Sales Representative CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a territory sales rep with six years in business-to-business sales who started in internal sales and moved to the field. The name, companies and numbers are invented but sized to a real mid-market rep. Internal sales, SDR, pharmaceutical and entry-level versions follow further down.

Sales hiring is unusually numbers-driven. The sales manager or sales recruiter reading your CV spends the first pass looking for evidence you hit target and how you did it. The four things that decide the phone screen:

• Target attainment by year. "Exceeded targets" means nothing; "£2.5m against a £2.1m target (119%)" is the whole story. Two or three years of attainment shows consistency, and one miss explained honestly beats a CV that hides all the numbers.
• What you sold, to whom, and the deal size. Industrial supplies to plant managers at £30K a year is a different job from software to finance directors at £150K. Name the product, buyer and average deal size so the manager can judge fit.
• How you generate pipeline. Cold calling, field prospecting, inbound leads, referrals, partners, trade shows. Managers hiring hunters look for self-generated pipeline; managers hiring account reps look for growth in an existing book.
• Rankings and awards. Top 10% of 60 reps, President's Club, Rookie of the Year. Give the denominator; "top performer" without one is not believed.

“The first thing my eye goes to is the percent of quota for the last three years. If it is not there, my assumption is that they missed. Give me the number, the quota, the year and the team size, and the interview gets scheduled.”

Three to four lines: what you sell and to whom, years, target attainment and revenue, how you build pipeline, CRM. A personal statement is stronger than a career objective at every level, including a first sales job.

Every sales rep CV says "responsible for generating new business and maintaining client relationships". Managers skip it. Each bullet needs a pound figure, a percentage, a count or a ranking. Eight rewrites using the metrics sales teams actually track.

Keep the list to 10 to 14 skills that a sales manager recognises and that the job advert mentions. Group them mentally: how you sell, what you sell with, and what you know about the industry.

Selling skills:

• Prospecting and lead generation: cold calling, cold email, social selling, referrals, field canvassing, trade shows
• Discovery and needs analysis; consultative or solution selling
• Product demonstrations and presentations
• Quoting, proposals and tender responses
• Negotiation, pricing and margin management
• Objection handling and closing
• Territory planning and journey planning (field sales; adverts usually ask for a full UK driving licence)
• Account management, renewals, upselling and cross-selling
• Pipeline management and forecasting
• Sales methodologies you have been trained in: Sandler, Challenger, SPIN, MEDDIC, Miller Heiman; formal qualifications such as CIM or Institute of Sales Professionals courses are optional

Tools (name the ones you have actually used):

• CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive; Veeva CRM for pharma and medical
• Prospecting and outreach: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, Apollo, Outreach, Salesloft, Gong
• Quoting and orders: NetSuite, SAP, Salesforce CPQ, Sage, company ERP systems
• Virtual selling: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Loom, DocuSign
• Reporting: Excel (pivot tables, pricing models), Power BI or Tableau dashboards

Industry knowledge counts as a skill: reading drawings and specifications for building products, the ABPI Code of Practice for pharma, Incoterms and pallet networks for logistics, NHS procurement and framework agreements for medical devices. Add one or two lines that prove you know the buyer's world.

Sales is one of the few careers where companies hire people with no direct experience on purpose: SDR teams, internal sales, insurance brokers, car dealerships, recruitment agencies and B2B distributors all run training programmes and graduate sales schemes. What they want to see is evidence you can handle rejection, work to a number and talk to strangers. Most people have that somewhere in their history.

1. 1Write a personal statement that names the sales role you want and your two or three best proof points: a retail or restaurant sales number, fundraising totals, a customer-service rating, a sport or competition record.
2. 2Rewrite retail, hospitality and call centre jobs in sales terms: upsell rate, care plan or add-on attach rate, average transaction value, customers served, ranking among colleagues.
3. 3Add any commission or target exposure, even part time: door-to-door, telephone fundraising for a university, selling ads for a student paper, a summer at a car dealership.
4. 4Show self-teaching: HubSpot Sales Software or Inbound Sales certifications (free), Salesforce Trailhead badges, LinkedIn Learning sales courses, books you can discuss.
5. 5Include sports, debating, competitive activities and leadership roles that show drive and coachability; sales managers ask about them in interviews.
6. 6Keep it to one page and mirror the advert's words: outbound, prospecting, target, pipeline, CRM.

• One page is fine for entry-level and junior reps; two pages is the UK norm for experienced reps, key account managers and sales managers with long deal histories. Sales managers read fast, so never go beyond two.
• Order: header, personal statement, optional 2-line "Key results" box (attainment by year, awards), experience, skills and tools, qualifications and training, education.
• Reverse chronological with months and years. Sales managers look at tenure and progression (SDR to account executive, internal to field). Explain short stints briefly in the personal statement or cover letter.
• Clean template such as cvplex sales-professional. No photo, no date of birth, no skill bars, no logos. Most companies push CVs through an applicant tracking system (ATS) that reads text only.
• Keywords to mirror from the advert when true: target or quota, pipeline, prospecting, outbound, B2B or B2C, territory, field sales, account management, CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot), consultative selling, negotiation, new business, renewals, and the industry terms in the advert.
• Title line should match the target: "Field Sales Executive", "Internal Sales Executive", "Sales Development Representative", "Business Development Manager", "Medical Sales Representative". UK adverts often say sales executive rather than sales representative, and recruiters search titles. Leave basic salary, OTE and company car details off the CV; they belong in the interview.
• Send a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-Sales-CV.pdf. Keep your LinkedIn profile consistent with the CV; sales recruiters check it before calling.
• Applying to a US or Canadian employer? They expect a resume, usually one page, with no photo; the same attainment-by-year numbers apply, in dollars.