This sales executive CV template shows a business-to-business salesperson progressing from an internal sales role into a territory-based position. The Word example combines prospecting, customer meetings, quotations and measurable sales performance. The guide also covers telephone, showroom and early-career applications, helping you explain what you sell, how you win business and the results you contribute.
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Content of this CV template
ADAM WILSON
LEICESTER
tel: 07700 900765 email: [email protected]
PROFILE
- B2B sales executive with ten years' experience selling workplace and trade supplies to small and medium-sized businesses.
- Combine new business development with repeat-customer growth, from initial contact and site visits through quotation and order confirmation.
- Delivered £432,000 in sales against a £400,000 personal target in 2025/26, including first orders from 19 new customers.
- Experienced in understanding purchasing needs, presenting suitable products and coordinating reliable delivery with operational colleagues.
- Use HubSpot CRM and Excel to manage opportunities, follow-ups and sales reporting. Full UK driving licence.
WORK HISTORY
SALES EXECUTIVE
NORTHLINE WORKPLACE SUPPLIES, LEICESTER
APRIL 2021 – PRESENT
Sell workplace consumables and packaging to businesses across Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, combining field visits with telephone follow-up.
- Manage a territory of 42 repeat customers while developing new opportunities through outbound calls, referrals and inbound enquiries.
- Achieved 108% of the 2025/26 personal revenue target; 19 new customers contributed £86,000 of invoiced sales during the year.
- Self-sourced nine of those new customers, researching local businesses and arranging meetings with owners and purchasing staff.
- Prepare quotations within agreed pricing limits, negotiate order quantities and delivery schedules, and confirm requirements with the warehouse.
- Maintain opportunity stages, values and next actions in HubSpot; review the pipeline weekly and follow up initial deliveries with customers.
INTERNAL SALES ADVISER
BRIAR TRADE SUPPLIES, LEICESTER
SEPTEMBER 2016 – MARCH 2021
Handled trade-customer enquiries and quotation follow-up for a regional distributor, developing from sales support into a personal sales target.
- Discussed product requirements by telephone and email, checked stock and prepared quotations for builders and maintenance businesses.
- Met or exceeded the monthly gross-profit target in nine of twelve months during 2019/20.
- Reactivated six lapsed trade accounts through targeted follow-up, discussing changed requirements and arranging sample orders.
- Resolved order queries with purchasing and transport colleagues; supported two new starters with product knowledge and the order system.
EDUCATION & DEVELOPMENT
A LEVELS
HAWTHORN SIXTH FORM, LEICESTER – 2016
Business Studies (B), Economics (C) and English Language (C).
NINE GCSES, GRADES A–C
INCLUDING ENGLISH AND MATHEMATICS – 2014
EMPLOYER TRAINING
CONSULTATIVE SELLING – 2023; HUBSPOT CRM – 2024
INTERESTS
Five-a-side football, cooking and going to live music events.
How to write a sales executive CV
A sales executive CV needs to answer three questions quickly: what do you sell, which parts of the sale do you handle, and how well do you perform? A clear answer to those questions is more persuasive than describing yourself as driven, resilient or an excellent communicator. Your experience should give the reader evidence of those qualities.
The title covers very different jobs. Winning contracts through site visits, converting telephone enquiries and selling cars in a showroom all involve sales, but they require different evidence. Build the CV around the selling environment in the vacancy, then select achievements that show why your experience fits.
Make your sales environment easy to understand
Give each recent role a short context line before its achievements. Identify the product or service, customer group and sales channel. For business-to-business work, the buyer could be an owner, purchasing manager, facilities team or director. For consumer sales, explain whether you work with walk-ins, booked appointments, inbound enquiries or an existing customer base.
Add useful scale: your geographic territory, typical order or contract value, number of active accounts, or usual sales cycle. Choose the details that affect the work. A six-month capital-equipment sale involving technical colleagues calls for different evidence from a same-day training booking. The reader should be able to recognise that distinction without researching your employer.
Adam’s example introduces workplace supplies, business customers and a defined Midlands territory. His earlier role shows telephone enquiries and trade quotations. That establishes a credible move into field sales while retaining the commercial knowledge developed in the previous job.
Use the profile to connect your experience with the vacancy
A useful profile combines your sales background, the work you handle and one relevant result. For an experienced applicant, “B2B sales executive selling workplace supplies, combining prospecting and customer visits with repeat-account growth” establishes more than a list of personal attributes. A brief target result can then support it.
Adjust the emphasis to the opportunity. An outbound role calls for prospecting and self-generated business near the top. An inbound role may benefit more from enquiry conversion, needs-based recommendations and accurate booking or order processing. A field role may also need an immediately visible territory and driving licence.
Someone entering sales can lead with relevant customer contact, product knowledge and experience working towards a measurable objective. The profile can explain the move from retail, hospitality or customer service in a sentence, with the supporting examples placed in the employment history.
Give your results a unit, a period and a useful comparison
Sales figures become meaningful when the reader knows what they measure. Revenue, gross profit, recurring contract value, units sold, bookings and qualified appointments each describe a different outcome. Name the measure and the reporting period, then add the target or previous performance where it helps.
- Revenue: Adam’s £432,000 against a £400,000 personal target shows both the scale and 108% attainment for the same financial year.
- New customers: 19 new customers contributing £86,000 during the year adds value and timing to the count. It explains more than “grew the customer base”.
- Conversion: identify the starting point, such as qualified enquiries becoming orders, and use comparable periods. The percentage is easier to interpret when the reader knows the approximate volume involved.
- Profit or pricing: a gross-profit target, margin result or sale secured within agreed pricing limits can demonstrate commercial judgement alongside revenue.
- Units or bookings: monthly vehicle sales, course bookings or confirmed delegates can be stronger evidence than a revenue figure where those are the employer’s main measures.
Show sustained performance where possible. Annual attainment or a run of quarterly results gives a useful view of consistency. If you include your strongest month or a sales award, identify the period and what the recognition measured. A ranking also benefits from context, such as placing second in a team of eight over a full year.
Separate individual performance from team results through the wording. “Delivered £X in personal sales” and “contributed £Y to a team campaign” make the responsibility clear. For a shared account or complex sale, describe the work you owned and the overall outcome in the same bullet.
Show how you create and progress opportunities
New-business employers want to understand where opportunities come from. Distinguish your own prospecting from marketing enquiries, referrals, centrally supplied appointments and existing-customer introductions. Adam identifies nine self-sourced customers within his overall new-customer result, so a recruiter can see both the total and his prospecting contribution.
Explain the relevant part of the process: researching companies, reaching the decision-maker, establishing a need, arranging a meeting, preparing a quote or following up a proposal. Select the steps where your contribution made a difference. This gives substance to terms such as lead generation, business development and pipeline management.
For appointment-setting or sales-development work, describe the quality and progression of the opportunities handed over. Meetings attended, opportunities accepted by the closing team or later sales attributed to your introductions can help. Activity figures such as calls or emails are useful supporting context when paired with what that activity produced.
Existing-customer sales deserve similar clarity. Explain whether you renewed an agreement, introduced another product range, increased order frequency or reactivated a dormant account. The outcome should reveal the additional business you helped create, rather than leaving the reader to infer growth from the size of an inherited customer list.
Use a short sale example to show judgement
One well-chosen example can bring communication and negotiation skills to life. Describe the customer’s requirement, the important action you took and the resulting order or next stage. A customer may have needed several delivery dates, a different specification, a demonstration or agreement from more than one buyer.
For instance, a workplace-supplies salesperson could explain how they agreed a phased first order with a purchasing contact and coordinated the delivery plan with the warehouse. That shows listening, commercial discussion and internal cooperation. If the relationship then developed into repeat orders, that can complete the example.
Include the commercial boundaries that mattered: quotation responsibility, pricing authority, order quantities, contract length or the involvement of a technical specialist. These details show your level of responsibility. Keep the account concise enough that the reader can understand your contribution without a full deal history.
Post-sale work can be valuable evidence too. A clear handover, prompt resolution of a delivery problem or follow-up after installation can support repeat business. Choose an example that connects customer care to the kind of ongoing relationship the employer needs.
Explain what you do in the CRM
Name the systems you use and connect them to practical sales work. “HubSpot: opportunity stages, follow-up tasks and weekly pipeline review” is more informative than a software logo or a self-rated proficiency bar. The same approach works for Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and other customer-management systems.
Useful detail includes recording customer requirements, keeping expected close dates current, maintaining quote versions, producing reports or preparing forecasts. If you introduced a better follow-up routine or helped colleagues adopt the system, describe the resulting improvement in visibility, response or completed actions.
Excel belongs on the CV when it supports work such as reviewing a territory, tracking performance or analysing customer orders. Presentation tools, product configurators and booking systems may matter in particular sectors. Give the most relevant systems space and demonstrate them through the work history.
Choose evidence for the kind of sales job you want
Field sales: foreground territory development, self-generated meetings, face-to-face presentations and the business won. Customer density, travel area and collaboration with delivery or service teams may help explain your patch. Put a relevant driving licence in the profile or additional information.
Telephone and inside sales: show the balance of inbound and outbound work, your responsibility for qualification, quote follow-up and closing, and how you maintain customer records. For a role feeding opportunities to field colleagues, make the handover and accepted outcomes visible.
Showroom and motor sales: identify the product or brand environment, new or used sales where relevant, monthly units, target performance and customer journey. Product demonstrations, test-drive coordination and delivery handovers can provide evidence beyond the headline number. Include relevant employer or manufacturer training alongside experience.
Services and longer-cycle B2B sales: explain the buyer group, contract or order basis, typical decision process and the colleagues involved in proposals. The CV should show how you kept a sale progressing through several conversations or approvals.
Present early-career experience and progression
For a first sales role, draw on customer-facing work with a clear commercial element. You may have recommended suitable products, followed up enquiries, secured repeat bookings or helped customers compare options. A practical example with a result provides a stronger starting point than a list of sales terminology learned for the application.
Sales administration can also be a useful route. Explain the quotations, orders, customer queries or follow-up work you handled and where you began taking more commercial responsibility. In Adam’s earlier role, the move from supporting sales to carrying a personal target is stated directly.
As your career develops, make changes in responsibility visible: a larger territory, responsibility for your own pipeline, more complex buyers or a move from appointments to closing. Coaching a colleague can be included without needing to make it the centre of an individual-contributor application.
If the vacancy is mainly about leading a team, setting targets and managing performance, the sales manager CV example gives more relevant guidance. For roles centred on developing an ongoing customer portfolio, see the account manager example.
Keep education and training relevant to the sale
List your main qualifications, institution and completion dates. For an established salesperson, recent experience and results usually warrant more detail than school subjects. Early-career applicants can give relevant business study, an apprenticeship or a practical course more prominence.
Training is most useful when its relevance is clear: consultative selling, a CRM platform, a manufacturer’s product range, technical specifications or a sector’s customer requirements. Identify employer training as employer training and give formal awards their exact names. Where the vacancy requests a particular qualification or industry background, make that evidence easy to locate.
The finished CV should leave the recruiter with a clear picture of your market, selling responsibilities and performance. Choose the examples that make that picture strongest. You can compare the available designs in the Word template library.
Sales Executive CV FAQs
Sales performance is usually more useful on the CV than personal pay. OTE describes a remuneration package, while revenue, profit, bookings and target attainment demonstrate your contribution. If the employer asks for salary expectations or current earnings, provide them in the requested application field or covering note. An unusually strong commission year is best translated into the underlying sales result when explaining your achievements.
Percentages against target, an approved value range, customer counts or a description of contract scale can still convey useful evidence. For example, target attainment over a named financial year shows performance without disclosing the revenue target itself. Explain the product, customer type and your responsibility so that the result retains context. Customer names are rarely needed to make a strong sales example understandable.
State the period and the target that applied to it. You could present attainment for the six months after taking over a new territory, then describe the customer base or pipeline you inherited. Where the employer formally adjusted the target, use that agreed basis. A short context phrase helps a recruiter interpret the result and avoids comparing two periods with substantially different responsibilities.
Yes, especially when you can show related work such as qualifying unfamiliar customers, securing referrals, re-engaging past enquiries or researching decision-makers. Give those examples prominence and describe the sales stages you already handle well. A role offering prospecting training may be a closer next step than one requiring an established record of entirely self-generated business. Your application can explain why you want to take on that additional responsibility.
Use a clear heading such as ‘Self-employed sales representative’, with the dates, product or service and the business you represented where appropriate. Describe your territory, lead arrangements, customer meetings and sales outcomes in the same way as an employed role. If you represented several businesses, group the work under one self-employed period and identify the most relevant assignments. The payment arrangement needs little space unless it explains the nature of the work.
