Dedicated and hard-working sales representative with 10 years’ experience selling a wide variety of products and services. Highly educated in sales technique, economics, marketing, and product markets. Motivated by team-oriented projects and self-improvement.
One common principle you may have been taught in your career preparedness class in high school is to include an objective statement on your resume. This practice is dated and ineffectual. The only situation that calls for an objective statement would be a drastic career change, like moving from sales to engineering. A Summary is a preferable alternative to an objective statement.
A resume should be tailored to the job you’re applying for. Since our resume writer is applying for another sales job, the skills and work experience included are all directly relevant to the sales position. If he were changing careers, he might consider taking a different approach. As a sales representative, hiring managers are uninterested in your air guitar skills unless they directly relate to your ability to sell their product. You’ll also notice that our resume writer kept his work experience within the last 10 years, which is as far back as you should consider for your document.
It’s never a bad idea to include numbers-based achievements in a resume, but it is nonnegotiable in a resume for a sales representative. Hiring managers aren’t just interested in the skills you say you have; they want to know results. They are more likely to hire a candidate with a proven track record than one with bold claims but no evidence. Notice our resume writer’s inclusion of “$4 million in sales volume.”
Though hiring managers are going to be familiar with their company’s goals and expectation for sales representative candidates, they aren’t salespeople themselves. Using complex sales jargon is more likely to confuse than impress. Our resume writer included specific metrics based on his accomplishments but didn’t go into the details of what the products were or how they worked, or what the average sale price was.
Soft skills can be difficult to communicate but are vital to your success as a sales representative. Hiring managers are going to look for indicators of your talent outside of the ones you explicitly describe. Our resume writer included his ability to operate sales-related software and communicate effectively, but a successful sales representative has to have that X factor. A hiring manager might deduce from the work experience, such as “increased personal sales volume by 8% per month,” that our resume writer is competitive with himself.