Increased sales by 40%.
Managed a successful sales team.
Improved forecasting accuracy.
These lines could describe substantial work. As written, none gives you much to discuss. The first lacks a period and a definition of sales; the second says nothing about management; the third provides neither a measure nor an explanation.
Let's rewrite them. The figures and situations in this walkthrough are invented examples, not results from a ModernCV customer.
1. “Increased sales by 40%”
Before changing the wording, find the underlying figure. Suppose the candidate managed an existing account portfolio that generated £800,000 in annual revenue in 2024 and £1.12 million in 2025. That supports a 40% increase, but the reader still needs to know whose portfolio it was.
A useful version is:
Grew annual revenue in my existing account portfolio from £800,000 to £1.12 million between 2024 and 2025 through renewals and expanded service agreements.
Now suppose those numbers belonged to a six-person team the candidate managed. The wording needs to change:
Led a six-person account team whose existing customer portfolio grew from £800,000 to £1.12 million in annual revenue between 2024 and 2025.
The second sentence establishes management scope without attributing every deal to the manager. A following bullet could explain the contribution: introducing joint account plans, joining complex renewal discussions or changing the way the team identified expansion opportunities.
The number needs the right label. Signed bookings, recognised revenue and recurring revenue describe different measures. Use the one your report actually records. If the territory doubled in size during the period, mention the expansion; otherwise, the comparison gives a misleading impression of growth in the same set of accounts.
Cannot disclose the amount? An approved percentage with a clear period can work. So can a description of the commercial problem and your role in resolving it. There is no need to force a financial figure into every line.
2. “Managed a successful sales team”
Take out “successful” for a moment. What remains is a responsibility, not evidence of how the person managed.
Here is a coaching example:
Introduced weekly discovery-call reviews for six account executives, using recent calls to agree one practical improvement for each rep to test the following week.
This tells an interviewer what to ask next: how did you choose the calls, give feedback and follow up? It also distinguishes active coaching from collecting pipeline updates.
If you have a separate team result, give it its own sentence:
The team achieved 108% of its annual new-business bookings target in 2025.
Putting the two bullets together provides context. It does not prove that the coaching alone caused the target result, and the wording should not pretend otherwise.
For a first management application, draw on the responsibility you already have. You might have coached new starters, run a deal review in your manager's absence or coordinated a territory handover. Keep the actual job title; the additional work can sit underneath it.
Management also includes decisions that produce no neat headline number. Reassigning neglected accounts, helping a struggling rep structure follow-up or resolving disagreement over lead ownership may offer a stronger example than a vague claim about motivating people.
3. “Improved forecasting accuracy”
This claim needs more care than it appears to. Which forecast? How far ahead? Was error measured against bookings, revenue or something else?
If you have not retained a consistent before-and-after measure, describe the change to the forecasting process:
Rebuilt the weekly forecast review around decision-makers, expected signing dates and agreed customer next steps, giving managers a clearer basis for challenging deal assumptions.
That is useful work in its own right. Adding an invented percentage would weaken it.
If you do have a measurement, keep the comparison consistent. A forecast made at the beginning of a quarter is not directly comparable with one updated the day before quarter-end. Put enough context in the bullet to make the result interpretable, and keep the calculation available for an interview.
Describe your CRM work: building reports, reviewing records, changing a process or administering the system. “Salesforce” in a skills list does not tell the reader which of those you did.
Build the rest of the CV around the evidence
Once the experience bullets work, write the profile. It can be short:
B2B sales manager leading a six-person team serving mid-market software customers. Background in account development, sales coaching and forecast review, following three years as an account executive.
Keep the profile short. The team size, results and examples in your experience section should do most of the explaining. For an account-growth role, put renewals and expansion first; for a new-business role, lead with acquisition and team development.
Sales management spans performance analysis, targets and team training, as the National Careers Service role profile describes. You do not have to give every responsibility equal space. Select the ones that explain your fit for this vacancy.
You can organise the finished experience section in ModernCV. Before spending time on layout, read each achievement as if you were meeting the candidate: is there enough here to ask a specific question?