As the gap between sales and marketing bridges ever closer to each other, learning new skills in each department is becoming very useful when tackling the challenges of opportunity generation.

With so many courses available online from so many different sources, my goal with this post is to help you cut through the clutter and quickly find the course that’s right for you.

Some are short introductory courses that take a few hours to complete, others are in-depth 12-month programs that give you everything you need to develop your career.

Sales Courses

Unlike most professions, getting into sales does not require any qualifications or any prior experience. What’s great about that is that it opens the opportunity for almost anyone to start their career in sales, however, it also means that there are many people out there who are doing a poor job at it.

From understanding your market and identifying your prospects, to conducting a sales call and negotiating a deal, there are many steps that need to be conducted correctly to ensure someone will be a successful salesperson.

The following sales courses will provide you with the tools and skills you need to close more deals. Whether it be specifically on negotiating or on the entire sales process, the courses listed below will help you in those areas that you need improvement in most.

The UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer – Prospecting Bootcamp

Designed for both beginners and experienced salespeople, this program will guide you through how to get past gatekeepers, engage decision-makers and qualify the prospect.

It will provide you with insights into the mindset of the seller and the buyer such as why you’re your own worst enemy and the buyer-seller matrix. You will also learn how to not sound like a salesperson and how to create your own 30-second pitch.

This session takes place over a live 4-hour Zoom conference call.

LinkedIn Learning – Asking Great Sales Questions

If you’re looking for an online sales course that focuses on asking the right questions that are meaningful for the prospect and that doesn’t sound like you’re just squeezing information out of them, then this course is for you.

Asking questions help you to discover what your prospect’s pain points and business goals are as well as helping you to qualify your prospect. You will be guided through how to ask questions that will create connections, drive credibility, create urgency and confirm value clarity.

The course will take 50 minutes to complete and rated 4.5/5 with over 180,000 people enrolled on it.

Dale Carnegie – Win Friends and Influence People: Secrets of Success

So much of sales is about influencing people. Knowing how to build rapport and gain trust is a huge part of how likely a prospect will become a customer. This course will help you to achieve just that.

Like the popular book How to Win Friends and Influence People, the course will teach you how to apply Dale Carnegie’s principles and have better relationships and connect better with your prospects.

You can complete this online sales course in 2.5 hours and you will learn from 36 short video lessons.

JBarrows – Driving to Close

With a yearly subscription, you can gain unlimited access to all their popular courses, videos, webinars, podcasts, livecasts and more.

Their selection of online sales courses includes Driving to Close (designed to improve the quality of interactions and executions throughout your sales process), Filling the Funnel (which shows how to build a pipeline to set more meetings, Personal Branding (designed to give you the skills and best practices for building a personal brand that makes an impact), and others.

As a subscription-based platform, you can have access to any new content that gets published and to Weekly Live Q&A Sessions.

Coursera – Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

On both a personal and professional level, negotiation is a huge part of how we get what we want. Whether it be negotiating a pay rise, a new job or closing a deal, this course will teach you the 4 steps to a successful negotiation which is to prepare, negotiate, close and perform & evaluate.

Over a series of short interactive videos, you will be taught new negotiation strategies and skills including questions to test you based on what you’ve learnt.

The course takes about 18 hours to complete and has nearly 100,000 reviews with an overall content rating of 98%.

Sandler – 21st Century Prospecting Online Course

The Sandler methodology is a popular sales method that has been around for over 50 years. It focuses on salespeople selling in a consultative manner rather than pushing the product on the prospect.

Since then, times have changed drastically as salespeople become more accustomed to remote selling with the use of different technologies. The 21st Century Prospecting Online Course includes up-to-date strategies such as online research and social selling on LinkedIn.

The course consists of 8 video lessons and resources to help you learn how to make a prospecting call, create a prospecting plan, engage gatekeepers, master virtual prospecting and more.

Udemy – Sales Machine: The Sales Training B2B Master Course

With over 14,500 students of this online sales course so far and a rating of 4.5/5, this course is created for both people who are considering sales as a career and those who are looking to improve on their current skillset, this course is created to give you the essential selling skills and the tools you need to become a sales machine.

As one of the top 1% of sales professionals at Oracle, the course creator will guide you step-by-step from how to instantly build rapport and identify customers’ main pain points to pitching your idea convincingly and close deals to grow your business.

The course consists of 9 sections, 29 lectures and 8 downloadable resources totalling just under 3 hours long.

Grant Cardone – Cardone University

If you are after something more in-depth, Grant Cardone Sales Training University is a platform that hosts a collection of online sales courses covering topics such as Selling Basics, Theory of Closing, Prospecting, Handling Objections, Cold Calling and more.

The program dives deep into each step of the sales process as well as including many other extras. Many of the largest automotive companies use this program such as Toyota and BMW as well as tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.

The program for individuals has over 1000 segments of video and the program for teams and businesses has over 3,500 segments including other benefits.

Brian Tracy – The Psychology of Selling

“Super-Charge Your Sales and Double Your Income”. Aimed for salespeople but also to non-sales professionals. Those in sales will learn skills that will help them in their career and break through barriers to increase sales fast. For those who are not in sales, Brian Tracy says “you may not realize it, but everything you do involves selling”.

The course will teach you many topics including why people really buy, how to enter your client’s comfort zone and other techniques and secrets to successful selling.

The 6 hour-long course came about from being asked to put together everything he knew about sales into an easy-to-use program anyone could use to sell more.

HubSpot Academy – Inbound Sales

At just over 2 hours long, this free online sales course will deliver 5 lessons taught by different instructors over a series of video segments. You will learn how to identify the best contacts to engage with, connect better with them and run a successful sales call.

The 5 lessons introduce the inbound selling methodology as well as teaching you the best outreach sequences, how to structure your conversations and persuade your prospects to move further along the buying journey.

With 5 quizzes along the way and passing the exam, you will get a badge to place on your LinkedIn profile, email signature, and website.

Marketing Courses

The world of marketing is very broad. From content marketing and social media to website design and paid ads, there seems to be something suitable for anyone looking to get into marketing or trying to hone their skills.

The following marketing courses will range from different price points, vary in complexity, and cover on-demand courses as well as live classes.

Udacity – Digital Marketing Nanodegree Program

This program by Udacity is designed for those who want to cover a wide range of topics in marketing. You will dive deep into topics such as the fundamentals of marketing, content strategy, social media, SEO, Google Analytics, and more.

Over a series of in-depth videos and real-world projects, you will learn everything you need to know about the world of marketing. In addition to the course, you will also have access to mentors who answer your questions and review your projects. Other career services are available too where you can get CV support and LinkedIn profile optimisation.

The online marketing course is estimated to take 3 months to complete when spending 10 hours a week.

HubSpot Academy – Social Media Marketing Course

As the world becomes more social media savvy, the Social Media Marketing Course by HubSpot Academy is created to help you attract new customers and build brand awareness.

For those who aspire to be in marketing or are already in marketing and want to learn more, this 4-hour free online marketing course will help you to develop a social media strategy, create content, build relationships and get started with social media advertising.

Over 8 core lessons and 40 videos, a selection of instructors will guide you through each of the different areas of social media and teach you how adding social media will expand your other inbound marketing efforts.

Skillshare – Copywriting 101: Crafting Your First Ad Campaign

A major part of marketing is the ability to write good copy. With this online marketing course specifically focusing on the principles of copywriting for creative ad campaigns, you will learn how to write for a range of mediums from print ads to commercial scripts.

The class is taught by Heather Baldock who has 5 years of ad agency experience. The classes will also cover a hands-on class project covering a headline writing exercise, TV and radio script, how to build your portfolio, and more.

The class is great for beginners and consists of 7 lessons amounting to under 40 minutes.

Coursera – The Strategy of Content Marketing

Content marketing is a huge part of attracting potential customers and raising more brand awareness. This course will cover how to develop and implement a content marketing strategy to help you write great copy and show you how to measure its success.

Aimed for people at an intermediate level, this online marketing course will guide you through 5 weeks of lessons using video, readings and quizzes. You will learn the content marketing ecosystem, crafting a content marketing strategy, managing your content, and more.

The course overall takes about 19 hours to complete and once completed, you will receive a certificate that can be shared on your LinkedIn profile. More than a quarter say they got tangible career benefits from this course.

Udemy – Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises

For those who want to get stuck into the analytics of marketing, then you should be sure to check out this course.

You will learn important marketing metrics, how to analyse the success of a PPC marketing campaign and know how to interpret your data into key findings. Using real-life scenarios, you will get a good idea of what big data is, data analytics and marketing analytics as well as the metrics used in social media, revenue, advertising and more.

By the end of this online marketing course, you will be able to model a marketing campaign’s revenue and expenses for 2 years and be able to summarise it all in a visual dashboard. Although no prior background in statistics is required, you are expected to know some Excel formulas as you work through the 5 hours of video that makes up this course.

Codeacademy – Learn how to build websites

Looking at a more technical side to marketing, building and designing websites that will attract potential customers is a fantastic skill to have.

Stepping away from the content side of things, a company’s website is often the first place a prospect will go to get their first impression about the company. This course will help you to learn how to tweak your company’s website and advance your web development skills.

You will be taught how to write code with HTML to build websites and create unique designs with CSS. In addition to the 9 lessons, you will build projects and also earn a certificate of completion at the end.

Google – Fundamentals of digital marketing

This free online marketing course by Google will teach you all the basics of digital marketing. If you’re looking to improve your CV to find a job in marketing or you want to develop your career, then this course will guide you through everything you need to know about digital marketing.

Whether you’re a beginner or just starting out, this course by Google covers 26 different modules where you’ll learn new skills in analytics, content marketing, email marketing, SEO, social media and web optimisation to name a few.

The course will take about 40 hours to complete consisting of video tutorials and quizzes along the way. Once completed, you will need to pass a 40 question exam to get certified where you’ll earn an authentic Digital Marketing certification from Google.

Udemy – SEO Training Course by Moz

Moz is a popular SEO software used by marketers to track traffic performance, conduct backlink analysis, research keywords and other useful solutions. 

This free online marketing course is made up of 7 sections teaching you different aspects of SEO. By the end of the course, you will learn how to craft your own SEO strategy, how to research keywords for your content, on-page and off-page SEO, and more.

To complete the 18 lectures will take over 3 hours after which you would have learnt the basics of SEO to help you increase the traffic your website receives from search engines.

SimpliLearn – Digital Marketing Specialist

Some people may only need a deep dive on a specific topic in marketing, others may want a general overview of a broad range of topics, but for those who want an in-depth understanding of digital marketing then this course is for you.

SimpliLearn offers this 12 month Master’s Program to help you gain expertise in SEO, social media, PPC, conversion optimisation, digital analytics, content, mobile and email marketing. With over 200 hours of live interactive learning and over 45 real-world projects and case studies, you will gain the education and experience you need to competently manage and execute campaigns as well as lead digital marketing teams and initiatives.

By the end of the course, you would have been exposed to over 40 different marketing tools and receive a Master’s certificate to show that you have the necessary skills of being a Digital Marketing Specialist.

New readers

For those that are unfamiliar with hubsell, we provide an end-to-end B2B prospecting solution with on-demand generated B2B data and multi-channel personalised outreach automation software to generate sales qualified leads.

Book your discovery call today to see how you can scale your opportunity generation.‍