Career Launchpad — Sales Academy

Unlocked when you pass the final exam. You now know more sales process than most people sitting in SDR seats; this playbook converts that knowledge into a job offer.

The framing: a job search is itself a sales process, and you have just trained in exactly that skill. The search is your first territory, and how you run it is your first evidence. Module 08 owns the interview room; this playbook owns everything around it — finding roles, getting interviews, choosing the offer.

And honestly: nobody can guarantee you a job in 30 days, and anyone who does is selling something. A targeted process gives better conversion at every stage and a realistic path to an offer in weeks-to-months — the maths is in Section 6.

1. Run the search like a pipeline

You are the AE. Roles are deals.

Module 02 maps directly: each target company is an account, each live application an opportunity with a stage, each interview a meeting that must end with a defined next step, each rejection a closed-lost to post-mortem briefly and move past. This isn't a metaphor — searches fail the way pipelines fail: too few opportunities at the top, no follow-up discipline in the middle, hope instead of process at the bottom.

Weekly activity targets

Salespeople manage inputs because outputs lag. Set yours and review them every Friday like a pipeline review:

8–10 targeted applications (tailored, to companies on your list — see Section 3)
20–25 outreach touches (connections, messages, follow-ups)
3–5 live conversations (screens, interviews, informational chats, recruiter calls)
1–2 hours of list research (new target companies, new openings, contact mapping)

Miss a week's targets and you feel it four weeks later as an empty diary — exactly like real pipeline. Working or studying alongside? Halve the numbers, but never let a week hit zero.

The tracker is your CRM

One spreadsheet, one row per opportunity, updated the moment anything happens. Columns to keep:

Column	Why
Company	The account
Role + link	The deal
Stage	Researching → Applied → Outreach live → Screen → HM interview → Final stages → Offer / Closed-lost
Contact(s)	Hiring manager, recruiter, any rep you've spoken to
Last touch + date	What happened last
Next step + date	The column that matters — if it's blank, the deal is stalled
Source	Job board, outreach, referral — so you learn what converts for you
Notes	Comp band, process stages, names, anything an interviewer mentioned

The Module 02 rule applies verbatim: an opportunity without a scheduled next step isn't pipeline, it's a wish. Review weekly, chase everything stalled, and keep the funnel counts (applications → screens → interviews → offers) — they're your conversion data, and a genuinely strong interview answer about pipeline maths.

Why 20 targeted beats 200 sprayed

Mass applying feels productive and converts terribly — a generic CV against hundreds of applicants converts at low single digits, and teaches you nothing between attempts. Twenty companies researched properly gets you a tailored CV, a named hiring manager, an outreach sequence, and often a referral — each of which multiplies your response rate.

Spraying's second cost: 200 applications means 190+ rejections and silences, which corrodes morale faster than anything else in the search. Targeted work produces fewer, better at-bats and keeps you diagnosing rather than despairing.

2. Where the jobs are (UK)

Titles to search

Entry-level sales hides behind a dozen names — search all of them:

SDR / BDR (Sales / Business Development Representative) — the classic entry seat: outbound, booking meetings for AEs
Business Development Executive / Associate — often the same job, sometimes full-cycle at smaller firms
Graduate sales / sales graduate scheme — structured entry routes at larger companies
Inside sales / Sales Executive — phone-and-video selling, often full-cycle on smaller deals
Associate AE / Junior Account Executive — rarer as a first seat but real, especially where you bring domain knowledge
Account manager (junior) / Customer Success Associate — the retention-side entry point from Module 06

In life sciences specifically, add: technical sales specialist, scientific sales, territory sales associate, clinical sales associate, market access associate. These often prefer a science background over a sales one — which is the trade you want.

Where to look

LinkedIn Jobs — the biggest pool; set alerts on the titles above and check daily, because early applicants get read.
Otta / Welcome to the Jungle — curated startup and scale-up roles with salary transparency; strong for health tech.
Company careers pages — your 20 target companies (Section 3) may post here before, or instead of, the boards. Check weekly.
Specialist recruiters — UK life-science and med-tech sales recruitment is a real niche; register with two or three agencies, remembering their incentive is a placement, not your best outcome.
General boards (Indeed, Totaljobs) — lower signal, occasional gems; alerts only, don't browse.

How to read a sales JD

You trained on comp in Module 01. Decode before you apply:

"£30k base, £45k OTE" — OTE is a projection, not a promise; the base is the only guaranteed number. Around two-thirds base, one-third variable is normal for entry seats (e.g. £30k base, £45k OTE).
"OTE £80k, uncapped!!" with a low or unstated base — if the base isn't stated, assume it's low, and ask at screen stage.
"Self-sourced pipeline" — you'll generate your own leads, not work marketing's. Fine if stated honestly; a red flag if paired with "warm leads provided" in the same advert.
"Fast-paced, hungry, KPI-driven" in every paragraph — often a high-churn boiler-room. Cross-check Glassdoor and rep tenure on LinkedIn (lots of 6–9-month stints in the same seat is the tell).
No product, sector, or customer named — frequently an agency fishing for CVs rather than a real vacancy.

Your sector angle is the differentiator

A career-changer competing on sales experience loses; one competing on domain credibility doesn't have to. Any science, clinical, or healthcare background — a degree, lab time, NHS exposure, even serious self-study through Module 07 — lets you talk about assays, care pathways, or ICS budgets in a way a five-years generalist SDR cannot.

So weight your target list towards life sciences and health tech, and say it in every application: companies selling into labs, pharma, and the NHS lose deals to reps who don't understand the buyer — you are the fix. It's the biggest lever a no-experience candidate has, and most never pull it.

3. Targeted outreach over mass applying

This is the doctrine, and it's the same skill you drilled in Module 03 — ICP, research, multi-touch sequences — pointed at employers instead of prospects.

Build the 20-company target list

Define your ICP for an employer: sector (life sciences / health tech), size (30–500 employees: big enough to have a sales team and onboarding, small enough that hiring managers read their own messages), location or remote policy, and a sales motion you could credibly learn. Fill the list from funding announcements, sector news, trade-show exhibitor lists, Otta filters, and "similar companies" trails on LinkedIn.

Tier it like a territory: Tier 1 (dream fit, live opening or strong signal) gets the full sequence below; Tier 2 applications plus lighter outreach; Tier 3 the watch list. Replenish as companies close out.

Find the hiring manager

For SDR/BDR roles the hiring manager is usually the SDR Manager, Head of Sales Development, or Sales Manager; at smaller companies, the Head of Sales / CRO / a founder. Find them via the company's LinkedIn people page filtered to sales titles.

While you're there, identify a current rep (for the informational chat, Section 5) and the internal recruiter if one exists. Log all three — contact mapping, exactly as Module 03 taught it.

The sequence: connection → note → value-touch → ask

Run it over roughly two weeks, alongside your application, never instead of it:

Connection request to the hiring manager — short personalised note, or blank if the note won't be genuine. No pitch.
The note (on acceptance, or as a follow-up): two or three sentences — who you are, why their company specifically, a soft signal you've applied. No request yet.
The value-touch (3–5 days later): something that shows thinking, not neediness — an observation about their market, a relevant question, a reaction to something they published. This touch separates you from every "just following up" candidate.
The ask (3–5 days later): direct and small — "I've applied for the SDR opening; I'm a career-changer with a [your background] background, trained in the full sales process end to end. Could I get 15 minutes, or is there someone better placed to speak to?"

The actual templates — connection notes, the value-touch, the ask, the recruiter version, the referral request — live in the swipe file (at /resources in the app). Personalise them; every hiring manager has seen the unedited versions.

No reply after the sequence? One polite close-the-loop message (the break-up logic from Section 6), then move on. Genuinely personalised outreach gets replies maybe 15–30% of the time — most won't answer, and the ones who do change everything.

Apply AND outreach, in parallel

Always both: the application gets you into the official process; the outreach gets it read — a CV with a human who recognises your name converts several times better than the same PDF cold in the pile. Apply the same day as touch 1, so the manager who looks you up finds you in the system.

Referral etiquette

A referral from a current employee is the highest-converting route in, and asking has rules: ask someone who has actually interacted with you — a rep from an informational chat, a connection who knows your work — never a stranger in a first message.

Make it easy and revocable: "If you felt comfortable referring me I'd be grateful — and if not, no problem at all, the chat was valuable on its own." They lend their credibility either way, so never resent a no — and always report back what happened; people who close the loop get referred again.

4. A sales CV with no sales experience

The shape

Two pages, UK norms: no photo, no date of birth, no "references available on request". Contact details, a three-line profile, experience in reverse order, education, a short skills/interests block. Recruiters give it 30 seconds on first pass — the top third of page one does almost all the work.

The profile is the Archetype 6 spine from Module 08 compressed to three lines: background, deliberate turn to sales with the training you've done, sector target. Name the Academy training and any certificate; it's your proof of intent.

Translate any background into commercial evidence

Every background contains commercial moments; surface them in sales language. Retail and hospitality contain targets, upsells, and difficult customers. Lab and academic work contain stakeholder persuasion, delivery to deadline, and presenting to sceptical audiences. Any committee, fundraising effort, or side venture contains demand generation from a standing start.

Three kinds of evidence outrank everything else: numbers (money, percentages, volumes, rankings), ownership ("I ran / I built / I persuaded" — never "was involved in"), and persuasion moments (anyone you brought from no to yes). Mine your history for all three before writing a single bullet — the same audit as Module 08's Archetype 9.

The bullet formula

Action verb + what you did + measurable outcome. "Raised £3,000 in sponsorship by cold-approaching 20 local businesses, converting 4" beats a paragraph about responsibilities. Two to four bullets per role, best first, every bullet earning its line.

No real number? Use a named consequence ("adopted as standard practice", "renewed for a second year") — but hunt the number first, and know how any number you claim was measured, because interviewers will ask.

What to cut

Duties with no outcome ("responsible for stock management"). Skills lists padded with Microsoft Office. Technical detail that doesn't serve a commercial story — one line of scientific context, then the delivery and persuasion. Anything over ~10 years old unless it carries a serious number. Hobbies, unless they evidence resilience or competitiveness with a concrete fact.

ATS, honestly

Applicant tracking systems mostly parse and store CVs for humans to search and read — the "robot rejects you for missing keywords" story is largely mythology at the company sizes you're targeting (small-company ATSs filter and organise; auto-rejection is an enterprise-volume phenomenon). What's actually true: clean single-column layout, standard headings (tables and graphics parse badly), PDF unless told otherwise, and naturally include the words the JD uses, because a human recruiter searches and skims for them. Time spent "beating the ATS" is better spent on Section 3, where a named human takes your CV out of the pile entirely.

5. LinkedIn as your landing page

Every hiring manager you contact will look at your profile before replying. It's your landing page: its job is to convert a curious click into a reply.

Headline, About, Featured

Headline — not "Seeking opportunities". State the offer: "[Science/your] background → B2B sales | Trained in full-cycle sales process | Target: SDR/AE roles in life sciences & health tech". Searchable, specific, confident.
About — the career-change spine in first person: your background as an asset, the deliberate turn, the proof of intent (training, drills, mock calls), the landing (the sector, and why). Short paragraphs; write like a human.
Featured — your certificate, plus one artefact that shows work: a post on what you learned, a mock cold-call breakdown, a one-page territory sketch. One good artefact beats five thin ones.
Open to Work — on for recruiters at minimum. The public green banner costs a little polish and gains recruiter traffic; most entry-level candidates should take that trade.

Activity that signals sales-readiness without cringe

You don't need to become a content creator, and don't post hustle-culture platitudes — hiring managers scroll past "the grind never stops" with a wince. Low-cringe, high-signal: thoughtful comments on posts from sales leaders and sector companies, an occasional short post on something concrete you learned, sector news shared with one line of your own analysis.

The bar: would a sales manager reading it think "this person thinks like a rep"? Two or three touches a week is plenty — consistency beats volume, and silence beats cringe.

Informational chats: learn from reps at target companies

Message SDRs and AEs at target companies — not to ask for a job, but to ask about the job. Reps remember being new, response rates are decent, and fifteen minutes gives you intelligence no JD contains — and makes you a warm name inside the building when you apply.

Questions that make the chat worth both people's time:

"What does a typical week actually look like — what's the split between calls, admin, and meetings?"
"What surprised you most after joining?"
"How does the team get its pipeline — marketing, SDRs, self-sourced?"
"What separates the reps who ramp well here from those who struggle?"
"Knowing what you know now, what would you tell someone applying?"

Never pivot the favour into "so, can you refer me?" in the same call. Send a thank-you, act on what you heard; if it went well, the referral question is natural a week or two later (Section 3 rules apply).

6. Managing the pipeline to offer

Screening-call logistics

Treat every screen as a real meeting: quiet room, headset, the JD and your tracker row in front of you, your questions ready (Module 08, Section 7 — process, timeline, why the seat is open). Answer unknown numbers during a live search or return the call fast — recruiters work sequentially through shortlists. Log everything immediately afterwards: names, stages, comp band, anything promised. The Notes column is where later-stage advantages come from.

Scheduling discipline

Reply to scheduling requests within hours, offer specific slots rather than "I'm flexible", confirm the day before, never miss or move an interview short of an emergency. Managers read scheduling as a work sample: slow to book reads as slow to follow up with customers.

The follow-up

Same-day thank-you note after every conversation, every stage — Module 08 gives the shape (recap their priorities, address anything you fumbled, confirm next steps). Almost no candidate does it.

Chasing without desperation

When a promised date passes, mirror the Module 03 follow-up craft: wait two working days, then one short, assumption-free nudge with a specific question ("Is a decision still expected this week?"); one more spaced follow-up if silence continues.

Then the break-up email, exactly as you learned it for prospects: name it as your last message, close the loop with grace, leave the door open — "I'll assume the timing isn't right and stop chasing; if things change I'd still love to talk." It's polite, self-respecting, and revives more processes than any pushy chase. Never: daily messages, guilt, or asking for feedback mid-chase (ask after a formal rejection, once, graciously — occasionally you'll get gold).

Run parallel processes, deliberately

Never sequence one company at a time — you'll lose months and negotiate from weakness. Run every live process in parallel and manage the timeline like quarter-end: if one company reaches offer while a preferred one is mid-process, tell the laggard honestly ("I've received an offer with a deadline; you're a preferred option — is there any way to accelerate?"). Companies move fast for candidates other companies want.

Ask for reasonable time on any offer deadline (a week is normal; exploding 48-hour offers are themselves a red flag). Don't accept and keep interviewing — reneging burns goodwill in a sector where people move between the same companies for decades.

The rejection maths (read this section twice)

Rejection volume isn't evidence you're failing; it's funnel arithmetic — the same arithmetic you drilled in Module 02. Realistic shapes for a no-experience candidate (estimates, not physics — your numbers will vary):

Cold, untargeted applications → first conversation: ~3–5%
Targeted application + outreach + tailored CV: ~10–20%
First conversation → hiring-manager stage: ~40–50%
Hiring-manager stage → final stages: ~40–50%
Final stages → offer: ~25–35%

Multiply that through: an offer costs roughly 12–25 first conversations, which at targeted conversion rates means a search measured in weeks to a few months of consistent activity — collecting dozens to a couple of hundred nos and silences on the way. Every one of them is the funnel working, not the funnel broken.

So handle it the way you were trained to handle a quota: control inputs (the weekly targets), post-mortem the losses that teach something and file the rest without rumination, and diagnose from your tracker — applications but no screens means fix the CV and targeting (Sections 3–4); screens but no second stages means drill Module 08.

7. Choosing and closing the offer

Module 08, Section 8 is your full offer-stage playbook — comp anatomy, the five before-you-sign questions, negotiation posture. This section is the decision layer on top.

Read the comp plan before you sign

Ask to see the plan document itself, not just the offer letter — a company that won't show it is telling you something. Check the base/OTE split; ramp protection (a guarantee or draw for your first months — and whether a draw is recoverable); accelerators and caps (a hard cap is a concern); and the quota's history — "what proportion of the team hit it over the last four quarters?" asked one final time, because the answer prices the OTE.

Speak to a current rep before signing if you can — you'd never let a customer buy without a reference call.

What moves at entry level — and what doesn't

Movable, roughly in order: start date, ramp guarantee length, base within the advertised band, sign-on bonus, occasionally year-one quota. Largely immovable for a first hire: the OTE structure, the band itself, equity beyond the standard grant.

The strongest posture is Module 08's: total-comp focused, flexible on base in exchange for ramp protection — "I'll meet you at the lower base if the guarantee runs six months, because I back myself on the variable." Negotiate once, politely, everything on the table together; entry-level offers are rarely pulled over one respectful ask.

Red flags — walk away

"100% commission" or commission-only "roles" — not a job; free labour with a lottery ticket attached. Walk.
No ramp protection on a long sales cycle — you'll earn base-only for months by design; a refusal to discuss a guarantee prices your failure in.
Quota nobody hits — if attainment questions get evasion twice, believe the evasion.
High-churn signals — a team of 6-month tenures, a re-advertised seat, an exploding offer, pressure not to speak to current reps.
Vague product or customers at final stage — if you still can't say precisely what they sell and to whom, that's their discovery failure, not yours.

One flag is a question to ask; two or three together is your answer. A bad first sales seat costs more than three extra months of searching — it can end the career change entirely.

Choosing between offers

Rank by what predicts a career-changer's success, not headline OTE: coaching quality first (the manager's honest answer about 1:1s and deal reviews — Module 08's point that this beats £10k of base holds), then ramp realism, pipeline sources (some marketing-fed pipeline beats pure cold-start), team attainment, sector fit — and only then the comp delta.

Resigning well

If employed: resign in writing after signing the new contract (never before), give contractual notice, keep it short, warm, and reason-light. No counter-offer dramatics — if you'd have stayed for money you'd have asked for it — and no criticism on the way out, however earned. UK sectors are villages; the manager you leave gracefully today is a reference, a customer, or an interviewer in five years.

8. Day zero to day 30

Between signing and starting

You typically have two to six weeks. Rest first — ramp is a sprint and you want to arrive fresh. Then, at low intensity:

The product: everything public — website, demos, case studies, competitor comparisons, reviews. Arrive able to explain what it does, for whom, in one plain paragraph.
The ICP and buyers: who buys, who uses, who pays, what the compelling events are (Module 03's lens). For NHS or pharma buyers, re-read Module 07 with this company in mind — the stakeholder map now has names.
The CRM basics: find out what they run (usually Salesforce or HubSpot) and do the free fundamentals training. Arriving CRM-literate saves week one for selling.
The market: the company's news, competitors, and sector press — so you join conversations instead of watching them.

Use the Academy during ramp

The curriculum was built to be re-read from inside a seat:

Days 1–30: your 30/60/90 from Module 08 is now real — run its Learn phase, calibrated against what their last successful ramp actually looked like. Module 02 for CRM hygiene from day one; Module 03 as you build your first list.
First live calls: Module 04 before every early discovery call; Module 05 when the first objections and stalls arrive.
First quarter: Module 06 when renewals and account work appear; Module 07 continuously if you sell into the NHS or pharma — the vocabulary compounds.
Keep drilling: ten minutes in the drill trainer keeps the frameworks warm while the job makes them concrete.

Three months in, when a friend asks how you got the job — send them here. The best evidence this process works is the people who ran it.

Launchpad checklist

Set up the tracker (Section 1 columns); commit to weekly targets and a Friday pipeline review.
Write your employer ICP; build the tiered 20-company target list.
Rewrite your CV: 2 pages, commercial evidence surfaced, every bullet on the action + outcome formula.
Rebuild LinkedIn: headline, About, Featured artefact, Open to Work for recruiters.
Set job alerts on all the Section 2 titles across LinkedIn, Otta/Welcome to the Jungle, and target-company careers pages.
Register with 2–3 specialist life-science/health-tech sales recruiters.
Map the hiring manager, one rep, and the recruiter at every Tier 1 company; log them.
Personalise the swipe-file templates (at /resources in the app) into your own voice.
Book 2–3 informational chats with reps at target companies; send thank-yous, act on what you hear.
Start the weekly rhythm: 8–10 targeted applications, each with the outreach sequence in parallel.
Build your Module 08 story bank and drill it — before the first screen, not after.
Prepare a one-page company brief before every conversation; verify facts with a live search that week.
Run every interview stage by the Module 08 playbook: notes, stage-close, same-day follow-up.
Chase on the break-up email logic: two spaced nudges, then one graceful close-the-loop message.
Keep processes parallel; use offer deadlines to accelerate preferred companies; never accept-and-keep-looking.
At offer: get the comp plan document, ask the attainment question, check ramp protection, speak to a current rep.
Screen against the red flags — commission-only, no ramp, evasive attainment answers, churn signals — and walk from two or more.
Negotiate once, politely: start date, ramp guarantee, base within band.
Sign, then resign in writing with full notice and zero drama.
Before day one: product, ICP, CRM fundamentals — then run your 30/60/90 with the Academy at your elbow.