For decades, to be successful in sales, all you needed to be was a people person.
However, times have changed — the world of sales is much more complex.
To stay on top of current trends and ensure you have the most up-to-date knowledge in your field, consider taking ongoing sales courses. Courses are developed to teach everything from the basics for newbies to complex new potential sales techniques for seasoned pros.
We scoured the internet for the best options out there, and narrowed down the list to these seven sales courses.
The Top 7 Best Sales Courses
- The Art of Sales – Best for most salespeople
- Sales Training: Practical Sales Techniques – Best for basics
- HubSpot’s Inbound Sales Course – Best for inbound salespeople
- John Barrows’ Driving to Close 2.0 – Best for improving closes
- Art Sobczak’s Smart Calling College – Best for sales calls
- RAIN Selling: Foundations of Consultative Selling – Best for relationship sales
- Asking Great Sales Questions – Best for guiding sales conversations
To learn more about these courses and see which ones may be a fit for you, read our in-depth reviews below.
#1 – The Art of Sales — Best for Most Salespeople
- Offered through Northwestern University
- Four courses in one
- Three-hour commitment per week
- Certificate available for a fee
If you’re looking for a sales course that covers a wide range of topics, sign up for The Art of Sales. It is made up of four distinct course that give you all the basic tools to get your sales career going, and sharpen sales techniques that may have dulled over time.
You can opt to either take all four of the courses in the specialization or focus on just one or two if you feel some aren’t necessary. The courses are:
- Course 1: Customer Segmentation and Prospecting
- Course 2: Connecting With Sales Prospects
- Course 3: Sales Pitch and Closing
- Course 4: Building a Toolkit for Your Sales Process
You can expect a three-hour commitment each week with this program, and you should have it all completed within 4 months. It is offered online through Northwestern University, so allows you the opportunity to learn through a strong university without any tuition or fees.
If you are looking for more advanced sales techniques, this course is not for you. But if basics are what you’re after, then you’re in the right place.
The course is entirely free to audit, but to get a certificate of completion, you need to pay.
#2 – Sales Training: Practical Sales Techniques — Best for Basics
- Great overview of the basics
- Mobile & TV access
- Certificate included
- Lifetime access for $99.99
Another great course for those looking to enter a career in sales or those who have just gotten into the industry is this Udemy course, called Sales Training: Practical Sales Techniques.
This course promises to teach you a number of different skills including:
- How to make customers into friends
- How to organize your sales
- How to increase efficiency
- How to gain confidence to prep for a sales meeting
- How to close deals with confidence
- How to build rapport
- How to master the selling process
- How to use different selling styles
With the purchase of this course, you will gain full, lifetime access to 2 hours of on-demand video and 11 downloadable resources to use anytime, anywhere. You’ll be able to access this course both on mobile and on TV, and you’ll also get a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Upon completion of the course, you’ll get a certificate that deems you ready to move on to the next stage of your sales career.
This course from Udemy costs $99.99.
#3 – HubSpot’s Inbound Sales Course – Best for Inbound Salespeople
- Inbound sales methodology
- Learn to connect w/ strong leads
- 20+ videos
- Complete in under three hours
As much as tried and true old-school sales tactics have worked in the past, we are not in the past anymore. HubSpot’s Inbound Sales Course will help bring you up to current times and help you to sell like a modern salesperson.
This course is ideal for both sales reps and sales managers looking to bring their skills up-to-date and will teach you things such as:
- How to identify strong contacts
- How to connect with strong leads
- How to prove worth to leads
- How to run sales calls and sales presentations that provide results
The course’s five sections are:
- Inbound Sales Fundamentals
- Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers
- Earning the Attention of Today’s Empowered Buyer
- Understanding the Buyer’s Context
- Delivering Personalized Sales Presentations
Those five sections are taught in 21 different videos and the content is tested over five quizzes. The entire thing should take you no more than three hours. And the best part? It’s free.
#4 – John Barrows’ Driving to Close 2.0 – Best for Improving Closes
- Start-to-finish sales training
- Closing roadmap & template
- Negotiation & handling objections
- Learn directly from John Barrows
You can be great at getting leads, at developing a relationship with potential customers, at organizing all of your work, but none of that matters if you can’t close a deal.
One way to build your closing skills is by taking John Barrows’ Driving to Close course. This class will help you to execute deals in a way that you haven’t done before.
Five different sessions make up this class, and they are:
- Objective Negotiations
- Meeting the Challenge
- Questioning Skills
- Objection Handling
- Closing Out
In these sessions, you will learn how to navigate the process from start to finish to help you reach the finish line you’re after: a closed deal. With this class, you’ll also get a Driving to Close Roadmap and Driving to Close Template that will help you see the process in its entirety, and help you put the lessons to action when it comes time to hop on a call with a potential customer.
The actionable techniques John Barrows provides are the real takeaway here so that you can apply what you learned directly to your job.
The price for this course can be found by reaching out to John Barrows at JB Sales.
#5 – Art Sobczak’s Smart Calling College – Best for Sales Calls
- Virtual and live training
- Monthly live webinars included
- Learn directly from Art Sobczak
- Discounts available
Even with the introduction of email, social media, and other avenues of sales, one method is still holding strong: calls. Sales calls aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so if this is a weak spot in your sales work, it’s time to strengthen it.
You can do this with the help of Art Sobczak’s Smart Calling College course. The book Sobczak released with the same name completely shook the way people had been looking at prospecting. This course dives deep into that methodology.
This class combines both virtual and live training to give you the freedom to take the course how and when it works for you, but also to give you an opportunity to learn live from the master himself. Participants in the course will be granted access to monthly live webinar training sessions for no extra charge.
Smart Calling comprises 12 modules each with 2-6 videos that range in length from 3 minutes to 13 minutes. The course content and modules are:
- Your Pre-Call Planning
- Pre-Buyer Conversations
- “Sounding” For Success
- Opening Statements That Grab Interest and Minimize Resistance
- Helping People Buy Through Questioning
- Listening at the Advanced Level
- Persuasive Sales Recommendations
- Asking For and Getting Commitment (Closing)
- Dealing Successfully With Resistance and Objections
- How to Set Up the Next Action; What to Say on the Follow-Up Call
- Beating Call Reluctance and Building Self-Motivation
This course doesn’t come cheap but is one that is trusted by many. The price of this is $895 for the first person from a company and $795/person thereafter.
#6 – RAIN Selling: Foundations of Consultative Selling – Best for Relationship Sales
- 100% customizable course
- Online workshops
- Live training & personal coaching
- Flexible, individualized pricing
Relationship selling is a technique used by many for selling items that are high-ticket and/or have a long sales cycle. If you are currently in or looking to go into relationship sales, then be sure to take this course from RAIN Group first.
RAIN Selling: Foundations of Consultative Selling is a customizable course that can be adjusted to fit your specific business needs. That means everyone’s course looks a little bit different, but everyone gets to choose from online workshops, live virtual training sessions, assessments, and coaching.
The learning objectives of this course include how to:
- Lead sales conversions from start to finish
- Build rapport and develop relationships
- Use questions to discover buyer wants and needs
- Close new business
- Sell ideas that influence the buyer
- Overcome objections to the sale
- Develop a value case
- Communicate that value case
- Sell based on value
- Understand buyers and buyer types
- Avoid common mistakes
This international training company comes with a strong reputation, and because the program varies from person to person, or company to company, there is no set price.
You can contact the RAIN Group for further information.
#7 – Asking Great Sales Questions – Best for Guiding Sales Conversations
- Sales questions for any scenario
- Learn 4 types of great sales questions
- Understand the customer perspective
- Free to LinkedIn users
We’ve all experienced those sales calls where we felt as if we were being interrogated. You definitely don’t want to be on the other end of a phone call like that and have someone tell you to take them off your calling list simply because your questions were off.
To help ensure that doesn’t happen to you, consider the Asking Great Sales Questions course from LinkedIn Learning.
By asking the right questions to your potential customer, you can develop a relationship as well as provide credibility and create urgency–-all things that are necessary to close a sale and create long-lasting relationships with customers.
The course is made of five different sections:
- Know Before You Go
- Questions That Create Connection
- Questions That Drive Credibility
- Questions That Create Urgency
- Questions That Confirm Value Clarity
The goal of this course is to help you understand things from the perspective of your customer and then learn how to use questions to guide your prospects through the process that makes them feel important and heard, rather than interrogated.
All the videos for this course are available on LinkedIn Learning for free.
How to Find The Best Sales Courses For You
Choosing just any sales course may not do you any good. It may be time and money wasted if you aren’t taking the time to think about the different qualities you need in a sales course.
Below are the criteria we used to pick the top sales courses for this article. Reference these and answer each criterion for yourself to narrow down your search to the best sales course for you.
Location
Are you looking for something local and in-person? Or would you prefer something virtual that can be done anywhere? Are you looking for a destination course or one that has a teacher come to you? There are a variety of styles of courses to take whose locations vary, so be clear on where you want to take your course before starting your search.
Duration
Some sales courses can be completed within just a few hours, while others can take months. Most of the time, the length of the course varies depending on the intensity of the class, and how in-depth it goes. However, if you are limited on your time, then you may want to lean towards something that can be done on a weekend. If, on the other hand, you want a more intensive course that you can chip away at a little at a time, a course that lasts for multiple months may be your cup of tea.
Focus
What are you hoping to gain from this course? If you are already an all-star at sales calls, then there is no reason for you to take a course that focuses heavily on calls. Think about where your weaknesses are in your sales, and find a course that focuses on that. In addition to considering your weaknesses, consider your goals and where you would like to be in your sales career, and what course will best help you get there.
Intended Audience
Take a look at who the courses are aimed at. If you are a senior sales executive, then a basic sales class is not what you want or need. And if you are new to sales, you don’t want to end up in a class about advanced techniques when you don’t have the basic ones down yet. Pay attention to who the classes are intended for, and where you are in your career.
Summary
The sales class that covers the most ground and is the best for a wide range of salespeople is The Art of Sales class by Coursera. This is our top recommendation because it sets a strong basis upon which a salesperson can build a stronger skill set and reach new heights in their career.
However, as you can see from above, many other sales courses are worth taking a look at, if they cover the topics you’re interested in. Whatever skill you’re wanting to strengthen when it comes to sales, there is a course out there for you.
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