Operations & Closing Skills

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

14 hours
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Intermediate
Subtitles

English

Found in

Part of

B2B Sales Negotiation: Leveraging AI

Overview

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Strengthen the operational skills needed to manage sales opportunities and close deals effectively. In this course, you’ll learn how to structure the sales process, manage opportunities through the pipeline, and apply closing techniques that help move deals toward successful outcomes. The course focuses on practical approaches for organizing sales activities, tracking opportunities, and guiding clients through the final stages of the buying process. You’ll explore how sales operations support successful deal execution, including pipeline management, opportunity tracking, and coordination of sales tasks. Through real-world scenarios, you’ll practice identifying deal readiness, responding to buyer concerns, and applying closing strategies that help convert opportunities into completed sales. What makes this course unique is its focus on the operational side of sales success. Instead of relying only on persuasion techniques, you’ll learn how structured sales processes, workflow organization, and effective deal management improve closing performance. These skills help sales professionals maintain momentum in the sales cycle and ensure deals move forward efficiently in complex B2B environments.

Syllabus

Navigate Sales Funnel: Understanding the Six Stages of the B2B Sales Funnel

In this module, you will develop a shared, operational definition of the B2B sales funnel that you can reliably use in real sales conversations, pipeline reviews, and negotiation planning. You will not focus on tactics or scripts. Instead, you will learn to internalize the funnel as a decision-alignment framework—one that explains why certain actions work only at specific moments in the buyer journey. You will learn to differentiate stages based on buyer readiness and seller intent, rather than surface-level activity labels. You will understand that each funnel stage exists to reduce a specific type of risk, such as misfit, misalignment, premature commitment, or negotiation friction. You will also examine common breakdowns caused by stage confusion, such as proposing before discovery or negotiating before qualification.

Navigate Sales Funnel: Applying the Sales Funnel: Placing Activities Where They Belong

In this module, you will move from knowing the B2B sales funnel to using it as a practical decision framework. While the previous module focused on understanding the six funnel stages, this one focuses on application and judgment. You will learn to place real sales activities into the correct stage based on intent, buyer readiness, and risk. You will correct a common professional mistake: assuming that sales activities automatically define the stage. Instead, you will evaluate why an activity is being performed and what decision it is meant to support. For example, you will learn that a demo can function as discovery, proposal support, or negotiation reinforcement depending on context. You will understand how misplacing activities creates friction, confusion, and resistance—often mistaken for buyer objections.

Plan Negotiation Success: Start Strong with BATNA

In this module you will examine why defining a BATNA is foundational to negotiation effectiveness. Using realistic workplace scenarios, this module will help you to recognize how BATNA shapes confidence, decision-making, and outcomes before any discussion begins.

Plan Negotiation Success: Building a Strong Pre-Call Plan with BATNA

In this module, you will apply BATNA thinking by completing a structured pre-call planning sheet. This module focuses on turning abstract preparation concepts into a practical artifact they can reuse at work.

Map Deal Stakeholders: Identify the Three Stakeholder Roles That Shape Most Enterprise Deals

This module builds the recognition foundation needed to map stakeholders correctly. Learners learn what the economic buyer, technical buyer, and user champion roles do in a deal (authority, risk ownership, adoption pull) and how those roles show up in realistic sales evidence like call notes, objections, and meeting behavior. The module focuses on correct identification under ambiguity—because titles alone are unreliable. Learners finish the module able to assign roles confidently and justify their reasoning in sales terms.

Map Deal Stakeholders: Build the Influence–Interest Map That Guides Engagement and Negotiation

This module converts role recognition into a usable planning artifact: an influence–interest map. Learners learn how to separate influence (power over the outcome) from interest (level of care and engagement) and how to place stakeholders based on case evidence. The module emphasizes usefulness: the map should tell you who to prioritize, who to align, who to de-risk, and where the deal is vulnerable.

Smart Decision Matrix: Why Structured Decision Matrices Improve Sales Decisions

Learners explore how shared evaluation criteria bring clarity and alignment to pricing decisions. Through realistic sales scenarios, they examine how cost, ROI, and implementation time help teams compare solution options objectively and reduce opinion-driven debate.

Smart Decision Matrix: Building and Defending a Weighted Decision Matrix

Learners practice building and applying a weighted decision matrix to compare pricing packages. Using hands-on activities, they assign weights, score options, and identify a preferred solution, strengthening their ability to justify recommendations with structured, job-ready reasoning.

Price Talk Tactics: Core Price-Negotiation Tactics

In this module, learners build a shared vocabulary for price negotiations by examining three foundational tactics used in sales conversations. Through concrete examples and annotation practice, learners learn to recognize anchoring, bracketing, and trade-offs as they appear in real deal language.

Price Talk Tactics: Apply Anchors and Trade-Offs in Live Price Talks

In this module, learners move from recognition to execution. They practice setting strong anchors, responding to counter-anchors, and trading non-price concessions to protect margin mirroring how experienced sales professionals manage real negotiations.

Pitch with Impact: Why Visual Hierarchy Makes or Breaks a Pitch

You will understand how visual hierarchy principles influence audience attention, clarity, and perceived value in sales presentations.

Pitch with Impact: Designing Slides That Guide Attention

You will redesign pitch slides using contrast, alignment, and repetition to improve focus, readability, and message clarity.

Pitch with Impact: Delivering a Pitch with Clarity and Confidence

You will present a structured 3-slide pitch that clearly communicates the problem, value proposition, and next step with confidence.

Close Deals Confidently: Foundations of Closing in B2B Sales

You will distinguish between key B2B closing techniques and understand when and why each is used to move deals forward.

Close Deals Confidently: Selecting the Right Closing Technique

You will distinguish between key B2B closing techniques and understand when and why each is used to move deals forward.

Close Deals Confidently: Delivering the Summary Close

You will create and deliver a clear, confident summary close that reinforces value and supports buyer decision-making.

Project:Managing Sales Operations: Deal Execution and Closing Strategy

In this project, you will manage a B2B sales opportunity by building a structured deal execution plan. You will organize the opportunity across the sales funnel, define your approach to planning and engagement, and prepare key actions required to move the deal forward. You will identify and map stakeholders involved in the deal, evaluate decision options using a structured framework, and prepare for pricing discussions. You will also develop a clear sales pitch outline and define a closing strategy to guide the deal toward agreement. This project simulates how sales professionals manage opportunities, structure deal workflows, and apply closing techniques in real sales environments. It focuses on organizing actions, making informed decisions, and executing a sales process that supports successful deal outcomes.