Interpret a marketing plan's target audience, positioning and channel mix well enough to question its assumptions before approving budget.
Marketing & Sales
Marketing and Sales Fundamentals for Non-Specialist Managers
Equips managers outside marketing and sales with the vocabulary, frameworks and metrics needed to brief agencies, read pipeline reports and question campaign plans with confidence.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Many managers in finance, operations, product and HR are asked to approve marketing budgets, sit on campaign reviews or line-manage sales staff without ever having studied marketing or sales themselves. This course gives non-specialist managers the working vocabulary and frameworks that marketing and sales professionals use every day: the extended marketing mix, positioning, the sales pipeline, forecasting methods and the metrics that separate a healthy campaign or forecast from a weak one. Rather than turning managers into practitioners, it focuses on the questions a confident non-specialist should ask before approving a budget, signing off a brief or reviewing a pipeline report. Teaching combines short case discussions, a live budget exercise and practice reading real pipeline and campaign reports, so participants leave able to brief an agency clearly, interpret a forecast critically and hold marketing and sales colleagues to account using shared language.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Read a sales pipeline report and distinguish healthy coverage ratios from at-risk forecasts based on stage conversion data.
Apply the extended marketing mix of product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence to a real internal case.
Calculate customer acquisition cost and lifetime value from finance and CRM data to judge whether a campaign is profitable.
Draft a one-page brief for an agency or internal team that states objective, audience, budget and success metric clearly.
Distinguish brand-building activity from short-term activation spend when reviewing a marketing budget request.
Ask sales and marketing colleagues targeted questions in planning meetings using shared vocabulary and metrics.
Who Should Attend
Finance managers who approve marketing and sales budgets without a marketing background.
Operations and HR leaders who line-manage marketing or sales staff for the first time.
Founders of small businesses handling marketing decisions alongside other duties.
Product managers who must brief marketing teams on new feature launches.
General managers in regional offices overseeing local marketing and sales activity.
Project managers coordinating cross-functional launches that include marketing and sales workstreams.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01How Marketing Creates and Communicates Value
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Markets, Segments and Positioning Choices
- Differentiate a market, a segment and a niche using a real product category to show how narrowing focus changes messaging.
- Build a positioning statement that states target segment, frame of reference, point of difference and reason to believe.
- Map competitors on a perceptual grid to identify where a brand's positioning is genuinely distinct rather than assumed.
- Critique a sample positioning statement for vague claims that could apply to any competitor in the category.
Session 2The Extended Marketing Mix in Practice
- Apply the seven Ps of product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence to audit an existing offer.
- Assess pricing tactics including cost-plus, value-based and competitor-referenced pricing for a given product scenario.
- Evaluate a distribution and channel plan for gaps between where customers shop and where the product is actually sold.
- Identify which mix elements a non-marketing manager can influence directly versus which require specialist sign-off.
02Reading Campaign Plans and Media Choices
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Objectives, Audiences and Channel Selection
- Translate a business objective into a marketing objective using measurable targets rather than vague ambition statements.
- Match target audience definitions to appropriate channels, comparing paid social, search, out-of-home and email for reach and cost.
- Distinguish brand-building spend aimed at long-term demand from activation spend aimed at short-term conversion.
- Question a media plan's assumptions about reach, frequency and budget allocation before signing it off.
Session 2Budgeting and Return Expectations
- Build a simple campaign budget that separates media cost, production cost and agency fees for clearer approval decisions.
- Estimate return on marketing investment using contribution margin rather than revenue alone to judge campaign viability.
- Compare budgeting methods including percentage of sales, objective-and-task and competitive parity for a given scenario.
- Flag common budget risks such as under-funded frequency or missing contingency for production overruns.
03Understanding the Sales Pipeline and Forecast
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Pipeline Stages and Conversion Metrics
- Map a typical sales pipeline from lead to closed-won and define what evidence moves a deal between stages.
- Calculate stage conversion rates and pipeline coverage ratio to judge whether a forecast is realistic or optimistic.
- Interpret win-rate and sales-cycle-length metrics to spot deteriorating deal quality before it hits revenue.
- Distinguish qualified pipeline from raw lead volume when a sales team reports on progress.
Session 2Forecasting Methods and Deal Reviews
- Compare forecasting methods including rep commit, pipeline-weighted and historical trend for their reliability and bias.
- Run a structured deal review that questions the decision process, budget authority and timeline behind a stated close date.
- Identify red flags in a sales update such as slipping close dates or single-threaded contacts within an account.
- Reconcile a sales forecast against the marketing pipeline of leads to check the two functions are aligned.
04Working Across the Marketing-Sales Boundary
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Handoffs, Lead Quality and Shared Metrics
- Define a shared lead qualification standard so marketing and sales agree on what counts as a sales-ready lead.
- Design a service-level agreement between marketing and sales that sets response times and follow-up expectations.
- Select shared metrics such as cost per qualified lead and marketing-sourced revenue that both functions can track together.
- Diagnose common handoff failures, including leads left uncontacted or feedback on lead quality never reaching marketing.
Session 2Briefing, Reviewing and Governing the Function
- Write a one-page creative or campaign brief that states objective, audience, budget, timeline and success measure.
- Chair a campaign review meeting that separates output quality from strategic fit before approving further spend.
- Set up a simple governance rhythm of monthly metric reviews so marketing and sales activity stays accountable to the business.
- Decide when to escalate a marketing or sales issue to a specialist rather than resolve it without expert input.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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