MM2100-Sales and Business Development

Module Provider: Leadership, Organisations and Behaviour
Number of credits: 20 [10 ECTS credits]
Level:5
Terms in which taught: Spring term module
Pre-requisites:
Non-modular pre-requisites:
Co-requisites:
Modules excluded:
Current from: 2023/4

Module Convenor: Mr Fabio Goncalves De Oliveira
Email: f.deoliveira@henley.ac.uk

Type of module:

Summary module description:

This module introduces students to sales and in particular the sales process and selling. It adopts a highly practitioner-oriented view of sales. It explains to students the different approaches and sales models, with a specific focus on direct and online sales. 

Students will understand the modern role of sales as a philosophy, culture, process and strategic business development role for companies. Students will understand and assess how sales activities influence the direction and decisions related to marketing, logistics, manufacturing, finance, resource capability and allocation. A customer centric approach to the stages of the sales funnel will be discussed, and marketing activities (digital and traditional acquisition medium channels) to capture and nurture leads, prospects and clients through the modern customer journey. At the same time, the module offers a practical approach to the foundations of individual skills and behaviour required from a salesperson.  

Aims:

Selling is central to any career in business. This module aims to help students gain an understanding of sales including the sales process. The module aims to equip students with concepts and their applicability in enterprises of any size or industry. Students will be equipped with concepts and practical examples that will allow them to articulate their understanding of sales as a strategy, as an individual practice and skill for life, and company’s flourishing. After attending the module, students will be equipped to assess the diverse activities, resources and methods to overcome the challenges of elaborating a successful sales process, both in an individual and collective spectrum of sales.

Assessable learning outcomes:

Students should be able to:? 

• Demonstrate a good understanding of sales and how selling fits into the business organisation and the awareness of a practitioner informed approach to selling. 

• To assess the different characteristics of the sales channels (value chain) and correlate them with company’s capabilities and capacities. 

• Demonstrate the difference between selling, marketing and business development by assessing the objectives in each stage of the sales funnel and related marketing, sales activities and common digital technologies supporting a sales pipeline.  

• To understand traditional and digital marketing most common acquisition channels/medium, and to assess the application in each stage of the customer journey and sales funnel. Understand and critical appraise own behaviour and attitudes regards to the role of a salesperson in a progressing digitalised context (lifelong learning, adaptability, curiosity, fast and accurate execution). 

• To understand and evaluate the role of the salesperson in adding value and sell a company’s unique sales value proposition (consultative selling, challenger seller, knowing your competitors, and match external threats, needs and opportunities with your company’s unique selling proposition). 

• To understand the modern customer journey (multiple and intertwined “moments of truth”) and appraise the added value of sales strategies and salesperson actions. 

• Create a winning sales strategy.

• To understand and contrast the common Key Performance Indicators used to monitor and measure sales performance. 

Additional outcomes:

Students will learn to work independently under pressure of time, and to organise diverse empirical material.

Outline content:

The lectures will cover the following topics: 

Introduction to the holistic role of sales and the effects of sales activities in other departments of a company 

Route to market: The sales value chain 

Embracing “Customer Orientation”  

Building a persuasive ‘sales value proposition’ 

Engaging the Sales Process  

Developing your selling skills  

Customer journey framework and B2B stakeholders mapping  

Understanding and assessing traditional acquisition channels 

Understanding and assessing digital acquisition channels 

Creating a winning sales strategy  

Brief description of teaching and learning methods:

Detailed guidance on the main topics of the syllabus and key references are provided in 10 x 2-hour sessions of lectures and seminars. Students are required to do a significant amount of reading of journal articles and chapters of books. A reading list will be provided. 

Summative assessment- Examinations:

Summative assessment- Coursework and in-class tests:

a. Team Presentation  

Teams will interview senior executives of companies to know and understand their sales strategies and sales processes. The gathered data will be used to prepare an answer to a Request for Proposal (RFP). A template for the presentation is provided to students to complete with their assessment and analysis, as well their proposal of a new sales strategy and go-to-market for the company interviewed. Students will pitch their proposal to a panel in a “viva” presentation. Students will be individually assessed accordingly to their contributions to the team work and to the presentation during the VIVA panel.  

b. Roleplay

An assessment of one?role-play exercise in Spring Term [weeks 26-29] to demonstrate practical skills in seminars on a topic related to one or more lectures. Students will be individually assessed accordingly to their individual sales performance during the VIVA.  

c. Online course and online tests:  

Students will choose and complete three online short-courses made available on Blackboard. After completing the courses, students are required to complete one online test for each of the courses completed. Three dates in weeks 3, 8, 10 will be available to students to complete the tests from 09:00am to 17:00 of each day. The questions will be related to the content of the chosen online courses. 

Formative assessment methods:

Penalties for late submission:

The Module Convener will apply the following penalties for work submitted late:

• where the piece of work is submitted after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): 10% of the total marks available for that piece of work will be deducted from the mark for each working day[1] (or part thereof) following the deadline up to a total of five working days;

• where the piece of work is submitted more than five working days after the original deadline (or any formally agreed extension to the deadline): a mark of zero will be recorded.

• The University policy statement on penalties for late submission can be found at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/cqsd/-/media/project/functions/cqsd/documents/cqsd-old-site-documents/penaltiesforlatesubmission.pdf

The student is strongly advised to ensure that coursework is submitted by the relevant deadline. The student should note that it is advisable to submit work in an unfinished state rather than to fail to submit any work.

Assessment requirements for a pass:

A weighted average mark across assessments. 

The student must achieve a total of at least 40 out of 100 points in the combined average of the three assessments: 

Final Mark = Mark Team Presentation (40%) + Mark Role Play (40%) + Mark MCQ results simple average (20%) 

Example: 

Final Mark = (50 * 0.40) + (60 * 0.40) + ((53 + 50 + 60/3) * 0.20) 

Final Mark = 32.8 + 24 + 10.8 = 67.6 

Reassessment arrangements:

Reassessment by submission of a recorded presentation and/or retaken the failed MCQs. 

Additional Costs (specified where applicable):

Last updated: 30 March 2023