Student experiences - Sales courses at Turku UAS
Hi there and welcome back to TUASpire!
My name is Verena (20) and I am from Regensburg, Germany. This week it should have been the last introduction post of our team. However, as my educational background is quite similar to one of our other members – Yannik – I decided to talk about something else. Sales. Experiences, expectations and everything else that comes to my mind.
First, do I have any prior experience in the Sales area? Yes! I have been working as a waitress at a guesthouse for about 3 years. My main task was to take orders and serve the dishes; however, more than often, you had to try to sell extras, e.g. desserts, coffee, etc. that was not even mentioned by the guest but y’know sometimes they don’t even know what they want and you have to remind them.
After that, I was working at a retail shop for clothing. Next up I will depict how a regular day at work looked like: Each time when a potential customer finally dared to enter our shop, my colleagues and I joined forces and approached her/him carefully, offering our assistance each time eye contact was made. Lingering around the customer and presenting clothes that might be of interest for him/her until something was eventually bought. If we didn’t do that, we earned stern glances from our superiors. Okay, it might not have been as intense as I described it but sometimes it felt like that.
As you can see, I have already gained some experience in Sales and to be honest any sort of experience can teach you something. Unfortunately, I never had any classes in that area which could have helped me in my previous jobs but this is about to change!
Sales courses at Turku UAS
Here at TUAS, I have taken several courses that are heavily Sales themed and I must admit that all of them are very interesting. Let’s start with the first course. “Technical Sales” by Timo Holopainen. In this course, my fellow students and I are learning more about the theory of Sales. Have you ever heard of SPIN questions? No? Well, it has nothing to do with spinning. Who would have thought? The SPIN technique is a sequence of questions to be asked in a particular order that will guide you towards closing the deal. In addition, you will learn how to deal with objections (this would have helped me big time back when I was working) and a lot more other things.
Next, we have the “Sales Workshop” also by Timo. In this course, you practically can apply everything you have learnt in the Technical Sales class. Fun fact: TUASpire was brought into being by the Sales Workshop course. The other teams of this course are working on improving the range of the Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards, writing a handbook about the Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards, organizing an event for Alumni or developing a buyer’s deck, which is a card game, simulating a business meeting. Please don’t worry if you are not familiar with the previous-mentioned projects as we will introduce them more in detail in future posts.
At last, we have the course “Sales Management, Methods and Tools” by Jouko Broman and Jaana Merikallio. The first one teaches you how to manage things, people and time as well as how to become a good leader in the future. The second one is more of a game than a course. In this one, you have to start a company, write a business plan and think in somebody else’s shoes (e.g. Managing Director, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, etc.)
The combination of these 3 courses is powerful as you do not only learn the theory but apply everything you have learnt in practical projects. Would these courses have helped me in my previous jobs? Definitely! These courses make me feel more confident when returning to the actual working life. I hope that you have learnt a little bit of what my teammates and I are doing aside from keeping this blog running and might even be more interested in these sales-related topics.
Anyway, that’s about it for this week’s post and I hope to see you again next week.
Have a wonderful day!
Your TUASpire team
(IG: @/tuaspire)