What does a Field Sales Representative do?

A Field Sales Representative sells in person within an assigned territory. They plan visit routes, prospect new customers, demonstrate products on site, negotiate and close orders, and keep existing accounts ordering regularly. They also feed market and competitor intelligence back to the company and log everything in the CRM.

What is the difference between field sales and inside sales?

Field reps sell face to face in a territory, spending most of the week traveling to customers. Inside reps sell remotely by phone, email, and video at higher contact volume. Field sales suits complex, relationship-heavy, or physical products; inside sales suits shorter cycles and digital products. Many companies blend both.

What should I look for when hiring a Field Sales Representative?

Look for self-management above all: ask candidates to describe last week in the field, visit by visit. Strong reps answer with specifics about routes, targets, and follow-ups. Verify territory results, check comfort with cold visits, and confirm the practical basics such as driving license and travel tolerance.

How is a Field Sales Representative usually paid?

Most plans combine a base salary with commission or bonus on territory revenue, plus a company car or mileage allowance and expense coverage. Base-to-variable splits around 60/40 or 70/30 are common. State on-target earnings and the vehicle policy in the job ad, since field candidates filter on both.

Field Sales Representative Job Description

Field sellers judge an opportunity on two things before anything else: the quality of the territory and how the commission actually pays. A dense route with existing accounts and a blank map with a hunting brief are both legitimate, and they suit different people entirely. Being vague about which one you are offering wastes the interview.

The draft below covers territory planning, prospecting, in-person selling, and keeping existing customers ordering. Before you edit, define the territory precisely, state the visit or meeting volume you expect, and be exact about vehicle and expense arrangements. These are the practical terms of the job rather than administrative footnotes.

Say what proportion of the week is travel, because the answer shapes somebody's life and is the most common thing understated in these postings. Explain the commission plan plainly enough that a candidate can model their own earnings. The generator below can produce a route-based or a longer-cycle version of the description.

Written by Yağmur Erge, HR Content Specialist at Hirex. Reviewed by the Hirex Recruitment Team.
Last updated September 14, 2026.

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About the Field Sales Representative role

A Field Sales Representative sells face to face, on the customer's ground. They own a geographic territory, plan visit routes, prospect for new customers, demonstrate products in person, negotiate on the spot, and keep existing accounts ordering. Much of the week is spent traveling between meetings, so the role rewards self-starters who manage their own time without a manager watching.

The shape of the job depends on what is sold. In consumer goods and distribution, field reps work dense routes of retail visits, checking stock, placing orders, and defending shelf space. In B2B services or equipment, they run fewer but longer meetings, with demos, site assessments, and multi-visit negotiations. Both versions live on relationship strength and territory knowledge that no remote seller can match.

In your posting, define the territory clearly, state the expected visit or meeting volume, and be upfront about travel share, vehicle and expense arrangements, and how the commission plan works. Field sales candidates self-select heavily on territory quality and earning mechanics, so transparency here saves everyone interview time.