How to Sell Yourself in Your Sales CV

By Andrew Fennell

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When you’re looking to pursue new opportunities in sales, your CV needs to engage recruiters and help you stand out from the competition.

Having a professional, visually pleasing CV that highlights your marketable skills, and is tailored to the sales industry, is key to helping you land plenty of interviews.

The below four tips will support you in crafting a CV, that aids you in securing your dream career.

 

Create a super professional outlook

It’s crucial to have a professional, clear CV structure, adopting a format that makes your relevancy for sales roles a focal point. An overcomplicated design will only distract recruiters’ attention, so stick to a muted colour palette and a clear, simple to read font.

A professional outlook should also be presented in the way you describe your previous experience, putting your best foot forward and avoiding any negative comments, especially when detailing the reasons for leaving your previous positions.

Look to continue your professional outlook through to your LinkedIn profile, adding a link to your CV so potential employers and recruiters can review testimonials or endorsements, helping to boost your application.

 

Lead with a powerful profile

A personal profile is an opening paragraph between 5-10 lines that summarises your CV. A concise overview that draws recruiters’ attention, engaging them to delve deeper into your experience.

Your profile should incorporate your sector-specific skills, experience and any industry related qualifications, such as NVQs in sales or degrees in marketing. A punchy introduction, which at first glance showcases to recruiters why you are the perfect candidate for sales roles.

In the same way, you sell yourself to clients or customers as a salesperson, you need to sell yourself in your CV. Your profile acts as your first impression so make it strong.

 

Tailor your CV for different roles

When applying for sales roles, it’s essential to tailor your skills, experience and qualifications to the industry. Look to make yourself custom fit to the sector, adjusting your CV to match the types of sales roles you’re looking to pursue.

Whether you’re looking to apply for roles in field sales, retail sales or telesales, it’s vital to use keywords and strengths that emphasise why you’re the ideal candidate for those types of vacancies. 

In your opening paragraph, detail why you’re applying for a certain type of role. Describe how your experience relates, whilst demonstrating your passion and commitment to following this career path.

 

Add facts and figures

Use facts and figures in your CV to verify your examples. Figures help to add context for recruiters, making you stand out in the recruitment process, boosting your relevancy for sales roles.

For example, instead of stating you have strong negotiation skills or the ability to build a pipeline, offer more detail of your experience by documenting that you, “successfully built a portfolio of 25 clients, billing over £250,000 in my first year.”

Grab recruiters’ attention by highlighting these facts and figures throughout your CV, as well as integrating core skills and achievement section underneath your personal profile.

 

Andrew Fennell is the founder of CV writing advice website StandOut CV – he is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to websites like Business Insider, The Guardian and FastCompany.

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