Career · 2026-08-22 · 12 min read

Sales CV: numbers you can defend

Rewrite the sales CV you already have: quota, cycle, CRM, and a parseable PDF. No empty “results-oriented”. ClarCV.

A sales CV without numbers is a brochure. ATS looks for Salesforce, book of business, B2B, “quota”, hunter or farmer as the ad says. A sales director looks for % of target, average deal, cycle, and whether you hunted or farmed. “Results-oriented” is not a keyword. This guide starts from the PDF you already have: turn tasks into honest numbers.

How to write achievements: CV achievements. Verbs: action verbs. ClarCV: upload the file, clarity and structure, ATS template. Free: 3 analyses and 2 downloads / 30 days, no card. Pro €7/month. You supply the figures; we do not invent 140% of quota.

Which number to use (if you lack “the official figure”)

Before: “Responsible for winning and retaining clients.” After: “Book of 45 B2B accounts (SaaS, 90-day cycle) in HubSpot; 112% of 2024 quota (internal, order of magnitude); 8 new hunter deals.” If you cannot name the exact %, use proxies: visits, demos/week, territory, customer type. You will have to hold it in interview.

• Quota or team ranking if it is defensible.
• Named CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics — the one in the ad if you used it.
• Hunter vs farmer vs inside: one word in the summary.
• Product: not “solutions”; the sector (industrial, insurance, SaaS).
• Sales language: CEFR if you have international customers.

“Sales star” Canva and the portal

A template with a sales bar chart is a drawing. ATS does not extract 112%. Put the number in text next to the role. One column. Canva guide if the PDF does not paste into Notepad.

Tailor hunter and farmer

Do not use the same summary for a pure hunting vacancy and a KAM one. Tailor for 20 minutes. Cut old retail roles if you are applying enterprise, or the reverse. Two pages max; a dense senior compresses 2010–2016.