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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: Your Website, Email Signature, and LinkedIn Profile Walk into a Bar…
What does your website, LinkedIn, and email say about you? Learn how to boost trust, professionalism, and impact in this Sales Vault replay focused on your digital first impression.
Recap & Replay: Selling the Value, Not the Product
Buyers see print and promo as a commodity—how do you stand out? Watch this powerful session on shifting the sales conversation to value, results, and creative solutions.
Recap & Replay: Sales and Marketing for Customer Retention (Not Just Acquisition)
Retaining customers is more profitable than finding new ones. In this Sales Vault session, we explore how to use print, promo, and personalized outreach to keep current clients loyal—and buying.
Recap & Replay: From Cold to Warm, How to Open More Doors
Cold calls don’t work like they used to—this session breaks down what does. Hear how Vault members are using LinkedIn, ChatGPT, handwritten notes, and custom GPTs to prospect smarter, connect faster, and win better business.
Recap & Replay: Bill Says Marketing is the New Sales. So, Why Aren’t You Doing It?
What’s stopping you from marketing consistently? In this replay, Bill Farquharson leads a no-fluff discussion on the fears, excuses, and roadblocks salespeople face—and how to build marketing momentum, even with limited time or budget.
Recap & Replay: How to Build a Repeatable 12-Week Marketing Campaign That Actually Works
Random acts of marketing don’t drive results. This workshop walks you through how to create and sustain a 12-week campaign rhythm that generates leads, builds trust, and grows your brand.
May 2025: Sign Language for Sales Reps
In this tactical session, Bill Farquharson shares how to sell signage as a marketing solution, not just a product. From packaging your offers to researching buyer needs, this workshop will boost your signage sales skills instantly.
Recap and Replay: “How to Keep Your Marketing Personal in an Automated World”
AI can make your marketing faster—but can it make it better? Learn how to use automation without losing your voice, and discover where the human touch really counts.
Recap and Replay: “Selling Without Selling: Using Education as Your Secret Marketing Weapon”
Nobody wants to be sold to—but everyone likes to learn. Watch this replay to see how educational content can help you build trust, generate leads, and grow your business without sounding like a sales pitch.
Recap and Replay: “The Power of the First 30 Days: Marketing to New Clients After the Sale”
Too many reps move on after the first sale—but that’s when real marketing begins. Discover how to engage, impress, and retain customers in the critical first 30 days.
Short Attention Span Sales Tips
Your Sales Swing Thought
Just as a golfer needs to clear his head of all bad thoughts before hitting the ball, you can come up with your own “sales swing thought” or you can use the example Bill Farquharson gives in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
The Non-Sales Sales Factor
“I’m no sales person” said the selling owner. But Bill Farquharson showed how 38 five-star Google Reviews reveal a different story. Learn an important part of sales you haven’t thought twice about until now. See Bill’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Why Your Great Idea Didn’t Sell
What just happened? You are walking out of a meeting where you presented the perfect solution to the client’s need…but no sales was made. Don’t you wish you’d seen Bill Farquharson’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip ahead of time.
The Positive of Negative Feedback
Haters gonna hate. The good news, you can use the anger to your advantage. And Bill Farquharson hopes you like this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
A Sales Calendar Tip
Don’t blink. Before you know it, summer will be here. Before time gets away from you even more, pull out your calendar and think beyond this week. Here, let Bill Farquharson spell it out for you in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Sales Quiz
Ever asked yourself, “What am I doing wrong?” Of course you have. In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson gives sales people a way to find an answer.
Check In. Keep Up.
How do you keep it all straight? Your list of activities and opportunities can result in a dizzying amount of record-keeping and cause you to drop the ball now and then. This is Bill Farquharson’s greatest fear and in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, he shares a quick organization hack.
Sales Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
If you could go back in time, you could buy Apple’s stock after their IPO and correctly predict the Super Bowl. While time travel is not currently available, you can read this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip and learn how to impact your sales future right now.
Sales Fear
What do disruptive middle school kids, blood donation, and selling print have in common? Find out in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
One Prospect, Four Sales Calls
Researching a company prior to making the sales call, while critical, is time-consuming. In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson talks about how to turn one prospect into four opportunities to make a sale.
Short Attention Span Sales Blog
Making a Good Post Great
When you bake a cake and want to make sure it is fully cooked, you are taught to stick a knife or toothpick in it. A clean instrument means done. When you are creating content to post, Bill Farquharson has a tip for you to know when it is not just good, but great.
How to Get Your Point Across in Written Form
Are your customers excited to hear from you? When an email pops up in their inbox, do they rush to open it or roll their eyes? You’ll do a better job at getting your point across in writing after reading Bill Farquharson’s blog (which you are hopefully excited to read).
Two Things to Say About Sales Objections
Why use 250 words when 50 will get your point across just fine? In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson goes with brevity to make two important points about sales objections.
Never Close a Sale
If you have a lot of quotes out there, you need to do two things. The first is to close, close, close. The second is to learn how to sell so you DON’T need to close, close, close. Find out more in Bill Farquharson’s blog.
I Know I Know You, But…
You are at a mall when you see a familiar face. They look at you and smile, then walk towards you to say hello. In the interim, you panic and go through your Rolodex of names but nothing comes to you. There is an awkwardness that can be cured two ways: miraculous recall or…reading Bill Farquharson’s blog.
Things You Can’t Teach a New Rep
The thing about starting up as a new sales person is you can take hours and hours of training classes to learn the do’s and don’t and how’s, but there a few points which are completely untrainable, and that’s what Bill Farquharson has on his mind in this week’s blog.
See If You Can Spot the Problem
A print shop owner has a problem: He can’t get a new sales hire to stick around. In this week’s blog, Bill Farquharson shares the transcript of his conversation and asks, “Can you spot the problem?” Help Bill’s customer by sharing your thoughts on why there is a revolving door of new sales hires.
Sell Like You Mean It, But You Don’t Need It
When Caddyshack’s Judge Schmails said, “It’s easy to grin when your ship comes in,” he wasn’t talking about sales. But when Bill Farquharson considers the Judge’s words, he comes up with a compelling thought in this week’s blog.
That Little Extra
Differentiation comes in many forms. A printer is a printer is a printer. All transactions are the same. But every once in a while you come across a small difference-maker. Bill Farquharson saw one while his wife was hanging a picture and it turned into ideas that can help you stand out. Read Bill’s blog.
Best Things to Say to a Customer Right Now
There are two types of people: Those who love roller coasters and those who don’t. Both groups, however, are united in their feelings about a
Downloadable Tools & Templates
Learn by Sales Challenge
Whitepapers
Articles
Surfing for Steady Sales Success
Society in general is set up to believe that the end goal of work is retirement. Put in your 30 to 40 years and you, too, can be on a beach somewhere clad in unattractive shorts, a torn T-shirt, and a metal detector. Pre-COVID, we salespeople, too, had a similar track to follow: Build up […]
Optimism & Opportunities for Selling More Print This Year
In a thoroughly forgettable movie, called “The Gumball Rally,” a cross-country car race is held amongst an international cast of characters. It’s a strange place to look for inspiration, but Franco, the Italian driver played by Raul Julia, delivers a line we can use to think about all that happened in 2020, put it in […]
Sales Challenges: How to Get an Appointment
It was never easy to get an appointment with a decision-maker and any veteran sales rep who says otherwise has blocked out the memories of phones ringing in perpetuity (pre-voice mail, mind you) and no electronic options (email, cell phones, texting). Fresh on everyone’s mind are the sales challenges of 2020. Between the difficulty in […]
COVID Client Hide-and-Seek
At some point this past spring, the game began. The Centers for Disease Control counted to 10 and everyone scattered. Kids came home from school and went to their room. Visitors went back where they belong. City-dwellers became country folk. And customers left their offices. It didn’t matter if you had your eyes closed or […]
Life Lessons Learned at 60
On Oct. 20, 2020, at 10:10 p.m. EST, I [turned] 60 years old. The cursor is blinking at me, awaiting my next words, but I am taking in the number “60.” Oddly, it’s one thing to say it and another thing to read it. Moving on … In 10 years of writing columns for Printing Impressions, […]
A Pirate Looks at 60
This column first appeared in Printing Impressions October 2020 © Bill Farquharson On October 20, 2020 at 10:10 PM Eastern time, I will turn 60 years old. The cursor is blinking at me, awaiting my next words but I am taking in the number “60.” Oddly, it’s one thing to say it and another thing […]
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The 90% Rule
This column first appeared in Printing Impressions September 2020 © Bill Farquharson Ah, human nature. There are things in life that are just predictable: The odds of a dropped piece of buttered toast landing face down. The chances of the driver you just screamed at for cutting you off being your next appointment. And the […]
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That Time a Vacation Column Was Submitted
This column first appeared in Printing Impressions August 2020 © Bill Farquharson va-ca-shun (n): To not work. No, really. Submit a column, back away from the computer, and get lost. Go on… It was clear to everyone but him that he needed a vacation. COVID-19 quarantining had made him a little, well, more crazy than […]
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Sell Away Your Problems
This column first appeared in Printing Impressions July 2020 © Bill Farquharson 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 […]
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The New Sales Challenges
This column first appeared in Printing Impressions June 2020 © Bill Farquharson “The New Sales Challenges: What was once optional is now mandatory” Those were the words written on the whiteboard when the sales reps filed in to the conference room for the monthly meeting. As is company policy, no cell phones were allowed, leaving […]
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