Sales and marketing recruitment inRetail
Recruitment for sales and marketing roles across multichannel retail, ecommerce, lifestyle brands, specialist stores, marketplaces, retail services and consumer-facing businesses.
£114.7bn
UK retail economic output, 2024
396k
Ireland wholesale & retail employees, Jul 2026
Sales and Marketing professionals in Retail get used to looking past the headline number. A promotion can perform brilliantly and still be poor business. Sales may rise while margin falls, customers may simply bring forward a purchase they were going to make anyway, or a campaign can create demand for stock the business cannot fulfil.
With experience, people get better at seeing what sits behind the result.
Sales and commercial professionals become more aware of margin, availability, timing, customer behaviour and the practical consequences of the deal they are making. They learn that a buyer saying no may be about space, stock turn, category strategy or risk rather than the product itself.
Marketing develops a similar awareness.
A strong campaign still has to survive the shelf, website, checkout, delivery and returns process. Experienced retail marketers learn that what the customer has been promised and what the business can actually deliver have to stay reasonably close together.
Live roles in Retail
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Register in confidenceWhat do employers look for in Retail Sales & Marketing professionals?
Retail experience is useful when someone understands how customer behaviour connects with commercial performance.
Consideration
Customer & Consumer Understanding
Strong professionals understand how customers research, compare and buy, and how consumer trends affect demand. This helps sales and marketing activity remain relevant rather than relying on broad assumptions about the market.
Take these into your next interview. A free hiring checklist for Retail.
Get the checklistRoles we recruit in Retail
Sales
Sales that improve commercial performance
Retail Sales Director
Leads the sales and trading strategy across stores, ecommerce, marketplaces or wholesale channels, aligning revenue growth with margin, stock and customer experience.
Head of Ecommerce
Owns online commercial performance, including conversion, trading, merchandising, promotions and coordination with marketing, technology, fulfilment and customer-service teams.
National Account Manager
Manages major retail, marketplace or wholesale accounts, negotiating commercial terms, developing joint plans and protecting revenue, margin and long-term relationships.
Retail Business Development Manager
Identifies new customers, channels, partnerships or locations and builds commercially viable opportunities around the retailer’s proposition, audience and operating model.
Store or Regional Sales Manager
Drives sales performance across a store or regional network through team leadership, local execution, customer service, operational discipline and consistent trading standards.
What employers look for in sales
Employers may be looking for someone who can:
• Look beyond revenue. Understand what sales growth has done to margin, stock, repeat behaviour and the wider category.
• Understand the customer or buyer properly. A no can mean price, space, timing, stock turn, risk or simply that the proposition does not solve the right problem.
• Work with operational reality. Selling an activity the business cannot stock or fulfil usually creates a different problem later.
• Understand the trading calendar. Range reviews, seasonal buying, promotions and stock commitments can make timing commercially important.
• Build useful relationships. Strong retail relationships tend to be built through reliability, clean information, realistic forecasts and doing what was agreed.
Marketing
Marketing that turns attention into demand
Retail Marketing Director
Sets the marketing strategy across brand, customer acquisition, retention, promotions and channels, ensuring activity supports profitable sales and a consistent customer experience.
Head of Brand
Defines brand positioning, identity and customer relevance, translating the proposition into campaigns, content, partnerships and experiences across physical and digital touchpoints.
Ecommerce Marketing Manager
Generates and converts online demand through paid media, search, email, social, affiliates and onsite optimisation, working closely with trading and ecommerce teams.
CRM and Loyalty Manager
Uses customer data, segmentation and lifecycle communications to improve repeat purchase, retention, loyalty participation and long-term customer value.
Retail Campaign Manager
Plans and delivers seasonal, promotional and product-led campaigns across stores, digital channels and partners, coordinating timing, creative, stock and performance measurement.
What employers look for in marketing
The stronger Retail marketers tend to:
• Connect campaigns with stock and trading priorities.
• Understand how customers behave across store, ecommerce and other channels.
• Protect margin while still creating demand.
• Think beyond acquisition into retention, loyalty and customer value.
• Make sure the brand promise survives the actual customer experience.
A campaign can create attention, but customers still experience the price, product availability, store, website, fulfilment, service and returns process.
Experienced marketers learn to work across those connections rather than treating marketing as a separate layer around the business.
Same CV. Different Capability.
Retail experience can cover very different commercial environments.
Two Key Account Managers may both list major retailers, joint business plans, promotions, forecasting and revenue growth.
One may mainly manage an established account and execute an agreed trading plan; another may negotiate range, margin and terms, influence buyers with category insight, manage trade investment and make decisions that materially affect stock and profitability.
The responsibilities can look similar while the level of commercial ownership is very different.
Professional A
Key Account Manager
- Strong buyer relationships and account continuity
- Delivers promotional and revenue targets
- Works within established ranges and trading plans
Professional B
Key Account Manager
- Builds new or underdeveloped customer opportunities
- Negotiates range, margin and commercial terms
- Connects forecasting, stock and customer strategy
- Uses category and customer insight to influence decisions
We find out which one you need. Brief a role
The Retail Economy
+1.2%
Ireland wholesale & retail employment growth, year-on-year Jul 2026
THE UK PICTURE:
In Great Britain, retail sales volumes rose by 1.3% in 2025, the second consecutive year of growth. Online spending remained a major part of the market, accounting for 28.3% of total retail spending in December 2025, while online sales values were 11.1% higher than a year earlier. Overall retail volumes, however, remained below 2019 levels. (Office for National Statistics)
THE IRISH PICTURE:
In Ireland, retail sales ended 2025 broadly flat in volume terms, while the value of sales in December was 1.5% higher than a year earlier. Performance varied significantly by category, with stronger growth in areas such as motor trades and electrical goods, while clothing, footwear and textiles declined. Irish retail data also includes online sales made by retailers operating in Ireland, although it does not capture all spending through overseas e-commerce businesses. (Central Statistics Office)
Behind the headline numbers is a sector balancing stores and screens, volume and margin, stock and timing. A supermarket, fashion chain, online retailer and specialist store may compete for the same consumer spend while operating very different buying cycles, promotional models and routes to market.
Building your Sales & Marketing career in Retail
Career progression in Retail usually brings broader commercial responsibility.
SALES
Sales and commercial careers can move from individual accounts, stores or territories into larger customer groups, regional responsibility, partnerships, ecommerce or wider commercial leadership.
As responsibility grows, people are more likely to become involved in pricing, margin, forecasting, stock, customer strategy and decisions about where future growth should come from.
The strongest progression is not always the biggest revenue number. Exposure to different channels, customer groups and commercial situations can develop a much broader understanding of how the retail business actually works.
MARKETING
Retail marketing careers often begin within a particular area such as digital, brand, CRM, ecommerce, trade marketing or customer acquisition.
With seniority, those areas start to come together.
More senior marketers may take responsibility for the wider customer journey, brand positioning, retention, trading priorities, campaign investment and how marketing works with ecommerce, buying, merchandising, stores and operations.
That broader exposure helps people understand not only what attracts a customer, but what makes the relationship commercially worthwhile over time.
For employers
For employers, we look beyond the obvious CV match and spend time understanding what someone has actually done, the environment they have worked in and how relevant that experience is to the role.
Discuss a Sales or Marketing HireFor professionals
For professionals, we help make sense of the experience you have built, what you are genuinely good at and where that might take you next.
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