Essential Sales Abilities to Highlight on Your Sales Resume

Top Sales Skills

Strong sales skills are essential whether you want to market a service, an idea, a product, or even yourself as the most qualified applicant for a tech sales position. The good news is that selecting the most appropriate sales-related skills for your resume is relatively simple.

Your most significant advantage comes when hiring managers specify precisely what sales abilities you should have if you're looking for a sales position within that company.

That said, you'll often have to make educated guesses as to what sales skills a recruiter is seeking. Fortunately, many valued skills are common to all types of sales positions. Here are some of the top talents in demand and where tech sales jobs are waiting for you.

Most Valued Skills For Your Tech Sales Resume

To close deals, salespeople must use a wide range of talents. These skills are often learned through experience but can also be obtained through education courses and certification programs.

To work in sales, you should build a well-rounded skill set that incorporates technical understanding and interpersonal practices. Here are skills most recruiters are on the lookout for.

Prospecting

Prospecting is one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks that salespeople face. But, if done right, it allows you to find potential customers who are the perfect fit for your product.

Successful prospecting includes identifying potential markets, contacting the right individuals, building outreach lists, establishing contact, and opening a qualified sales conversation with new clients.

Prospecting requires resilience and a willingness to follow up on stalled contacts.

Cold calling—one of the first steps toward converting new customers—is crucial for many tech sales specialists, especially at the beginning of their sales career.

Add a bullet or two in your resume about your experience with cold calling or cold outreach and, if possible, mention your success rate. Recruiters frequently prefer candidates with experience making cold calls and generating solid sales leads.

Upselling is a sales approach that informs and guides customers to buy an advanced or better version of a product or service the customer is presently using or intends to buy. The goal of upselling is to increase the customer's lifetime value of a product or service the customer already owns.

A proven ability to upsell products and services can make you a particularly valuable member of any tech sales staff.

When looking for a tech sales position, it would be helpful to outline what leadership qualities you've developed—particularly if you want to work as part of a group. Applicants who demonstrate promise as leaders are frequently sought after by employers for sales management positions.

As someone familiar with tech sales, you should already know how much engaging in verbal and written conversation is necessary for success.

While communication can sometimes feel draining, it's still an essential skill to nurture. Employers want sales staff who can effectively handle all forms of interpersonal contact to help engage customers and close sales. So on your resume, emphasize your work and communicate effectively with customers by describing the breadth of clients you've managed.

Mastering sales requires more than just talking. Active listening is just as necessary. As it relates to sales skills, active listening is the practice of paying close attention, reflecting on what is being said, and responding appropriately.

This skill helps you prepare for every client's justification for not becoming a customer and enables you to react in a way that would move you closer to success.

In the experience or summary portion of your resume, discuss how your active listening skills have assisted you in generating productive intro and discovery conversations with prospects.

High emotional intelligence makes it easier to connect with a prospect and show compassion for their needs. Tech sales specialists must be aware of their personality strengths and weaknesses and use this knowledge to their advantage.

An effective salesperson always wants what is best for the business. The simplest way to accomplish that is to master negotiation and learn to come to agreements that benefit all sides. Skills such as conflict management and the capacity to remain composed under pressure are essential in a negotiation.

You should list moments in your resume where your practiced negotiation skills have benefited you and your previous company.

Being an effective salesperson requires in-depth knowledge of your company's products and services and the overall industry itself. Therefore, when you list this ability on your resume, you're in an excellent position to impress the recruiter by demonstrating you are familiar with the advantages of working with a company's product, services, or even buyers.

Prioritize Skills Relevant To the Position

Although it is tempting to mention every sales talent you possess, doing so may give the impression that you need more experience and confidence.

Perhaps surprisingly, many hiring managers favor candidates with a modest number of relevant skills over those with an endless number of unrelated skills. So if you're considering including programming experience on your resume, it might be better to emphasize skills like effective communication or the ability to close deals with challenging clients instead.

Look for listed prerequisite skills in the job description and then incorporate those you can into your resume. In addition to making you look better, it will improve your chances of passing applicant tracking systems and getting an interview.

Be Detailed

Include as much information as possible about your sales experience on your resume. Rather than simply stating "cold calling" in your talents section, elaborate on how your cold-calling abilities have contributed to a steady rise in new clients over several months. Recruiting managers will find this helpful information when coming to hiring decisions.

Show Your Numbers

The best sales resumes are rich with metrics and numbers. You need to provide concrete evidence to demonstrate your bonafide sales skills. Failing to do so puts you at risk of coming across as unreliable and not genuinely qualified.

Where you can, provide some quantitative data, such as your highest number of leads generated, the number of new sales you've closed, your performance against quota, and the percentage increase in customer renewal and retention attributed towards your efforts.

Doing this will highlight how having you on the sales team will produce measurable outcomes and genuine advantages for the entire business.

Career Opportunities In Tech Sales

Depending on the specific business and role occupied, tech sales compensation can be profitably competitive. Most reward outstanding performers with commission-based incentives and other bonuses, which can significantly boost one's overall pay.

Two appealing aspects of tech sales positions are the potential for quick advancement into more extensive sales opportunities and the fact that jobs are available nationwide. Cities with exceptionally high demand include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, NYC, Raleigh and Atlanta.

Many companies offer work-from-home and hybrid office solutions, giving employees more freedom and control.

Interested in finding out more about tech sales positions available near you? Sign up with Rainmakers today!