When Your Reputation Stops Working

Jon B. Roberts is a hired gun in sales organizations. Several times now, Roberts has been the guy the company called in to fix the sales department and lead a turnaround when things were in trouble.

In 1993, the CEO of a surgical-supply manufacturer recruited him to save the company's sales department after a 10 percent sales decline in a single year. Roberts, of Grand Prairie, Texas, said he mended broken client relationships, built new ones and increased sales. Five years later, he was well known in the world of medical-device sales, and word of mouth and reputation took from him one sales department to the next.

At each job for the next 12 years, Roberts said, he rebuilt what was broken or improved what was already working, racking up an impressive record of sales turnarounds and success. But his resume said none of that.

Roberts stopped updating the document in 1998, since word of mouth was doing the work for him. But in late 2009, Roberts decided he wanted to look beyond sales jobs in the medical-equipment industry and make his case to hiring managers unfamiliar with his work. He needed a resume update and didn't know how to put his accomplishments in writing.

J.M. Auron, a certified professional resume writer who works with TheLadders, helped Roberts find ways to demonstrate a progressive mastery of sales and management throughout his career. Auron noted that Roberts is able to "lead all sales activities and operations including sales, new business development, new market penetration, contracts, negotiations, problem resolution and field sales."

In addition, Auron showed the progress Roberts made in being able to negotiate up to eight-figure contracts. Auron also honed Roberts' resume better to reflect his ability to develop new sales packages to meet complex client needs and to create new processes that more effectively captured potential customer concerns and reduced customer attrition.

In the end, the new resume helped Roberts demonstrate his signature talent - "Jon tends to go in where others have failed, and he gets the job done," Auron said. "He's a fixer."