The presentation / case stage — The sales interview playbook

The four common briefs

30/60/90 plan — the most common brief for AE/AM roles.
"Sell us our product" — common at product-led startups.
Territory plan — field-based roles with a geographic patch.
Mock demo — presales/solutions seats, and increasingly product-led AE seats.

Universal rules:

confirm brief and audience in advance;
slides sparse, thinking dense;
timebox to 60–70% of the slot;
end every deck with your assumptions listed and questions for them — it turns assessment into working session.

The 30/60/90 template — AE/AM in health tech

Days 1–30 — Learn (earn the right to an opinion).

Product: complete onboarding; get demo-certified as early as they'll allow — and if you have any presenting or demo experience from your past life, flag it and volunteer for week 3–4, not month 3.
Customers: shadow live calls and recordings; sit with customer success on two live accounts.
Market: map the buying landscape (NHS: trust vs ICS structures, frameworks, budget cycles; lab tools: lab-manager vs procurement dynamics — Module 07 gives you the vocabulary; use it precisely).
Internal: meet marketing, product, clinical/scientific colleagues; learn CRM hygiene from day one; ask every top rep — "what do our best customers have in common?"
Exit criteria: standard demo unaided; ICP and top-3 objections articulated; territory list mapped.

Days 31–60 — Build (pipeline and first motions).

Build and tier the target account list; begin outbound on tier 1.
First discovery calls solo with manager shadowing; co-run late-stage deals with a senior rep.
Reactivate dormant leads and closed-lost accounts from the CRM — the fastest honest source of early pipeline.
One in-territory event; book meetings off the back of it.
Exit criteria: self-sourced meetings booked [target to be set with the hiring manager]; pipeline building toward their ramp expectation; first opportunities qualified into stage 2+.

Days 61–90 — Earn (own the number).

Full-cycle ownership of new opportunities; first closes if the cycle allows — ask their cycle length first: on a 9-month NHS cycle, "first closes by day 90" exposes you as naive, so commit to stage-progression milestones instead.
Territory review to the manager: what's working, pipeline maths against quota, what you need.
Request a customer reference visit and a win/loss debrief on two recent deals.
Exit criteria: pipeline at [their coverage multiple]; forecast discipline; a written quarter-2 plan.

Present it with the caveat that closes the deal on you: "These numbers are placeholders — the first thing I'd do is calibrate them against what your last successful ramp actually looked like." That sentence shows exactly the judgement they're screening for.

"Sell us our product" — the rules

Never open with the product. Open with discovery on the panel: "Before I show you anything — you're playing a practice manager at a 12,000-patient GP practice, yes? What does your registration workload look like today?" They built the product; you cannot teach them their own features, so the only thing being scored is your process — feature-dumping is an automatic fail.
Discover for 30–40% of your time, then position only the two or three capabilities that answer what they told you, in their words.
Handle the objection they will throw (they always throw one) with the Section 4 method.
Close for a concrete next step — a pilot scope, a stakeholder meeting, a procurement conversation.
In the debrief, explain your choices: "I ignored features X and Y because nothing you said made them relevant." That sentence wins the exercise.

Territory and demo briefs, briefly

Territory plan

Segment the patch (for a life-sciences corridor territory: universities and institutes, pharma/biotech clusters, NHS trusts),
tier accounts by fit and accessibility,
name the first 10 targets and why them,
show the maths (meetings → opportunities → pipeline vs quota), and
list the data you'd want from marketing.

Use real place-names and real institutions from the brief's geography — an afternoon of research here makes the plan feel like a working document rather than a slide exercise.

Mock demo

Open with a playback of their requirements,
demo against those requirements only,
check in every few minutes ("is this how your team would use it?"),
park deep technical rabbit holes with a promised follow-up.

Tailoring beats coverage (Module 04's demo rules apply in full).

7. Questions to ask interviewers — tiered

You are qualifying this job the way a good AE qualifies a deal — and the questions themselves demonstrate the skill being hired.

For a candidate with no sales record this section is disproportionately powerful: you can't yet prove you've carried a number, but you can ask precisely the questions of someone who understands how numbers work.

Recruiter screen (logistics + surface qualification)

"What does the full process look like — stages, who I'd meet, timeline?"
"Why is the seat open — growth, backfill, or a new team?"
"What's the comp structure at a high level — base/OTE split?"
"What separates the candidates who get through this process from those who don't?"

Hiring manager (the deal-qualification tier — ask at least three)

"What proportion of the team hit quota last quarter / last year?" The single most important question. Evasion is data.
"What's the ramp expectation — how long to full quota, and is there a guarantee or draw during ramp?"
"What's the realistic sales cycle and typical deal — size, stakeholders, procurement route?" For NHS sellers this reveals whether the motion is real or aspirational.
"What's the pipeline mix — marketing/SDR-sourced versus self-sourced?" This defines what the job actually is day to day.
"What did the last person who succeeded in this seat do differently?"
"How do you coach? What does your 1:1 and deal-review rhythm look like?" — for a first sales role, the honest answer to this question matters more to your success than £10k of base salary.

Field note
Asking "what proportion of the team hit quota?" does more than gather data — it changes how the interviewer reads you. Sales managers hear it as the question an experienced rep asks, because reps who have been burned by a fantasy OTE always ask it; candidates who ask only about culture and progression read as junior. And if the answer comes back vague or defensive, you have learned more about the seat than an hour of polished pitch would have told you.

Exec close (strategy + conviction tier)

"What has to be true in 18 months for this hire to have been a clear win?"
"Where does growth come from over the next two years — new logos, expansion, new markets?"
"What's the runway/funding position, and how does the sales plan map to it?" (At listed/large companies: "how is the commercial org performing against plan this year?")
"What nearly stops customers buying from you, and what are you doing about it?"
And always, before you leave: "Do you have any reservations about my candidacy I can address now?"

8. The offer stage: how sales comp works and what to negotiate

Anatomy of a sales offer

Base / variable split. AE offers commonly sit near 50/50 (e.g. £50k base / £100k OTE); AM and presales roles often run richer on base than the AE's 50/50 — 60/40 to 80/20 is common. Entry-level and career-change AE offers may sit lower in absolute terms but keep the same shape. OTE is a projection, not a promise — its credibility is exactly the team-attainment question from Section 7.
Ramp protection: a guarantee (variable paid at 100% for the first n months) or a draw (an advance against future commission — check whether it's recoverable, i.e. clawed back from later earnings). For a first sales role on long NHS cycles, ramp protection matters more than an extra £5k of base — you will not close much in month three, and the plan should acknowledge that.
Accelerators and caps: what rate you earn above 100% of quota, and whether commission is capped. A cap is a red flag worth naming.
Equity: at startups options are real comp — ask for share count and total shares outstanding, strike price, vesting (typically 4 years/1-year cliff), and the exercise window on leaving. Individual-contributor grants run from a few tenths of a percent at seed down to hundredths by Series A/B — the questions above tell you what yours is actually worth.
The rest: territory definition, how the quota was set, commission timing (monthly/quarterly; on invoice or cash), pension, car/travel allowance for field roles.

What's actually negotiable

Roughly in order of how readily companies move: start date and sign-on bonus → ramp guarantee length → base within band → equity → OTE/quota (rarely moves, though year-one quota sometimes does).

UK notice periods constrain start dates — a career-changer often has one to serve; name it early, it's expected.

The career-changer's strongest posture is total-comp focused: flexible on base, strong on variable and ramp protection — trade base flexibility for a longer guarantee, a better accelerator or more equity, and say you're doing so.

"I'll take the lower base if the ramp guarantee runs six months, because I back myself on the variable" makes sales leaders want to hire you more, not less — it is the sound of someone who intends to earn.

Voice from the field
"Salary terms without success terms is Russian roulette."
— Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference (2016)

Before you sign — the final qualification

"Can I see the comp plan document, not just the offer letter?" (Non-negotiable — a company that won't show the plan is telling you something.)
"What did quota attainment across the team look like over the last four quarters?"
"How was my quota set, and when was it last changed?"
"Exactly how is my territory/account list defined, and what protects it from change?"
"When and how is commission paid, and what happens to pipeline I've built if I leave?"

If possible, speak to a current rep before signing. You'd never let a customer buy without a reference call; extend yourself the same courtesy.