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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: Motivation, Momentum & the Midweek Slump – Sales Mindset Replay
Motivation comes and goes. Discipline is hard. In this replay, Bill walks you through real-world ways to reset your mindset, plan around your energy, and pull yourself out of a sales slump. Perfect for the days when you’re staring at the phone and not feeling it.
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.
Short Attention Span Sales Tips
Prospecting? Do This, Not That
What’s the key to a good voicemail message? In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson says something relevant about being relevant.
Ruthless Time Management
While most sales reps are busy, the best of the best are productive. In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson shows you how.
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.
Short Attention Span Sales Blog
Good Rep vs. Great Rep – Which One Are You?
Watching a tennis tournament, there’s amazing play in the early rounds and then the top ten show up and take the game to a whole new level. Reach your top level by taking the advice in this week’s blog (1 min read).
Confidence: The Sales Skill That Sells
Ever looked at someone and thought, “That one is special”? What you might be seeing is a wearable trait that can grow your sales. Find out more in Bill Farquharson’s 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.
Downloadable Tools & Templates
Learn by Sales Challenge
Whitepapers
Articles
10 Tips and Tricks for Printing Industry Sales Reps Who Are Now Selling From Their Homes
Two weeks after graduating college in 1982, I went to work selling business forms from a one-bedroom apartment in Worcester, Massachusetts. I had a bed, a kitchen table with two chairs, a small TV, and a couch. Without any other space available, my desk sat in the middle of the living room and from there […]
Best Ways for Salespeople to Get Their Point Across When Selling Printing
It is remarkable just how many salespeople I know and work with have ADD. Attention Deficit Disorder is typically a diagnosis associated with middle school-aged kids who, like me, were once called dreamers, class-disrupters, and unfocused. Are those with ADD deficient of paying attention? Yes, we are. Is it a disorder? Not in my experience. […]
Five Tips I Can’t Teach You When It Comes to Selling More Printing
There are fundamental lessons to sales. These are the basics — the building blocks — if you will. Follow them and you will find some level of success in sales. As a sales trainer and coach, I can walk you through them: Make a high-value, well researched sales call to the right target market by […]
Five Odd Pieces of Sales Advice
When I joined the local golf club, it was only the old guys who played in the Saturday morning pickup games. We called them “golf in slow motion.” Now, I’m that guy. When I started in sales in 1982, we scoffed at the legacy reps who lumbered in and out of the office, drove old […]
Sales Challenges: ‘Houston, We’ve Had a Problem’
Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert’s oft-misquoted words informing mission control something had gone very, very badly on their way to the moon, was easily the greatest understatement of the 20th century. Perhaps had he known the full extent of the damage done to the capsule — not to mention the odds he and the rest […]
10 Sales Questions for Summer
Ah, summertime. Lemonade in a hammock. That novel you’ve been meaning to read. And, finally, a chance to pull the proverbial train into the station, exhale, and think things through. We spend most of the year with our heads down; too busy selling to wonder if we are heading in the right direction. Finding answers […]
Cleaning Out the Sales Closet
A dozen Printing Impressions columns. Fifty-one Short Attention Span Sales Tips. Fifty-one blogs. That is the amount of content I generate on an annual basis. Add to that the occasional white paper, training course, and the various material generated for The Sales Vault, and it makes for a busy and hungry literary machine. Scattered around my desk, […]
Hit the COVID Reset Button
I have AFib, a common heart condition that can cause both arrhythmia and a heart rate that can go from 65 bpm to a sustained rate of 165 in, well, a heartbeat. A few years back, I had an ablation in order to deal with those irritating and dangerous symptoms. For the most part, it […]
Print Sales Lessons I Learned From My Job in College
Here in the Northeast, liquor stores are called “Package Stores,” or “Packies” for short. During my tenure at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, I worked at Russell Liquors in the center of town, earning $2.05 an hour, thankyouverymuch. Everybody needs a lousy job like this one in their past. You can’t see it in the moment, […]
Your End-of-the-Week Checklist
Finally, it’s Friday afternoon. Another long week of sales challenges is now behind you. Your task list is a mass of scribbles, arrows, and check marks. Sure, there are some bullet points not completed, but when is that not the case? The only thing between this moment and you heading home is that Sales Challenges […]
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