WARNING: Everyone has resume writing advice, and not all of it is good. Take resume advice from professionals only.
Your resume, along with your LinkedIn profile, serves as your invitation to the party. Get it wrong, and you won’t even have a shot at some of the best sales jobs available. Use these 10 tips to update your resume and win top sales interviews.
1. CAUTION: Math Involved
Include the quota you carried, the year, percent of quota attainment, year-over-year territory growth, sales rankings, and club numbers. Numbers are what separate a sales resume from a job description, so know your sales math before you write a single bullet.
2. Action Verbs
Start each bullet with an action. Power-pack your resume with verbs that describe your accomplishments, because the shift from duties to achievements is the single biggest resume upgrade there is. HINT: the most overused action word is “managed.”
- Closed business in the e-commerce vertical
- Spearheaded new logo acquisition
- Championed new offerings
- Overachieved quota
- Challenged to develop new business
- Launched new technology offering
- Honored with “Quota Crusher” award
- Landed largest deal in company history
- Delivered 109% of quota consistently
- Revitalized Southeast region by targeting previously lost accounts
- Drove front-end client development
- Collaborated with channel partners
- Accelerated the sales cycle
- Discovered new ways of winning
- Dominated the energy market
- Instituted sales programs
- Optimized channel strategy
- Leveraged relationships with alliance partners
3. Resist the Big S-t-r-e-t-c-h
Most people feel a little pressure to over-polish their resume. Don’t do it. No degree? Don’t award one to yourself. Missed your numbers? Don’t say you hit them. Unemployed? Don’t write “2024-present.”
I had a candidate who was one credit shy of his degree, and his resume said he had one. He wasn’t let go over it, but it became an issue, and it cost him credibility from the very start of a new role. One credit is a minor thing. For his reputation, it turned major.
4. Go Chronological
Traditional works best. Keep things in chronological order, or your resume is more likely to be deleted right out of the gate.
5. Edit
Keep it crisp and not too wordy. If you can say it with fewer words, do it. And get a second or third pair of eyes on your resume to check for grammatical mistakes.
6. Glamour Up
Make sure your resume is making the right first impression. You have about 10 seconds, so get it right.
Watch out for the Frankenstein resume: each new job gets tacked onto a document first built years ago, and nothing else ever changes. Sometimes this goes on and on for a decade. The styling shows the age of the resume, and candidates who do this just don’t get selected.
It’s an invisible cost. No one calls to tell you your resume looks stitched together; you just don’t get picked, and you never learn why. It happens regularly. Rebuild the document clean every few years with a current font and current formatting.
7. Strike the Right Balance
Resumes can be overworked and tortured, or too sparse. Overworked resumes are wordy and busy. Sparse ones lack critical information, numbers, and achievements. The balance point is two pages of your best material, and not a page more.
8. Pour On the Relevant Details
Details increase your odds of interview selection. Include names of blue-chip clients, titles of prospects, average deal size, quota, territories covered, products sold, and quantifiable results.
9. Keep It Crisp
Your resume should reflect sharp, concise communication. Keep it on point, relevant, and devoid of extra fluff. Sales resumes packed with concise facts, in an easy-to-read format, make the strongest first impressions.
10. Season Lightly
Descriptors like “proven,” “consistent,” and “solutions-driven” have their place, but use them sparingly and only when backed by data. “Proven” next to “109% of quota, four years running” works.
Five adjectives in a summary paragraph with no evidence reads like every resume in the pile. When in doubt, cut the adjective and keep the number.
The Payoff
A sales resume has one job: get you the interview. Numbers, action verbs, accurate claims, and a crisp two pages are what get it done. Update your resume with these 10 tips and your invitation to the best sales opportunities out there takes care of itself.
Then be ready, because once the interviews start, the real selling begins.
All 10 tips are part of the complete guide to sales resumes, LinkedIn, and job applications.
