IT Sales and Marketing Essentials
A one-day programme for technical people who have acquired a sales responsibility without ever being taught to sell: engineers, consultants, support leads and technology business owners. The usual failure is not a lack of confidence. It is a demonstration of everything the product does to a buyer who asked about one thing, followed by silence, followed by a quotation nobody follows up.
The session assumes no sales background and does not ask anyone to become a different personality, which is the reason most technical staff resist sales training. It works with what technical people already have, which is credibility and genuine product knowledge, and adds the structure that turns a conversation into a decision. It sits below the Consultative Sales course in the catalogue, which covers the longer strategic sale, and beside the Sales Skills and Closing Techniques course, which goes deeper on the individual deal.
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Programme Agenda
9:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Welcome and Programme Overview
Introduction to the session, objectives, and housekeeping.
9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Understanding the Sales Process
The stages a B2B technology sale actually moves through, from first contact to signature to renewal, and what has to be true before a deal can advance. Why a pipeline is a forecasting tool rather than a list of hopes. Qualification, and the discipline of disqualifying early so time goes where it can produce something. The specific shape of an IT sale: multiple stakeholders, a technical evaluation, and a procurement process that outlasts everyone's patience.
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Break
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Understanding Your Customer
Researching a prospect before the first meeting. Identifying who decides, who influences, who uses and who can only say no. The difference between the technical buyer's criteria and the economic buyer's, and why a product that wins the technical evaluation still loses. Discovery questions that surface the business problem underneath the technical request, and the discipline of asking before presenting.
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Presenting Value Instead of Features
The habit technical people have to unlearn. Translating a specification into an outcome the buyer's business cares about, and quantifying it where possible. Structuring a demonstration around the buyer's stated problem rather than around the product's feature list. Handling the request for a full demonstration when a targeted one would serve better. Proposals and quotations that make a decision easy rather than exhaustively complete.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Lunch
1:30 PM - 2:20 PM
Sales Communication and Handling Objections
Listening at a level most technical conversations never reach. Reading the room and recognising disengagement. The objections that recur in IT sales, covering price, timing, incumbent supplier, internal capability and risk, and how to treat each as information rather than as rejection. Answering a question you do not know the answer to without losing credibility. Following up so it is useful rather than irritating.
2:20 PM - 3:15 PM
Marketing for Sales Professionals
What a technical salesperson should understand about the marketing that feeds them. Positioning and differentiation in a market where everyone claims the same things. Content and case studies that support a sale in progress. Using LinkedIn and the professional network without behaving like a broadcast channel. Where marketing hands over to sales, and the leads that get wasted at that boundary.
3:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Break
3:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Practical Sales Workshop
Role-played discovery and objection handling using the participants' own products and their own real objections, observed and given structured feedback. Deliberately uncomfortable, because the alternative is being uncomfortable in front of a customer.
4:10 PM - 4:45 PM
Sales Action Planning
Building a personal plan: target accounts, the activity level required to hit a number, a follow-up rhythm that survives a busy technical week, and how to track it without a heavy CRM process. What to do in the first week back, which is where most training stops mattering.
4:45 PM - 5:00 PM
Wrap-Up and Q&A
Key takeaways, next steps, and close.
Key Outcomes
- Describe the stages of a B2B technology sale and what must be true to advance one
- Qualify and disqualify opportunities early so time goes where it can produce something
- Map the technical, economic and user buyers, and address each on their own criteria
- Run a discovery conversation that reaches the business problem under the technical request
- Translate specifications into quantified business outcomes
- Handle price, timing, incumbent and risk objections as information rather than rejection
- Leave with a personal action plan covering target accounts and follow-up rhythm
Training Mode Physical / Online / Hybrid / e-learning
HRD Corp SBL-Khas Claimable
Level Basic. Suitable for engineers, consultants, technical support staff, pre-sales, account managers new to the role, and technology business owners. No prior sales experience required.
Duration 1 Day (8 Hours) | 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Venue In-house at the client's premises, or delivered via the client's preferred platform (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or equivalent)
Assessment Observed role-played discovery and objection handling using the participant's own product, plus a completed personal sales action plan
Certificate Certificate of Completion issued to all participants upon full attendance