Sales & Business Development Skills in Demand

Sales and business development teams find customers and close deals. Requirements focus on track record and territory more than tools, which is why few specific skills reach a high share here, and remote work is common.

We analyzed 476 U.S. job descriptions from 153 employers for Sales & Business Development roles. The most requested skills were CRM systems (22%), Excel (15%) and Project management (9%).

12,931open U.S. roles tracked
4 yearstypical experience asked for
$161,000median advertised pay, from 1,735 roles that state it

Business tools

  • CRM systems22%
  • Excel15%
  • PowerPoint9%

Product & design

  • Project management9%
  • Agile4%

Cloud & infrastructure

  • AWS3%
  • Google Cloud3%

Finance & legal

  • Regulatory compliance3%

Operations

  • ERP systems3%

Data

  • Tableau3%

Languages

  • Python3%
  • SQL3%

Updated November 7, 2026, using job descriptions collected since October 8, 2026. Shares show how many of the sampled descriptions mention a skill, so a low share can still be a firm requirement in the roles that list it. We sample a limited number of descriptions per employer so that no single company dominates, and we only report figures backed by several employers. Advertised pay comes from a different group of roles than H1B filings, so the two are not directly comparable.

All job families