Business Development Manager Resume

No matter where you are in your career, you can’t go wrong having a professional business development manager resume prepared and ready to go should an opportunity present itself.

This guide will show you everything you need to know about writing a business development manager resume from beginning to end.

And if you prefer, you can download the complete business development manager resume template from this guide by purchasing it here.

About Business Development Manager Resumes

Whether it’s your achievements or your unique skillset, you know what makes you different from other professionals and the value you bring to companies. Although you know your strengths and are able to speak to them, it can be difficult to communicate all of these in a succinct, organized, and compelling manner when drafting a resume. While you can vision your next challenge, you aren’t sure how to target your resume in order to get noticed by potential employers.

Step one in resume writing is to look objectively at your career and create a narrative. What were your key achievements? What are your strengths and what makes you an asset to an organization’s culture? Next, research industry trends and what employers are looking for. Have you thought about moving into a new industry? Consider the transferable skills that you can use in your resume to describe your accomplishments and experience that would relate.

Extensive sales, lead generation, and relationship building skills are just a few of the extensive experience you have gained as a business development manager. These skills should be highlighted in your resume to help readers understand your career path. Your resume should be engaging, captivating, and eye-catching.

Next, you need to create a resume that highlights your strengths and distinguishes you from other candidates while conveying this information clearly and persuasively. While there are some general guidelines for professional resumes, certain industries have their own standards in terms of length, language and the inclusion of additional information, such as publications. Our career experts are well-versed in these idiosyncrasies. They can help you navigate them and create professional resumes that will establish your brand and maximize the presentation of your experiences.

You might consider using a professional resume writing service after reviewing this guide and our sample resumes.  Experienced professional writers can save time that you can in turn use to review job openings and build your network.

Learn more about the services we offer.

The Business Development Resume in Context

The job search can be daunting even for high-level professionals. As the workforce and technology continuously change across several industries, the hunt for job opportunities is also constantly evolving . To be noticed and secure an interview, you need to use a tactical approach. In addition to the resume-writing strategies and significant research discussed here, your resume must be well-prepared to pass through applicant tracking software (ATS), a software used by many employers to pre-screen applicants.

Once you’ve done your research on the job market and have a good understanding of what potential employers expect, you can start to strategize how you should present your work history. It is crucial to consider how an outsider will view your resume. This will help you ensure that the narrative flows throughout the document. Consider what each role has contributed to your current position. What were your greatest achievements? What were their major achievements? The answer to these questions will help potential employers see what you can do to add to the success of their organization.

A compelling resume should be detailed and clearly show your accomplishments. It should be concise and clean. Here are some general guidelines to help you create a perfect resume:

• Aesthetic Appeal: Consistent spacing and formatting throughout will ensure that the resume looks appealing and draw the reader in. 
• Compelling Introduction: In the first few lines, you should clearly state what your unique contribution is to the organization. This information will be included in the executive summary at the beginning of the resume.
• Greatest Accomplishments: You should discuss your notable achievements in detail on your resume. Data-driven evidence should also be provided that supports the contribution of these accomplishments.
• Provide the Right Level of Detail: You should not have any spelling or formatting errors in your document that could distract from the story’s strength. To keep the resume short and concise, it is important to count words. Articles such as “a” or “the” should be omitted. Pronouns should be avoided as they can increase the word count.
• Readability: It is possible that your resume will be seen by many people, some of which might not be from your industry. Avoid using technical language, and make sure to spell out acronyms from the beginning. You might think that everyone is familiar with the meaning of an acronym, but this is not true.

A resume for a business development professional should focus mostly on achievements. How much did you grow a territory? How much new business did you generate? What was the impact on revenue? You’ll want to showcase these achievements in a way that catches the reader’s eye and makes them want to know more about you.

Business Development Manager Resume Presentation

ESimple, elegant formatting is key to creating appealing and effective resumes. While you might see some fancy resume designs, they can distract from the intended impact of your resume’s content. In resume-writing, it is important to be concise. The resume should be no more than 2 pages and no more than 1000 words.

It is tempting to make your resume flashy in the hope that it will draw more attention. Although it may attract more attention, it might not be in the way you want. This strategy can have the opposite effect. Busy hiring managers don’t have much time to review resumes and need to make an immediate decision about whether to move forward with your application. Potential employers may not be interested in your resume if it is too complicated or has unclear information.

Your resume should reflect your accomplishments. It’s important that your design is well-organized, efficient, and easy to read. Instead of displaying your achievements in a distracting layout, let them shine in the document.

When viewing a resume from an aesthetic perspective, it is important to remember what potential employers or recruiters may see. It’s important to use white space strategically. Professional resumes should have a clean design with easily scanned information.

Your document design should be well-organized and formatted. Use clearly defined sections and precise titles for section headings. Make job titles bold and use clean fonts for easy readability. Give concise job descriptions and highlight your achievements with bullets. Avoid using any photos, graphics, or excessive colors in your resume design, as they can distract from your content. You should, instead, use your creativity to write your career success story and showcase your accomplishments and achievements.

Now that you understand these important considerations in putting together an exemplary, professional resume, we will now focus on how to optimize and present the content of the resume.

Contact Information

Your contact information is essential to ensure that an employer can reach you after a successful screening of your resume. As shown in the following example, this information should be included at the top of your resume.

These are just a few of the things you’ll notice:

• Only your state and city are listed.

• Please choose only one email address. This should be your personal email and not one that is associated with your current job.

• Add your LinkedIn profile URL for an additional way an employer can reach you. This will allow you to showcase yourself as a professional with a personal brand.

• Add your phone number as an alternative method of outreach.

Job Title and Summary

For your new business development manager resume, the content is for the job you want, not the job you have. The job title at the top of your resume should be for the position you’re applying for, not your current position. This document is intended to help you target your next challenge, so this section may require some customization depending on the job you are applying for. ATS systems often deduct points if the job title at the top of the resume does not match the job description posted.

Research has shown that only a few sentences in a resume are read by hiring managers before they decide whether to review it further. This means that your opening lines must be compelling and impactful. Following the job title, we will begin your professional summary. This summary begins with your unique value proposition, or elevator pitch, outlining your most important accomplishments and how they have helped you to be successful in your next role. Use descriptive language to clearly define who you are and what sets you apart from your peers.

An example UVP for a Business Development Manager: 

Driven and passionate business development manager with deep experience in driving business development, revenue growth, and territory expansion.

Use this UVP to guide you. Write 3-5 sentences that highlight key attributes that are unique to you and also align with your targeted role. Use active language to communicate what you contribute and how this has led to success for the organizations where you have played a major role. This will communicate to potential employers your skills and accomplishments that can be used to support their organization’s growth.

A sample summary for a Business Development Manager may look like this:

Driven and passionate business development manager with deep experience in driving business development, revenue growth, and territory expansion. Leverage emotional intelligence, communications, and good judgment to build relationships, ensure customer success, and define market strategy. Apply creative and critical thinking to solve problems while fostering culture focused on best practices, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic selling. Innovative with ability to develop new approaches, conduct meetings, and meet sales targets.

If you find yourself having difficulty choosing what you want to highlight in your professional summary, review the job descriptions for your target role and choose those that best match your skills in language and scope. Thinking about both hard skills and your soft skills, you will create your customized professional summary and UVP by researching what companies want from you in this desired role.

Avoid using flashy, wordy language in your resumes and use industry-specific keywords wherever possible. This will help you target your resume for the job you want and reinforce your knowledge of your field.

Keywords

It is important to know the role keywords play in aligning your professional summary with the job you are applying for and the industry as a whole. We can’t say enough that it is possible for even the most qualified candidates to not be invited to interview because their resume did not score well enough in the employer’s ATS. Optimize your resume to avoid this by reviewing the job description and choosing the keywords and phrases that best match the position.

There are certain skills and attributes every business development professional should have, along with specific accomplishments. Below is a list of common keywords in the sales industry. This list is not comprehensive, but it should be used in conjunction with the job descriptions you have reviewed.

Hard skills:

• New business development
• Sales growth
• Revenue growth
• Territory expansion
• Customer success
• Market strategy
• Forecasting
• Strategic selling
• Strategic direction
• Proposals
• Direct sales management
• Market research and analysis
• Sales goals
• Sales materials
• Marketing programs

Soft skills:

• Emotional intelligence
• Written and verbal communications
• Good judgment
• Relationship building
• Problem-solving
• Creative thinking
• Critical thinking
• Leadership
• Cross-functional collaborations
• Negotiation

Areas of Expertise (Skills and Competencies) 

Once you have created a list with keywords you want to include in the document, you can begin drafting the next section by listing 6-10 bulleted areas where you are an expert. These keywords should be matched with those in the job description, as ATS systems will scan for verbatim matches. For example, if the job description mentions key performance indicators, you should not use KPI. The acronym can be spelled out as follows: key performance indicators (KPI). Additionally, this list can be a combination of both hard and soft skills.

Keep these areas in mind and think about how you can highlight them on your resume. You can also include a section highlighting high-level and data-driven achievements, which will be listed following  the areas of expertise. These achievements should not be duplicated later in the document if you decide to list them. Remember, less is always more in resumes!

• Expanded territory by 50% by focusing on developing relationships, improving business scaling, and executing effective business strategy.
• Modernized proposals and contracts by building automation within existing CRM software.
• Increased revenue by $23M in 2017 with focus on enhancing end-user experiences, expanding distribution channels, and improving business operations and processes to improve efficiency.

Employment History / Professional Experience

This section can be expanded on your professional summary or UVP to provide details about your career. Although it does include descriptions of your responsibilities position-by-position, it should be presented in a way that reflects the evolution of your career in a clear, concise way and in reverse chronological order. To avoid ageism, limit your career scope to only the past 10-15 years and highlight your most recent history.

The name of the organization and the location should be listed for each position, including the number of years you have worked there (months may be listed, although this may make your resume look crowded). Your job titles and a brief description of your key responsibilities should also be included. Highlight your achievements within the role with 3-5 bulleted accomplishments. When drafting the bullets, try to employ the C-A-R method (challenge-action-results) to phrase them: outline the challenge, the specific actions you took to address it, and the results that were achieved. While quantifiable data may increase the impact of your role, not all roles measure results in this way. However, if you do have numbers and data, it is a good idea to include them in your resume.

Avoid repetition by keeping your document concise and clear, removing any repetitive skills and achievements, and concentrating on the ones that are most important to an outside reader. You only have a few pages to tell your career story. Therefore, you need to use compelling language and information that highlights your unique contributions. Avoid using phrases such as “responsible” as they don’t convey what you’ve actually done. Instead, use action words like lead, drive, and direct. You should use the present tense for your current role, and the past tense for your previous roles. This will ensure consistency across all descriptions. Remember that bullets must always be written in the past tense because they refer to achievements that have already been accomplished.

You may list any roles that were held prior to 10-15 years ago if they are high-level companies or may be deemed relevant to the position you are seeking. If you do choose to list these roles, add an Additional Experience section with the company, job title, and location.

Education & Professional Development

Once you have a clear picture of your career history, we’ll now discuss how to highlight your education and professional growth. This section will list the degrees you have earned and the universities where they were obtained. You should not include your graduation year or your GPA. You should also list any professional certifications or licenses that you may have earned. They should be listed in order of importance.

Additional Information

You may consider highlighting additional sections if you have any remaining space:

• Awards
• Affiliations for Professionals
• Publications
• Languages
• Volunteer/Community Service

Many business development professionals have technical proficiencies and awards to list. If there is room, it’s important to list these so readers know how extensive your knowledge is. Awards and honors show hiring managers that you have had many successes and can bring those skills to their organization.

It is not necessary to include any additional information unless it is relevant to the job you are applying for. Avoid listing extra information, such as hobbies, that could devalue your resume and take away from optimum valuable space.

Finished Resume

After you have completed your resume, it is time to look at it both from a holistic, aesthetic lens, and in detail. Take a look at your resume from the view of an outside reader and ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the resume concise and does it easily describe me and my achievements? Would you want to learn more about this person’s background?

• Is the resume confidently written using action words?

• Is your resume too long or too wordy?

   

• Do you see any formatting, spelling or grammatical errors?

You should then have another person (preferably a peer in the industry) look over and proofread your resume. Even the most skilled writers use an editor to catch nuances and errors. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity for your dream job because of a simple spelling mistake.

Next Steps

See Resume Writing Packages

This guide has provided some insight into the complexity of creating a professional and compelling resume. Many professionals, like you, may seek help in creating a resume that is both results-driven and will position them for the next stage of their careers. Time is money and a professional resume can make all the difference in getting an interview within weeks or months.

Professional Resume Writers is a full-service, leading career advancement company that works exclusively with professionals like yourself. Our decades of experience help our clients get hired quicker and negotiate higher compensation packages. We will identify your unique talent brand and bring out and enhance the best in you, making you truly the best candidate for your next job.

We can help you land that interview that will take you to your next dream job. Our business development manager resume template can be used if you prefer to create your own resume but still want to use our sample.