How to Write a Stand Out Sales CV

As a recruiter I read through CVs for people applying for revenue generating roles on a daily basis. It continues to astounds me how people who can put a sales pitch together for a client, can't work out what to put on their CV.

The problem is compounded with the fact that candidates often think I'm in the business of finding jobs for people. If that was the service I was providing, I would be charging for it. (n.b. in Australia it is against the law to charge someone for finding them a job. You can charge for services like CV writing, but not for submitting candidates for roles).

My job is finding the best employee I can for my client or prospect. It boggles my mind even more when I have a sales manager or director apply for a job and get annoyed that I didn't submit the CV to my client. If they were on the other side of the fence receiving a CV (and a hefty invoice) from me, they would be annoyed that the candidate had absolutely no relevant experience.

With all this in mind, I thought I would put together a little guide on how to craft a CV that sells you and your skills as the best solution to fit company's problem (i.e. the vacancy). This is not a guide for submitting CVs to Recruiters but just in general what a CV needs to contain to help win you that job.

First imagine you are putting together a brief or a marketing document for your client. What would it contain? Well a CV is very much a marketing document and the same sort of information is needed.

This is how your document should start:

• Easily accessible contact information (with multiple methods of contact) should be prominently displayed on the first page so that who ever is reading it doesn't need to flip to the end to find your number or e-mail. Also include relevant social media links (i.e. LinkedIn).
• This first part should also include your address. Often if I'm recruiting for a client in an inconvenient location, the first CVs I will look at are from people who live close by. This can't be you if you don't include your location.
• An executive summary that highlights WHY they should interview you. This is not a summary of your career history but a summary of what skills you have as compared to what they are looking for, with specific measurable indicators. E.g. "Successfully built a pipeline of worth of $2M RFPs in 6 months from a zero base" or "Currently selling IT solutions involving Global Transformation projects for MNCs with an average deal size of $20M and an annual target of $60M TCVs"
• An outline of what will be contained in the document - i.e. A list of what jobs you worked, for what company and for how long so that your entire career history can be seen at a glance.

If this takes more than one page you are making a major mistake, especially if you are applying for a job and I haven't headhunted you. The first thing I do after I open the CV of an unknown candidate is scroll down to find the last job. If I have to scroll through 3 pages of "skills" and "summaries" to get to this vital information it reflects poorly on you.

Why am I first looking at your most recent job? If you're applying to be a Mega Deals BDM and you're last job was a cashier at Coles I would be wasting my time looking at anything else. If you think I'm joking I get something like this at least once a week. As a headhunter my job is to find someone already doing the job for a competitor who wants to move companies.

Next is a question - where do you put your education? If you've recently completed an MBA it's worth showing that off. As a result put the degree you have, where you obtained it and the year you finished (or are finishing). Otherwise I would strongly recommend putting your education at the back. I've had clients specify that my candidates have a degree in the job description and yet never bring it up when the candidate I sent them comes straight from a competitor.

Now it's time for your work history - the most important part of a CV. Your last job should have the most information (unless it was a short contract or incredibly brief stint), followed by a little less for your second, less still for your third and much less for everything else. If your career spans over 15 years, you can start grouping jobs together, e.g. "10 years various entry level sales experience" followed by a list, e.g. "1986-1990 AM at IBM; 1990-1992 Senior AM at Oracle; 1992-1997 Key AM at SAP".

Your entire CV should be no longer than 3-4 pages. It is a marketing document not a proposal or an RFP. It's there to sell you and should be enough to close the employer on a meeting with you. The reason CVs tend to blow-out to 10+ pages is people spending too much time on their experience.

Each job needs to be structured in a very orderly way. Use bold, underlined or increased font size to identify the company you worked for and what role you worked. Next to these two put the dates you worked. It doesn't matter what is first, the date or the company/title but put them next to each other rather than line after line.
Underneath put a brief sentence that describes what the company does, or if it's big what divison you worked for.

e.g.--
Microsoft - Senior Account Manager - 2009-Present
Microsoft Cloud Solutions division (e.g. Office 365, Dynamics CRM & Sharepoint on the Cloud)
------

Short, easy to read and easy to find when scrolling through a page.

Now it's time for "responsibilities". I'm very torn about this because everyone in the industry should know what a BDM or AM does, there is no need to write things like "closing sales". Duties should highlight how much of the sales cycle you look after. It should show how much you cover of all of the following: make go-to-market and marketing material, prospect, identify opportunities, cold call, account plan, account manage, relationship manage, visit clients or sell on the phone, put together bids and proposals, put together RFPs and tenders, gather requirements, create pre-sales architecture, manage service delivery, up-sell existing clients & customer retention.

I think it's important to very briefly highlight which of these duties you are responsible for without going on for more than 1 or 2 sentences or bullet points.

The most important part of your time at any company is your key achievements. People trust your ability to close sales based on your past experience closing sales. So you need to list:

• Sales you've made that are significant (including the products/services sold, $ value of the deal and name of the company, if not the name at least a strong indicator, e.g. "Major Australian bank" or "Leading News organisation")
• Your YTD Sales (or pipeline)
• Your last few years results (and whether it's Financial or Calendar Years)

If you are not including these achievements on your CV you are going to lose out to people who are. Imagine you are selling a product to a client that will save them money on admin costs and you don't list HOW with specific examples and dollar values.

Even better would be showing case studies that highlight how you've helped people save money in the past. That's exactly what your career history is - a list of case studies where you were used a sales person.

As a summary this is what a good CV contains:

• Easily accessible contact information at the top of the CV
• A brief 1 page or less executive summary, including outline of work history
• A 2-3 page summary of career history
• Key achievements for each company you've worked for, which show how much revenue you are capable of billing, what products you've had experience selling and what kinds of clients you have experience selling to

Additional Tips:

• If you want to include "skills" put them at the end. For those recruiters that have massive databases and use key-word searches the computer reads the CV so it doesn't matter where the skills are. Headhunters don't care what "skills" are written on your CV, only what work you can prove you've done before.
• Don't include your hobbies, photos or any witty comments/statements
• Don't include a career statement or objective. Companies don't care what you want as an employee, they care what you can do for them.
• Don't include personal information that could be used to discriminate against you (marital status, religion, number of children, etc).
• If you're sending the CV for a particular job make sure your CV shows how you meet the key selection criteria. E.g. if you need experience winning new business in the Real Estate industry, include clients you've won in the Real Estate industry. If your CV is just going to a recruiter with no particular role in mind simply highlight your absolute best achievements.

Formatting Tips:

• Don't get too fancy with Word formatting - no columns, no text boxes, no dividers, no paragraph indenting, no tables and definitely no clip-art
• Use the [TAB] key instead of making heaps of spaces.
• Send .doc files, especially to recruiters. Don't send PDFs which can't be edited or any weird format which can't be opened. And don't send .docx files.

My final tip - if you're applying for a sales role you should be calling the recruiter. Would you land a sale from a cold lead by e-mailing them a proposal and an invoice? If you're interested in the role, pick up the phone and call, and keep trying till you get them.