Sales situations can happen in every day life as well as in the business environment. Being able to position yourself or your company's brand or product to gain a competitive advantage is a vital skill in today's competitive markets. Whether you are interviewing for a job, or prospecting for new business, or simply trying to convince someone about an idea, having a successful sales strategy will give you the tools to maximise your chances of reaching the outcome you desire.
Here's a list of 10 top online courses that will help you develop your selling technique, skills, and methodology:
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Here's a list of 10 top online courses that will help you develop your selling technique, skills, and methodology:
Sales Training: Techniques for a Human-Centric Sales Process
By HubSpot via Coursera
Starts December 11th
This course on sales will teach you how to run HubSpot's inbound sales methodology that focuses on being helpful, not salesy. By the end of this course, you'll be able to prospect for new business, qualify for high-quality prospects, book meetings with decision makers, handle buyer's objections, and negotiate and close a deal.
By following this process, you'll be able to jumpstart your career in sales with tactical tips and advice to run an effective sales playbook.
Learners who complete this course will have an opportunity to apply to work in sales at HubSpot.
Who is this class for: This course is for people looking to kickstart their career in sales. You might be a year or two out of school, just got your first business-to-business (B2B) sales job, and want to improve your sales skills. If you don't yet have a job in sales but want to improve your skills, we'll give you an example business to use throughout the course.
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Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process
By The University of Chicago via Coursera
Starts December 4th
Selling is a life skill. As people, we interact with other people every day in many different types of situations. And if you stop and think about those various situations, many of them are sales situations. You might be interviewing for a job, or meeting a new potential customer, or trying to convince someone that your idea is the right one. These are sales situations, and in this course you will learn how high-performing salespeople use critical skills and disciplines to create success each and every time they interact with another person. You will learn how to acquire and delight customers, use selling skills in different contexts, tell powerful stories, manage the entrepreneurial selling process, and use the key tools required for success in building your company, your career and your life.
This course is designed as an adventure of discovery. You will be tested, taught and transformed through a series of lectures, readings and real-world exercises that are designed to push you up and out of your comfort zone. We will explore both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) selling and entrepreneurship issues and concepts. You will explore frameworks that define and clarify the knowledge, skill and discipline to be successful in selling.
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Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills
By The University of Michigan via Coursera
Starts December 4th
We all negotiate on a daily basis. On a personal level, we negotiate with friends, family, landlords, car sellers and employers, among others. Negotiation is also the key to business success. No business can survive without profitable contracts. Within a company, negotiation skills can lead to your career advancement.
I hope that you will join the hundreds of thousands of learners who have made “Successful Negotiation” one of the most popular and highly-rated MOOCs worldwide. In the course, you’ll learn about and practice the four steps to a successful negotiation:
(1) Prepare: Plan Your Negotiation Strategy
(2) Negotiate: Use Key Tactics for Success
(3) Close: Create a Contract
(4) Perform and Evaluate: The End Game
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Strategic Sales Management Specialization (5 courses)
By Fundação Instituto de Administração (FIA) via Coursera
Started November 27th
This Specialization is intended for sales professionals who seek to improve their sales planning and management competencies and skills. Through five courses, you will cover Effective Sales overview, Sales Strategy, Models and Frameworks to Support Sales Planning, Sales & Marketing Alignment, and you will develop a Final Project. By the end of this specialization, you'll have improved your knowledge, competencies, and skills regarding the sales planning process. And you will be able to apply the concepts integrating the sales planning process to the strategy of the company, by bridging the gap between strategy and sales. The potential for value creation through the sales functions will be increased at the end of the Specialization.
Course List
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- Effective Sales – An Overview
- Sales Strategy
- Models & Frameworks to Support Sales Planning
- Sales & Marketing Alignment
- Strategic Sales Management Final Project
The Digital Economy: Selling Through Customer Insight
By The Open University via Futurelearn
Starts January 8th
Uncover new perspectives on the role and behaviour of your customers, to enhance your sales and marketing.
No matter how sophisticated your marketing is, if it doesn’t result in attracting customers, your business is set to fail.
This online course applies fresh thinking to how marketing and selling activities combine to create customers who keep coming back.
You will develop an understanding of how customer relationship management breeds business development success; critically evaluate accepted wisdom on how marketing influences customers; and learn how marketers increasingly draw on powerful information systems to build a holistic view of customers.
This course is intended for anyone who wants to learn about attracting and retaining customers. No previous experience of studying sales or marketing is required, but some basic knowledge of how businesses work would be beneficial.
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Acumen Presents: Daniel Pink on the Art of Selling
By +Acumen Courses, Daniel Pink via Udemy
Learn the new art and science of effectively moving people from bestselling author Daniel Pink.
Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.
In this course, Daniel Pink, bestselling author of To Sell Is Human offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. He teaches research-grounded tactics to help you understand your audience and convince them to take clear actions—whether that is funding your venture, buying your product, or adopting your new idea. You'll leave the course better equipped to practice the new skills of selling--pitching, improvising and serving.
Daniel is one of the most highly-regarded contemporary authors covering topics ranging from business to work to behavior. His TED Talk on the science of motivation is one of the 10 most-watched TED Talks of all time and, in this course, he’ll walk you through the science of motivating people to buy, use, and adopt.
You’ll learn three effective methods to pitch and then have the chance to apply all of Daniel’s tactics to your own “selling” challenge. Along the way, Daniel will teach you how to remain buoyant in the face of the inevitable rejection that comes with selling and instruct you on the new ABCs of sales.
Daniel’s insights will change how you see the world and transform what you do at work, at school, and at home. He’ll help you realize that sales doesn’t have to be sleazy or distasteful, but can be a personal, purposeful, and ultimately human art.
Learn the new tactics of sales from one of the best thinkers on business and behavior
Content and Overview
- Understand why sales has changed more in the last 10 years than in the previous 100 years—and how you can adapt
- Discover how to map the power dynamics between customers and sellers
- Gain strategies to grow attuned to the perspectives and needs of your customers and audiences
- Practice 3 research-backed pitching techniques to sell your ideas
- Learn to make sales personal, purposeful and ultimately human
Daniel will introduce you to the concept of sales—and help you understand why almost everyone is in sales now because we are all trying to move or persuade others. You’ll learn how to frame your own “Sales Challenge”—a situation where you need to convince or move others—so that you can apply Daniel’s tactics and research directly to your own work.
Next, Daniel will present the research on how sales has shifted more in the last 10 years than in the previous 100 years by explaining the concepts of information asymmetry and parity. He’ll also explain two “big picture” techniques for moving others--irritation and agitation--and help you learn to differentiate between them. Then you’ll have a chance to apply these two techniques to your own Sales Challenge.
Daniel will walk you through the new “ABCs of Selling” –attunement, buoyancy, and clarity--and offer structured tips for how you can put these concepts into practice right away. You’ll dive into exercises where you’ll assess the power dynamics between the seller and the buyer and learn to tailor your messages accordingly. You’ll learn tactics to stay more buoyant in the face of inevitable rejection that comes with selling new things. And you’ll learn how to design “off-ramps” that point your customers or audience in the direction of clear actions.
Daniel will then explain the fundamentals of effective pitches. He’ll offer you three templates to create pitches that work based on the social science research. You’ll have a chance to apply these frameworks to craft your own pitch.
Finally, Daniel will wrap up by offering advice on how you can make sales more personal and more purposeful so that—far from being sleazy or distasteful—selling can be a very human art.
Who is the target audience?
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- Anyone who wants to learn to more effective move, persuade, or convince others
Sales Training: Practical Sales Techniques
By Chris Croft via Udemy
Sales Hacking: Essential sales skills, sales strategies and sales techniques to sell just about anything!
Sales is all about listening to people and prescribing a solution. In every job you'll come across sales moments, whether you're selling yourself in a job interview or selling products to customers - it's an essential skill in all career paths. Sales needn't be slimy, immoral, or complicated - it's simply about getting the best solution for the customer so they are thrilled to buy from you.
With this course you can maximise your sales potential in just a few minutes - if you're already working in sales, or looking for a lucrative and enjoyable future career, effective selling is a valuable skill that you definitely need to master.
Chris Croft is an international speaker and widely published author, who's been teaching Sales skills to companies for over 20 years. He's taught all over the world, as well as online, and has an entertaining and practical teaching style. This course is guaranteed to keep you engaged and amused, and teach you life changing skills for home and work.
This course covers everything you need to know about sales: from preparing and planning, relationship building, objection handling techniques, and closing the deal at a brilliant price. It looks at lots of real life examples (some of which will definitely get you laughing) and gives practical tools you can use right away to get better results.
Sales Hacking overview includes:
Who is the target audience?
- Planning your toolkit
- Building a rapport and relationship
- Handling objections and hidden excuses
- Creating a foolproof efficiency system for organising your sales
- Simple tricks to raise yourself above 90% of the competition
- Simple phrases that will get you a brilliant closing price
- And lots lots more!
- Those currently working in sales looking to increase their figures
- Those considering sales as a career in the future
- Anyone who has to deal with customers face-to-face
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Learn to Sell Anything by Grant Cardone
By Grant Cardone via Udemy
Learn sales basics, techniques, and strategies that will give you the skills to sell anything.
Do you have a product, a service, an idea, or an opinion that you need to sell, yet fail to see consistent, predictable results?
Have you ever thought to yourself, "Why does selling come so naturally to some, but seem almost impossible for others?"
Guess what - you are not alone! Having to sell something does not have to cause you fear and discomfort. Not only can selling be something that you enjoy, it can be a highly profitable activity.
Look, the truth is: the lack of success that most encounter with selling has nothing to do with being an introvert or an extrovert, but instead is simply the absence of learning a few basic principles.
This course lays out the foundation of what it takes in order to succeed in selling ANY product or service in ANY industry. Grant demystifies what selling really is and how in fact, every person on the planet is a salesperson, regardless of their job title or profession.
Contrary to what some say, people are not “born" salespeople. Selling is a skill that can be learned, developed, and mastered. This course will set you down the path to increased sales, higher levels of confidence, and more motivation as you approach prospective clients of your products or services in the marketplace.
This course will teach you:
Who is the target audience?
- What the MOST important sale you will ever make is
- The difference between the PROS and the amateurs in sales
- The 1st and MOST important rule of selling
- The ONLY reason you won't like selling… and it's not what you think
- Why price is a MYTH
- How to develop a million dollar sales attitude
- How to predict what the customer will say before they actually say it
- What the 90 day phenomenon is and how to avoid it
- How to MASTER time
- How to identify your easiest sale
- Who your powerbase is and how to sell to them
- The EXACT amount of effort for you to see success in selling
- The MOST successful strategy to use when a customer wants a discount
- And find out who the most important person in the world REALLY is
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- This course is meant for anyone who has a service, idea, or product to sell to the public. More specifically, this is a course for those not satisfied with their current levels of production or income. This course will benefit anyone required to interact with people whether it is face to face, over the phone, or over the internet.
Inside Sales
By Josiane Feigon via Lynda.com
Inside sales professionals face a noisy, crowded, and fast-paced marketplace with distracted and risk-averse decision makers. In this course, best-selling author and global inside sales expert Josiane Feigon helps you build the trust you need to capture the interest from today's buyer. She helps you understand what attributes you need to be successful, what your customer expects from you, what tools you should use, and how to establish your plan, set your goals, and do your pre-call research. Once you're prepared, she walks you through the specific techniques of the sale, including getting past gatekeepers, overcoming objections, and closing the sale.
Topics include:
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- Understanding the qualities of successful inside sales pros
- Using the right sales tools
- Social selling with LinkedIn
- Improving your response rate
- Building a foolproof qualification plan
- Getting past gatekeepers
- Listening
- Handling objections
- Closing the sale
Sales Negotiation
By Lisa Earle McLeod via Lynda.com
Bestselling author and sales coach Lisa Earle McLeod has helped companies like Google and Roche build passionate, purpose-driven sales organizations. In this course, sales professionals will learn how to negotiate with the best interests of their organization and their customers at heart, by uncovering their own noble purpose. Lisa reveals the surprising truth behind why compromise doesn't work; instead, she explains how to ask questions that reveal information about the buyer—and help you decide when you can negotiate and when you can't. She also identifies common negotiation traps and ways to negotiate that don't just close the sale today, but build longer-term relationships for tomorrow.
Topics include:
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- Negotiating with noble purpose
- Three kinds of sales negotiation
- Why deals fall apart
- Spotting and diffusing negotiation traps
- Asking for their boss
- Negotiating via email
- Avoiding renegotiating sales
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