Posted by CV Nation on
When pursuing sales jobs, you’ll need to equip yourself with an effective cover letter that demonstrates your value and suitability for the job.
In this guide, we cover everything you need to know to prepare a great sales cover letter. We also provide three cover letter examples.
This guide is designed for all sales professionals, including sales executives, sales advisors, sales representatives and sales coordinators.
When writing your cover letter, it’s a good idea to follow a specific structure. This will help you ensure you have covered all the key points and sold yourself as effectively as possible.
Use this six-step process to create a hard-hitting sales cover letter that gets results in the job market.
1. Introduction
2. Overview of knowledge and expertise
3. Key selling points
4. Why you want to work for the company
5. Key skills
6. Polite ending and call to action
Let’s look at these steps in more detail.
Start your cover letter with an introduction to yourself and explain your interest in applying for the role. Tell the reader why you are writing the letter.
Provide a brief summary of yourself, touching on your areas of expertise and knowledge. Keep this part short and to-the-point.
This section of your cover letter is where you need to sell yourself. Draw on your key strengths to convince the reader that you’re the perfect candidate for the job.
Have you got 5 years’ sales experience? Have you got a track record of exceeding sales targets?
Highlight your key successes and achievements that articulate your competencies. If possible, use quantify your achievements with numbers to bolster them.
This is the part where your research comes into play.
Explain how you are aligned with the company’s values and culture. By marrying yourself to the company’s values and showing that you understand the company, you’ll make a positive impact on recruiters.
Write about a few of your strongest skills. Provide examples of times you have used the skills to achieve positive outcomes.
End your cover letter by thanking the reader for their time. State that you look forward to hearing from them and would be eager to discuss your application further.
When writing your sales cover letter, you need to research the company you are applying to work for. This is because you need to understand the company’s values and culture.
When you understand this information, you can then explain how you align with the company’s values and culture.
Another great aspect of research is that it shows recruiters you’re genuinely interested in the company.
Take your research a step further and find out what the company’s goals are for the future. Learn about the market position. If you can mention any of this in your cover letter, without coming across as pretentious, you’ll convince the recruiter that you have a sincere interest in joining the company.
If you have no sales experience, you may be wondering how to complete the impossible task of writing a strong cover letter for sales positions.
The truth is, it’s not that difficult.
If you don’t have any sales experience, identify your transferable skills. You might not have experience in sales, but you might have experience communicating ideas to someone people. Draw attention to your people skills, communication skills and how you’re adept at influencing people.
With no sales experience, training is a big factor in the future of your career. For this reason, it’s important to draw attention to any sales training you have undertaken.
If you haven’t yet undertaken sales training, start looking into it. Research courses that cover the basics of sales roles.
It’s also beneficial to undertake sales job interview training, as well as training for the general recruitment process.
A week or two after applying for the job, it’s advisable to send a job application follow up letter. Follow up letters thank the hiring manager for their time, reinforce what makes you a unique candidate and reiterate your interest in the role.
Keep your follow up letter short and concise. Don’t go into too much detail and don’t come across as if you are hounding the hiring manager.
You may think of follow up letter as a bit pushy. However, they are a professional way of recapping on your suitability for the role and demonstrating your enthusiasm for the role.
Your cover letter should be accompanied by a powerful CV. Without a strong sales CV, even a very good cover letter will not get you results you.
This is a very important aspect of cover letter writing.
To ensure your cover letter is professional and easy-to-read, you should add line spacing to add space between paragraphs.
Letters that don’t use line spacing often appear as one huge block of text. Most recruiters won’t even read these letters, so make sure to utilise Microsoft Word’s line spacing feature.
To add spacing to your cover letter, highlight the text, click ‘Layout’, then add 8 pt. spacing in the ‘After’ section.
This will ensure your paragraphs are easily distinguished from each other. It will also optimise your recruiter’s reading experience, which can only be a positive thing!
Ideally, you should be aiming for margin sizes of between 1.7 cm (0.66”) and 2.2 cm (0.86”). Of course, you widen or narrow the margins further in line with the amount of content you do or don’t have to include. But try not to make them too wide or too narrow in order to ensure your letter is professional in appearance.
Use common fonts that readers have become accustomed to. These include Times New Roman, Garamond and Calibri.
Don’t try to be creative with your fonts. At best you will look unprofessional. At worst your cover letter will be too difficult to read.
Font sizes should be between 11 pt. and 12 pt., for most fonts, including Times New Roman, Calibri and Garamond. Make sure your text is neither too small nor too large.
When saving your cover letter in Microsoft Word – or whichever word processor you are using – make sure to give it a simple, professional title. Something like ‘Cover Letter’ is fine.
Avoid unprofessional titles such as ‘coverletter023432’. When recruiters see such titles on documents, they may instantly see you as unprofessional.
