3 Great Sales Manager CV Examples (With Sales Management CV Writing Guide)

Sales managers are tasked with increasing sales, improving profitability and maintaining customer satisfaction. As such, sales manager’s CVs should convey their ability to generate sales growth and contribute to business and customer success.

In this guide, we’ll should you how to prepare a CV that does exactly.

From 2019 to 2029, employment of sales managers in the United States is expected to increase by 4%. As demand for sales managers increases, competition in the job market will also increase.

As such, it’s important to prepare yourself a strong sales management CV that illustrates your sales capabilities, shows recruiters what makes you stand out from the crowd and helps you land job interviews.

In this guide, we cover all aspects of CV writing for sales managers. This includes:

- What to include on your sales management CV and how to format it

- The most important skills for sales managers and how to show them on your CV

- How to highlight your achievements and convince employers that you’re the perfect candidate for roles

- How to detail your employment experiences, as well as your education, training and certifications

- This guide also incudes 3 sales management CV templates that you can use to improve your job search

The first step involves detailing your name and contact details.

Include your email address, phone number and location. Don’t list your full address, unless you have been requested to do so. Instead include the town/city and country that you live in.

If you have a strong LinkedIn profile, include your LinkedIn URL here too.

The personal statement is a short summary at the top of your CV that illustrates your unique selling point and capabilities as a sales manager. You may also know this section as a ‘professional profile’ or a ‘CV summary’.

As a sales manager, your personal statement should highlight your ability to improve sales performance and meet targets. You should also touch on your industry experience and product experience.

For example, if you specialise in software sales, the personal statement provides you with an opportunity to highlight your product knowledge, industry experience and client relationships.

Here is an example of a sales manager’s personal statement:

Ambitious, extroverted sales manager with over 7 years’ experience in SaaS sales management in the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom. Possesses a proven track record of generating sales growth and exceeding targets by developing value-adding strategies that move the needle.

Adept at orchestrating all aspects of the sales cycle, from consulting with clients to gather requirements and propose solutions to managing contracts and facilitating technical training for end-users. Recognized as an inclusive, influential leader who takes pride in helping Sales teams develop and providing colleagues with a platform to meet performance objectives.

Now it’s time to add a skills section to your CV. The goal of this section is to draw attention to a small number of your strongest qualities and show recruiters what you can bring to the table.

Focus on hard skills in this section – skills that are fundamental in performing your everyday job. Listing soft skills – such as organisation and empathy – adds little value unless they are backed up with examples and results.

We will cover the best way to demonstrate your soft skills later in this guide.

Hard skills for sales managers include:

Sales management, relationship management, data & analytics, consultancy selling, budget management, training, pipeline management, strategy development, product knowledge, CRM proficiency, negotiation, team leading, KPI delivery, customer service.

As previously mentioned, soft skills provide little value on your CV unless you use examples, results and achievements to show that you possess the skills.

As such, it’s much more beneficial to draw attention to soft skills in your work experience section. This way, you can demonstrate your soft skills in a way that provides tangible examples of times you have utilised them.

Soft skills are arguably as important as hard skills for sales managers, if not more so. But which soft skills are most important for sales managers?

Here, we have detailed the 5 most important soft skills for sales managers, as well as how to demonstrate them on your CV.

Ultimately, sales is about providing products or services that solve problems for customers. By employing an emphatic approach, sales professionals are able to understand customers’ problems, identify issues and see things from customers’ perspectives.

This enables sales managers to develop customer-oriented strategies and solutions, which in turn improve customer satisfaction and revenue.

Empathy also enables sales professionals to develop stronger, more profitable relationships with clients.

How do you show empathy on your CV?

The best way to demonstrate your empathy on your sales management CV is to provide examples of times that you’ve worked with customers to help them achieve their goals.

Here is an example:

Held multiple consultations with a financial services company to confer on major problems with operational efficiency, before delivering the new CRM system that enabled all operations to be managed from one system and resulted in a 173% reduction in working hours

Leadership is one of the most important skills for sales managers. Sound leadership of the sales process and team operations is a key factor in driving sales performance.

Not all sales managers have people management responsibilities, but many do. As stated in Level Eleven’s article on sales statistics, sales managers spend, on average, 32% of their time managing people.

So how do you demonstrate your leadership skills on your CV?

The goal of a leader is to deliver results. As such, showing results on your CV is the best way to show your leadership skills. So if you can demonstrate how you have added value as a sales manager, you’ll come across as an effective leader.

If possible, use numbers and metrics to bolster your achievements and highlight your successes in management.

It goes without saying that relationship building is a vital skill for sales managers. Lucrative business deals are often built on robust client relationships.

So it’s important to ensure your relationship building proficiency comes across on your CV.

How do you show your relationship building skills on your CV?

In sales, good business and client relationships often lead to sales growth. So show the results that came about as a result of your relationship building.

Strategic thinking is the thought process involved in achieving goals. As indicated in Skillsyouneed.com’s guide on leadership skills, strategic thinking may be the most important skill for managers.

For sales managers, strategic thinking is, basically, the ability to envision, formulate and execute value-adding sales strategies.

How do you show strategic thinking skills on your CV?

Strategic thinkers, ultimately, build plans, develop goals and contribute to business success. When writing your CV, demonstrate your results and the strategy building process that was involved.

This will demonstrate your strategic thinking skills and show recruiters that you can deliver.

In sales, adaptability contributes to revenue growth and customer satisfaction. This is largely because, in order to be effective, sales processes and strategies should be adaptable to changing business landscapes, markets and products.

How do you demonstrate adaptability on your CV?

An effective way of showing your adaptability on your CV is to draw attention to times you achieved positive outcomes while operating in changing, ambiguous environments.

Here is an example:

Secured a £4M deal that was almost impossible to complete by sourcing new products from Southern Europe

As a sales manager, the work experience section is arguably the most important section of your CV as it enables you to provide tangible examples of your ability to deliver results.

When listing your work experience, use the reverse-chronological format. The reverse-chronological format involves listing your jobs posts by starting with your most recent position and working backwards.

Start each job post by detailing your job title, employer/company name, location of employment and dates of employment.

Here is an example of a sales manager’s work experience section:

Including numbers related to your achievements is one of the best ways to make your sales management CV stand out.

The goal of sales management it to generate revenue growth and numbers provide evidence of your ability to do that.

Here is an example:

Obtained $740k in sales for a new software solution – released in 2015 – by building new relationships and closing deals with 12 new contacts

When writing the work experience section on your sales management CV, ensure to include numbers related to your sales performance.

Use powerful verbs and adjectives to bolster your achievements and make your CV stand out.

Launched, executed and initiated are examples of powerful verbs.

Meticulous, robust and novel are examples of powerful adjectives.

Instead of jumping straight into your achievements and duties, provide some context for each job post. This will give recruiters a better idea of what your role involved.

For example, you want to touch on what industry you worked in, who your customers were and what type of product you were selling.

Take a look at how we provided context to the job post in our example sales management CV:

Heading the sale of the company’s main SaaS solution that enhanced the management of sales and marketing activities. This role involved the management of all aspects of the sales cycle, from negotiation contracts to training end-users.

In this section, list your qualifications and any relevant training programmes that you’ve completed.

Start with your highest form of education, whether it be a degree, A-levels or GCSEs. Then list your training in reverse-chronological order.

Don’t include any irrelevant training or qualifications. Focus on those that are relevant to sales and skills that are required to perform your job.

For example, a time management course would be relevant, but a sailing course would not.

Use the final section of your CV to list any relevant additional information.

Relevant additional information may include IT/software proficiency related to sales management, language skills, voluntary experience, licences and certifications.

Many employers use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to filter and rank applicants’ CVs based on specific keywords and requirements. The goal of ATS is basically to figure out if you’re qualified for the job.

To ensure your CV is optimised for ATS, it’s important to include strategically-placed keywords throughout your CV and ensure it is professionally formatted.

Which keywords are important for sales management CVs?

The most important keywords for sales managers vary depending on the job you are pursuing. To find out which keywords are important for your CV, study the job description and learn about the essential requirements of the role. This will give you an idea of the most important keywords to include on your CV.

Examples of relevant keywords for sales managers include:

Sales management, pipeline management, territory management, relationship management, consultative selling, contract management, leadership, channel management, negotiation, market analysis, customer retention, sales strategy development

The CV templates in this guide are optimised for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), so feel free to use them to improve your job search.

So, before you include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your CV, ensure it illustrates your unique selling point and shows recruiters how you can add value.

Ideally, sales manager’s CVs should be two-pages long. In most cases, two pages provides enough space to showcase your skills, achievements and experiences in plenty of detail, without losing the attention of the reader.

CVs that are longer than two pages are usually not concise, and the key information can be difficult to locate.

However, those with less experience are often recommended to go with a one-page CV. This is because they simply don’t need the extra page. One-page CVs can make a stronger impact than longer CVs as the key information may be easier to locate.

If you’re not confident that you can convey your experiences, achievements and suitability for roles as a finance director on your CV, consider using a professional CV writing service.

A professional CV writer should be able to present you as an ideal candidate for roles by illustrating your value and making you stand out.

View CV Nation's premium CV service.

We hope you’ve found this sales management CV writing guide helpful. If you feel that you could benefit from our CV writing service, feel free to view our Premium CV package.

For more in-depth advice on CV writing, view our ultimate guide on how to write a CV. Or take a look at our guide on CV layouts to see 10 great CV layout ideas

Or view our guide to sales management job interviews, which includes 20 common sales management interview questions and example answers.