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Sales Resources
On-Demand Courses
Selling to Hospitals: Big Fish Sales in a High-Rules Environment
Hospitals buy a ton of print, signage, and promo—yet they can be notoriously hard to break into because decisions run through committees, compliance, vendor approval, and long budget cycles. This course teaches you how to research healthcare trends, identify revenue-driving opportunities, find the right stakeholders, and frame your offering in the language hospitals care about: safety, outcomes, efficiency, and patient experience.
Selling to Banks: Cracking the Code of Financial Institution Sales
Banks and credit unions buy plenty of print, signage, and promo—but profitable work comes from understanding how they make money, what’s changing in the industry, and what priorities your target institution is pushing right now. This course shows you how to build value-driven pitches, research like a pro, and walk into the conversation sounding like a partner—not another vendor begging to be put on the bid list.
Selling to Colleges: Win the Big Fish Without Becoming Bait
Colleges and universities are a massive, price-sensitive market with scattered buying circles—which means real opportunity… and real complexity. In this 6-lesson course, Bill breaks down what colleges buy, why they buy it, and who’s doing the buying, then shows you how to sell beyond “submit a bid” by tying print, signage, and promo to what schools are trying to accomplish right now.
Sustainable Productivity
Busy isn’t the same as productive. This course gives experienced reps a simple, repeatable system to plan their week, protect their best sales activities, and end every day with tomorrow ready to go. Learn how to stack appointments, manage opportunities, and sell more in less time—without burning out.
Landing the Big Fish
Big accounts don’t get “won.” They get pursued, mapped, and earned—over time, with patience, creativity, and a strategy that goes way beyond “just checking in.” This course gives you the mindset, structure, and contact tactics to break into large organizations, stay relevant during long sales cycles, and build a repeatable Big Fish pipeline.
Taming the Nuisance Customer
Learn how to identify, manage, and—when necessary—fire time-sucking, profit-draining clients. Learn practical strategies for dealing with bullies, slow payers, price-checkers, and chronic complainers so you can protect your time, your team, and your best customers.
Getting to YOUR Next Level
Explore this practical, no-drama framework to figure out where you are, where you want to go, and exactly what has to change in your mindset, skills, and activity to get there. This isn’t motivational fluff. It’s a working blueprint you’ll use to evaluate, review, plan, and execute your way to real growth.
A Sustainable Productivity Plan for New Sales Reps
Build consistency and focus with a repeatable productivity system for sales reps. Learn how to plan smarter, execute better, and stay on track — every day, every week.
Objection Mastery: Turning Resistance into Revenue
Master the art of handling objections. Learn to recognize, reframe, and respond to resistance with strategies that convert hesitation into opportunity.
Effective Sales Presentations
Turn your next meeting into a masterclass in preparation, presentation, and persuasion. In this course, Bill Farquharson walks you through every step of an effective sales presentation — from preparation to delivery to securing the next meeting. You’ll learn how to research your client, structure your message, and communicate with clarity and confidence.
Making Contact with Decision Makers
This course is about mastering one of the hardest parts of selling: gaining access to the person with the power to say “yes.” You’ll learn why diligence beats talent, how to craft powerful conversations, and how to reset your mindset so you stop feeling like a pest and start acting like a trusted advisor.
Marketing is the New Sales
Marketing is the New Sales helps you stand out in a crowded market, generate steady leads, and strengthen client relationships. By the end, you’ll have practical strategies to drive growth and keep your pipeline full—without relying on old-school sales tactics.
Lead Generation for Legacy Sales Reps: Sharpening Your Edge
Sharpen your edge and win better business. This advanced course helps seasoned sales reps refine their Ideal Customer Criteria, apply smarter prospecting strategies, and leverage AI to save time and uncover high-value opportunities. Stop chasing volume and start focusing on the clients who deliver the most profit and loyalty.
Lead Generation for New Sales Reps: Build Your Funnel, Build Your Future
Build your funnel, build your future. This course gives new sales reps the confidence and tools to find their first great customers. Learn how to combine traditional prospecting methods with modern AI strategies so you can keep your pipeline full and your sales career growing strong.
Pre-Call Research
Learn how to uncover what matters most to your prospects before you ever pick up the phone. This course teaches you to research smarter, find the right decision-makers, and transform generic sales calls into meaningful, solution-focused conversations.
The Prospecting Playbook
Turn cold calls into opportunities with a proven prospecting system. This course shows you how to build a pipeline, stay organized, and consistently generate new business.
Diligence
Build consistency, stay motivated, and outwork your competition with Bill Farquharson’s 6-part video course on the sales skill that beats talent every time. Perfect for print, promo, packaging, labels, and signage professionals who want lasting success.
New to Sales in the Graphic Arts?
Build confidence, avoid costly mistakes, and hit the ground running with Bill Farquharson’s 8-part video course for sales newcomers in print, promo, packaging, labels, and signage.
Time Management for Salespeople in the Graphic Arts: Do More, Stress Less, Sell Smarter
Master your day, reduce stress, and sell smarter: This course teaches salespeople in the graphic arts how to prioritize, plan, and build time habits that actually stick.
Workshop Replays
Recap & Replay: Selling with a Boss Who Doesn’t Get Sales: How to Stay Sane (and Hit Quota Anyway)
Bad leadership shouldn’t tank your numbers. This session shows how to manage up: set clear expectations, communicate activity that actually moves deals, earn trust, negotiate office/road time, and ask for what you need—from qualified leads to weekly check-ins. You’ll leave with scripts, frameworks, and a 90-day plan to stay sane and hit quota.
Recap & Replay: Why They’re Not Calling You Back
Silence after the quote? This workshop breaks down why prospects ghost (wrong contact, lost momentum, weak value, conflict-avoidance) and how to revive the conversation. Get specific language to set follow-up expectations before you leave, craft “optimistic” voicemails, vary your medium, and run a smarter touch pattern—without sounding desperate.
Recap & Replay: What to Do When Sales Slow Down
Every seller hits valleys. This session walks you through immediate moves (audit pending work, scan emails, compare to last year), mid-term plays (seasonal campaigns, re-activations), and mindset resets that keep you productive. You’ll also plan the holiday slow weeks and set targets so you start January locked and loaded.
Recap & Replay: What Would Primo Do?
Primo Duran takes the mic for a lively hour on practical selling: planning 4–5 months ahead, running annual reviews, using FOMO/VIP positioning, grading clients (A/B/C), setting boundaries on rush jobs, and selling value instead of price. Plus specific ideas for trade shows, promo, and cold-outreach touch patterns.
Recap & Replay: Sales Activities That Actually Move the Needle
This workshop zeroes in on behaviors that truly drive revenue: consistent new-business activity, a simple activities→opportunities tracking system, purposeful touch patterns (calls + email + LinkedIn), and short-term goals with real accountability. You’ll learn how to avoid “busywork drift,” persist through five+ touches, and plan weekly so nothing slips through the cracks.
Recap & Replay: Turning One Order into Many
Don’t stop at one sale — build momentum. Learn how to turn a one-time order into a steady stream of repeat business and referrals with proven follow-up strategies from Bill Farquharson’s workshop, Turning One Order Into Many.
Recap & Replay: Selling When You’re Crazy Busy
When business is booming, sales often get pushed aside. In this replay, Bill Farquharson and Sales Vault members share how to prospect, prioritize, and protect your pipeline—even when you’re stretched thin.
Recap & Replay: Selling to Banks
Banks are big, complex, and full of opportunity. Watch this Sales Vault replay to discover how to break into the financial sector, from spotting industry trends to finding the right contacts and creating a process that works.
Recap & Replay: How to Get More Referrals
Your best source of new business may already be in your client list. Watch this replay of How to Get More Referrals to discover practical, non-pushy ways to ask for—and earn—referrals that bring in high-quality leads.
Recap & Replay: Marketing Without a Marketing Department
No marketing department? No problem. Watch this replay to discover smart, simple tools and habits you can use to promote your business, attract customers, and stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Short Attention Span Sales Tips
New to Sales? Here’s Good News!
The persistent thought of a new sales rep is, “I am not doing my job if I am not landing orders.” In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson disagrees.
Sales Road Kill
While you are delivering your sales pitch, the client is receiving an entirely different message from an unexpected source. Find out more in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
A Successful Sales Thought
Can you think your way to sales success? Bill Farquharson thinks not. But there is a way to use thought to get you there and Bill shares those thoughts in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
65 and Selling…
Not just one, but three sales tips is Bill Farquharson’s birthday gift to you. Find them all in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
The LinkedIn Handshake
Imagine working hard to get an appointment and then, after “Hello,” you have no idea what to say. That’s what making a LinkedIn connection feels like. If you want a plan for what to do, check out this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Five Seconds of Negotiation
Silence is one of the most underused tools in sales. Learn how to turn silence into a powerful method of persuasion in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
A Complaint Challenge
How long can you go without complaining? And what does the answer have to do with sales? Find out in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
The Irony of the Sales Meeting
Most sales meetings are dull enough to put even the most caffeinated rep to sleep. And here’s the irony…Find out more in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Your Bad (Internal) Reputation
Think you are mistreated by the Production team? Maybe you are. Want to know why? Find out in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Distracted Selling
A defensive driving course teaches young drivers about distractions. This week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip approaches the subject from a different angle.
Short Attention Span Sales Blog
Sales Is a Sport. Train Like It.
There are the natural-born sales reps and then there are the rest of us. You can beat the schmoozers by following Bill Farquharson’s advice in this week’s blog. (1 min read)
No Idle Hands
Whenever Bill Farquharson and his sister were picked up from school, their mom was busy writing a note, reading a book, or creating a recipe. This taught Bill and his now-retired brother a valuable sales lesson he shares with you in this week’s blog.
Someone’s Calling Your Customer
Two reps read Bill Farquharson’s blog this week. One panics. One yawns. Be the yawner by taking Bill’s advice/warning to heart.
Profit Silos
We all get 24 hours in a day. Some of use those hours better than others. In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson gives a high level lesson on sales focus.
Be the Wizard (No Curtain Required)
You are who you say you are. That’s Social Marketing 101. In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson shows you how to follow your own Yellow Brick Road to sales success.
Climbing Out of the Sales Slump
It’s coming. It’s going to happen to you. A lot. You will need a strategy. The “It” in this equation is a sales slump. The strategy is what Bill Farquharson has in mind in this week’s blog.
Forecast: Sales Headwind
In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson sends out a special message of encouragement to all struggling sales reps.
I Sure Hope You’ve Been Hacked
A mind-bending email arrived in Bill Farquharson’s inbox and it resulted in a blog warning to others.
Making the Dreaded Collections Call
“Collection calls are my favorite part of the job,” said no sales rep ever. But in this week’s blog, Bill affirms the thought that this, too, is what sales gets paid for.
The Best Differentiator
When you’re in grade school, it’s all about fitting in. Get into sales and you want to stand out. In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson advises you to not overthink it.
Downloadable Tools & Templates
Learn by Sales Challenge
Get yourself unstuck
Feeling stuck? In this post, Bill has outlined specific Sales Vault resources (Workshop Replays, Video Courses, Sales Tips & Blogs) to help you find the motivation and inspiration you are currently lacking.
Dealing with Voicemail…Solved
You probably don’t put much thought into it, but your outgoing voicemail message is a selling tool in itself. Find Sales Vault resources to sharpen your voicemail message to get that elusive call back, and if the call back never comes; what to do next.
How to Get Your Price…Solved
When you expect the “price” objection, you can prepare for it. Bill has compiled Sales Vault resources in the form of Tips, Blogs, Workshops and more that address this very issue.
Land the Big Fish Accounts…Solved
Top sales people have at least one major account. Most have several. Here are some ideas and tips for landing a big fish of your own and links to Sales Vault Resources that further explore the topic.
Find High-Quality Leads…Solved
Consult these Sales Vault resources Bill has selected to help you find new strategies and ideas for sourcing high quality leads.
Secure More Appointments…Solved
Once upon a time, it was fairly easy to get face time with a client. Today, you’ll be lucky if you get to FaceTime (or Zoom). Here are some ideas for facing these new sales challenges using specific Sales Vault resources Bill has selected for you.
Selling through LinkedIn…Solved
With customer contact more rare and difficult than ever, knowing how to harness the marketing power of online tools like LinkedIn will grease the skids for your selling efforts and get the phone ringing. Find actionable strategies to leverage the power of LinkedIn using these Sales Vault Resources.
Sell More in Less Time…Solved
Time management is a HUGE subject, especially as it relates to sales. I could write on the subject all day, but here I’ve outlined specific Sales Vault resources (Workshop Replays, Video Courses, Sales Tips & Blogs) to get you thinking differently about how you manage your time as it relates to sales success.
Whitepapers
Articles
Managers: Don’t Expect Your Sales Reps to Try to Make 25 Sales Calls Per Day
I received an email from a reader and, by the time I got done with my response, a column had written itself … Dear Bill: In your October Printing Impressions article, “How to Improve Your Productivity,” you mention making 10 or more calls per day and that very few people have the time or patience […]
Persistence: How Long Should I Keep Calling on a Sales Prospect Before Giving Up?
Consider this scenario: You bang on the door of a prospect. The door opens and, before you can say anything, the prospect throws a glass of water in your face. The next day, you bang on the door of the same prospect. Again, the door opens and, again, the prospect drenches you. Would you go […]
Sales Challenges: Preparation Powers Persuasion
In his book, What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack wrote about how everyone is in sales. Kids, for example, try to sell their parents on the idea that ice cream at 4 o’clock won’t ruin their dinner. Those who grow up to become sales people are the ones who don’t […]
How to Improve Your Productivity When Selling Printing
“I did it! I finally caught up on all my work!” Said no one. Ever. The concept of time management fills books, seminar venues, and Printing Impressions columns every now and then. Time is finite and a big part of success in sales comes down to selling more in less time. You can be busy but not productive. You […]
Sales Challenges: How to Differentiate Yourself
When we were younger, no one wanted to stand out. Grade school, junior high (as it was once called), and high school was survivable so long as you weren’t different in any way. Once you become an adult, of course, being different becomes the goal. We strive to set ourselves apart with the same gusto […]
Sell Away Your Problems
It’s as if you were in a coma, isn’t it? There you were cruising along and the next thing you know your book of business is a pamphlet. You can rub your eyes and pinch yourself all you want. Nothing is going to change. Thanks to COVID-19, your sales life is in crisis. You are […]
Sales Challenges: Are You Like a Gallon of Milk?
Heading down aisle after aisle of your local supermarket, you fill your cart with the items from the shopping list while trying not to faint at the sharp uptick in prices across the board. Arriving in the dairy section, you examine the choices for milk. $4.39 for one brand and $4.99 for another. Thanks to […]
Sales Challenges: It’s Time for Your Midyear Checkup
Are you feeling sad at all?” When my primary physician asked me that question during a recent med-check appointment, I shot back an inquisitive look. She continued, “The pandemic has changed much of our daily lives and we like to check in with our patients regarding their mental health and overall well-being.” Having worked from […]
Keys for Printing Industry Salespeople to Develop Good Time Management Skills
How is it that the people who sell the most work the least? That sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? You would think someone selling millions of dollars of print or signage would have no family, few friends, a 25 handicap, an un-mowed lawn, and bags under their eyes from lining up back-to-back-to-back 14-hour workdays. But the […]
Sales Challenges: ‘Inventing Anna,’ a Jedi Print Sales Rep
Have you seen the Netflix sensation, “Inventing Anna”? It’s a fascinating true story (except for the parts that were made up) about a young woman who weaved her way into the highest levels of New York City’s high society armed with a believable story, 1,000cc of chutzpah, and a dream of creating something big. By […]
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