Resume advice for direct mail job search campaign

Per the advice in "Rites of Passage," I intend to mail out a large number of resumes to firms I'm interested in.

In "Rites'", Lucht recommends a rather more verbose resume than Manager-Tools suggests; one which focuses more of a marketing message (including potentially multiple paragraphs describing job duties and accomplishments for each job).

Since I'm working to change industries and have a rather unconventional career history (I'm very much a jack of all trades), I think I could benefit from a sales pitch and a bit of discussion when I'm cold-mailing managers out of the blue.

What are your thoughts about Lucht's approach? Is it only suitable for high-up executives, whereas the rest of us "commodity" workers (Lucht's term, not mine) only justify a straight CV?

Am I better off putting this discussion into a cover letter and let the resume serve its purpose as a simple, readable, one-page summary of my career?

Also, and this is off topic, I have been employed on and off (more often on than off) since I was 12 years old. I have taken the liberty of only including post-college career history. Is this a mistake, given that I have some fairly impressive (for a young'n, at least) jobs?