Keentune

Sales curriculum

8 chapters
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200 concepts
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free
Everything the adaptive question bank can teach and test in Sales, from foundations through advanced practice. Work through it in order, or start practising and let the questions find your level.
A. The sales process and pipeline
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Open opportunities arranged by stage.
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Prospect, qualify, discover, propose, negotiate, close.
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Objective evidence required before advancing an opportunity.
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Removing dead deals so the forecast means something.
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Volume that flatters the number and predicts nothing.
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Time from first contact to closed, and what lengthens it.
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How quickly value moves through the pipeline.
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Buyer-initiated vs seller-initiated motion.
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One decision-maker vs a buying committee.
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Cycle length, decision structure and rational-vs-emotional balance.
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Allocating effort where the return is highest.
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Firmographic definition of who is worth pursuing.
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The role-level portrait of who actually decides.
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Three different states with different next actions.
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Marketing-qualified vs sales-qualified handoff definitions.
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Where leads die between teams.
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A shared written plan to a decision date.
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Status quo as the most common reason deals are lost.
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Why a shared method beats individual improvisation.
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Diagnosing before prescribing.
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Framing the offer against a defined problem.
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Teaching, tailoring and taking control of the conversation.
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Starting small deliberately to grow the account.
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Post-sale revenue as part of the process.
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Bad-fit customers as a qualification failure.
B. Prospecting and outreach
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Building a target list from the ideal customer profile.
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Knowing enough to earn the first minute.
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No prior relationship vs an existing signal.
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An introduction outperforming any cold channel.
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A change that creates a reason to reach out now.
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Coordinated email, phone and social touches.
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Number, spacing and variety of touches.
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Relevance, brevity and one clear ask.
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Deceptive subject lines as a legal exposure.
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Where customization actually changes reply rates.
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Leaving a message that earns a callback.
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Treating the assistant as an ally, not an obstacle.
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Building visibility before the outreach.
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Honouring do-not-call and unsubscribe requests.
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Registry obligations and the exemptions.
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Identifying who you are and why you are calling.
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Claims made in outreach are still claims.
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Baseline expectations and what improves them.
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Where persistence stops working and starts costing.
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Closing a sequence cleanly and leaving the door open.
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Response time as the strongest conversion predictor.
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Ranking by fit and by engagement.
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Saving the cycle by removing bad fits fast.
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Activity, reply and meeting-set rates.
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Accuracy and respect as a durable strategy.
C. Discovery and qualification
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Understanding the problem well enough to be useful.
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Opening the conversation vs confirming a detail.
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Establishing the current state.
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Surfacing the difficulty the buyer already feels.
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Making the cost of the problem explicit.
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Letting the buyer state the value of solving it.
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Demonstrated understanding before responding.
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Why the seller talking less correlates with winning.
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Letting the buyer fill the pause.
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Attaching a number to the problem.
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What doing nothing costs the buyer.
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Budget, authority, need and timeline as a qualification frame.
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Where a rigid checklist disqualifies good deals.
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Quantified measures of success.
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The person who can actually release funds.
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What the buyer will judge options against.
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The steps and approvals between now and signature.
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The specific problem driving the evaluation.
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An internal advocate with influence and access.
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Someone who will fight for you vs someone who informs you.
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Declining an opportunity as a legitimate outcome.
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The deadline that makes inaction impossible.
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Raising money early enough to matter.
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Recording what was learned so it survives the handoff.
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Playing back the problem before proposing.
D. Value selling, demos, and proposals
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What it does vs what it does for this buyer.
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Framing the offer against a quantified problem.
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Cost, benefit and payback stated in the buyer's terms.
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Value expressed as a ratio the buyer already uses.
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Purchase price plus everything after it.
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What only you provide, stated without disparagement.
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Where you win, where you do not, and saying so.
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Evidence a skeptical buyer would accept.
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Comparable outcomes with real numbers.
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Third-party validation and how to request it.
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Building the demo around the discovered problem.
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Showing what matters, not everything that exists.
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Framing each demo moment before and after showing it.
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Answering honestly and repositioning.
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Problem, approach, outcome, price and next step.
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Anchoring, tiering and what each option signals.
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Concession tied to something received in return.
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What a percentage off actually costs the business.
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Selling what will actually be delivered.
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Churn, refunds and reputational cost.
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Performance claims requiring evidence held in advance.
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Comparisons that must be accurate and supportable.
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Typicality and material-connection disclosure.
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Why the contract is the promise that counts.
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A deal both sides would defend internally.
E. Objections and buyer psychology
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Engagement rather than rejection.
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The three-step handling sequence.
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Answering the objection they actually have.
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Usually a value-communication problem, not a price problem.
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Comparing against doing nothing.
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No money now vs no priority now.
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Discovering the real approval path.
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Whether the delay has a reason or is avoidance.
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Surfacing the unstated concern behind the stall.
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Positioning without disparagement.
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The hardest competitor and how it is displaced.
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Reducing perceived risk with pilots and guarantees.
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Credibility earned through specificity and follow-through.
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Raising the concern before the buyer does.
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A structure for empathizing before answering.
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Buyers weighing the risk of change more heavily.
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The default winning without argument.
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Peers as the most persuasive evidence.
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Genuine help before the ask.
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Micro-agreements building toward the decision.
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Real deadlines only; manufactured urgency destroys trust.
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Too many options stalling the decision.
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Reinforcing the decision after it is made.
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Decisions felt first and justified afterwards.
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Questions and behaviors that indicate readiness.
F. Closing, negotiation boundary, and ethics
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The most common omission in a lost deal.
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Testing readiness without forcing a decision.
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Proceeding as if agreed, and when it is appropriate.
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Restating agreed value before the ask.
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Two acceptable options rather than yes or no.
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Ending every conversation with a scheduled action.
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Why they raise short-term close rates and destroy retention.
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Fabricated deadlines as both unethical and legally risky.
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Advertising one offer and delivering another.
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Material conditions that must be disclosed clearly.
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Consent and cancellation requirements.
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Cancellation rights in certain sales contexts.
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Establishing value first, then dividing it.
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Knowing your own walk-away and theirs.
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Trading rather than giving.
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Defending value without hostility.
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Declining a deal that would create a bad customer.
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A professional buyer whose job is to extract concessions.
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Where sales stops and legal begins.
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Transferring context to delivery or success.
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Learning the real reason rather than the polite one.
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Delivering what was sold as the referral engine.
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Lifetime value over transaction value.
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Why honesty outperforms pressure in repeated games.
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Recommending against your own product when it does not fit.
G. Accounts, teams, and roles
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Controls the budget and can approve the spend.
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Evaluates whether it works and can veto.
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Lives with the outcome and shapes adoption.
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Advocates internally when you are not in the room.
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Actively opposes, with a reason worth understanding.
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Shaping the decision vs making it.
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Why more stakeholders lengthens the cycle.
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Relationships across several stakeholders reducing single-point risk.
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Access at the level where budget actually moves.
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Prospecting and closing as separate roles.
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Retention and growth after the first sale.
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Where success work ends and selling resumes.
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Technical validation inside the sales motion.
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Remote and in-person motions and their economics.
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Selling through a third party.
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Training, content and tooling that raise the team's floor.
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Time to full productivity for a new seller.
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Developing skill vs inspecting activity.
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Targets that are demanding and achievable.
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Base, variable and accelerators shaping behavior.
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Rate applied to revenue, and when it is earned.
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Compensation producing behavior nobody intended.
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Fair distribution of opportunity.
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Context that survives a role change.
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Norms deciding what gets rewarded in practice.
H. Metrics, CRM, and forecasting
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Closed deals divided by leads.
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Won divided by decided opportunities.
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Open deals distorting the ratio.
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Revenue divided by number of deals.
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Closed revenue against the target.
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Pipeline value as a multiple of quota.
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Deals required divided by conversion rate.
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Quota divided by win rate.
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Won divided by starting leads.
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Where in the funnel deals are actually lost.
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Median rather than mean, because of outliers.
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Calls and emails as inputs, not outcomes.
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What predicts revenue vs what reports it.
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Revenue multiplied by the applicable rate.
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Fully loaded selling cost per customer won.
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Whether the acquisition motion is economically viable.
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A shared record, not a surveillance tool.
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Bad data producing confident wrong forecasts.
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Commit, best case and pipeline.
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Measured against actuals, not against optimism.
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Systematic over-forecasting and its causes.
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Testing a forecast against evidence in the record.
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Grouping by entry period to see real progression.
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Quarterly patterns and end-of-period distortion.
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Choosing metrics that will not corrupt behavior.
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