5 ELEMENTS to include in a SALES CV

There has been much written about writing an impactful CV, so we are not going to rehash any of that here.  What we would like to do though, is to look at those things that we think should be a part of every salesperson’s CV.  Our Top 5 as follows;
 
1. Numbers
It sounds obvious right? Sales people live and die by their numbers (sales targets) and yet we see so many CVs every week that make no reference to the numbers.  Now when we say numbers, we are not talking about listing the actual sales target/s for each role but what we as recruiters and what our clients are looking for is a salesperson's ability to consistently hit their targets.  Rather than list the actual target and result, express your results as a percentage of target achieved (per quarter/per annum). 
 
You may also want to show by how much you grew sales over successive periods. Again this can be expressed as a percentage rather than listing actuals. If you were at an organisation for say 4 years then be sure to include achievements for each of the four years.
 
As salespeople, we are also measured on the number of outbound activities we perform each week; telephone calls, emails, meetings, social media posts etc.  Top salespeople are disciplined and time block each day to perform these essential tasks. Let your prospective employer know that you are comfortable doing this and give them an idea of your work rate by including some of these numbers also.
 
2. Sales Training
Top salespeople share a number of innate behavioural traits in common. Following a recognised sales methodology and a set of sales processes however makes sales success repeatable.  Include the Sales Training you have done in your CV, whether formal (through certified trainers) or informal (in-house training). Aside from the skills that you have picked up from the training, this also shows your prospective employer a commitment to continuous learning and self-improvement.
 
3. Sales Tech
Sales Tech, or the use of digital tools to help improve productivity and sales conversion rates, is an ever increasingly important part of a modern sales persons kitbag.  Most salespeople will have used a few CRM systems in their career. If you are just starting out in sales and have limited experience or have only used one system then we would suggest downloading a free trial of another to widen your experience.
 
While the CRM is the building block of any Sales Stack, there are a number of other tools that modern sales people are using to improve their productivity and success rates. These tools align to each stage of the sales process. Include a list of those that you have experience with.
 
 
4. Client Names
Even though this is a list of essential things to include in your CV - this is actually one thing that we recommend to leave out.  Avoid using past client names.  Unless you have the clients express permission to include it in your CV then it’s a breach of confidentiality. It’s perfectly acceptable instead to write something like  “ … a top 10 Global Mining Company”
 
 
5. Ability to write well and under time pressure. 
Turning around a well-written and crafted proposal/email response that addresses specific client concerns is an important skill of the modern B2B sales person. Being able to do this within tight deadlines is an extremely valuable skill.
Clients want to understand how your solutions are going to help create value and/or manage their risk and so this requires a degree of written originality, given that no two clients are identical.  
 
We would suggest including this ability in a Personal Profile section of your CV where you are including your skills that are relevant to the role in question.
Your CV however should not have been written under any time pressure and so spelling mistakes and poor grammar is inexcusable.
 
 
 
Fifth Executive is a specialist sales recruitment agency, owned and operated by its two Principals who have over 50 years sales and sales management experience in Australia and Internationally.