Entrepreneurial Selling - (E-M)

Part I: Sales Model

Week 1: Selling and the Business Model

• Entrepreneurial Selling Challenges
• Sales Model Classification
• Channel Economics

Week 2: Channel Partners

• Direct vs. Indirect Selling (includes case study)
• Selling through Retailers (includes guest lecture)

Week 3: Sales Scaling

• Developing a Scaling Model (includes case study)
• Building Unicorns vs. Camels (includes guest lecture)

Part II: Selling Techniques

Week 4: Enterprise Selling

• Selling Innovations to a Buying Center (includes case study)
• B2B Targeting and Lead Sourcing (includes database application)

Week 5: Sales Scripts

• Approaching Customers
• High-Pressure vs. Low-Pressure Selling Techniques

Week 6+7: Selling Practice

• Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing Practices (includes guest lecture)
• Dealing With Difficult Clients (includes guest lecture)
• Sales Pitch

The course consciously minimizes overlaps with my Foundations of Sales course in WHU's Bachelor program. Thus, it is valuable to students who had a class with me before and those who haven't. To bring everyone to the same level before the course, students with a Bachelor's degree from other schools than WHU receive the selling material from my BSc course as a complimentary self-study.

Selling is a set of skills that one can learn. Only a few people are born selling aces. I designed the course content based on interviews with WHU entrepreneurs and WHU investors. The course intends to enhance five categories of competencies:

• Factual knowledge, for example, applying salespeople jargon to discussing the status of a sale (such as the decision-making unit, red flags, pipeline, RFQ, gatekeepers, and other idioms) and understanding the specifics and terminology of selling to consumers, small and medium businesses, and large enterprises,
• conceptual knowledge, for example, classifying the varieties of sales models as part of business models, evaluating value propositions and the uniqueness of selling positions, analyzing the composition of a buying center, organizing the elements of a structured selling methodology, remembering legal constraints on managing sales data and on prospecting, and comparing the costs of sales channels,
• selling-specific procedural knowledge, for example, applying a structured selling blueprint, using databases to identify target customers, creating prospecting scripts, evaluating the needs of a customer through questions, creating a compelling selling story, handling objections, guiding sales conversations through questions, and closing,
• general business-relevant procedural knowledge, for example, preparing for business meetings, making the best out of a limited preparation time budget, making concise contributions to discussions, constructively building on arguments by other participants, and
• metacognitive knowledge, for example, evaluating one's selling behavior and creating a skill profile for salespeople.

The learning method mix includes role-play sessions between students with joint debriefings, case-based discussions with concluding mini-lectures, interactive concept lectures, and managerial guest presentations. Watch this video showing the style of case-based sessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbNNsq1fC0A. Problem-based learning requires significant energy from both the student and the teacher.

• 50%: team project "Sales Enablement Video"
• 50%: class preparation notes (pdf, bullet points are enough)