In our new Digital and Social Marketing degree, we added a Principles of Sales course. I need to define the course and create a rough syllabus; and hire someone (adjunct) to teach it. I want to be sure that:
-the course includes at least one of the Hubspot certifications
-the course uses LinkedIn for prospecting -> mining
-the instructor has recent successful sales/sales mgmt experience
If anyone would be willing to share their syllabus, or connect me with someone who'd like to teach a class, I'd love the connections. Post here or email direct: dmcdermo@northshore.edu. Location is north of Boston. Start - Fall 2020.
Hello, we're using 250ok and that they have incredible functionality and customer service. Still operating at the Hubspot API even though so one can be a recreation changer!
We revamped our Professional Selling class just this summer. We adopted Brian Signorelli's Inbound Selling book. It's published by Wiley and very reasonable at $25. Our students complete the Inbound Sales Certificate in class and work in LinkedIn as well. (Once they complete the certificate they can add it to their LinkedIn profile). Good luck!
Great to hear you are using the Inbound Selling book. As a note to others, I've heard that instructors can get a free evaluation copy of books, so if you want to evaluate the book you might be able to request one here.
The author, Brian Signorelli, was kind enough to create an instructor's guide for our Education Partner Program as a companion to teaching with the book.
Yes Isaac the guide is mostly just a summary/highlights of the chapters but helpful. Brian told me he's also working on a slide deck, so we are looking forward to that.
They do very well. We've used the Inbound sales certificate for several years now, but our text prior to now was not really aligned with the certificate, and yes now it is. (And I recognize your name and pic from the videos, Kyle :). We usually watch a few of them in class. Cheers!
Greetings. I think you're off to a great start. One suggestion I have would be to explore a number of the best sales textbooks to identify themes/common content/topics, and then establish learning outcomes for those you plan to include. This will lead you to finding the best tools, courses and certifications (such as those HubSpot provides) which will allow you to identify the best content (and learning devices) to move students efficiently and effectively to reaching those outcomes. In other words, start at the end and work backwards, as opposed to simply selecting the delivery devices you want to include and later figuring out what they accomplish.
Two common textbooks you might consider reviewing in your course design process are Selling Today and Contemporary Selling.
I'm in the process of updating my syllabus now, but in the spirit of @imoche's question and @DrMick's advice on starting with learning objectives, here are my current high level learning objectives for my Professional Selling course, which I teach at UConn.
My course is part of our minor in Professional Sales Leadership and also an elective on our Digital Marketing and Analytics minor, with a specific focus on B2B marketing (which is of course very involved with sales). So my objective #1 is heavier on marketing's role in B2B demand generation and sales enablement than I've seen in sales textbooks. My objectives #2 and #3 are pretty consistent with sales textbooks and other sales courses I've seen. These three have been pretty consistent themes for me for the last 8 years or so (though terminology has evolved). Objective #4 is a new one for me this year based on feedback from our partners and the evolution of selling practice. As a result I am moving to a hybrid delivery format.
On textbooks-- at the moment I have dropped a traditional sales textbook in favor of Dan Pink's "To Sell is Human" supplemented by content from @KyleJepson's Inbound Sales certification, and additional free/library licensed content I add.
Let me know if you find this helpful, and appreciate any feedback to improve it too!
Course Learning Objectives: At the end of the course you should be able to:
Explain, apply and integrate key concepts associated with creating value for both clients and marketers through professional selling.
Creating Value through Selling
Understanding B2B Buyer Needs and Decision-Making Processes
(IDENTIFY) Content Marketing, Strategic Prospecting and the Sales Funnel
Developing Value Propositions for Individual Clients
Trust and Ethics in Sales
Explain, apply and integrate key concepts and skills associated with managing personal interactions in complex sales processes.
(CONNECT) Connecting and Building Rapport
(EXPLORE) Questioning for Mutual Value Creation
(ADVISE) Building Business Cases and Business Proposals
(EARN COMMIT) Addressing Concerns and Earning Commitment
Demonstrate the ability to apply these concepts and skills in an integrated manner to effectively develop and close sales opportunities, through role play exercises.
Improve your effectiveness in interacting remotely with colleagues and clients.
Effectively use videoconferencing technology to synchronously interact
Effectively use messaging and document generation tools to asynchronously interact
Demonstrate strong virtual team work habits and attention to team action, interpersonal and transition processes
Just weighing in from the HubSpot side--I think the Inbound Sales Certification course would be the best fit for what you've described. It describes a fairly basic modern sales approach for sales reps who are just getting started, and it touches briefly on social selling, including a few tips specific to LinkedIn.
Definitely agree with Kyle that the Inbound Sales Certification is the best one for a principles course, I am in the process of revising the syllabus for my spring course to include all of the modules from it (currently I use two), and would be happy to share when it's done.
THANK you -- I'd love to see what you are doing. In my marketing careers I've been closely aligned with sales and want to be sure my students get a really GREAT experience!
I'll forward my syllabus to your email address. I teach both online and inseat but am only teaching this class in seat. But we teach it online using the same assessments so the content is transferable. Because we use Blackboard and have robus content in Blackboard, my syllabus is relatively simple (I don't repeat assignment descriptions etc because they are in the LMS). Good luck. Linda