By Dan Levine,

The title of this article is an iconic line from the 1992 cult drama classic,Glengarry Glen Ross. The line was brilliantly delivered by Alec Baldwin’s character, a “motivational” sales leader. So since you do call yourself a salesperson, PROVE IT!

I see hundreds of salespeople’s resumes in any given month. What amazes me is that most salespeople have no idea how to write one. Your resume is simply the backside of your baseball card. It should only highlight the most important statistics (achievements) of your career. That’s what employers care about.

With the wide-range of available candidates in today’s market, you need to stand out, and the only way to do it is to show revenues you have generated. A salesperson is only as good as their recent successes. Salespeople are not hired anymore based on experience and personality; it’s all about the numbers, and they must be recent numbers.

Many experts have said that employers will look at a resume for anywhere from 15-20 seconds before deciding to move on or move forward. If your career must be summed up in less than 30 seconds, then you MUST draw the employer’s eyes directly to your performance numbers.

Here’s how to do it:

After your ‘Summary of Experience,’ you should list each year in a column with the yearly Quota, your actual performance number and the Percentage above (or below) the Quota. Also you want to add your Company Ranking and Awards (i.e. President’s Club) if applicable. Any solid, tenured, successful salesperson knows these numbers off the top of their head and can spew them off at any given moment.

Here are some common mistakes seen way too often on Salesperson’s resume:

• Makes 1,000 cold calls per week. – Who cares? How many did you close and how much was the sale?
• Consistently exceeds sales quotas. – Great! What’s the quota? What percentage did you hit?
• Number 1 salesperson in the company. – Great! Are there only 2 of you?
• Generated new business contacts from Fortune 500 companies. – Really? Any person with internet access and a pulse can do this through LinkedIn. Which company did you close and drive revenue from?
• Grew territory revenues by 100% – Great! Is the territory the entire country, the northeast, your neighborhood? What were the revenues before you got there?

Even if you are happily employed, you should always have an up-to-date resume illustrating your most recent successes. It’s a smart plan each year to take 10 minutes to document your accomplishments for that year. Unfortunately, this is not Major League Baseball where someone keeps your stats for you. It’s up to you to do it or no one else will.