Entrepreneurial Selling

Though not explicitly labeled as such, every member of a company is in sales. Each has interactions with potential clients, even if briefly, and these experiences affect the likelihood of your business closing greater or fewer sales with a given customer. Perhaps nobody can have a more significant effect on sales outcomes than the Entrepreneur/CEO. Consider the following people: Jobs, Bezos, Dimon, Zuckerburg, Musk, Altman, Buffett, Gates, Cook, Nadella & Pichai. Though sellers are often assumed to be extroverted, many tech leaders mentioned above became their organization’s best salesperson despite beginning their career as introverted entrepreneurs. Regardless of whether you are naturally outgoing, more than anyone in your organization, as a leader, you are selling your business and solutions to VC firms, investors, current and potential clients, partners, and employees. In this class you will learn how to think like each of these “customer” constituencies, best represent your company, present well, handle objections calmly, resolve issues, and negotiate firmly but fairly. Deep questioning will be a core focal point. It drives engagement and builds trust with clients, because understanding their story allows you to intertwine your own. Students will learn how to facilitate sales conversations and later present what they learned back to customers in context of the challenges and/or opportunities they face. The course is specifically designed to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge, skills and mindset necessary to build and run a business. The content is grounded in over 25 years of selling to Fortune 500 businesses, working with their CEO’s and other CXO’s. To get the most value, you need to participate in each class. Lectures are interactive. Each student will have the opportunity to apply concepts and skills through exercises that represent typical selling scenarios entrepreneurs and sellers encounter. Some of these will be written, but many are verbal. Often, people are somewhat or even quite uncomfortable with public speaking, leading conversations, tense situations and negotiations. That is very understandable. By the conclusion of the class, it is my sincere hope that each of you will improve measurably on these fronts.