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National sales director skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

5 min read

Quoted experts

Adry S. Clark Ph.D.,

Andrea Dixon Ph.D.

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical national sales director skills. We ranked the top skills for national sales directors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 9.3% of national sales director resumes contained crm as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a national sales director needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 national sales director skills for your resume and career

1. CRM

CRM stands for Customer relationship management and it is a complete process through which a business or organization monitors and administers its interactions with the customers. A process in which large amounts of data are collected through marketing via a company's website, polls, surveys, and other social media applications. The basic goal of CRM is to target the right audience for their product, and then fulfill their needs, to increase the sales and revenue of the company.

Here's how national sales directors use crm:

Recruited to join international software firm to drive launch of new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and solutions division.
Implemented ERP application to both financial and manufacturing departments and introduced the MS CRM to the sales team.

2. Healthcare

Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of a person's health by the diagnosis and treatment of a person's injury, illness, or any other disease. Healthcare is a basic necessity of human life and is the responsibility of the country's government to ensure that each person gets healthcare. Providing healthcare is the job of certified health professionals that includes doctors, surgeons, nurses, and other physicians. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, dentistry, therapy, and health training all come under healthcare. Healthcare plays a vital role in the country's economy and its development.

Here's how national sales directors use healthcare:

Developed sales initiative focusing on educational, government, and public healthcare markets.
Maintained relationships with several industry leading healthcare related companies.

3. Business Development

Business development is the ideas or initiatives that work to make business work better. Selling, advertising, product development, supply chain management, and vendor management are only a few of the divisions involved with it. There is still a lot of networking, negotiating, forming alliances, and trying to save money. The goals set for business development guide and coordinate with all of these various operations and sectors.

Here's how national sales directors use business development:

Direct reports included four regional managers, Business Development Manager, six customer service representatives, and National Chain Account Manager.
Designed compensation plans for channel managers, sales engineers, and business development teams that emphasized revenue performance and accountability.

4. Product Development

Product development is the complete procedure of creating a product from concept until release of the final product. Product development has many stages after which a product is released into the market. Identifying the need, creating the opportunity, conceptualizing a product, and providing a solution, all are different stages of product development.

Here's how national sales directors use product development:

Work effectively cross-functionally internally to complete sales, installation, servicing, and product development activities as appropriate.
Help establish key repeatable services offerings and provide product-marketing research for new product development projects.

5. Revenue Growth

Here's how national sales directors use revenue growth:

Expedited team effectiveness, productivity and revenue growth by initiating sales organization call reporting system and incentive structure.
Developed, executed strategic sales plan to achieve organizational revenue growth objectives.

6. Salesforce

Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company based in San Francisco, California. This company provides customer relationship management services that enable the customers to be closer to the company. It gives the company detailed information about each customer, including marketing, sales, commerce, and services. Salesforce also helps market a product to attract more buyers, and helps win more customers by targeting the right audience.

Here's how national sales directors use salesforce:

Help implement SalesForce, drove team to develop Territory Plans & strategic initiatives to close business
Promoted company products to non-profit groups through conventions, online and direct channels Team member for design of company website Administered Salesforce.com

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7. Sales Management

Here's how national sales directors use sales management:

Identified organizational needs and created a comprehensive sales management training program that became the company model corporate-wide.
Reorganized and expanded the sales management team to capitalize on regional growth opportunities.

8. Sales Targets

Here's how national sales directors use sales targets:

Lead national sales teams to achieve and exceed sales targets by developing and implementing effective sales strategies and marketing campaigns.
Expanded leads and retained a feasible network of contacts and potential clients to meet assigned sales targets with consistency.

9. Sales Training

Here's how national sales directors use sales training:

Developed and implemented a standardized sales training and bonus program which accelerated productivity and decreased sales representative turnover by 23%.
Directed and helped distributors in establishing sales offices and developed sales training and marketing techniques and materials.

10. Business Plan

Here's how national sales directors use business plan:

Key responsibilities included hiring and developing the regional management team and creating a comprehensive business plan and executing on the strategy.
Coordinated and managed 12 statewide sales representatives, including their detailed business plans and financial performance.

11. Account Management

The process of strengthening the relationship between a company and client is called account management. Effective account management has two key objectives, one is to retain loyal customers and the second one is to help the company grow by creating connections with new customers.

Here's how national sales directors use account management:

Facilitated new product introduction to accounts, coordinated selling efforts between account management and regional sales teams.
Experienced in key account management and relationship between agency community and corporate and government client base.

12. Trade Shows

Here's how national sales directors use trade shows:

Developed marketing programs including marketing literature, advertising in trade magazines, attended and coordinated market segment trade shows.
Researched, selected, organized and participated in key industry Trade Shows for maximizing visibility

13. Sales Strategies

Here's how national sales directors use sales strategies:

Contribute ideas to upper management; identify new sales strategies by regularly monitoring competition and evaluating customer feedback.
Developed sales strategies with responsibility for business growth and established and managed revenue budgets and forecasts.

14. Market Research

Market research is a collective effort to collect information related to a consumer's needs and wants. It is a systematic approach that involves recording and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. Market research helps a business to identify a target market correctly and identify the gaps in potential consumer's expectations.

Here's how national sales directors use market research:

Selected, supervised and analyzed findings of market research firms in product positioning, customer retention and expansion analysis.
Cultivated new business and direct sales growth through intensive market research and presentation of individualized business tactics.

15. Sales Process

Here's how national sales directors use sales process:

Manage C-level sales process from proposal development, financial underwriting and contract negotiation, resulting in finalist presentations and closing sales.
Executed on-site analyses of sales processes and operations, delivering strategic recommendations for improvement.

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What skills help National Sales Directors find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on national sales director resumes?

Adry S. Clark Ph.D.

Director, Western Oregon University

The skills that stand out on resumes fall into two categories: 1) Skills required to do the job and 2) Skills almost all employers look for. The most important aspect of resumes is to make sure it reflects exactly what the employer needs. Study the job description, identify key skills, and have them reflected on your resume. Think about transferrable skills, not the specific roles you've had.

Most employers look for skills such as communication (written/oral), flexibility, proactivity, problem-solving, project management, and technical. Make sure to cultivate those skills in whatever role you have, and have examples that demonstrate those skills.

What soft skills should all national sales directors possess?

Andrea Dixon Ph.D.

Executive Director, Center for Professional Selling, Frank and Floy Smith Holloway Endowed Professorship in Marketing, President, University Sales Center Alliance 2019-2021, Baylor University

Since sales professionals have a lot of information available to them today via customer relationship management (CRM) systems, the sales manager's "supervisory" role is less important (especially for experienced sellers). Consequently, the sales manager needs to be more of a coach and enabler of high performance. Having confidence balanced with humility allows the sales manager to engage more effectively with their salespeople.
One of the critical soft skills for sales managers going forward will be the ability to connect members of the sales team to others in the organization - in other words, the sales manager of the future needs to have strong skills in network building for others. Sellers have access to data which helps them build success.
They also need access to the right people to turn to when they need specific expertise or assistance.

What hard/technical skills are most important for national sales directors?

Andrea Dixon Ph.D.

Executive Director, Center for Professional Selling, Frank and Floy Smith Holloway Endowed Professorship in Marketing, President, University Sales Center Alliance 2019-2021, Baylor University

One of the growing technical skill requirements for sales managers is in the area of data analytics. Our performance and customer systems provide a myriad of data, and the role of the sales manager is to be a sense-maker of that mound of data. What are the implications for changes in strategy or behavior evident in last quarter's activity? How can the sales manager help a specific seller "see" where the data suggest new approaches?

What national sales director skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Kaustav Misra Ph.D.

Associate Dean, Central Connecticut State University

This pandemic taught us many things and one important thing that we have an efficiency gap.

The way of doing business will be much more technology orientated. Hence graduates should be ready to unskill and upskill their credentials. This time it is necessary to forget the old way of doing business and learn new skills to get a job or stay in a current job. Soft skills have become much more important than before, but a different soft skill set would be essential to interact with future market participants. Thus, a gap year should be utilized to unskill-upskill and enhance relevant credentials by getting into short-long term programs, training, and workshops would be highly recommended.

What type of skills will young national sales directors need?

Michael Mikitka

Executive Vice President, MHI – Material Handling Industry

Courses and internships are essential. While the required depth of knowledge may vary from one position to another, employers are generally looking for candidates with strong "people-related" skills, those who are willing to continue to learn, and those with the ability to be flexible and adapt.

By "people-related" skills, I mean the abilities associated with effective communication (listen and express ideas and direction) and the skills related to working independently and a team.

As for the interest to continually learn... from a technology, data, and equipment perspective, today's supply chain looks very different than it did 10-years ago. The willingness and ability to continually learn are essential for anyone in a leadership role.

As for flexibility and adapting...supply chain/logistics is as much about responding to disruption and demand as it is planning for it. There is a predictable demand (i.e., seasonal...everyone knows when back-to-school shopping begins). Then there is the unpredictable demand (i.e., power-outages, wildfires, pandemic) that impact market and the ability to operate. Candidates that express flexibility and problem-solving skills will be much sought-after.

What technical skills for a national sales director stand out to employers?

Todd Lee Goen

Instructor & Internship Director, Christopher Newport University

Technical skills are often industry and/or position specific. Applicants should highlight any technical skills related to the position advertisement and those that add value to the position/organization. Most importantly, requirements for technical skills change with time and technological advances. This means employers value workers capable of adapting to change and continually improving and acquiring new technical skills. Thus, it's usually more important to demonstrate you are capable of learning and developing technical skills than it is to have a specific skill set upon hire (although this is not true for some positions/industries).
That said, technical skills related to online presentations, virtual meetings, virtual networking, remote working and the like are hot commodities right now. While most organizations were in the process of adopting many of these technologies and ways of doing business pre-pandemic, the pandemic accelerated the process. Organizations are making it work, but they often don't know best practices or the most efficient means of working in the largely virtual, pandemic environment. Post-pandemic, many of the remote/virtual changes the pandemic brought will stay in some form. Technical skills that support this type of workplace will make applicants stand out to many employers because they need/want to do virtual/remote business better.

Do you want to know more?

List of national sales director skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a national sales director resume and required skills for a national sales director to have include:

CRM
Healthcare
Business Development
Product Development
Revenue Growth
Salesforce
Sales Management
Sales Targets
Sales Training
Business Plan
Account Management
Trade Shows
Sales Strategies
Market Research
Sales Process
Sales Objectives
Sales Performance

Sales Organization
Sales Presentations
Sales Growth
Sales Territories
Direct Reports
Distributors
Sales Plan
Product Line
Sales Quota
Sales Revenue
Direct Sales
Sales Reps
Enterprise Sales
Sales Efforts
Client Relationships
Sales Operations
ROI

Sales Professionals
Sales Associates
Sales Programs
Saas
Account Executives
C-Level
Sales Volume
Medical Sales
Funnel Management
Media Sales
Business Model
HR
Strategic Partnerships
OEM
RFP

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

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