Entrepreneurial Selling

The course has four content streams:

• Finding strategic product-market fit (2 sessions)
• Developing personal selling skills (4 sessions)
• Building and managing the sales team (5 sessions)
• Selecting and managing channel partners (2 sessions)

• In regard to factual knowledge, participants are enabled to apply salespeople jargon to discussing the status of a sale (such as the decision making unit, red flags, pipeline, RFQ, gatekeepers, and other idioms) and to understand the specifics and terminology of sales management in various industry sectors (FMCG, engineering, IT, professional services, medical and electrical equipment, trade).
• In regard to conceptual knowledge, participants are enabled to analyze the composition of a buying center, to evaluate the fit of the sales process with organizational structure, compensation structure, and skill set, and to understand the key limitations imposed by the U.S. and U.K. anti-bribery acts.
• In regard to selling-specific procedural knowledge, participants are enabled to apply a structured sales process and blueprint, to evaluate approaches for getting access to C-level decision makers, to evaluate the win probability of an opportunity and identify potential roadblocks, to evaluate the needs of a customer through questions, to create and deliver a sales proposal, to deal with customer objections, and to provide constructive feedback on selling behavior of others.
• In regard to general business-relevant procedural knowledge, participants are enabled to prepare for business meetings and internal committee sessions, to make the best out of a limited preparation time budget, to make concise contributions to meetings, to constructively build and comment on contributions by other participants in the meeting, and to derive a course of action from a careful analysis of the situation and a structured evaluation of alternatives.
• In regard to metacognitive knowledge, participants are enabled to evaluate their own selling behavior and skills, to evaluate the ethical dimension of a selling situation, and to create a skill profile for sales people.

[1] Anderson, Lorin W. and David R. Krathwohl (2001), A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing – A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, New York: Longman.

• role play,
• case-based discussions,
• interactive lectures,
• real-life case project.

This video illustrates our case-based approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbNNsq1fC0A