About
Course Overview
What you’ll learn:
- Identify the steps and activities involved in closing deals and making the sale.
- Develop an Ideal Prospect Fit is so you are effective right from the beginning.
- Evaluate the leading characteristics that turn leads into qualifying prospects.
- Learn how to confidently manage common objections that can arise throughout your sales process
- Create a clearly laid out sales plan with established milestones that is crafted for your startup
- Learn how to uncover the reasons why you win and lose sales opportunities
What you’ll get:
- Total of 50 hours: 10 hours per week of self-paced learning
- Weekly hands-on exercises that directly lead you to build your sales process
- Certificate of Completion
Course Modules
Getting Started and Introduction to Sales
Module 1: Identify and research where you get a clear view of who your customers are by creating the Ideal Profile Fit and mapping out a standard Buyer Journey
Module 2: Leads vs. Prospects find new people to add to your sales pipeline by maximizing your efforts across both inbound and outbound strategies
Module 3: Once the lead is acquired, learn how to qualify each lead and move them down your sales pipeline. After you connect with them on a discovery call, determine if they are a good fit by probing their true needs and uncover any assumptions. The goal is to understand the prospect’s challenges, pain points and business goals
Module 4: Pitching the Opportunity – begin a conversation with the prospect about the particulars of their situation and persuade them that your solution covers their pain points. In other words, position your product or service as the best solution
Module 5: Closing is where your hard work turns into revenue when your prospect becomes a customer
Module 6: Win/Loss Analysis will help learn how to adjust your processes to increase your win rate.
You’ll make real progress in five weeks.
Our course is practical. We focus on tactics that will help you close customers and accelerate revenue.
We’re here to support you.
Through the live webinars, you’ll have a chance to interact with other founders taking the course and connect with sales experts who have deep experience so you can make a real difference in your business.
Let’s advance the world together.
Since 2005, MaRS has accelerated the growth of thousands of young companies whose technologies and solutions meaningfully improve lives every day. Are you ready to join them?
Meet your instructors
Kevin Smith, Founder, The Story Architect & Venture Facilitator, MaRS Discovery District.
Kevin spent 14-plus years at Dell in consumer, B2B and enterprise sales, and enterprise marketing. After helping develop go-to-market strategies for the company’s acquired startups, he reconnected with his passion for entrepreneurship and began helping startups full time. Kevin’s expertise includes branding, messaging, marketing strategy, SEO, content and social media marketing, presentation and pitch design, web design, lead generation, sales coaching and business development.
Chris Giantsopoulos, COO & Founder, PayUp Jack & Venture Facilitator, MaRS Discovery District
Passionate and energetic, Chris works as a venture facilitator at MaRS and has taught thousands of entrepreneurs across Ontario and the east coast, in universities, colleges and regional innovation centres. Earlier in his career, Chris was a leader at the BMO Institute for Learning, heading up several international training teams. Chris later co-founded and was CEO of QuickEnrollment Inc., a successful fintech online registration company targeted at amateur sports across Canada. He is currently in the process of launching his next fintech venture, PayUp Jack. Catch up with Chris on LinkedIn.
Tony Cascio, Senior Growth Advisor & Venture Facilitator, MaRS Discovery District.
Tony rose through the ranks of Gartner, a leading global research and advisory company. During his tenure, Gartner grew to a $3.3B company with 30+ consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. From individual contributor and sales management to sales leadership and senior corporate leadership, Tony’s charge: to drive globally consistent growth and retention programs that accelerate business performance across new and tenured sales professionals. His style: open, collaborative, honest and respectful.
FAQs
Register via the Start now button above. Make sure to include an email address that you check regularly. Email will be our primary mode of communication with you throughout the course. After you have registered, you will receive an email with additional instructions to create an account on our online learning platform and our Slack channel.
The course costs $35.00.
This course is entirely online and consists of 5 modules. Each week, you’ll complete a set of exercises that guide you toward achieving the objectives of that week.
Enroll in the course includes access to the material for as long as you need it!
This course is suited for early stage founders or sales professionals looking to learn how to close customers and accelerate revenue. No prior sales experiences is required, we’ll walk you through the steps involved in order to be effective when converting leads to customers.
Yes! This course is available to anyone, anywhere—the core concepts are useful for all entrepreneurs. That said, the course was designed in particular with technology entrepreneurs in mind, and therefore some of the material may not be applicable to non-tech businesses. Please refer to the course overview before registering to ensure that the course is a good fit for you.
Yes. Each learner who successfully completes 100% of the online materials will receive a non-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by MaRS Discovery District.