# AI for Sales Professionals Course (Self-Paced)

Canonical URL: <https://www.graduateschool.edu/courses/ai-for-sales-professionals-course-self-paced>

## Overview

This self-paced course takes you from your first Claude conversation to a fully configured AI workflow built for sales professionals. You’ll learn to write effective prompts, organize ongoing work with Projects, build reusable templates with Artifacts, and connect Claude to workplace tools — all using sales-specific examples, exercises, and real deal documents. By the end, you’ll have a personalized Claude system designed around your sales role and your pipeline priorities.

Sales professionals spend too much of their week on work that isn’t selling: researching prospects, writing follow-up emails, customizing proposals, updating CRM notes, and preparing for meetings. Claude can handle the research, writing, and analysis that surrounds every deal — so you can spend more time in conversations that close revenue. This course covers the full sales cycle: prospect research and account briefs, outreach sequences and follow-up emails, proposal and RFP response drafting, objection handling scripts, pipeline analysis, competitive positioning, and executive presentation content. The course culminates in a capstone where you produce a complete deal pursuit package using your full Claude system.

## What you'll learn

- Write structured prompts that produce accurate results for writing, analysis, summarization, and research
- Set up and use Projects, Artifacts, Styles, and Memory to build a personalized Claude workflow
- Apply advanced prompting techniques including role-based prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, and the You Ask Me method
- Connect Claude to workplace tools including Google Drive, Gmail, Excel, and PowerPoint
- Apply Claude to core sales workflows including prospect research, proposal drafting, objection handling, pipeline analysis, and competitive positioning
- Build a complete sales Claude system and produce a capstone deal pursuit package ready for workplace use

## Curriculum

#### Module 1: Getting Started with Claude AI

- Explain how Claude works in plain language and identify the model tiers, plans, and interface
- Understand the context window, how Claude processes information, and when to start new conversations
- Practice your first Claude conversation using a sales-specific prompt
- Identify what Claude does well, what it doesn’t, and when human judgment is essential

#### Module 2: Prompting Fundamentals

- Apply the five-part prompt framework: context, task, format, constraints, and examples
- Write effective prompts across five use cases: writing, summarization, analysis, research, and creative problem-solving
- Recognize and fix common prompting mistakes that produce vague or unusable output
- Practice prompting with sales scenarios: drafting a prospect follow-up email, summarizing an RFP, and writing a discovery call prep brief

#### Module 3: Working with Files & Documents

- Upload and analyze images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and documents directly in Claude
- Use Claude to extract, compare, and summarize information from uploaded files
- Work with sales-specific file types: RFPs, proposals, pipeline exports, CRM screenshots, and competitive intelligence reports
- Complete a hands-on file analysis exercise using provided sales sample documents

#### Module 4: Projects & Knowledge Bases

- Explain how Projects use custom instructions and knowledge bases to organize ongoing work
- Write effective Project instructions that encode your role, audience, format preferences, and rules
- Upload reference documents and understand how RAG retrieves relevant content
- Create a sales Project for a major deal pursuit using your company’s solution one-pager, a prospect brief, and a sample proposal

#### Module 5: Artifacts, Styles, Memory & Usage Management

- Create reusable deliverables with Artifacts and edit them directly or through conversation
- Build custom Styles that match your professional communication voice
- Configure Memory to retain key context about you and your work across conversations
- Apply usage management techniques to extend your plan value

#### Module 6: Advanced Prompting & AI Tool Selection

- Use role-based prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning, and multi-step workflows
- Apply Extended Thinking, web search, and the You Ask Me technique for complex tasks
- Compare Claude with ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini to choose the right tool for each task
- Practice advanced prompting with sales scenarios: diagnosing a stalled deal, building a multi-touch outreach sequence, and preparing for a negotiation

#### Module 7: Introduction to Claude Cowork

- Explain what Cowork is and how it differs from the claude.ai chat interface
- Read, write, and manage files from your desktop environment
- Configure guardrails, file permissions, and network settings for safe use
- Understand prompt injection risks and how to protect against them

#### Module 8: Context System, Connectors & Integrations

- Build foundational context files and set Global Instructions that apply to every Cowork session
- Connect Claude to Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, and other workplace tools
- Use Claude natively in Excel and PowerPoint with the Office add-ins
- Configure your context system and connections for sales workflows, including pipeline analysis in Excel and deal presentations in PowerPoint

#### Module 9: AI for Sales — Core Workflows

- Use Claude and web search to produce one-page prospect research briefs with company overview, recent news, likely pain points, and conversation starters
- Draft customized proposals and RFP responses using your solution documentation and the prospect’s stated requirements
- Build objection-handling scripts with evidence-based responses and competitive positioning against key rivals
- Analyze a pipeline export to identify at-risk deals, stalled opportunities, and priority actions for the week
- Complete a hands-on lab producing a multi-document sales content package

#### Module 10: Capstone — Build Your Sales Claude System

- Audit your sales tasks and identify the highest-value opportunities for Claude assistance
- Configure a personalized sales Claude system: Projects, context files, Styles, and connected tools
- Run a complete end-to-end deal pursuit workflow: prospect brief, customized proposal, competitive positioning document, and a three-email follow-up sequence
- Create a Week 1 action plan for applying what you’ve learned to your sales role

## Instructors

### Steve Pesklo — Instructor

Steve is an energetic trainer who focuses on applying technical concepts to everyday work practices. He is the founder and president of SoftLake Solutions, a company that specializes in providing data and AI applications to identify fraud for Internal Audit, Criminal Investigations, Forensic Accounting, Privacy, and Compliance.

Steve brings a large amount of experience across multiple industries and government agencies. He is an expert in implementing large data analysis projects across the world, including Inland Revenue in the UK and Argentina, New Zealand, Africa and across Europe. Previously, he was the manager of Data Architecture and Data Services for a large mortgage company. He is a frequent speaker on data analytics and project management topics and speaks fluent German. He has been teaching at the Graduate School for over 10 years.

Steve has an M.B.A. from the University of St. Thomas and a B.S. in Computer Science from California Lutheran University and the Universität Salzburg in Austria. He is certified as a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Project Management Professional (PMP), and a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM).

## Pricing

**Tuition:** $899