Business Reality
Selling is the function students judge fastest and understand least
Most management students picture sales as persuasion, and quietly rank it below strategy. This session has a sales leader describe the actual work — research, qualification, pipeline discipline, forecasting, and the number they carry every quarter.
The function every business depends on, and most students dismiss.
Sales is where the revenue that pays for every other function comes from, and it is the function management students are least likely to have seen up close. What they imagine is a conversation. What it mostly is, is a process.
A sales leader describing their pipeline, their forecast and the deal they lost last month tells a student more about how businesses work than a chapter on the marketing mix.
What a sales manager actually does
23 topics across 4 areas. Five parts of the job.
Finding the OpportunityBefore any conversation happens.6
- How a sales team works
- Where leads come from
- Prospecting and outreach
- Qualifying who is worth time
- Working the marketing pipeline
- Territory and account planning
The Customer ConversationDiscovery before pitching.6
The good ones ask more than they say.
- Understanding the customer's problem
- Asking better discovery questions
- Explaining value rather than features
- Handling objections
- Negotiating
- Knowing when to walk away
Managing a PipelineWhere the discipline lives.6
- What a pipeline is
- Stages and conversion
- Forecasting
- Follow-up
- CRM in practice
- Why deals stall
Carrying a NumberWhat the job is measured on.5
- Targets and quotas
- How performance is measured
- What a bad quarter looks like
- Managing a team against a number
- Incentives and how they shape behaviour
Questions students get to ask
- What does your week actually look like?
- How many conversations become customers?
- What is the hardest part of the job?
- How do you handle a customer who says no?
- What did you misunderstand about sales at the start?
- How do you manage a team that is behind target?
- What makes a good salesperson, really?
How the session runs
A sales leader walks through their own pipeline and forecast, then a real deal — how it started, what nearly killed it, and how it closed or did not. Students then work a short qualification exercise on a scenario, and put questions to the practitioner.
What your students leave with
- A realistic picture of what a sales manager does all day
- An understanding of a pipeline and why it is managed the way it is
- How customer conversations are actually run
- What carrying a target does to how a team behaves
- Whether this is a career worth preparing for
Scheduled sessions
Nothing scheduled yet
Sessions are arranged with a college once a date is agreed. Ask us and we will find the right person for it.
A student rather than a college? See what is coming up, or ask your placement team to host this.
The function that pays for every other function.
Tell us who your students are and what stage they are at. Sessions are free for participants.