Business Development Resume

To make it in business development, you need to convince companies that you have the confidence, leadership, and business expertise necessary to improve growth and bring a firm to the next level.

The best way to do that is with an effective resume.

Here are four expert tips for writing the best business development resume possible:

Highlight your business development resume skills

To show hiring managers that you’re capable of steering a business in the right direction, you need to demonstrate your ability to innovate and drive results.

That’s why including a detailed resume skills section that showcases your business development expertise is essential.

Use your skills section to describe both your hard and soft skills. Hard skills are your technical knowledge, while soft skills describe your interpersonal traits. As a business development professional, you’ll need a mix of both to do your job well.

To get you started, here are some of the most important hard and soft skills to include on your business development resume:

• Business forecasting
• B2B sales
• Relationship management
• Microsoft Office
• Problem-solving skills
• Sales experience and strategy
• Communication skills
• Public speaking
• CRM Software (Oracle Eloqua, Salesforce)
• Proposal writing
• Account management
• Vendor management

Open with a strong business development resume summary

As a business-savvy professional seeking a career growing profit margins, you need to know how to give a great pitch.

Think of your resume summary as an elevator pitch for your resume.

Your resume summary should be placed at the top of the page after your contact details and explain your qualifications. Done well, a resume summary will grab any hiring manager’s attention and convince them to keep reading the rest of your resume.

Here’s an example of what a strong business development resume summary looks like:

Example:

Business development professional with 8+ years of experience managing multi-million dollar construction projects, coordinating a team of 90+ subcontractors, and performing new client acquisition projects and analysis. Boosted company’s quarterly sales by 20% while reducing costs by 15% annually.

Include strong business development action verbs

As a business development professional, your value to a potential employer is what you do every single day to grow the company. Your experience section is where you show those actions off.

So how do you best communicate your past successes and responsibilities? By using strong business development action verbs.

Including action verbs on your resume helps bring your past job responsibilities to life by demonstrating the specific actions you took to achieve positive results.

Here are some action verbs to incorporate in your business development resume:

Emphasize your soft skills

In business development, having the right soft skills is an important asset. Thinking up innovative business solutions requires taking chances and being confident enough to approach new customers.

Hiring managers look for business development professionals who radiate positivity, are natural leaders, and negotiate with ease. All of these are interpersonal skills that you should consider highlighting in your resume.

Business development is not only about creating new sources of revenue. Another huge part of the job is to maintain current business relationships so your company can rely on them for years to come. To build that trust, you need strong communication skills and an openness to feedback.

Show employers that you have these valuable qualities by showcasing your soft skills throughout the skills section and experience section of your resume.