5 Tips For a Powerful Sales Resume

If you’re a sales professional, and you’re looking for your next gig, then you better put those skills to work. A sales resume needs to do exactly what you’re great at….selling! Although that may seem obvious, it’s incredible the amount of sales resumes I’ve read that do not sell me on the candidate at all. After reading hundreds of resumes myself, and hiring sales professionals across all levels of the sales organization, I’m here to provide 5 tips to write a powerful sales resume. Ready

1. Treat Your Resume Like a Cold Call

Think about the last time you did a cold call, what was the most important thing you had to do in that call? You had to make a good impression in the first 15 seconds to convince the prospect to stay on the phone with you. A sales resume, or any resume for that matter, is the same; you want to engage your reader within the first glance, or 15 seconds, to convince them to keep reading. Once you’ve convinced them to read further, that’s when you can provide your detailed pitch, or experience. So how exactly do you do that?

First, ensure your resume includes a summary of who you are. If you had to summarize yourself and sales skills while highlighting your personality and uniqueness, how would you say that in 2-4 sentences or bullet points? This is where your resume should start. This summary should demonstrate what your personal brand is and highlight why you’re the ultimate candidate.

Second, make sure that your resume design suits you as well as the position and company you’re applying for. Some positions and companies appreciate lots of colour and a professional headshot, others don’t; do your research and figure out what’s best for you. 

Third, do not exceed 2 pages. I’ll say it again; do not exceed 2 pages. No one wants to read a 3-4 page biography about you. All you need to get across is a) your credibility as a salesperson and b) why you’re the best candidate for the job.

Remember you don’t need to include everything, just include the most important and relevant information.

2. Highlight Key Sales Elements & Results

There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of sales roles out there. One of the most confusing parts about them is that they often have the same title but mean completely different things. For example, how many times have you heard “SDR” or “BDR” used interchangeably? Sometimes BDR means inbound sales only, sometimes it means outbound sales only, sometimes it means both inbound and outbound; it’s all very confusing! That’s why it’s important to highlight these key sales elements in your resume to properly articulate what your role entailed and what experience you really have.

Some key sales elements to include are:

• What you sold, what industries you sold to, which personas you sold to

• What your territory comprised of

• What your average deal size was

• Your average sales cycle length

• Annual and/or monthly quota and quota attainment 

• Big logos - if applicable to the next organization

• Sales training & sales methodologies learned and utilized

• Other outstanding achievements or promotions

Always keep in mind, the more you can quantify the better! There are many sales professionals out there, so to compete among the best, you want to demonstrate that you can walk-the-walk.

3. Use Keywords

If you have a persuasive opener to your resume, that’s great; but unfortunately that doesn’t always ensure that your resume gets reviewed for the job you applied to. For some job postings, recruiters or hiring managers get hundreds or sometimes thousands of applications. In these cases, often companies will use software to process and sort resumes to narrow down the candidate pool. In these scenarios, job seekers need to be mindful of the keywords they include in their resume. When this software is used, they scan the resumes of the applicants and often only candidates who match a specific keyword criteria will have their resume looked at by a human. Imagine putting all that work into your resume and have it not even get looked at?

To ensure you have the right keywords in your resume, review the job posting and figure out what words are used within it. In addition, check out the company website to better understand the company culture and values. Try to mirror the language without ‘keyword stuffing’ your resume. Use the keywords throughout and make sure you use them in context; keep in mind not to overdo it.

Pro Tip: Make sure these keywords exist on your LinkedIn profile as well so you come up in searches when recruiters are seeking out candidates. Check out this post for more details on optimizing your LinkedIn profile.

4. Polish

Once you have done all of the above, make sure you give it the polish it deserves. Put yourself in your prospects shoes, would you want to read this resume if it landed on your desk? Make sure your resume looks clean with clean lines and proper spacing between jobs and bullet points. Give it a quick re-read to make sure nothing sounds redundant or unnecessary for the job you’re applying to; remember you don’t need to include everything to get an interview. Lastly, double-check, triple-check, quadruple-check for spelling mistakes; this is very important.

5. Be authentically you!

Last but not least, be authentically you in your resume! Ensure you represent yourself honestly and make sure you have your facts straight; you never know who the prospect knows in the industry so you don’t want to misrepresent yourself (besides, the truth will come out in the interview). Finally, don’t be afraid to demonstrate your personality; highlight your personal brand where you can and ensure you have an all-star LinkedIn profile to direct your readers to. 

To learn more about polishing your LinkedIn brand image, check out this post titled How to Use Social Selling to Land Your Next Dream Job.

Have anything to add or stories you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you! Connect with me on LinkedIn here.

Cheers!