Sales workshops by Brewster Barclay
From strong technology to a repeatable sale
Practical workshops for complex selling and high-value B2B: who you sell to, how you reach them, and how you win the deal and carry it into production.
- A two-to-three-hour overview for a mixed cohort
- Half-day workshops for 8 to 16 people
- A three-hour design session for up to four companies
- Online or in person
The workshops follow the three parts of a company that have to speak to the market with one voice. Product Management decides who you sell to, what the problem is worth to them and what you are actually selling. Marketing reaches the right people and hands on the ones ready to talk. Sales runs the pipeline, the meetings and the long road from first engagement to production. Take them in order, or start where your problem is. Each workshop is taught against worked examples prepared in advance; the design session is the one place where your own pipeline is the material.
The workshops at a glance
Start here
An overview of all three parts, and where each of the workshops below fits.
A tour d'horizon of B2B sales
For a mixed cohort of founders and early commercial hires, at any stage, in an accelerator or a hub programme, in complex selling and high-value B2B. Most ventures cannot say whether their selling would survive a second salesperson, a second market or a second product. This is the tour of the whole of B2B sales that lets them find out.
- Product Management. Business value, the customer profile and the buying unit; feature, benefit and value; hardening the value proposition before you scale. In depth in From Technology to Value.
- Marketing. Lead generation as a cadence, how many leads are enough, and the routes to market you can afford. In depth in From Name to Qualified Lead.
- Sales. The pipeline as states, qualification and saying no, velocity and conversion, uncovering value with SPIN questions, meeting the people who decide. In depth in Managing a Complex Sales Pipeline, Complex Selling, From First Engagement to Production and B2B Sales Pipeline Design.
- The sales team and the founder. Founders sell first; the first sales hire; a replicable process, written down; sales enablement and readiness; when the founder steps out of selling.
It is run as a conversation, with a round of participant objectives to open and hands-up polls throughout. Ideas are illustrated with worked examples prepared in advance, with time to hold each question against your own company; no participant's own deal is used as a case in the room.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not a repaired sales process, which an afternoon cannot produce, but the diagnosis: how to ask five questions of your own company, how to tell a closing problem from a process problem, and where each answer is to be found. The Sales Readiness Diagnostic, a separate scored assessment of one company, can follow.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The five questions; the map of the Three Domains; the buying-unit role sheet; the SCOTSMAN checklist; the SPIN question planner; the call plan; and the short-pitch outline.
Two to three hours · a mixed cohort of founders and early commercial hires · in person or online · a conversation, with worked examples
Product Management
Who you sell to, what you are worth to them, and what you are actually selling.
Finding Product-Market Fit: who you sell to, what they are worth, and what you are actually selling
For founders of deep-tech and high-technology ventures who cannot yet say precisely who they sell to, what the customer's pain is worth, or what they are actually selling — and who know that a pipeline built on the wrong customer never converts.
- Who you sell to. The Ideal Customer Profile and what makes a customer a bad fit; the buying unit persona by persona; one beachhead won completely before any expansion.
- How you reach them. Value-chain position and route to market, decided before they decide your margin for you; and why an uncontested market has no way to buy.
- How you find out. SPIN questioning and the two canvases, run with the discipline of a salesperson and the openness of a researcher; interviewing for pain, and testing the message by asking a customer to play it back.
- What you are worth. Economic value to the customer against the status quo, built in their numbers with them; value points persona by persona; a price probed rather than set.
- What you are actually selling. Standard, configurable or special, decided before the customer asks; engineering work as a priced product; which revenue models, in what order.
Every artefact is treated as a hypothesis to be tested with the market, not a document to be completed. Each block is taught against a worked example, with time to hold the idea against your own company. It draws on forty years of complex B2B sales, grounded in the SPIN and Miller Heiman methodologies.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not finished artefacts, which half a day cannot produce, but the method for each: how to write a customer profile and buying-unit map, how to state a value hypothesis in the customer's own cost terms, how to probe a price without setting one, and how to design the next customer conversation as a test.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas; the persona-value grid; the four pricing probes; Test Cards and Learning Cards; and a one-page challenge sheet — one customer, one day, one number to find out — that turns the day into a first action.
Half day · 8 to 16 founders · online or in person · taught against worked examples
Marketing
Reaching the right people, and knowing when to hand one on.
Demand generation for deep tech: reaching the right people, and knowing when to hand one on
For founders of deep-tech and high-technology ventures who know who their customer is but have no repeatable way of reaching them, and who cannot yet say how many names it takes to produce one conversation worth having.
- How the buyer actually behaves. The self-directed buyer and the dark funnel; the shortlist settled before evaluation opens; the view a language model formed first; and what changes when no category exists.
- The seven families. Every way a lead originates, from the founder's network to grant consortia, grouped by the mechanism that creates the contact, with what each costs in money, founder time and lag.
- Working the out-funnel. Five states from a name to a qualified lead; the out-funnel ratio counted, not felt; scoring on fit and engagement; one sentence for each member of the buying unit.
- The gates, and where to focus. Three gates from contact to qualified opportunity, each with a written standard; the handover both sides agree; the cost-of-sales test; and what is failing in 2026.
Every channel choice is treated as a hypothesis to be tested against real conversion, not a template to be copied. Each block is taught against a worked example, with time to hold the idea against your own company. It draws on forty years of complex B2B sales, grounded in the SPIN and Miller Heiman methodologies.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not a finished campaign, which half a day cannot produce, but the method: how to count your out-funnel ratio, score a named-account list, choose two or three families on the cost-of-sales test, and write each gate as a standard with its disqualifiers.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The seven-family map, with the cost, founder time and lag of each family; the five-state contact tracker; the fit-and-engagement scoring sheet; the persona message grid, one sentence per member of the buying unit; and the gate definition sheet, one line and three disqualifiers for each gate.
Half day · 8 to 16 founders · online or in person · taught against worked examples
Sales
Running the pipeline, the meetings and the long sale.
Which one? Managing a Complex Sales Pipeline is the structure and Complex Selling is the skill; both serve any complex sale, and they are two separate half days. From First Engagement to Production covers the same ground for deep-tech hardware, where the buyer runs a technical evaluation and a qualification before anyone signs. B2B Sales Pipeline Design follows Managing a Complex Sales Pipeline and designs your own pipeline with you.
Seven states, two gates, and a deal that advances only when both sides have acted
For companies selling complex, high-value B2B with deals in flight, whose pipeline is a spreadsheet, a feeling, or a list of activities rather than states.
- The pipeline as states. A stage is what the deal has achieved, not what you did; the seven stages from Marketing Qualified Lead to Win, Loss or Close, with both sides' exit actions; the two gates that matter most.
- Qualification. SCOTSMAN at the entry gate, MEDDICC as the tracked fields, BANT and CHAMP compared and combined; an example deal qualification table; knowing when to say no; the hope trap of zombie deals parked in Negotiation.
- What is different by venture type. Deep tech, high technology, software as a service and services as named variants on one model; a pilot as a process, not a state; intellectual property as a negotiation point; procurement as the second process.
- Pipeline health, forecasting and the record. Dwell time, stall rate, conversion, win rate and cost of sales, each with its trap; forecasting by name below thirty closed deals; the customer relationship management system as the one non-negotiable; win/loss review.
Every stage is treated as a claim about what the buyer has done, tested against the record rather than against a feeling. Each block is taught against a worked example prepared in advance, with time to hold the idea against your own pipeline; no participant's own deal is used as a case in the room.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not a rebuilt pipeline, which half a day cannot produce, but the method: how to write a stage as a state with both sides' exit actions, how to write a gate with its disqualifiers, how to record why a deal was dropped, how to read dwell time and stall counts from a handful of deals, and how to forecast a deal by name.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The seven-stage table with both sides' exit actions; the gate definition sheet; an example deal qualification table; the four-condition checklist before a proof of concept; the pipeline measures sheet; the forecast-by-name list; and the day-one capture list for the system of record.
Half day · 8 to 16 participants · online or in person · taught against worked examples
Explicit needs, a real champion, and an advance from every meeting
For companies selling complex, high-value B2B with deals in flight, and the people who sit in the room with the buying centre. The pipeline records what the buyer has done; this is what you do to make the record true.
- SPIN questioning in practice. Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff, with practice on prepared cases; implied needs made explicit; feature, benefit and value; the discipline of a salesperson and the openness of a researcher.
- Buying centres in the room. Economic buyer, technical buyer, user and coach, and their individual win conditions; stances, not only roles; multi-threading without going around your champion; if you do not meet the decision maker, you will lose.
- Champion development as a distinct skill. Qualifying and coaching a real internal sponsor with budget proximity and credibility; the test of a champion; things your champion can use unaltered.
- Insight-led selling for genuinely novel technology. Sense-making, Challenger and SPIN, and choosing between them; competing against the status quo and do nothing; selling at your real technology readiness level; state the limitation before they find it.
- Call planning and running the meeting. Never enter without a plan, an agreed agenda and a defined advance; the one-slide discipline; MEDDICC in practice; quantifying value with the client; talk-to-listen ratio and other self-checks.
Every technique is held to one question: has this buyer said, in their own numbers, what the problem costs and what solving it is worth? Each block is taught against a worked case prepared in advance, with practice on the questioning and the call plan and time to hold each idea against your own company; no participant's own deal is used as a case in the room. It draws on forty years of complex B2B sales, grounded in the SPIN and Miller Heiman methodologies.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not a finished call plan for every deal, which half a day cannot produce, but the method: how to plan the four question types from the problems you solve, how to plan a meeting around an advance with a fallback, how to test and coach a champion, how to build a value case in the buyer's numbers, and how to tell an advance from a continuation.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The call plan sheet; the question planning sheets; the advances table; the buying-centre map by role, stance and win condition; the champion test; the one-page value summary; the evidence pack list; and the after-meeting three questions.
Half day · 8 to 16 participants · online or in person · taught against worked examples
Managing the long hardware sale: the gates inside the customer, the evidence that moves a deal, and the pitfalls that stall it
For deep-tech hardware ventures, in robotics, materials, semiconductors, medical technology and the like, whose buyer runs a technical evaluation, a qualification protocol and a supplier approval before anyone signs. If your buyer qualifies what you make, choose this one; Managing a Complex Sales Pipeline and Complex Selling cover the same ground for any complex sale, in more depth.
- The gates inside the customer. Three processes run at once and only one is yours; every veto holder named; the procurement path mapped during discovery; regulatory dates read as sales dates.
- Keeping it alive. Never single-threaded; stances as well as roles; every meeting ending in an advance the buyer commits to; stalled deals reported as stalled.
- Getting paid for the design-in. A ladder of paid steps from feasibility study to first-article supply; trading rather than giving; the pioneer premium; and whether the specification names you or an envelope.
- Pilot to production. Four conditions before a trial starts; a signed baseline; an unassisted period; automatic conversion; and the second deal negotiated into the first.
It opens on one pipeline, not two: evaluation, qualification, design-in and design win are the work between the states of the pipeline you already manage. Each block is taught against a worked example prepared in advance, with time to hold the idea against your own company. It draws on forty years of complex B2B sales, grounded in the SPIN and Miller Heiman methodologies.
What you leave knowing how to do. Not a finished pipeline, which half a day cannot produce, but the method: how to draw your own journey against the seven states, map one account's gate owners, test a pilot against the four conditions, and price a concession you have already given away.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The seven-state map with the hardware journey inside it; the gate-owner map; the stance map; the mutual action plan; the ladder of paid steps; the concession matrix; and the four-conditions checklist with the pilot design specification.
Half day · 8 to 16 founders · online or in person · taught against worked examples
Your own pipeline, stage by stage, argued out against your own deals with three other companies in the room
For companies that have attended Managing a Complex Sales Pipeline, or know its content, and want their own pipeline designed with them: at most four companies at a time, up to two people each, with each company's own pipeline and own deals as the material.
- Before the session. A preparation questionnaire in six sections does each company's first draft, so the room is spent on the argument; your stages as states, both sides' activities per transition, qualification, stakeholders, sector nuances and metrics.
- In the room. Each company presents its pipeline against the seven states; the group challenges every stage, is it a state, what did the buyer do, is this a gate, where does the pilot sit; the deal qualification table, what you must do and what the customer must do, is written for each stage.
- Leaving with. Your redrawn pipeline with both sides' exit actions, your qualification criteria by stage, your stalled state named, the deals you will stop, and what you will record from day one.
- After the session. The customer relationship management system configured to match, and nothing else; a follow-up one-to-one per company a few weeks on.
This is a working session, not a teaching workshop, and it is the one item in the catalogue where the participants' own material is worked on. The theory is assumed and restated in ten minutes; the rest of the time belongs to the four pipelines and the people challenging them.
What you leave knowing how to do. Here you leave with the thing itself: your own redrawn pipeline and its qualification criteria, argued out against your own deals and written down in the room. And you leave knowing how to keep it a pipeline: how to tell a state from an activity on sight, and how to ask of any deal what the buyer last did.
Tools and templates you learn to use. The preparation questionnaire; the seven-state table with both sides' exit actions; the deal qualification table, two columns per stage; the gate definition sheet; the three budget questions; the minimum configuration of the system of record; and the day-one capture list.
Working session · up to four companies, two people each · three hours · online or in person · your own pipeline is the material
Interested in running one or more of these with your founders, programme or portfolio?
Brewster Barclay|brewster@brewsterbarclay.com|+32 498 67 60 36
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