Business Development & Sales Certificate

The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. In this course, students will learn marketing terminology and principles including the marketing mix, marketing segmentation and how external forces impact marketing strategy as well as how marketing fits into the organization.The impact of ethical issues, diversity, globalization and social responsibility on marketing decisions will also be examined.

This course explores the psychological and behavioral factors that influence consumer decision-making. Through a combination of theoretical and applied approaches, students will examine how individuals acquire, process, and use information to make purchasing decisions. Topics include the impact of social and cultural factors on consumer behavior, the role of emotions in decision-making, and the effects of marketing and advertising on consumer choices. Students will apply their knowledge of consumer behavior to the development of buyer personas for an organization.

Students will learn how to nurture and identify qualified leads and how to turn those leads into returning customers as they examine the role of sales and business development in the organization. Through role-play activities students will experience the sales process, as they practice how to overcome objections. Students will assess their own sales style and will earn industry standard sales certifications.

Ensuring a positive experience and lasting customer/client relationships is crucial for business managers across employment sectors - public, private, and non-profit. Topics such as business process management, customer experience management, customer relationship management, customer service support, and related performance measurements and technologies are covered in this course. Assignments and discussions require application and synthesis of business knowledge and include global issues such as the generation of revenue through strong customer relationships and related outsourcing issues. Students also begin to view business as a group of integrated processes, rather than a group of functional silos.

Students will learn effective workplace negotiation skills and strategies that they can apply in a wide variety of business contexts including operations, business development, sales, and client relations. Students will explore the negotiation process, including identifying the objectives, challenges and motivations of each party, the various transactional structures that can achieve each party's objectives and the ethical, professional, political, and social issues that can arise in a business negotiation.

In the culminating course for the certificates, students will reframe knowledge and competencies from their certificate into a workable model that is applied through experiential learning models to a professional opportunity. Students will apply these competencies as professional best practice in a project that incorporates relevant research findings from the field.