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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: 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.
Recap & Replay: Prospecting Without Cold Calling
Tired of cold calls that lead nowhere? Replay this Sales Vault workshop to discover proven alternatives—AI research, warm introductions, white papers, LinkedIn, referrals, and more—to generate real opportunities without dialing strangers.
Recap & Replay: Marketing to a Niche Without Getting Stuck in a Rut
Niche markets can open doors—but they can also box you in. In this replay, learn how to gain credibility, land high-value accounts, and avoid the dangers of over-specialization.
Recap & Replay: Selling to Colleges
Colleges are a unique and lucrative vertical—but breaking in requires insight. In this replay, Bill Farquharson and higher ed veteran Eric Nystrom reveal the buying cycles, key decision-makers, and practical sales strategies you need to grow your presence on campus.
Recap & Replay: How to Follow Up Without Being Annoying
The line between persistence and pestering is thin. In this workshop, Bill Farquharson and Vault members share strategies, stories, and scripts for following up on quotes and sales calls without crossing the line.
Recap & Replay: Content Creation for Non-Creatives
Content is critical for visibility, but most salespeople aren’t writers or designers. This workshop shares simple tools, AI tricks, and shortcuts to create posts, emails, and campaigns that get noticed without taking all day.
Recap & Replay: What Makes You Different
Discover how to define and communicate your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Watch the Sales Vault replay with Bill Farquharson and sales pros.
Recap & Replay: AI RX: Automating Access & Accelerating Sales in Hospitals
Use AI to prospect smarter, personalize outreach, and gain access to hospital buyers. In this Sales Vault workshop, Bill walks through real prompts, research strategies, and side-door tactics that make AI your new best sales assistant.
Recap & Replay: What Buyers Are Thinking (But Won’t Tell You)
Buyers may smile, nod, and say all the right things—while secretly planning to ghost your proposal. In this Sales Vault workshop replay, you’ll learn how to recognize invisible objections, reduce fear of change, and make your prospects feel safe saying “yes.”
Recap & Replay: Selling to Hospitals Webinar with special guest Peter Holden
Hospitals are complex—but lucrative—prospects for print, promo, and signage sales. In this Sales Vault webinar, former hospital CEO Peter Holden joins Bill Farquharson to pull back the curtain on the healthcare buying process. Watch the replay and get your prescription for sales success.
Short Attention Span Sales Tips
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.
Differentiation
“Sure, I’ll buy from you. But you have to tell me what’s different about you first?” Multiple answers to that question…are found in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip.
Your Digital Story
Everyone has a story to tell. But, we also have stories told about us…stories that affect our sales. In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson challenges you to take charge of your online persona so your customers see you in the best possible light.
Quit Running That Play
If a football team ran the same play over and over, the defense would probably figure it out, right? And if you don’t change your ways, you, too, will be tackled to the ground. Check out Bill Farquharson’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip for more.
Recalculating: Your Route Around the Price Objection
You quote, you lose. You quote, you lose. You quote, you lose. Are we having fun yet? In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson offers up a different approach.
The Wimbledon Difference
You’ve probably never noticed this key differentiator before, but once you look for it and compare, nothing comes close. Even non-tennis fans will get something out of Bill Farquharson’s Short Attention Sales Tip this week.
One Less Thing
AI offers some amazing capabilities, but because it takes time to learn and master each agent, you might want to take the advice Bill Farquharson shares in this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip before going down every AI rabbit hole.
Hitting the Content Bullseye
You know you need to post on LinkedIn but don’t have any idea what to write. In this week’s Short Attention Span Sales Tip, Bill Farquharson shares his thought process.
Sell Past the Close: The New Rule That Works
Bill Farquharson broke the “never sell past the close” rule—and it worked. This quick tip explains why closing isn’t the end, but the start of the next sale.
Short Attention Span Sales Blog
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.
Name-Dropping Danger
“Who are some of your other clients?” is a common question for a prospect to ask. How you respond can make or break the opportunity. Learn the right way in Bill Farquharson’s blog.
The Confidence Myth
When it comes to selling with confidence, we have it all wrong…so says Bill Farquharson in this week’s Sales Blog.
How Sales Entrepreneurs Think Differently
Can you name three things top sales reps do differently? You will after reading Bill Farquharson’s blog this week.
Best Case Assumptions
Ever talk yourself out of picking up the phone to make a sales call? They’re probably busy. Or gone. Never mind. In this week’s 1 minute read blog, Bill Farquharson changes those thoughts.
Git ‘er Done: How to Avoid Distractions
Got distractions? Here’s some thoughts on how to carve out a little quiet time. Read Bill Farquharson’s blog.
An Odd Sales Compliment
When a prospective client rewards your diligent sales efforts with these words, it is high praise indeed. Read more in Bill Farquharson’s blog.
A New Sales Rep’s Journey
Do you remember when you first started out? Remember the fear? The anxiety? The rejection? In this week’s blog, take a walk down Memory Lane with Bill Farquharson.
Selling by Their Rules
A post-golf conversation over a beer planted a thought in Bill Farquharson’s head: Whose rules are we following when we sell? Get it right and you have a client for life. Read more in this week’s blog.
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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