From No to Yes The sales course

01 Foundations

Foundations: Earning the Yes

The foundations of selling: how a buyer decides to buy, and how to earn that decision. Getting attention, finding the real problem and how the buyer sees it, building trust, explaining your offer, handling objections, getting a commitment, following through after the yes, and practising so that you keep getting better.

10 modules · 47.25 hours · Professional Selling: Foundations

Or both courses together.

02 Outcomes

What you will be able to do

By the end of Foundations, on your own real deals:

  1. Lead a discovery conversation on a real opportunity in which the buyer states, in their own words and figures, what the problem is, what it leads to, what standing still costs them and what changing would cost them, and record which parts they told you and which you inferred.
  2. Earn a first conversation and the trust a decision needs: ask for one small step with a real reason, show what you know in a form the buyer can check, recommend what serves them where your interest and theirs part, and keep every commitment you make.
  3. Describe your offer, its price and one honest drawback only in terms of needs the buyer has stated, and answer an objection by first finding where it started.
  4. End each conversation with a next step the buyer states in their own words, with when, where and how they will take it, and plan the first weeks after a yes for the mistakes people will make.
  5. Improve your own selling deliberately: practise one narrow moment with recorded takes scored one criterion at a time, and keep a written, scored record of your reads of your own deals.
03 Modules

What you will learn about selling

Foundations: Earning the Yes

47.25 h · 10 modules
  1. 01 The Buyer’s Mind Agreeing with you is not the same as deciding to change. This module teaches why: buyers weigh a change against what they already have, the cost of changing looms larger than its benefit, and the person who decides carries a risk of their own. You learn to let the buyer state what standing still costs them, and how framing, the first number said, too many options and an optimistic timeline shape the decision. 6.75 h
  2. 02 Earning Attention A buyer’s attention is spent before your first contact arrives. This module teaches you to earn a share of it: to ask for little and make it easy to take in, to give something useful before you ask, to give a real reason they could repeat to a colleague, to show what you know rather than claim it, and to answer a first no. 6.75 h
  3. 03 Diagnosis Most sellers arrive with the answer and ask questions that can only confirm it. This module teaches you to treat your diagnosis as something to test: to ask about problems, what they lead to and what solving them is worth, in the buyer’s words; to tell a complaint from a want; to hear the problem as the buyer does; and to ask about what you have not been told. 6.75 h
  4. 04 The Problem Frame A buyer arrives with the problem already defined, and the definition decides what they will buy. This module teaches you to offer a different view as one they can test, to find what they measure the present against, to turn a remembered problem into a count, to place it among everything else on their list, and to put doing nothing on the list as a choice. 4.5 h
  5. 05 Trust Trust is a willingness to be exposed to someone, not a warm feeling about them. This module teaches you to earn it where the decision needs it: evidence of ability in the areas the buyer is unsure about, a recommendation that serves them where your interest and theirs part, doing exactly what you said, and examples from buyers like them that they can check. 3.75 h
  6. 06 Articulation How you describe your offer decides whether it is heard as an answer or tested as a claim. This module teaches you to describe it only as the answer to a need the buyer has stated, to make fewer and stronger points, to set the price beside the cost they described, to name one honest drawback, and to give each person in the decision the same facts from their own need. 3.75 h
  7. 07 Objection as Information An objection tells you something about the sale, often about something earlier in it. This module teaches you to trace an objection to where it started, to answer the hard question rather than an easier one, to prepare for the questions the buyer will be asked by others, to hold a point the buyer needs held, and to explain a no in a way you can act on. 3.75 h
  8. 08 Commitment A good meeting can end with the sale exactly where it was. This module teaches you to plan each meeting for a step the buyer will take, to ask for it plainly instead of pressing, to help the buyer choose between two good options, and to let them make the commitment their own, with when, where and how they will act. 3.75 h
  9. 09 The Follow-Through The yes is where the work of making the change succeed begins. This module teaches you to plan the first weeks for the mistakes people will make, to decide in advance what to do when something goes wrong, to read early results without over-reading them, to record why the decision was made before the outcome is known, and to deal with the moment people will remember. 3.75 h
  10. 10 The Craft Years of selling are not the same as years of practice. This module teaches you to practise one narrow moment with feedback, to take one new behaviour at a time into real conversations, to score your own recordings one part at a time, to know which of your instincts the work has trained, and to keep score on your own reads of your deals so that your judgement improves. 3.75 h

Each lesson takes 45 minutes. No total here includes an estimate.

04 Final project

The final project

A complete written plan for winning one real sale of your own: what to ask, in what order, and what you need to hear before you ask for the business.

Ten parts, each with a short list of what a strong answer contains. Saved privately as you go, every version kept, and printable. It is not marked: submitted with every part written, it completes the capstone for the Professional Selling: Foundations credential.

05 Credential

Professional Selling: Foundations

  • Foundations complete: every lesson’s reading, Your turn, interactive and drill done
  • Foundations capstone submitted, every part at least 100 words (checked for completeness, not marked)

Awarded: automatic. Both credentials.

06 Order

Where it fits

Start here. Advanced assumes what it teaches.

Not ready for a full course? The book and mini-course include Module 1 of Foundations in full.