By Kara Ellison, Associate Divisional Director
As a sales professional, you will know how important first impressions are. With that in mind, your CV needs to demonstrate a positive representation of you to the hiring manager or recruiter.
Just like your role in sales, your CV needs to be your personal pitch, highlighting key achievements, experiences, solid sales techniques and communication skills in a persuasive, professional and exciting way.
In this article, we share some great tips to help you create an outstanding CV that will enable you to stand shoulders above other sales candidates.
Think of this as an elevator pitch, but for yourself.
Start your CV with an opening statement. This is a short and punchy summary of your career objectives, key achievements, and the core skills/ attributes you can offer to the business.
If it’s weak, not only will hiring managers doubt your abilities, but they’ll also stop reading altogether. Craft something outstanding and you’ll be on your way to getting those all-important interviews.
Remember to tailor this section of your CV to the job you’re applying for and include keywords from the job description, that way you’ll be at the top of search results on their talent identification software.
Answer these questions and you’ll be set.
Always display this under your summary, it’s one of the most important parts.
As a sales professional, results are monitored by targets and other metrics, so including detail of revenue you’ve generated, and achievements in each role is essential in your CV. Recruiters and hiring managers will be looking for this, during the initial application review stages.
Detail is key! Instead of stating that you’ve “managed a sales team” change it to, “actively managed a sales team of 5 field sales representatives, that collectively generated £3 million in new revenue throughout 2019.” This will create maximum impact, and you’re actually stating a number of skills and achievements in one sentence.
As a sales professional, employers require specific abilities, many are specialist sales techniques, and others are soft skills that enable you to successfully build relationships. Highlight these throughout your CV.
Keep in mind the four skills below, these are essential to your sales career and need to be highlighted.
Relationship building – demonstrate to the prospective employer that you have the ability to turn leads into sales and build long-lasting, trusted relationships.
Resilience – show that you’re able to accept setbacks, recover quickly from disappointments, adapt well to change, and effectively respond to challenges.
Product knowledge – demonstrate specific product knowledge to support your excellent customer service approach, increasing sales and brand reputation.
Converting a sale – the ultimate goal for any sales professional is to convert a lead into a deal, so ensure that your CV provides solid examples of where and how you’ve done this.
Here are a number of other essential hard and soft skills, you should consider and demonstrate throughout your CV:
Hard skills:
Soft skills:
This section is the star of your CV. This is the part you can get to the nitty-gritty of your experience, to demonstrate where you’ve perfected your sales skills and abilities.
Always order your job roles from most to least recent, and include job title, name of employer and dates of employment.
For each job role, include 4 to 6 bullet points, describing your responsibilities, and your accomplishments throughout your time of employment. Ensure you highlight experiences that are relevant to the role you’re applying for.
Also use this an opportunity to include more appealing verbs, instead of “responsible for” use “successfully negotiated, collaborated, implemented”.
It’s key to demonstrate how well you undertook the role, use the PAR (Problem-Action-Result) technique to structure your bullet points.
If you’re progressing your career into a specific industry, you need to demonstrate, both the experience and knowledge you’ve gained from within it.
There are a few essential elements to include, these are as follows:
A customer's overall experience with a brand, positive or negative, is a major contributor to both long-term loyalty and sales. As a sales professional, you need to demonstrate to the prospective employer your ability to work with customers, effectively find solutions and ultimately, build long-lasting relationships that convert to repeat sales.
Include examples of your customer-focused approach and where you’ve successfully established relationships, throughout each role listed in your CV.
Split your qualifications and training into two parts, core (traditional qualifications, degree, A-levels etc) and additional (essential training or courses needed in sales).
In sales, it’s essential to keep on top of the competition, new technologies, consumer trends and behaviours, processes and new and tactful sales techniques. By demonstrating you’re a proactive learner in your CV, hiring managers will trust that you’re an expert in the field.
John Doe
4-5 lines summarizing you and your background
2013 – CIM – Current Study
2008 – 2012 Sheffield Hallam University
1st Class Honors Marketing Degree
2006 – 2008 A-Levels (Business Studies – B, Media – A, English Literature – B)
2001 – 2006 GCSE’s (10 GCSE’s A* - B including English, Maths & Science)
Jayne Doe Manufacturing – May 2012 – Present
Jayne Doe Manufacturing are a £6m turnover business in South Yorkshire. They are a specialist steel tooling business with key OEM clients including Automotive, Aerospace and Engineering.
Sales Manager
Key Responsibilities:
Key Achievements:
Our successful Sales division work with a range of sectors, from Blue-Chips to Green-Fields, publicly quoted to privately backed and not-for-profit organisations.
We currently have a number of fantastic and exciting opportunities across the UK.
Submit your CV to find out how we can help you take the next step in your sales career.
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