Of average salaries in Europe

A while ago, a Sales Director asked for “an average salary for a sales/account manager in IT company selling specialty software within Europe”.

I wish it were that simple but there is no such thing as a “salary in Europe”. For the same job, each country will pay different salaries.

Salaries are normally always expressed as gross salary ie before social security deductions (healthcare, pension, long-term disability, unemployment insurance…) and tax deductions. Depending on the country, income taxes are deducted directly through the payslip (eg UK) or are submitted individually by the employee (eg France).

If you get some numbers in reply to this kind of question, I advise you to check the reliability of the source. Best to get info from survey providers… but usually this info is only available to the companies who participate in their (paying) compensation survey. And if the source is reliable, then you will have to take into account cost-of-living differences in order to estimate what spending power this would give you compared to salaries in your current country of work.

As far as variable pay, you should consider not the value of the bonus (ie the actual pay… but it is linked to individual performance in sales positions) but the amount of the on-target bonus ie which amount or % of salary does this sales/account manager receive if he/she reaches all targets at 100%.

Variable pay will depend a lot on how the company is structured : is it through account “ownership” or through the management of all accounts within a specific geography or by type of customer (eg : by company size or industry)… It will also depend on whether the job is held by an individual contributor or by a team leader / people manager.

Hopefully this bit of methodology will help you navigate through any data you receive to this wide question, if you ever get any.

 

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