You’re goal-oriented and strive for excellent performance in the workplace. You know that you can help companies boost sales and create an exceptional customer experience in the process.
Is your resume template optimized to give you the advantage as you begin your sales career?
Knowing what to put on a resume can be tricky when you don’t have much sales experience. Use our cover letter writer and beginner sales representative resume examples to effectively promote your top skills and land a top job in 2024.
What Matters Most: Your Beginner Sales Representative Skills & Work Experience
Many beginner sales applicants wonder what skills they can put on their resume to stand out in the hiring process.
Fortunately, there’s a lot you can list here since sales careers have tons of transferable skills. For instance, if you worked in retail, you could list skills involving customer service or managing deadlines, among many others.
Additionally, any sales-related education you have, like a degree in marketing, can also be used when picking your top skills since you would have completed a lot of relevant coursework in consumer behavior and product promotion.
Here are some top beginner sales representative skills in today’s job market.
9 top beginner sales representative skills
- Customer Service
- Active Listening
- Presentations
- Inventory
- POS Systems
- Conflict Resolution
- Customer Acquisition
- Loyalty Programs
- Consultative Sales
Sample beginner sales representative work experience bullet points
Now you’re probably wondering, if you don’t have experience, what can you put in your work experience bullet points?
While you may not have direct sales experience, you can still list many other relevant achievements from jobs in other industries or your education. For instance, if you helped achieve 96% positive satisfaction scores as a customer service rep, that would be very relevant.
You can also list examples from non-traditional work experiences like volunteer work or school extracurriculars as needed. For instance, volunteering at a call center for a local non-profit would still show many applicable skills in speaking clearly and managing customer needs.
Here are some more samples:
- Established a positive rapport with customers while generating 5 loyalty program signups daily to increase return customers by 67%.
- Greeted over 80 customers daily and answered any questions as needed in a helpful and friendly tone to achieve 98% positive satisfaction scores.
- Worked cooperatively with team members as part of the school’s FBLA program to finish first place in a regional investment simulation competition.
- Took regular calls at a local non-profit call center, clearly explaining information about local food programs to help 20 families in need daily find the resources they need.
Top 5 Tips for Your Beginner Sales Representative Resume
- Both interpersonal and technical skills matter
- Sales reps need the technical know-how to achieve company goals while using interpersonal skills to create a great customer experience. Your examples can include both, such as using active listening to understand customer needs and make accurate product recommendations.
- Use numbers whenever possible
- The sales field uses tons of numbers to optimize performance. Using numbers like efficiency or customer satisfaction ratings in your examples will make your impact stand out.
- Proofread thoroughly
- Accuracy is one of the most essential aspects when handling customer needs. Show hiring managers you’re detail-oriented by submitting a resume free of typos and grammatical errors.
- Consider an objective
- A resume objective is a great idea for sales applicants without much experience. For instance, listing how you’re a motivated professional with two years of customer service and inventory management experience will immediately catch a hiring manager’s attention.
- Fill up a full page
- While you may not have much sales experience, you should still aim to fill a full single-page resume to present a well-versed skill set. Use your education or hobbies & interests as needed for additional information about your customer service or presentation skills.
Reverse chronological formatting is the best fit. It helps to present your most recent and relevant achievements first. To catch the hiring manager’s attention, stick to related aspects for the specific position, like customer acquisition or loyalty programs.
Not every beginner sales rep job will require a cover letter, but you should make an effort and submit one. It’ll allow you to show your passion for the company’s mission or go into greater detail about how you optimized the customer experience in a previous position.
You should limit your resume to three or four jobs, even if you’ve worked at more than that. Aim for the most recent positions and ones that are most relevant to key sales skills like customer service and consultative selling.
