Overview
Selling is a life skill. At the core, this is a course in persuasion which is just a fancier word for selling. Persuasion is a skill you need to be good at in anything you do in life….which is why many students without near term plans to start a business have found the course to be immediately useful and impactful in their careers, recruiting, and in all aspects of life.
This course is designed as an adventure of discovery. You will be tested, taught and transformed through a series of interactive discussions, video lectures, and exercises that are designed to push you up and out of your comfort zone.
The biggest challenge to growing a successful entrepreneurial venture is selling. Entrepreneurs must build a strong sales pipeline to ensure profitable growth as they tackle other pressing issues like product development, staffing, infrastructure, and financing. In the Entrepreneurial Selling course, you will learn how to acquire and delight customers, use selling skills in different contexts, tell powerful stories, manage the entrepreneurial selling process, measure your success and use the key tools required for success in building a company. The course will combine the following elements to create a powerful learning experience for you:
•Frameworks that define and clarify the knowledge, skill and discipline to be successful in selling
•Toolkit: A list of key tactical sales tools, which we will build tool-by-tool throughout the course
•Guest Speakers: Real life examples of key class concepts
•Discussion: Based on readings, cases, and your experience, the class will be a dialogue that explores both B2B and B2C selling and entrepreneurship issues and concepts
•Role Plays: Experiential exhibitions to emphasize class concepts.•Assignments: These include a cold outreach, case write-ups, a barter exercise and Sales Toolkit for a start-up or early-stage company, as well as a Sales Meeting with a mock customer
All of these elements will be supported by research into both sales and entrepreneurship.
Overarching Goal
The goal of this course is to make you as efficient and effective in selling (persuasion) as possible, so that when you are spending time selling, not a moment is wasted. Why? Because as an entrepreneur (and a human), the way you spend your time determines success and failure.
Learning Objectives
You will be able to:
•Understand the key phases of the entrepreneurial selling process, and identify the most common failure points in the process
•Construct a sales toolkit for your venture
•Build a set of sales skills and disciplines that will serve you in any career context (and in life...)
