B2B Sales Foundations: Pipeline, Process & Communication

Coursera via Coursera Specialization

Go to class Write review

Details

Go to class

Provider

Coursera Specialization
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Duration & workload

4 weeks, 10 hours a week
Level

Intermediate

Found in

Overview

Google, IBM & Meta Certificates — All 10,000+ Courses at 40% Off

One annual plan covers every course and certificate on Coursera. 40% off for a limited time.

Get Full Access

Transform your B2B sales approach with this comprehensive program covering the sales lifecycle from pipeline development to deal closure. With the six-stage sales funnel framework, you'll learn to align activities with buyer readiness. Develop advanced communication skills using DISC profiling to adapt your style to different buyer personalities, building trust through active listening & strategic rapport techniques. Create compelling presentations using visual hierarchy principles, craft memorable sales stories using proven frameworks, & handle objections with structured approaches that uncover true business concerns. Build practical CRM skills for lead tracking that supports AI-driven insights & reliable forecasting. Learn to identify closing moments, select appropriate techniques, & move deals forward with confidence. Expand your pipeline through strategic business development & partnerships that create sustainable growth. Most importantly, shift from feature-selling to value-based conversations using the Four Pillars framework to build defensible business cases that earn executive trust. Through hands-on exercises, real scenarios, and practical tools like objection matrices & one-page strategy templates, you'll develop immediately applicable skills. Perfect for sales professionals ready to advance beyond basic tactics to strategic, consultative selling. You'll confidently navigate complex B2B sales cycles with a systematic approach that consistently delivers results.

Syllabus

Course 1: Master Active Listening
Course 2: Build Client Rapport
Course 3: Adapt Communication Styles
Course 4: Engage with Storytelling
Course 5: Craft Sales Strategy
Course 6: Sell on Value
Course 7: Develop Lead Tracking
Course 8: Pitch with Impact
Course 9: Tackle Client Objections
Course 10: Navigate Sales Funnel
Course 11: Close Deals Confidently
Course 12: Grow Business Pipeline

Courses

0 reviews
1 hour 40 minutes
View details

This course helps sales professionals recognize buyer communication styles and adapt their messaging to build trust, reduce friction, and move deals forward. Learners practice identifying common DISC-style communication patterns through observable buyer signals, then apply those insights by revising a real sales email for an Analytical buyer profile. Through short videos, applied readings, coach dialogues, hands-on activities, and assessments, learners develop practical communication skills they can use immediately in emails, meetings, and negotiations, ensuring buyers feel understood, confident, and ready to engage.
0 reviews
1 hour 27 minutes
View details

Build Client Rapport is an intermediate-level course designed for sales professionals who want to establish strong, natural connections with clients from the first interaction. Because trust is often formed early in a conversation, the course focuses on practical, repeatable techniques that help sellers create comfort, credibility, and openness quickly, without sounding scripted or forced. Across two focused lessons, learners explore three rapid-rapport techniques: mirroring, small-talk alignment, and shared experiences. Learners examine how these behaviors shape first impressions, influence client engagement, and affect the quality of discovery conversations. The course then shifts to application, guiding learners through simulated first-meeting scenarios where they practice opening conversations and demonstrating rapport within the first two minutes. Through short videos, readings, guided practice, and targeted assessments, learners develop rapport-building habits they can apply in real sales conversations. By the end of the course, learners will be able to identify effective rapport techniques and apply them to create stronger client connections from the start.
0 reviews
2 hours 7 minutes
View details

This course builds practical, hands-on skills for closing B2B sales deals with confidence and clarity. Learners explore how to recognize closing moments, interpret buyer signals, and select the most appropriate closing technique based on deal context. Through guided lessons, realistic scenarios, and practice activities, learners develop judgment around when to use forward-moving closes versus reassurance-oriented closes, and how to adapt their approach to buyer readiness. Across the course, learners practice crafting and delivering a concise 30-second summary close, refining their language and delivery to reduce hesitation and support buyer decision-making. By the end of the course, learners have a repeatable closing framework they can apply in real sales conversations to move deals from evaluation to decision without pressure, while maintaining trust and momentum in complex B2B environments.
0 reviews
1 hour 34 minutes
View details

Building an effective sales strategy starts with understanding how buyers think, decide, and evaluate risk in different industries. In this practical, hands-on lesson, learners explore how entering a new industry vertical requires more than reusing existing messaging—it demands clear strategic choices about who to target, what value to emphasize, and how to reach buyers effectively. Through guided examples and structured activities, learners practice translating the same product into the language, priorities, and buying process of a new vertical. They work with real-world scenarios to adjust segmentation, refine value propositions, and select channels that match buyer behavior and trust requirements. By the end of the lesson, learners create a one-page sales strategy that captures these decisions in a focused, easy-to-use format. Designed for sales professionals and go-to-market teams, this lesson builds confidence in making strategic trade-offs and producing a clear artifact that can guide real-world planning, alignment, and execution.
0 reviews
1 hour 46 minutes
View details

Accurate lead tracking is the foundation of effective B2B sales, reliable forecasting, and AI-driven decision-making. Yet many sales teams struggle not because they lack tools—but because lead data is inconsistent, unclear, or poorly maintained. In this course, you will develop practical CRM lead-tracking skills used by modern B2B sales and revenue operations teams. You will begin by understanding how leads move through standard CRM stages and why those stages matter for sales alignment, prioritization, and negotiation timing. You will then apply this knowledge in a sandbox CRM by creating leads, documenting sales context, and assigning follow-up tasks that mirror real-world workflows. Designed for intermediate to advanced professionals, this course emphasizes clarity, consistency, and professional judgment—not just clicks in a tool. You are required to have basic familiarity with B2B sales processes and prior exposure to CRM tools such as Salesforce or HubSpot. By the end of the course, you can confidently track leads in a CRM, support AI-powered insights, and demonstrate day-one readiness for B2B sales environments where clean data drives smarter negotiations and stronger results.
0 reviews
1 hour 14 minutes
View details

In sales, strong solutions often stall because buyers struggle to understand, remember, or explain the value. Conversations move fast, stakeholders change, and details blur. This course teaches storytelling as a practical skill to structure messages clearly. Using the situation–>struggle–>solution framework, you will learn to organize information so buyers can follow your logic and retain key points. Structured messages reduce effort, helping buyers focus on evaluating fit rather than interpreting information. You will build skills in understanding why narratives improve retention and applying them to craft concise customer success stories. The course emphasizes clarity, relevance, and credibility, enabling you to communicate value effectively and create messages buyers can easily remember and share.
0 reviews
1 hour 47 minutes
View details

Grow Business Pipeline is an intermediate/advanced course designed for professionals who already have experience in sales or customer-facing roles and a basic understanding of the B2B funnel. In this course, you develop a clear understanding of business development and how it differs from direct selling in driving long-term pipeline growth. Through practical examples and guided activities, you explore how business development activities build awareness, credibility, and access to new opportunities earlier in the funnel. You will analyze realistic scenarios to identify partner organizations that could extend market reach and justify why those partnerships matter. By the end of the course, you will be able to apply partnership thinking to expand your B2B pipeline and explain how strategic business development supports sustainable revenue growth.
0 reviews
1 hour 46 minutes
View details

Master Active Listening is an intermediate-level course designed for sales professionals who want to build trust, uncover real buyer needs, and improve the effectiveness of their sales conversations. Rather than focusing on what to say, the course emphasizes how to listen and explains why disciplined listening behaviors influence buyer confidence, credibility, and engagement. Across two focused lessons, learners examine core active-listening behaviors, including paraphrasing, asking purposeful open-ended questions, and summarizing. Learners explore how these behaviors signal respect and understanding during buyer interactions, then apply them by analyzing a recorded discovery call and capturing the buyer’s stated needs in clear, structured written summaries. Through Coach-led reflections, short videos, curated readings, hands-on practice, and quizzes, learners build practical listening habits that support clearer call notes, stronger follow-ups, and better alignment with buyer priorities. By the end of the course, learners will be able to identify effective active-listening behaviors and produce concise, buyer-centered summaries based strictly on what the client said.
0 reviews
2 hours 2 minutes
View details

Navigate Sales Funnel is an intermediate-to-advanced short course within the B2B Sales Negotiation: Leveraging AI Professional Certificate. In this course, you will develop disciplined, stage-based thinking across the full B2B sales lifecycle. You will see that in complex sales environments, deals often stall not because of poor execution, but because activities are misaligned with buyer readiness. You will build a clear understanding of the six core funnel stages - prospect, qualify, discover, propose, negotiate, and close—and examine how each stage supports a specific buyer decision. Moving beyond theory, you will apply this framework to realistic sales activities, placing actions such as demos, follow-ups, proposals, and negotiations into the correct stage based on intent and timing. Through videos, Coach discussions, funnel mapping, and scenario-based assessments, you will strengthen your ability to reason about pipeline flow, explain decisions professionally, and avoid sequencing mistakes. By the end of the course, you will be able to use the sales funnel as a practical decision tool to improve deal planning, negotiation alignment, and overall sales outcomes. Basic experience participating in or observing B2B sales conversations is adequate for taking this course, no formal sales training required.
0 reviews
2 hours 41 minutes
View details

Sales presentations often fail not because the idea is weak, but because the message is visually unclear or poorly delivered. In high-stakes, time-constrained sales environments, how information is structured directly affects attention, credibility, and perceived value. This course helps professionals design and deliver sales pitches that persuade by guiding audience focus and reducing cognitive load through clear visual hierarchy. By the end of this course, you will be able to explain how visual hierarchy principles, contrast, alignment, and repetition, shape audience attention and value perception in sales presentations. You will also be able to apply visual hierarchy principles to improve the structure and focus of pitch slides and deliver a concise pitch demonstrating clarity, structure, and confident delivery. Experience in presenting ideas or products in a professional or sales context is required. Building on that foundation, the course emphasizes hands-on practice through slide redesign exercise. You will also create focused, visually persuasive slides and deliver a clear mini-pitch that communicates a problem, value proposition, and next step.
0 reviews
1 hour 39 minutes
View details

Sell on Value is for B2B professionals who need to move beyond feature-focused selling and build a clear, defensible business case for their solution. In this course, you will learn how to move beyond feature-focused messaging and develop a defensible business case for your solution. Using practical frameworks, you will analyze and reframe messaging around quantified value, apply the Four Pillars of Value: revenue, cost, risk, and speed, and practice communicating ROI, risk reduction, and strategic impact in a way that earns executive trust.
0 reviews
1 hour 40 minutes
View details

With this course designed for those who have moved beyond the beginner level, you will be able to overcome the obvious objections and get at the true business concerns that cause the customer to hesitate. Rather than relying on gut feelings, you will be using a structured approach to answer objections with a sense of strategy and consistency. Objections are not obstacles; they are actually guides to the true issues at play. By asking the right questions and identifying the true causes of objections, you will be able to develop a unique advantage in any negotiation. You will also be working on the creation of an objection resolution matrix, the tool you need to link objections with personalized and trust building responses. You are required to have basic negotiation experience, familiarity with client-facing sales conversations, and comfort asking probing questions. It is a way for you to apply the knowledge you acquire directly into the real world.