Sales Executive Apprentice Review

My role is in an inbound loyalty and retentions team, I answer calls and webchats from customers with billing and invoicing queries and have to try and retain customers who may wish to cancel their subscriptions to our software. This is the same each day, although the volume of customers I speak to can change.

I have learned a bit about what it is like to work in accountancy and payroll as this is not something I had ever been exposed to before. I have also learned about the psychology of sales through my apprenticeship provider and how you can interact efficiently with customers to build a rapport.

My programme is not what I expected it to be - the daily role was described as being a sales role which may have been misinterpreted or miscommunicated as we are more of a customer service team. I enjoy working with my team and everyone in the office is friendly but I was not aware of the nature of the role until I started. I do however enjoy the theory behind the apprenticeship course I am doing although it is proving difficult to apply to my role.

My apprenticeship programme is well structured, we have a monthly lecture/meeting with our apprenticeship provider to introduce us into the next module we are due to complete. The tutor is enthusiastic and this shows through his effective teaching. However, the structure becomes less clear when the tasks must be applied to our job as we do not necessarily have to ability to make it relevant.

My employer is supportive, there is a lovely team that look out for apprentices and check in on us when needed. My team is small and very busy at the moment so we have struggled to find time for further training and time for exposure to other teams in the sales department.

My training provider so far has been supportive. There are monthly meetings with everyone on the course where we have time to reflect on the previous module and discuss what we have learned. We then are introduced to the module we will be starting that day. I have however tried to reach out for some help and have struggled getting a response which has lead to my manager chasing my progress but in order to progress I need feedback.

I do not think my qualification is relevant to the specific role I am in. Although the qualification is in sales and I have learned a lot, my role is not direct sales. The course talks a lot about outbound dialling, cold calling, direct sales and sales planning. None of this is something I am exposed to so most of my work is written hypothetically, as advised by the training providers.

Yes, there are many extra curricular activities for apprentices at Sage to get involved with - many apprentices enjoy taking part in these and networking. However, due to the nature of my role and the lack of resourcing, our team is made up of three apprentices and without us it would be short staffed, so we are very restricted to what we can get involved in.

Yes

I would recommend Sage to a friend - this is because the company looks after their colleagues and offers progression opportunities as well as a lovely working environment. However, I would advise anyone who wanted to join Sage to make sure they are fully aware of what the role they are offered entails and to ask as many questions as possible, as I was not and it has not been what I expected to be doing.

To ask questions during the application, make sure you know exactly what your role entails and what it is you will be doing each day - the job title isn't as accurate as I had hoped. I would also advise anyone to just be themselves and go in with a smile on their face and enjoy meeting lovely new people.