diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 9a388ccf35..8e88ad7a4a 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -144,10 +144,16 @@ One of the reasons we suggest virtualenv is that it makes it easier to do this s
 
 If you want to run a local copy of cve-bin-tool, the recommended way is to install it locally.  From the cve-bin-tool main directory, run:
 
+### If not in a virtual environment
 ```bash
 python3 -m pip install --user -e .
 ```
 
+### If in a virtual environment
+```bash
+python3 -m pip install -e .
+```
+
 Then you can type `cve-bin-tool` on the command line and it will do the right thing.  This includes some special code intended to deal with adding new checkers to the list on the fly so things should work seamlessly for you while you're building new contributions.
 
 ## Help, my checkers aren't loading