A Complete Guide to Field Sales

Comprehensive guide for outside sales teams covering everything from how to close more deals to career opportunities

What is Field Sales?

Did you know outside sellers make up 52% of all salespeople in the United States?

Field sales is a type of selling where sales people are mostly in person, meeting with customers on a day-to-day basis.

Whether you're new to field sales or an experienced professional looking to learn something new, the goal of this guide is to help provide additional information around field sales teams and the potential career opportunities.

Field sales refers to selling activities conducted in person, directly engaging with potential clients at their location rather than remotely or digitally.

It typically involves travel, face-to-face interactions, and a deep understanding of customer needs. Think of when in movies you saw the traveling salesperson going door to door. You can read more about the differences between inside and outside sales teams here.

Who Has Field Sales Teams?

Field sales teams are common across almost all industries. Most frequently, enterprises with thousands of employees have large field sales teams.

Industries with higher-than-average concentrations of field sellers include:

• Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices

• Commercial Insurance

• Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

• Technology (Software and Hardware)

• POS Software

• Manufacturing and Industrial Equipment

These companies rely on field sellers to communicate value, demonstrate products, and build trust that leads to long-term business relationships. As daily interactions increase, keeping clean notes and customer context organized becomes more difficult, which is why many teams adopt tools like Myko to simplify the admin work.

Types of Field Sellers

Transactional (Volume-Based) Field Sales

These field sellers focus on a high volume of transactions and often manage many customer interactions in short sales cycles. This is common in industries like consumer goods or smaller-scale B2B products such as POS systems. Transactional field sellers must excel in interpersonal skills and be fearless in the face of rejection.

This type of field sales requires exceptional in-person communication. Many leads are cold knocks where you meet prospects for the first time. It is a great training ground for developing future leaders. Myko helps transactional sellers move quickly by capturing notes, business cards, and follow-ups instantly without needing to slow down.

Enterprise Field Sales

Enterprise field sellers handle complex, high-value deals that have longer sales cycles. They manage fewer accounts and engage deeply with multiple stakeholders.

Most in-person meetings involve traveling to different teams within the same customer to learn their business and complete a consultative sale. These are often high-paying jobs with heavy travel. With many stakeholders and long timelines, Myko helps by bringing forward past meetings, contacts, and notes so the seller walks in fully prepared.

Recommended Technology for Field Sellers

The best field sales teams equip their reps with:

• Salesforce: A top CRM for customer relationships, pipeline tracking, and reporting.

• HubSpot: A popular CRM for SMBs with a clean interface.

• Badger Maps: A route optimization tool that helps field sellers plan efficient travel.

• Myko: An AI-powered voice-to-CRM tool that lets field sellers update Salesforce with a simple voice note. Myko handles fuzzy search, normalizes spelling errors, interprets incomplete information, and automatically logs activities, contacts, and opportunities with accuracy.

Integrating these technologies can streamline your sales process and dramatically increase efficiency.

Opening an Initial Meeting with a New Account

Your initial meeting sets the tone for the relationship. Follow these best practices:

• Preparation is Key: Review whether your company has interacted with this account before and understand their industry. Myko can surface recent activity, account history, and relevant contacts in seconds.

• Lead with Value: Start your conversation with insights that matter to their business.

• Listen Actively: Ask open-ended questions and show genuine curiosity. Myko can turn your meeting notes or voice recordings into accurate CRM entries afterward.

Best Practices for Field Sellers

Success in field sales requires more than closing deals. Consider these essentials:

• Organization and Planning: Maintain an organized schedule and map your visits. Myko helps by logging up to 100 activities at once from a single summary or voice recording after long field days or conferences.

• Effective Communication: Practice speaking comfortably to strangers and building rapport quickly.

• Continuous Learning: Read blogs, train frequently, and shadow experienced sellers.

Managing a Field Sales Team

Training is one of the most important factors in a successful team. Well-trained sellers perform better and ramp faster.

Using tools like Myko gives new sellers immediate access to meeting history, past conversations, and account context in their territory. This reduces confusion, improves follow-up, and increases the chances of re-engaging previously interested accounts.

• Set Clear Goals: Communicate targets and objectives clearly.

• Leverage Technology: Use CRM analytics and tools to track performance. Myko improves data cleanliness, which makes reports more reliable.

• Provide Support and Training: Invest in ongoing skill development.

Career Paths for Field Sellers

Field sales provides a strong foundation for many career paths, including:

• Sales Management

• Account Executive or Strategic Accounts

• Sales Operations or Enablement

• Executive Leadership

Field sales is an exciting career with strong opportunities for growth and advancement. Combining these skills with AI tools like Myko allows sellers to focus more on customer relationships and less on administrative tasks.