Are you searching for your next sales role? Looking for ways to parlay your sales experience to other fields? Or maybe you’re just trying to get your foot in the door. Whatever your background, sales experience is one of the number one things recruiters look for in a resume — and they explained to us exactly what it is they’re looking for.

If you’re looking to get into a sales role — or out of one — keep reading for the lowdown on exactly how to put sales experience on your resume.

Do’s and don’ts of putting sales experience on a resume

DO: Include key skills in their own section for an at-a-glance overview of what you can bring to the role.

DON’T: Put soft skills like “customer service” in your Skills section — instead demonstrate these skills in the bullet points of your Work Experience section.

For example, "Provided exceptional customer service, resulting in a 95% satisfaction rate among clients"

DO: Quantify your accomplishments whenever possible.

For example, instead of simply saying "Increased sales," try "Increased sales by 20% in Q3 2021 compared to Q3 2020.”

DON’T: Exaggerate or make up figures. Using your best guess is okay, but being deliberately misleading isn’t.

Must-have sections for your sales resume

Now let’s take a look at exactly what belongs on your retail sales resume (and where to include it all).

Work experience

The first thing any hiring manager looks at on your resume is your past experience. Make sure to clearly include:

• The name of the company you worked for
• Your job title
• The dates you worked (these don’t need to be exact — listing the months or even years is fine)
• A handful of accomplishments

This last one is key. Your Work Experience section should never just list your job responsibilities — instead, you should think about what you actually achieved in the role.

For example, if one of your responsibilities was balancing a cash register, you shouldn’t write “responsible for making sure the register was balanced at the end of the day.” This says what anyone in your job would be expected to do, but not what you actually did or what made you better at it than anyone else.

Instead, try to be specific about what you did and add numbers wherever possible. For example:

Balanced all transactions every 3 hours of the day with credit card machines, cash registers and check scanners.

This clearly explains what you did (balanced transactions), what tools the task involved (credit card machines, cash registers, and check scanners), and numbers to set you apart (every 3 hours).

You might also want to include examples of:

• Promotions or significant milestones
• Quotas met or exceeded
• New business generated
• Deals closed
• Customer satisfaction
• Profit generated
• Money savings
• Efficiency improvements
• Number or frequency of tasks

The most effective way to show recruiters your sales experience and skills is through the accomplishments in your Work Experience section. To find out if your resume is effective, upload it to the tool below.

Key skills

After your Work Experience, the Skills section is probably the most important part of your resume. It provides a snapshot of what you can do to potential employers and allows you to include some of the keywords they’re most likely to be looking for.

On a sales resume, you should think about listing skills like:

• Retail sales
• Merchandising
• Apparel
• Point of Sale (POS)
• Cash handling
• Inventory management
• Interactive displays
• Foreign languages

You should also include evidence of soft skills like communication, customer service, negotiation, and relationship management. These should go in your Work Experience section rather than in your Skills section — scroll down for some examples you can use in your own resume.

You should also try to include keywords and hard skills relevant to the job you’re applying for. If you’re unsure which ones to include, use the tool below to find the right ones.

Education and certifications

If you only graduated recently and don’t have a lot of previous sales experience, this section can go at the top of your resume; otherwise, it should go below your Work Experience section. You can list any formal education or qualifications here, including:

• Degrees in sales, marketing, or any other relevant discipline
• Sales training courses
• Professional certifications, e.g. Certified Sales Professional (CSP), Certified Inside Sales Professional (CISP)

Resume summary

This section is optional, but it’s a good idea if you’re just starting out or looking to change careers. It can go right at the top of your resume and should briefly (in 100 words or less) summarize your key sales experience and any particularly impressive skills or accomplishments.

Sample resume for a sales associate

Here’s an example of a resume that puts all that advice together:

You can find this resume — and others — at our retail resume guide.

Sales associate resume bullet point examples

Looking for some more examples of what to write about your sales experience on a resume? Here are some examples to get you started — feel free to tweak these to make them your own.

Maintained 20% cross selling rate, beating store KPI targets by 25%.

The most important part of a sales resume is, well, sales. If you’re good at what you do, prove it by including examples of times you met (or better, exceeded) sales targets.

Convinced customers to sign up for RW's loyalty credit card, with a 10% discount, leading to 300+ repeat business.

Do you have the gift of the gab? Communication skills and relationship building are essential in sales. Even better if you can quantify them with numbers like customer satisfaction rates or repeat business.

Decreased shrink from $15,000 to about $600 through problem identification and follow-through.

Including examples of times when you directly made (or saved) money for your company is always a good way to demonstrate the value you’d bring to a new role.

Designed creative marketing displays using 20+ flyers, 300+ coupons, and 130+ advertisements to increase customer awareness and store traffic by 80%.

Sales and marketing often go hand in hand, so why not branch out a little? Designing displays, creating advertising materials, and getting the word out about promotions are valuable entry-level marketing skills that can give you a head start in sales-adjacent roles.