Sales Assistant Cover Letter: Examples for the UK [2024]

Sitting down to write a cover letter for a sales assistant job can be like trying to help a customer make a decision without knowing what it is that they want and without properly understanding the products you have in stock. You could throw a series of product features out there and hope something sticks.

Only, there is no customer in front of you and there’ll be no back-and-forth to figure out what your potential new employer wants. You have one chance to sell them on your application and that’s it. If you miss the mark on your first attempt then it stays missed and the job goes to someone else.

This article will show you how to write a cover letter for a sales assistant job application that hits the mark. The sales assistant cover letter example below is better than nine out of ten out there. Follow this guide and yours will be at least as good, even if you’re writing a sales assistant cover letter with no experience.

Use the LiveCareer cover letter builder and your cover letter will write itself. Choose a professional template, answer a few easy questions and the creator will generate a professional cover letter for you with just one click.

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Writing a cover letter for a different role? Check guides tailored to similar positions:

• Customer Service Cover Letter
• Marketing Cover Letter
• Lidl Cover Letter
• Retail Cover Letter
• Sales Cover Letter

Want to see more? View a full list of cover letter examples for most common UK jobs.

Example cover letter for a retail sales assistant

Best format for a sales assistant cover letter

Writing a cover letter should be easy, but might escalate into a challenge once you're unprepared to craft it. Before writing, create an outline for your sales assistant cover letter to include all essential elements it needs to have. Format your cover letter as follows:

• Header – the upper section containing your contact details.
• Salutation – a friendly, yet professional greeting.
• Opening – an introduction explaining why you're a good fit.
• Main body – the key part with your achievements and skills.
• Closing – a quick summary with a direct call to action.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you craft a polished sales assistant cover letter, using a proven cover letter structure:

1. Set your sales assistant cover letter header out properly

Just like certain regulations and standards determine the basic layout and features of any sales floor, there’s a standard UK business letter format that’s going to set the basic shape of your letter of application. Everything apart from the content of your body paragraphs is going to have to adhere to this format.

The header is going to be the trickiest part to set out, and it’s dead simple. Align to the right your full name, postal address, email, and phone number. Leave a line and add the date of writing. To address your cover letter properly, leave another line and align to the left the recruiter’s name, their job title, the company name, and the company address.

Sales assistant cover letter example header

You can adjust every cover letter created in the builder to meet the job requirements. Choose the name of your profession and the company to which you’re applying, and the LiveCareer cover letter builder will automatically adapt the content for you. Create a cover letter faster than you ever thought possible and apply for the job in record time.

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2. Begin your sales assistant cover letter with a friendly and professional salutation

Friendly greetings are par for the course no matter what kind of sales assistant you are. It’s similar when it comes to your sales assistant cover letter. Start with a friendly, professional, and adequately formal salutation. How formal exactly will depend on the company’s culture how senior the recruiter is.

The best case scenario is that the company is not too conservative and the seniority gap between you and the recruiter isn’t too great. In such cases, default to ‘Dear + first name’. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this or you feel it’d be inappropriate, then go with ‘Dear + title + surname’ instead.

Always use ‘Ms’ as the title for women (unless, of course, they hold a doctorate, medical qualification or military rank). Be certain of the person’s sex before using gendered titles like ‘Mr’ or ‘Ms’. If their name doesn’t unequivocally indicate their sex, then search online to double-check

In the extremely unlikely event that you can’t determine someone’s gender after checking their LinkedIn profile, company website profile, and generally searching online, then use ‘Dear + first name + surname’. You really ought to be able to find out what their gender is, though. But what if you can’t even find a name?

If you’ve double-checked the job advert for clues, scoured the internet (including Microsoft’s LinkedIn), and called up and asked and you still don’t know to whom to address your sales assistant cover letter, then address it to their job title (e.g. ‘Dear Floor Manager’) or function (e.g. ‘Dear Hiring Manager’).

Avoid at all costs the cold and out-dated ‘To Whom It May Concern’, ‘Dear Sir / Madame’, and anything similar. Do what you can to have a name to put to the recruiter’s function. Failing that, determine their role as precisely as you can.

Sales assistant cover letter example salutation

3. Grab the attention with a strong opening paragraph

Your opening paragraph will be short—only 40–80 words—but it’ll have to do three things well. It’ll need to demonstrate your enthusiasm for the job, foreshadow what it is that you can bring to the company, and describe how you’d make a good fit for the company in terms of your goals and values.

To achieve this, introduce yourself and describe one of your on-the-job achievements. Show, if it’s not already clear, how your achievement lines up with the company’s goals and explain how you can apply the same skills to the company’s situation. Research the company to know what it’s situation and goals are.

If you’re writing a sales assistant cover letter but have no experience, then start with your enthusiasm for the role but then include a relevant achievement from your studies or any volunteer work you’ve done. If you don’t have an achievement like this, then include a belief statement instead.

A belief statement is a statement in which you describe how you’re a good match for the company when it comes to its goals, stated values and mission. Once again, you can find out what the company claims as its values by doing some background research. Check its official website first and foremost.

Whether experienced or not, be sure to mention the company by name and the job title as it appears in the job advert at least once each. Were you referred to the role for which you’re applying? This is the time to mention the fact, to ‘drop names’. It can only improve your chances—referrals are good for companies.

Sales assistant cover letter example opening paragraph

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4. Lay down what you can bring to the company

Just like hearing a rapid-fire series of impressive product features can be the thing that nudges a shopper into making a purchase, so can a rapid-fire series of impressive achievements be the nudge that gets you a job interview. This works by showing the recruiter what you’ve done for previous employers.

An achievement is the description of actions you took at work, usually in response to a problem or challenge, and the benefits your employer gleaned from those actions. You can use something like the CAR approach or STAR method to structure your achievements. Be sure to quantify at least the benefits.

This is the main part of your sales assistant cover letter and it should end up being 120–200 words long. You can break it up into two separate paragraphs to break up the text or even use bullet points to that same end.

Cover letter for sales assistants: example main body paragraph

5. Wrap up your sales assistant cover letter with a neat closing paragraph

Like when bombarding a shopper with a lot of options and information, it’s a good idea to summarise the key takeaways and tie up any loose ends. Use your closing paragraphs to do just that for the recruiter. Summarise your achievements and explicitly tie them back to benefits for the company, if need be.

Thank your reader for the time and energy they’re putting into weighing up your application. Not only is this good manners, but it might have a significant and positive impact on your chances. End on a call to action (CTA) in which you suggest the next step and show your eagerness to continue the recruitment process.

Keep this section short at 40–60 words and don’t repeat yourself—summarise just enough to make it clear just how the achievements you’ve listed translate into potential benefits for the company should they hire you. Sometimes this is obvious and doesn’t need to be hammered home at all.

Sales assistant cover letter example closing paragraphs

6. Sign off in a way that matches your chosen salutation

There’s not too much to getting this part right: sign off your cover letter using ‘Yours Sincerely’ if you addressed your sales assistant cover letter to someone by name or ‘Yours Faithfully’ if you weren’t able to find a name. Skip 2–3 lines and type your full name. Sign above your name if you’re submitting your cover letter in hardcopy.

Cover letter for a sales assistant job: sample sign-off

Some final things to keep in mind before sending your sales assistant cover letter

Your personal appearance as well as how presentable the sales floor is both have a huge impact of shoppers’ experience and spending. The little things matter, presentation matters. People judge books by their covers all the time, it makes sense as it saves us time and is often accurate enough.

So make sure you do everything you can to leave your sales assistant cover letter absolutely word-perfect and grammatically sound. Proofread your work. Use a web app to scan for mistakes and bad writing. Ask someone you trust to check over your cover letter and CV, they’ll pick up on things you missed.

Your sales assistant cover letter should be short, so end up coming in at 250–400 words and fill half to a single A4 page. Use as much white space as possible and choose a professional-looking font, like Noto, Arial, Liberation or the default Calibri to make your work as readable as it can be. Set font size to 11–12 points.

Remember that your sales assistant cover letter and CV make up a single application together. The way they look in general and their layouts should reflect this: make sure they’re a match, visually. Finally, when emailing your cover letter, always save or export your work as a PDF to keep all the formatting stable, unless told to do otherwise.

A cover letter alone simply won’t be enough—you need an impactful CV, too. Create your CV in minutes. Just follow our wizard and fill in every CV section with ready-made content. Get started by choosing a professional CV template.

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Did you like our sales assistant cover letter template? I hope you found what you were looking for in this article. Please leave any questions, comments or feedback in the comments section below.

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Our editorial team has reviewed this article for compliance with Livecareer’s editorial guidelines. It’s to ensure that our expert advice and recommendations are consistent across all our career guides and align with current CV and cover letter writing standards and trends. We’re trusted by over 10 million job seekers, supporting them on their way to finding their dream job. Each article is preceded by research and scrutiny to ensure our content responds to current market trends and demand.