Sales Resume Sample

Sales is a broad category that encompasses most industries. From insurance companies to biochemical manufacturers, all industries require salespeople to move their products and make profits.

However, sales is a highly competitive field, and getting the job you want isn’t always easy. You’ll need a great sales resume to showcase your sales experience, skills, and accomplishments in order to impress a hiring manager and get invited for an interview.

To help you, we’ve included three tips for writing a great sales resume:

1. Make your experience section achievement-oriented

No matter what industry you work in, success in the world of sales ultimately comes down to how many sales you can make and how much revenue you bring in. Because of this, your sales resumes should heavily feature hard numbers that highlight your previous accomplishments.

If you’re not sure what type of numbers to include in your resume experience section, ask yourself these questions regarding products, profits, customers, clients, and averages:

• What are the types of products you’ve sold?
• Who are the customers you’ve sold to? (healthcare organizations, consumers, B2B, etc.)
• What positions are those customers in? (managers, c-level executives, etc.)
• What are the typical sizes of your deals, and the total average amount of all deals per month?
• What is your quota achievement? Are you above average, or below average?
• Have you managed or trained any sales employees?

Additionally, you should start each experience bullet off with an action verb that showcases what skills you put to work in your previous role.

For example, here are 45 common action verbs that might be found on a sales resume:

Now, it’s time to put those action verbs and hard numbers to work. Here are five examples of how to write actionable, quantified experience bullet points on your sales resume:

1. Customer Satisfaction 

Design and develop procedures to ensure sales team achieves organizational customer service expectations, resulting in annual increase of customer satisfaction by 5% annually

2. Closing sales 

Improve and maintain operational and profit objectives exceeding $13 million in sales monthly within the district; implement company business plan and provide information for future improvement to business manager

3. Exceeding sales targets

Analyzed customer needs via carefully constructed surveys to develop data-driven pitches, increasing profits by 15% over two years

4. Achievements and awards

Awarded “Outstanding Achievement” trophy for consistently performing above average sales in a company spanning 20 states

5. Managing and supervising

Supervise sales staff of 7; communicate job expectations and provide direction, support, and motivation to team to meet agreed sales targets and KPI lines

2. Include a mix of sales-related skills

Regardless of the industry you work in, you’ll need to include relevant hard and soft sales skills on your resume. The necessary soft skills for sales professionals don’t change much in each industry, but hard skills often do.

Certain industries only require their salespersons to have a charming personality, with the ability to be convincing when negotiating with customers, while others require salesmen to also have knowledge of specific tools and software to aid in data analysis to develop and implement new sales strategies.

Hiring managers will want to know what kind of software you can use, and whether you have the personality type necessary to succeed in sales.

Here’s a list of the top 10 sales skills that employers love to see on your sales resume:

Additionally, because of the range of customers a business might have, being able to speak multiple languages is a plus. You should list languages that you’re proficient at in your resume skills section.

3. Add certificates to your sales resume

The competitive nature of the sales industry ultimately pits every salesperson against one another. Whether you’re a beginner taking your first position, or you have a decade of sales experience under your belt, it’s important to never stop growing and learning if you want to remain competitive.

Certificates are another avenue for showing your competence as a salesperson. Luckily, there are quite a few certificates available for sales professionals out there looking to improve their sales pitches, and for a way to set themselves apart from the crowd of other applicants.

Here are some of the most common sales certificates:

• Certified Professional Sales Person (CPSP)
• Certified Inside Sales Professional (CISP)
• SPIN Selling
• Challenger Development Program
• Certified Sales Leadership Professional (CSLP)
• Certified Sales Executive (CSE)

Certificates and courses are also available for both Salesforce CRM and Hubspot CRM, two widely used software programs in the sales industry.