Objective:

At the end of the course, the participants:

• Have gained knowledge and understanding for the sales process.
• Have obtained knowledge and understanding for typical roles and tasks.
• Have gained an insight into practical and application-oriented aspects through an extensive case study and role plays.

Content:

One of the key qualifications in IT sales (activities related to the customer) is the understanding of sales mechanisms as well as having the corresponding basic skills. This apllies not only to the marketing staff, but also to consultants of customers, project  managers and developers. After a short overview of the different types of businesses and the resulting requirements regarding marketing and sales in general, the course focuses in particular on the process of selling IT-solutions professionally.

The topics are structured as follows:

• Understanding the market: which information regarding the markets of clients and suppliers needs to be obtained and where can such information be found.
• Knowing the customer: what should a provider know about the customer and its staff? This goes up to the question with which characters one has to deal with.
• Planing the sales process: sales builds on phases, milestones and formally describable intermediate results.
• Building a sales team: solutions are developed and sold with a team consisting of  "players" having different expertise. How does one play this game?
• Positioning the solution: obviously, it is necessary to develop a solution which is competitive, both technically and commercially.
• To contract: what is important at the very last steps: how to convince the customers.

Based on a real-world case study, the students have the opportunity to reflect and practice the learned theory by means of teamwork and role plays. This aims at establishing a first connection to reality. The topics of the course are enriched with many examples from practice.