SkillDriftYour Personal Career Coach!
Sign in

Skills employers ask for in sales jobs in manufacturing

In 3,644 sales jobs in manufacturing in the SkillDrift job index, the most requested skill is Negotiation, named in 35% of postings. Sales follows at 29.1%, then Business development at 22.5%.

Based on 3,644 job postings in the SkillDrift job index, read on 1 October 2026.

Most requested

The 8 skills named most often

Each share is the part of all sales jobs in manufacturing that name the skill. One posting usually names several skills, so the shares add up to more than 100%.

  1. 1Negotiation35%1,276 of 3,644 postings
  2. 2Sales29.1%1,060 of 3,644 postings
  3. 3Business development22.5%820 of 3,644 postings
  4. 4Customer relationship management22.3%814 of 3,644 postings
  5. 5Lead generation17.5%637 of 3,644 postings
  6. 6B2B sales13.4%487 of 3,644 postings
  7. 7Client relationship management12.2%443 of 3,644 postings
  8. 8Account management8.2%297 of 3,644 postings

Which of these does your resume show? Upload it below. SkillDrift reads it against a real job, names the skills it does not show yet, and builds a plan to close them.

Start with your resume.

Takes about a minute

Upload it once. You get your readiness score, your closest roles, your real gaps and week one of a plan built for them.

Drop your resume here
PDF, DOC or DOCX · up to 5 MB · takes about a minute

We read your resume to score it and find matches. We store it so you don’t have to upload it again if you make an account, and delete it after 30 days if you don’t. Privacy policy.

Don’t have a resume?Build one with SkillDrift AI in 2 minutes.Build my resume
How to read this

Where these numbers come from

The SkillDrift job index collects live job postings and reads the skills each one asks for. This page counts the postings in the sales role group within the manufacturing industry, and shows the share that name each skill. Skills appear as employers write them, so close variants such as Excel and MS Excel can both appear, because a posting may use either. The page is refreshed from the index, and the date above shows the last read.

FAQ

Questions people ask

What is the most requested skill in sales jobs in manufacturing?

Negotiation. It is named in 35% of the 3,644 sales jobs in manufacturing in the SkillDrift job index on 1 October 2026.

How many job postings is this based on?

3,644 postings, read from the SkillDrift job index on 1 October 2026. Each share is the number of postings that name the skill, divided by all postings in this group.

Further reading

Keep going