Entrepreneurial Selling

The course content is organized around five themes:

1) Fitting sales and business model

• Types of sales approaches
• Smart sales strategy for start-ups: It’s NOT all about ads (Stephan Schubert guest lecture)
• Marketing positioning and value proposition

2) Personal selling process

• Prospecting: Selling is a contact sport
• Telling a compelling selling story (Mattias Protzmann guest lecture)
• Listening and closing (includes case Scheel & Partners, WHU)
• Relationship building: It’s networking or it’s not working (includes case Heidi Roizen, HBS)

3) Enterprise sales process

• Understanding enterprise buying (includes case British Columbia Box, Ivey)
• Enterprise selling methodology
• Enterprise selling traps (includes case CMR Enterprises, HBS)

4) Inbound sales process

• Inbound marketing and marketing automation (includes case Hubspot, HBS)
• Selling as a numbers game (includes case InsightSquared, HBS)

5) Sales evolution and scaling

• Sales team evolution (includes case Transition at DataCorp, HBS)
• Sales channel evolution (includes case Oversight Systems, HBS)

1) 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),
• understand the specifics and terminology of sales management in various industry sectors,
• define sales performance indicators.

2) In regard to conceptual knowledge, participants are enabled to

• analyze the composition of a buying center,
• classify the dimensions of sales performance management,
• evaluate sales performance KPIs.

3) In regard to selling-specific procedural knowledge, participants are enabled to

• apply a structured sales process and blueprint,
• evaluate approaches for getting access to C-level decision makers,
• evaluate the win probability of an opportunity and identify potential roadblocks,
• evaluate the needs of a customer through questions.

4) In regard to procedural knowledge of sales leadership, participants are enabled to

• provide constructive feedback on selling behavior of others,
• conduct pipeline reviews,
• develop sales forecasts.

5) In regard to general business-relevant procedural knowledge, participants are enabled to

• prepare for business meetings and internal committee sessions,
• make the best out of a limited preparation time budget,
• make concise contributions to meetings,
• constructively build and comment on contributions by other participants in the meeting,
• to derive a course of action from a careful analysis of the situation and a structured evaluation of alternatives.

6) In regard to metacognitive knowledge, participants are enabled to

• evaluate their own selling behavior and skills,
• evaluate the ethical dimension of a sales leadership situation,
• create a skill profile for sales people,
• to develop criteria of sales excellence.

• 20% role-play sessions between students,
• 60% case-based discussions with concluding mini-lectures, and
• 20% interactive concept lectures.

This video shows our case-based sessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbNNsq1fC0A. This way of learning requires a great amount of energy, both from the student and from the teacher.

• 100% individual performance. No team grades. No peer evaluation.
• No sit-down, speed-writing exam under time pressure, no memorizing of PowerPoint slides, no black-out risk.

The course grade is composed as follows:

• 40%: eight class preparation notes (pdf, bullet points are enough, ca. 500-750 words)
• 10%: two role-play videos and two database exercises,
• 50%: two individual take-home papers (pdf, essay)