Sales & Marketing: currently 700 jobs.The latest job was posted on 20 Oct 17.

Sales & Marketing

This sector contains all our sales and marketing jobs in financial services firms. Salespeople advise clients such as high net worth individuals, pension funds, hedge funds or other institutional investors on investment opportunities. These can be when to buy and when to sell securities. Financial salespeople usually focus on particular products such as government bonds, equities or derivatives. They should be charming, persuasive and good at selling. Larger investment firms employ research-sales professionals who sell their employer's research expertise. There's also a hybrid sales-trader who recommends products to clients and then executes the trades resulting from their recommendations.

A financial marketer's role is to develop new opportunities to sell these products, as well as preparing marketing materials and business pitches to position the firm as it would like to be seen. Although related, marketing and public relations are distinct functions. Marketers concern themselves with managing a firm's reputation by deciding how its brand name, products and services are portrayed in advertising and promotional campaigns. Public relations people focus on how a bank is represented in the media and, in the case of public companies, to investors.

Salespeople communicate with clients from the moment the financial markets open until the moment they close, as well as for several hours before and after. They start their day reviewing financial publications along with reports from their research staffs. They also listen in on morning conference calls conducted by their research departments, where they learn of upgrades or downgrades to securities already covered, or of new issues being added to the coverage list. All this material becomes fodder for the day's sales calls.

People looking for a financial sales job should be outgoing and self-confident, have the ability to grow and maintain client relationships, have excellent communication skills and the ability to understand complex financial products. They should also be passionate about financial markets, function well under pressure, be comfortable with numbers; and be able to think on their feet and react quickly to changing market conditions.

Marketing staffs not only promote their firms as a whole, but product-specific marketing people sit alongside sales teams. A financial marketing career can include sponsoring events, producing brochures and other collateral, developing corporate logos, determining the pricing and positioning of products and services, and researching markets for potential new products.

To succeed in a financial marketing job you should have strong written and oral communication skills, networking and relationship management capabilities, understanding of and ability to communicate complex financial issues with authority and understanding, and have specific knowledge of markets and market segments.