Software companies want to feel confident that they are investing in the best sales talent to drive growth, expand into new territories, and increase revenue. Your ticket to a coveted position at an awesome tech company is your resume. In the main, you need to convince recruiters and hiring managers that you are the sales talent they need to drive that growth.
A well-written resume can be the difference between getting ignored and getting put on the short list for an interview. But typical advice about resume-writing falls short when it comes to a metrics-driven profession like sales. Listing your former places of work, the years you worked there, and what your responsibilities were in those jobs does not sell your talent.
Without an excellent resume, you could be the most accomplished sales professional in all of the tech industry—but continue flying along under the recruiting radar. Thankfully, the difference between a ho-hum list of previous workplaces and a stand-out, winning software sales resume is easy to define.
It’s all about how you make that first impression:
Introduce yourself with an impactful summary.
Provide detailed explanations of your previous roles.
Remove doubt with meaningful sales stats.
Stand out by being personable.
Work with a software sales recruiter to fine-tune your resume.
Introduce yourself with an impactful summary.
The very top of your resume needs a concise but impactful summary of your key skills and abilities. You should include a career objective that ideally aligns with an explanation of what you’ll bring to your future company. You should also tailor the language in this top section of your resume, using terms from the job description of the very role you are pursuing. Keeping your summary focused on these keywords will help search engines or an application tracking system (ATS) notice your talent.
But beyond the technical science of using the right keywords, including terms and phrases that relate to your desired role will make your resume stand out to the recruiter who reads it. Consider this part of your resume like the first few lines of your sales pitch. If you want the hiring manager to keep reading, make these words count by piquing their interest.
Provide detailed explanations of your previous roles.
The sea of software sales is vast and home to many ports of call—and recruiters want to know you’ve traveled where it matters. Honing in on a few key elements will help your resume stand out by highlighting your specific expertise and qualifications. Regions where you have sold or managed a team, the specific products you have sold, and the types of customers you have sold to will provide recruiters with a more detailed understanding of where you’ve been and what you can offer. It never hurts to get even more pinpointed with stats such as deal sizes, the time length of the sales cycle, and quota achievement.
“I managed a team that sold software to banking clients” is a lot less convincing than “I managed a sales team in the Northwest Region connecting regional banks to an outstanding customer support solution. Working with C-level executives, my team structured average deals of $50K with ten different regional banks in Washington, and Oregon. Design and implementation of these systems averaged three weeks.”
Remove doubt with meaningful sales stats.
Remember that when you’re writing a resume, you want to sell yourself. Each description of your role at a previous company should highlight how you were the most awesome thing there since sliced bread, rather than just listing your responsibilities. Anyone can show up to work and do their job, but a sought-after sales professional surpasses expectations.
While waxing poetic about your accomplishments in previous roles will certainly make you look good, nothing cements your credibility like numbers. Examples and achievements highlighted with actual stats can convince a hiring manager and remove any doubts or ambiguity. Focus on discussing your targets—and how you surpassed them. Generated revenue and unit sales are also great numbers to showcase and will help convince hiring managers that you’re talented enough to put on the interview list.
Stand out by being personable.
While companies want to invest in top-notch sales talent, they increasingly place value in the idea of a collaborative work culture. To that end, tech companies don’t just want to know your numbers. They want to know if you’ll fit in with the tribe. Of all the traits hiring managers like to see, emotional intelligence is one that increasingly stands out as one of the most important. Don’t be afraid to include information about yourself as an actual human being somewhere on your resume.
In many cases, this could be a short section after your professional experience, highlighting your education—such as where you received your degree(s) and the type of extracurriculars you participated in. If you have weekend interests, consider putting down some of those as well, whether you like to kayak or decorate cakes. Volunteer experience goes a long way towards showing commitment to a cause. These pieces of information can become talking points during an interview to help hiring managers get a deeper sense of who you are—and you never know when you might connect over a certain point. You also rode up to Machu Picchu on the back of a llama?
Have a software sales recruiter fine-tune your resume.
Working with a software sales recruiter is the final, must-take step for anyone who is serious about stepping up into a better role with more professional potential. A software sales recruiter can not only be that second set of eyes to make sure your resume looks great and reads flawlessly. A software sales recruiter is conversant with the lingo in software sales, knows the ongoing hiring trends in tech, and can size up your skills and past accomplishments to help direct you to the role(s) for which you are most qualified—and help you fine-tune your resume accordingly. If you are thinking about what you could do to take your resume to the next level, send me an email at mike@michaelblair.com and let’s see how I can help you stand out from the other job seekers.