Co. is a company that sells and repairs used or old watches. The company was founded by Mr. Howard, and his son Edward handles the day-to-day operations while Mr. Howard repairs the watches that arrive to the store. The company also has 4 employees supervised by Edward and it has a $20,000 a month expense budget. Who would be the manager in this case?

We previously defined a manager as someone that supervises both activities and people within a given organization. In this case, Edward will be the one who fits this concept since he handles day-to-day operations, deals with staff and also, administers the store’s budget.

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What Does Human Resources (HR) Mean?

Human resources is often a synonym of labor, human talent, human capital and manpower. Any company or institution develops its mission through a combination of different resources. These can be classified as technological, physical, financial and human. No matter the field where the organization operates in, human resources are required in some extent. In general, the service industry requires a greater level of human resources if compared to manufacturing activities, especially at highly automated industries. The term is frequently applied to the department managing the workforce of a company.

This is the unit responsible of all processes related to personnel, such as recruiting, hiring, training and payroll. In addition, this department is generally in charge of compliance with labor laws. Because of the importance and at the same time complexity of managing those processes, the most successful companies consider the Human Resources Department as highly strategic. Nowadays it is understood that employee’s performance and contribution to organization goals is closely related to the effectiveness of the human resources function.

Example

Bristen & Neil Inc. is a manufacturing company that grew considerably since its creation five years ago. It operates now with 780 employees located in three cities. The company success was the outcome of exceptional efforts made by the founders and owners, who are very innovative and action-driven people. Although the initial achievements were certainly extraordinary, the owners realized that growth and profitability rates declined over the past year. A consultant firm was hired to research the reasons. The consultants then found that many employees were not motivated to perform well because of low salaries.

Others are not properly trained to do the assigned job. Some workers are unhappy because the founders never visit their workplace and therefore think that their work is not significant enough. The newest workers did not understand well their responsibilities. As a consequence of the consulting project, some radical decisions were made to solve the main problems. The first signal of change was to structure a strong, highly professional Human Resources Department. This example shows that process related to and focused on human resources must be a priority to guarantee sustainable accomplishments.

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What Does Entrepreneurship Mean?

The word entrepreneur is said to have its roots in a French word that means “adventurer”. There’s also a discussion about this subject, since some other say that the word comes from a Latin word. Either way, entrepreneurship is now a widely referred business word that identifies business activities normally carried out by innovative people. The concept of entrepreneurship has a bit of glamour attached, but in the real world, many ordinary ventures should be considered as entrepreneurial activities.

The idea behind this is that anyone willing and knowledgeable to undertake the risks involved in developing a business venture should be considered an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is normally tied to new businesses but it can also refer to social activities, like the development of non-governmental organizations or community-building activities like setting up a new church or a home shelter.

To sum up, entrepreneurship should be interpreted more like a spirit, not a particular activity. It is a matter of character, skills and courage that come together to develop new ideas and concepts that add value to society.

Here’s an illustration of these.

Example

Mr. Prince is a 32 years old economist graduated from one of the top business schools of the U.S. After he graduated from his Master degree he decided to develop a statistical model to predict European currency results by using different tools. He decided to start a company to develop this idea and sell it to financial services companies all around the world. Should this be considered a case of entrepreneurship?

According to our concept, entrepreneurship is an activity where an individual assumes the risk of funding and managing a given venture. As we can see Mr. Prince seems to be willing to deal with the risks of developing this idea, which means that this should be considered a case of entrepreneurship.

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