Cover Letter For A Sales Resume
Given how important the cover letter for a sales resume is, and how unclear a lot of sales professionals are on this task, I have just prepared a permanent listing for it. You’ll find it here at sales resume cover letter.
Sales Resumes At Different Stages Of The Career Cycle
It’s been a busy couple of days. I have just updated the resources section of the main site. It’s still work in progress, but it’s on it’s way.
First off are two pages which have a focus on sales people at different stages of their career cycle. They are:
Entry Level Sales Resume – speaks for itself, but essentially advice for those new to sales or those applying for non-executive sales jobs. Then we have…
Sales Manager Resume – again fairly obvious. For those at a more senior level applying for jobs at a sales manager level.
And if you missed it, I last week I tidied up the baby page about the sales resume format to use.
More to follow including help on writing that perfect cover letter. And a revised and collected edition of my sales resume tips series of articles which will be available free of charge in pdf format. And even more besides!
Stay tuned.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
Use Your Sales Resume To Highlight Your Most Relevant Capabilities
Use Your Sales Resume To Stress Your Capabilities
I was talking with a close acquaintance of mine a few days ago. He’s a sales senior manager in multinational blue company with operations across most of the developed world.
It was whilst I was writing about where and when it is ok to use a generic sales resume a few days ago, that our last conversation came to mind.
Essentially, due to the fact that he has a fairly large account team he see’s quite a lot churn amongst his sales team. That in itself is not a problem, sales people move on to better opportunities all the time. His issue was that since he is involved in the recruitment process for new intakes of Sales Reps he finds reviewing the bundle of resumes that land on his desk a torturous exercise.
(I’ll interject here that someone else in the HR team has already sieved the original bundle of sales resumes to identify the ‘best candidates’. My friend is simply reviewing those best sales resumes).
Upon questioning he revealed that his biggest problem is he has to search each resume extremely hard for exactly what he is looking for. And the point is that what he is looking for is self evident!
Why? Because most candidates make two big failings: firstly they fail to communicate relevant experience & skills as it relates to his market, and secondly they often do not express their actual capability (i.e. how good they are at delivering the numbers).
I immediately understood what he was saying, I have seen it on too many occasions myself.
These two aspects of your sales resume are briefly discussed here use your resume to sell yourself and here customize your sales resume.
If you are still in doubt about what to do, then can you refer to this how to write a sales resume manual.
Thanks for reading. Catch you again.
Industry Specific Sales Resume Help
When it comes to sales resume writing I notice a lot of people in different industries looking for guidance in their particular field – pharma, IT, Real Estate etc, etc. So what I have in mind to do is to prepare a series of sales resume articles each of which will be dedicated to a different industry.
To be honest they’ll pretty much all go over similar ground, albeit with a different industry flavour.
Here is my To-Do list as it is right now:
- sales engineer resume
- medical sales resume
- retail sales resume sample
- software sales resume
- insurance sales resume
- it sales resume
- sales clerk resume
- advertising sales resume
- technical sales resume
- medical device sales resume
- sales assistant resume sample
- hotel sales manager resume
- medical sales resumes
- retail sales resumes
- retail sales manager resume
- resume for pharmaceutical sales
- automotive sales resume
- software sales resumes
- inside sales resumes
- new home sales resume
- wireless sales resume
- computer sales resume
- furniture sales resume
- sales engineer resumes
- technology sales resume
- advertising sales resumes
Of course there will be cross over between similar industries, but I intend to keep them as focussed as possible with examples as I work through. As and when the industry specific sales resumes are completed I will of course update this page with active links.
In the meantime, you may find this series of Sales Resume Tips (which not specific to any particular sector or industry) helpful. I am considering creating a FREE Sales Resume Tips pdf from them in the near future.
And if you are really stuck with your sales resume, then check out how to write a sales resume book (which is now downloadable for immediate access).
When to Use a Generic Sales Resume
In my book there are two different kinds of (sales) resume. The first is targeted and the second is generic.
Targeted Sales Resume
The first type is a sales resume that is ’targeted’ to a specific vacancy (.e.g a Sales Representative role, with Company A, requiring Skills B, Qualifications C, Experience D etc, etc). The other type of resume is non-targeted – i.e. a generic resume. It is unlikely that any two of your targeted resumes will be identical, although they could be if you were applying for two or more different vacancies with near identical companies with near identical job specifications.
Generic Sales Resume
By comparison your generic resume is a holistic / all-embracing view of your career assets, and as such will embrace all of your experience, skills, qualifications etc, etc, in one single document (your resume).
Your generic sales resume provides the starting point for your targeted sales resume. You will modify this generic resume according to the requirements of each different sales job that you apply for. If you are unclear please refer to How To Write A Sales Resume manual.
But your generic sales resume will serve other roles also. For instance, here are three areas that it will come in useful:
- Posting to job search bulletin boards.
- Sending out to headhunters and recruitment experts.
- Handing out at a recruitment fair (an event where on or more companies who are ‘looking to recruit’ attend).
With the exception of these three scenarios, you should find out as much as you can about a company and the vacancy and then fit (target) your sales resume accordingly. This isn’t difficult, but it needs to be done.
