Good classes to learn sales? Specifically outbound sales, B2B!
I was wondering, do any of ya'll know of good online classes/resources for learning how to get better at sales, specifically outbound sales, in the context of selling agency services?
My brother, who just graduated from college, is going to be working for me as a summer intern, and I'd like him to focus on boosting up my agency's sales funnel (we're an SF-based firm focused on software development services, content marketing, white paper writing, pitch decks, general startup services, etc.).
I haven't had to do aggressive outbound sales/marketing in a while as we've mostly gotten leads from word of mouth or platforms, so I'm not super sure what direction to point him in. I was thinking a class he can take over the course of a weekend would be the place to start!
Any recommendations appreciated!
Sales for Founders by @louisswiss
Thanks for the mention Rosie!
There'll be a free version of my S4F course coming out in the first week of July. It's ~90min of actionable content aimed at getting you 'just good enough' at sales to go out and start reliably closing deals.
If your brother doesn't have much 'real' sales experience, that would be a great place to start as it covers the fundamentals.
It sounds like you have an existing funnel in place and some great revenue already though.
If that's the case - and your brother has some prior sales experience - I'd recommend starting off by going through some of Steli Efti's free ebooks and articles over on the Close.com blog.
For agency stuff specifically, @brennandunn has some dynamite stuff on acquiring new customers over at DoubleYourFreelancing.com
And I've heard great things about Joel Klettke's two short sales trainings (also for agencies, here. But I haven't taken them myself.
Hope that helps!
Hi Louis, thank you so much!! This is such great info and awesome resources, I appreciate it.
I would love to sign us both up for the free version of your course in July. :)
No idea about classes. I thought Julian Shapiro is someone who does that type of stuff, but it looks like I was wrong. But while looking through his website, I did find a simple doc about the process that's part of his growth guide:
https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/b2b-sales
Thank you, this is absolutely wonderful! A great place for him to start :)
Glad to help. A couple more quick reads:
https://justinjackson.ca/sales
https://www.indiehackers.com/article/how-to-achieve-a-40-response-rate-on-cold-emails-cd5458cf44
Love this topic. I have a course on sales called Selling for Freelancers that I stand behind, but it's more freelancer focused than agency focused: https://freelancing.school/
I plan to write some free in depth articles around this topic too 🙏
If you want him to learn sales funnel strategy then I would suggest Russell Brunson's book DotCom Secrets (he's the founder of ClickFunnels) and taking the One Funnel Away Challenge. It's a 30 day challenge that teaches everything you need to get a sales funnel going - how the buyer process works, funnel strategy and design, creating a compelling offer, writing copy, mechanics of creating a funnel, etc. I'm doing it right now and it is both challenging and very valuable. (Full disclosure: those are both affiliate links)