Do you like working with people? Enjoy building relationships? Love to travel?
You may have what it takes to be an account manager.
Account managers are excellent communicators and masterful relationship builders. They are responsible for handling key accounts (customers) and they act as the main point of contact between a company and its accounts. Account managers are adept at project management and can skillfully balance the needs of a variety of accounts -- maintaining customer trust, negotiating contracts, and fielding all customer queries in a timely manner.
In 2023, marketplaces are becoming increasingly crowded and competitive -- both on and offline. Especially with the rise of the internet, it’s easy for consumers to pull a phone out of their pocket and search up hundreds of different services and to switch to a competitor at a moment’s notice.
That’s why a team of good account managers can make or break a company. Fostering strong, loyal relationships that stand the test of time is a careful art that requires excellent communication and strategic problem solving. You must think on your feet, quickly understand the varied needs of different clients, and get creative when faced with new and interesting challenges.
Sounds exciting? Continue reading below to see examples of well-written account management resume templates to help you land your next role.
Jump to a template:
The account manager works as an extension of a sales team to strengthen end-customer relationships, improve sales enablement, and ultimately further revenue for the company. Account managers are responsible for overseeing customer relationships, and will work closely with sales, marketing, and customer success teams to target end-customer needs and concerns, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
Typically, account managers will have a bachelor's degree in a related field such as business administration, marketing, or English. Hiring managers will be looking for someone who has experience working within a sales team and with end customers. Ideal candidates for this role will have experience as a business development lead, account executive, or inside sales associate. Hiring managers will be looking for someone who’s a superb communicator and able to effectively collaborate internally. Account managers should have great people skills, presentation skills, and demonstrated multi-tasking abilities.
Though account managers wear many hats internally, above all, they are responsible for driving future revenue with current customers. Noting any experience you have in customer support or relations can show hiring managers you have the soft skills needed to listen to, negotiate with, and persuade current customers to keep their business.
Professional sales experience is often required to land the role of account manager. Holding entry-level sales roles, such as a business development associate or sales development representative, will show hiring managers you have the foundations of working in sales covered and are ready to progress.
Account managers with a few years of experience should highlight the skills they’ve developed that pertain to the role. To succeed as an account manager, you must be able to foster long-term relationships and build trust with your accounts while also keeping detailed records of their needs. When writing your account manager resume, make sure to follow this template to highlight your accomplishments.
It’s important to quantify any of your previous accomplishments that are relevant to the role. Think about the accomplishments a successful account manager should have, and include as many examples as you can where you excelled in such areas. For example, detail the value of your accounts, the percentage increase in revenue you contributed, or your rate of customer retention. A strong account manager resume will speak to these skills while including numerical details to back up your experience.
As mentioned above, technical savvy is an important part of being a great account manager. You must know how to maintain impeccable records of your clients and interact with software to those records to anticipate client needs. Recruiters are on the lookout for candidates who can demonstrate this ability on top of good relationship building skills. Make sure you read through the job description carefully and include all relevant technical skills you have with using customer relationship management (CRM) software such as Airtable, Salesforce, and more.
A sales account manager manages a portfolio of accounts, maintaining existing relationships and working to generate new sales for their company. While an account manager might work primarily in pre- and post-sales processes, a sales account manager is typically involved throughout the entire sales lifecycle. Thus, when writing your sales account manager resume, make sure to tailor your experience to highlight relevant sales experience and technical skills.
Roles that specialize in sales are often driven heavily by numbers and quotas. As you craft your resume, keep this in mind and make sure to quantify your previous accomplishments in sales roles, such as with exceeding a given quota. Use strong action verbs that demonstrate your sales skills such as “solicited” or “generated”. Accompany these verbs with metrics that demonstrate your expertise in capabilities such as reducing customer churn rate, increasing revenue, or exceeding sales expectations.
Like a general account manager, a sales account manager must also be technically savvy and capable of keeping meticulous records of their accounts. Especially since you support the entire sales process and act as a key point of contact with the client, you must have a strong grasp of CRM software or other similar account management programs. Demonstrate your experience in your skills section. In addition, if you have taken any boot camps or online courses in sales or account management, include those on your resume as well.
If you’re a recent college graduate or in the middle of changing careers, you may feel like you don’t have enough work experience to get a job in account management. Don’t worry -- plenty of students have landed strong account manager roles without extensive work experience. You can use this template to sell yourself and demonstrate your skills using a strong education section and your transferrable experience in other realms.
Most graduates don’t have a ton of work experience right out of college, and hiring managers know that. If you haven’t had the chance to work for a company yet, you can still effectively show a recruiter that you have the skills and work ethic to succeed as an account manager. Include relevant coursework in your education section, as well as any honors or awards you received. Make sure to also include your GPA or any relevant test scores such as the SAT.
If you have experience as an account manager intern, or even in another type of internship with transferrable skills, make sure to outline that work you did. To further bolster your experience, you can also include university projects, volunteering work, and any other activities and clubs you participated in where you utilized account management skills. For those experiences, focus on instances where you demonstrated problem solving and interpersonal abilities.
A key account manager is in charge of the company’s most important accounts, ensuring that these relationships are strong -- that they are efficiently catering to their accounts’ needs and that all issues are addressed quickly and effectively. While key account managers may be responsible for a smaller number of accounts than a general account manager, the value of these key accounts can add up to a large portion of the company’s revenue. Thus, it’s crucial to demonstrate in your resume that you have the skills and experience to succeed in such an important role.
Hiring managers are looking for candidates who have demonstrated expertise in managing key accounts for companies. When crafting your key account manager resume, make sure to include experience where you’ve been in charge of large or important accounts, and try to highlight your expertise with quantifiable metrics. Use verbs such as “strengthened” or “implemented” to emphasize your ability in having such responsibilities.
Key account managers are crucial to a company’s success, and hiring managers want to see that you have the ability to take on this responsibility. To make your resume stand out from the crowd, craft a narrative that shows your career trajectory in taking on more work and increasing responsibility throughout your work experience section.
A senior account manager is a senior-level role that comes with various sales and customer success responsibilities. Typically, the senior account manager is responsible for overseeing an organization's account management duties and managing high priority accounts. They may be tasked with negotiating to keep valuable customers, working with marketing and customer success teams to enable customer retention, and overseeing junior account managers.
Hring managers will be looking for a candidate with considerable experience. To become a senior account manager, you must have a bachelor’s degree in a related field such as marketing, business, or humanities. Furthermore, hiring managers will be looking for someone with several years of experience in sales or customer success roles. Prior roles as an account executive, business development manager, or junior account manager will help you land this role. The ideal senior account manager understands sales and marketing techniques, has great negotiation skills, and developed communication skills.
Since senior account managers often own large, high priority accounts, they must know how to successfully keep their business. Senior account managers should have experience successfully negotiating during the sales process. Demonstrating examples where you have negotiated successfully with clients in the past on your resume can help you land this role.
Most often, senior account managers are responsible for overseeing the performance and success of the junior account managers on their team. For this reason, demonstrating any experience you have with overseeing, training, or coaching staff members will be helpful in landing the role.
A senior account manager is the backbone of a successful sales team. Beyond the expertise of a general account manager, you must be skilled at handling multiple accounts and at meeting important sales quotas, all while managing personnel and leading a team. When writing your resume, make sure to include experience that speaks to your abilities in such areas.
Senior account managers are responsible for meeting sales targets and liaising between clients, other account managers, and the organization. Thus, it’s important to show that you understand what the job entails and that you have the skills to succeed in the role. Use strong action verbs to showcase your accomplishments in hitting sales benchmarks, e.g. “achieved” or “exceeded”.
If you’re applying for a senior account manager role, make sure to include as much experience as you can that shows your expertise with supporting sales processes and achieving key benchmarks. It’s especially important here to include work experience that is tailored to the skills of a senior account manager, such as meeting target renewal rates, skillfully managing major accounts, and increasing profits.
Inside sales account managers are similar to sales account managers, and are responsible for maintaining their portfolio of accounts and generating new sales. The main difference is that an inside sales account manager carries out their duties virtually. In the wake of the pandemic, this is a role that has exploded in demand as companies need to hit important sales targets without endangering their workforce.
Like with other roles, it’s important to brainstorm the qualities of what a successful account manager would look like in this position before starting on your resume. Inside sales involves a significant amount of managing many portfolios and making cold calls, hunting leads, filing reports, etc. Thus it’s important to demonstrate your stellar project management skills. Include any certifications you have earned, or past experiences with project management and/or similar roles.
As mentioned above, the sales world is often driven primarily by hitting quotas and meeting sales targets. It is essential to include your experience in sales and to highlight your accomplishments with relevant metrics and strong, relevant action verbs to the role, e.g. “improved” or “facilitated”. In addition, include numerical evidence of your abilities such as the dollar amount of how much you contributed to a client’s revenue growth, what percentage you increased sales by in a certain amount of time, etc.
The technical account manager works in tandem with an organization's sales and technical support team. This role is responsible for communicating with end customers, troubleshooting technical issues they may face, and leading new customers through onboarding and training after they purchase a product or service. Technical account managers are integral roles to ensure customers are supported in their purchasing journey, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
For this role, hiring managers will be looking for someone with a diverse skill set. Typically, the technical account manager will need a bachelor's degree in a related field such as business administration. More importantly, hiring managers will be looking for someone with a mix of sales and technical experience. To land this role, you will need a few years of experience in professional sales. Additionally, hiring managers will be looking for people who have experience explaining and implementing technology for customers. A good technical account manager will have great people skills, clear communication skills, lots of patience, and solid technical knowledge.
Having sales experience in technology or software will help you land this role. Showcasing your ability to explain complex products in an effective way to end-users will be valuable to hiring managers. Make sure to highlight any experience you have selling and implementing technology.
A technical account manager (TAM) utilizes similar skills to that of an account manager, and must likewise be adept at relationship building. However, they must also have deep technical expertise and be able to break down complicated product details into simple terms -- both before and after the sale of the product/service they are supporting. When applying for a technical account manager role, follow this template to highlight your technical accomplishments and quantify your previous experience.
Hiring managers are looking for candidates who can effectively demonstrate their technical ability and experience with maximizing customer satisfaction. When writing your technical account manager resume, focus on concrete examples where you successfully utilized your technical skills to successfully support your assigned accounts. Include metrics that are relevant to the role, such as your rate of success or contribution to revenue growth.
Read through the job description carefully and note what types of technical support the company is looking for. Focus on including such relevant experiences in your work history, especially ones where you’ve successfully fostered strong relationships and strategic accounts using your technical knowledge. Don’t forget to write out the software you used or the specific problems you solved. To further ensure that your resume stands out from the crowd, tailor your skills section according to the skills they include in the job description.
A national account manager is tasked with creating and developing relationships with clients on a national scale. You will listen to any complaints or concerns they may have and work to ensure that your company provides them with their needs in the most efficient and helpful manner. You have a huge area to cover and so you may be assigned junior account managers and other subordinates who will help you cover the large area. While a lot of your work will take place over the phone, you will also work to meet clients in person. You need to be very well versed in your company’s products, have excellent interpersonal skills, and be a great team leader. Take a look at this recruiter approves resume sample to see how to include all of the above.
At the heart of account management is sales. Account managers must acquire and retain clients to whom their company sells. So ensure that your resume shows your sales background and skills.
One sure way to put yourself above the competition is to get certification in fields closely related to your job. Certification in fields like sales, marketing, or customer service would be useful.
This is a customer-facing position in the insurance industry. Your job is akin to customer service in that your goal is to develop and nurture relationships between customers and your insurance company. You will need to be able to answer any questions the customers may have, assist them to solve any problems, and provide information about the various products your company offers.
Recruiters will be keen to see experience in the insurance industry and, in particular, customer-facing experience in the field. Here is a strong resume sample.
Grab recruiters’ attention from the very beginning of your resume. Because they may not have time to scrutinize the hundreds of resumes they get, it’s advantageous to include impressive achievements and metrics in the introduction section as this applicant has done.
Like all other account managers, marketing account managers create and maintain relationships with clients. The biggest difference is that these account managers specialize in the marketing of the company’s products to these clients. You will be in charge of creating marketing strategies and campaigns, researching the competition, coordinating the realization of marketing campaigns, and analyzing the effect of these campaigns. Your resume should show your ability to do all these tasks and more.
This position is not specialized in one medium like website marketing. So your resume should equally show experience in marketing on multiple mediums. This applicant shows experience using email marketing, website marketing, and social media marketing.
A marketing account manager is the face of the company to its clients. It is your job to manage client relationships and cultivate new client relationships. You will be the middle man between the marketing department and the client and will endeavor for your client to have a positive experience with your company. This position needs excellent interpersonal skills as well as problem-solving and communication skills.
Many professionals in this position have bachelor's degrees in marketing, business, or a related field, and have years of experience in the industry. Take a look at this successful resume.
Strong action verbs can highlight your marketing and leadership skills. Verbs like ‘championed’, ‘supervised’, and ‘launched’ help frame your achievements in a positive light.
As much as client relations and communication are a big part of your role, you still need to show yourself to be a strong marketing professional. So concentrate on listing your marketing skills in the skills section.
In this position, you will be working closely with the company’s sales team. However, your focus will be on creating long-term value for clients and strategizing on improvements that will attract more clients as well as retain the current clients longer. You should be able to tell your superiors what resources they will need to reach their sales and growth objectives.
Recruiters will expect to see a bachelor's degree in sales or a related field, as well as experience and success in your sales strategy planning.
A sure way to put you above your competition is to get certified in a closely related field like sales or account management. It makes recruiters confident in your abilities and shows that you are passionate and dedicated to your profession. This is particularly recommended for those who may not have a lot of experience.
Companies often use ATS filters to filter through resumes. If you are applying for this position, ensure you clearly write the position title as a header. Simply writing ‘account manager’ may not be enough to get you through. Ensure you specify.
This position is similar to a normal account manager but with a lot more responsibility. You will be building and maintaining relationships with the company’s enterprise clients. You will most likely be in charge of a larger territory as well.
Recruiters will expect to see a bachelor’s degree in a relevant position and significant experience in B2B sales. Ensure that your resume shows both.
This is a senior account management position. It will be beneficial for recruiters to see how you grew into that position. Focus on including sales and account management positions and showing progression with each new job.
Because you will be conversing with multiple clients, having extra languages is extremely beneficial. Especially if you are working with an international client that may have clients in countries that speak your extra languages. Include your proficiency in each language.
As you can see from the seven different templates above, there are big differences even within the type of account manager roles that are out there. Make sure to carefully read through the account manager job posting that you are applying to.
When crafting your skills section, take the time to understand what exactly the company is looking for so you can adjust your resume accordingly. Taking notes as you read through different account manager roles can help you get a better idea of what skills/frameworks you should include.
Another useful tip that can save you time during your account manager job search is to create a pool of account management skills sorted by type. Then, as you apply to different roles, pick and choose which skills are most relevant depending on the job description, and swap them in and out to easily create a unique resume each time.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Account Manager job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Account managers are experts at fostering strong relationships, skillfully juggling the needs of multiple accounts, and efficiently communicating with many different types of people. You must have excellent business judgment and be oriented towards results. When writing your account manager resume, make sure to include action verbs that reflect your expertise in such areas -- for example, use words such as “strengthened” or “increased” to emphasize your accomplishments.
Again, it is helpful to review the account manager job description you are applying to and see what action verbs they are using. But make sure not to copy all of their verbs, and instead think critically to come up with creative verbs of your own that are similar in meaning.
For more related action verbs, visit Sales Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become an Account Manager, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on an Account Manager resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Account Manager resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your Account Manager resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Led 4-member team to improve relationships with key institutional clients, growing revenues 30%
Developed go-to-market strategy for ~$100 million B2B market segment; led cross-functional team of 15+ internal stakeholders to prepare new product offering
Accelerated goal to increase digital sales by improving e-commerce experience on existing website and adding new storefronts on Amazon and eBay; analyzed consumer data to ensure accurate targeting by segment; resulting in 300% increase in online orders in the following year.
Managed business relationships with 10 clients, including Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank and McDonalds and presented marketing strategies to senior management to drive ROI and re-engineer sales operations, generating $2MM+ in annual revenue
Developed materials for sales team to articulate value of an unique new platform; performed competitor analysis and customer calls to inform product positioning and pricing
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
