Learning plan — Sales Academy

The Academy is 16 modules and 79 micro-lessons across three tiers. You will not read it in one sitting, and you shouldn't try. This plan turns the catalogue into a route: what to read, in what order, at what pace, what to produce as you go, and what to do the day an interview actually lands. It assumes no sales background and builds towards the final exam, the Career Launchpad and a first application sent on purpose rather than in hope.

How to use this

The daily habit is Today. It is the ten-minute version of everything below: your next lesson in curriculum order, the flashcards that have fallen due, and the questions you previously got wrong. On a day with nothing else in it, open /today, clear the three items, keep the streak. That alone moves you forward.

This plan is for the days you have more than ten minutes. It sequences the modules into routes, attaches one thing to produce to each stretch of reading, and tells you when to abandon the route entirely because an interview is booked.

Checkpoints gate everything. Each micro-lesson runs five to eight minutes and ends in two or three questions answerable only from the text above them — you cannot continue until you pass. Reading you can't be tested on is reading you won't keep. It also makes "read" a real state the product counts: /progress scores mastery from it, and /exam checks it before letting you sit.

Three tiers, one direction of travel. Foundation (00, 09, 10, 11) assumes nothing and explains the job, the buyer's business, the communication craft and the tooling. Core (01–08) is the path to interview-ready and the only tier that gates the exam. Specialist (p1–p4, gold) is depth you buy when a specific situation calls for it.

Three routes — pick one honestly

Choose on your actual circumstances, not your ambitions. The wrong route is the one that assumes you have evenings you don't have.

Route	Who it's for	Time	Length	Covers	Ends at
The full run	No commercial background, no interview booked yet	~4–6 hrs/week	~6 weeks	Foundation + core	Exam → Launchpad
The fast track	An interview already booked, or real commercial experience behind you	1.5–2 hrs/day	~2 weeks	Core only	The interview
The drip	Anyone in a full-time job or full-time study	10–15 min/day	~12 weeks	Foundation + core	Exam → Launchpad

One rule sits above all three: a booked interview interrupts the route. Stop where you are and run the callback protocol below.

The full run (~6 weeks)

Two modules a week, foundation before core, exam at the end. Roughly an hour on four or five days, plus one longer session for the week's exercise — which matters as much as the reading, because writing forces knowledge into a shape you can say aloud under pressure.

Week	Modules	Produce
1	00 the job itself · 09 business acumen	Score yourself against module 00's self-assessment and write the honest paragraph: which of the three day-in-the-life walkthroughs you actually want. Then do module 09's forty-minute research exercise on one real company you'd apply to — how it makes money, who holds the budget.
2	10 communication craft · 11 the sales stack	Record two minutes of yourself answering "why sales, why now?" on video. Watch it back against module 10's presence checklist, fix one thing, re-record. Then rewrite one real email you've sent using the reply-getting structure.
3	01 fundamentals · 02 pipeline	Take a live job advert and do the pipeline maths: from a plausible quota, back to deal size, win rate, pipeline coverage and weekly activity. Do it on paper, then explain it aloud in under two minutes.
4	03 prospecting & qualification · 04 discovery & value	Build one deal file for a company you'd love to work for: ICP definition, one cold email (structure from /resources, words your own), a MEDDPICC scorecard, and ten discovery questions for the persona. Then rewrite two of your own past achievements as pain → impact → quantified value → proof.
5	05 objections/negotiation/closing · 06 account management	Write your own handling for the five objections you'd most likely face selling your target product to your target buyer — your words, not the module's. Then sketch a one-page account plan for a fictional key account.
6	07 UK life sciences & health tech · 08 interview playbook	A one-page "how I'd sell this into an NHS trust" for a real company. Then build the story bank: 8–10 STAR stories from your own record, every result carrying a number, each rehearsed aloud at 90 seconds.

End of week 6: sit the exam. Fifty questions across foundation and core, 85% to pass, twenty-four hours between attempts. Eligibility needs the core modules read with their checkpoints passed — foundation reading strengthens you but doesn't gate you. Before you sit, take every core module quiz in /trainer and clear your missed-questions list.

Passing opens /launchpad — the job-search playbook — and issues a completion record with your score. Be accurate about what that is: evidence of work done inside a self-study course, not an industry certification. Say so plainly if it comes up in an interview, then talk about what you can do rather than what you hold.

The fast track (~2 weeks)

For a booked interview or a real commercial background. Core only, in this order, at roughly two focused hours a day. It gets you speaking the language and running a repeatable process; it does not get you the full picture.

Days	Work
1–2	01 fundamentals · 02 pipeline. Comp vocabulary and pipeline maths are the two things a hiring manager can test in ninety seconds.
3–4	03 prospecting & qualification. MEDDPICC cold, in your own words, with an example per letter.
5–6	04 discovery & value. The single highest-scoring skill in a role-play stage.
7–8	05 objections/negotiation/closing. Write your five objections, then say the handling aloud until it stops sounding like a script.
9	06 account management or 07 life sciences & health tech — whichever the role actually is. If it's an NHS-facing AE seat, take 07.
10–12	08 interview playbook in full, plus your story bank with real numbers in it.
13–14	/cram for your stage, every relevant role-play in /trainer aloud, cheat sheets the night before.

What you're skipping, and what it costs. Be clear-eyed about the trade:

00 the job itself — you may reach the "why sales?" question without having genuinely decided, and interviewers hear the difference between a decision and a hope.
09 business acumen — the classic fast-track failure. You are fine until a finance person joins the call or the case stage asks for a business case, then you have nothing to say about margin, payback or budget cycles. If you skip one thing, don't skip this one; read it after the first interview regardless.
10 communication craft — your listening, questioning and phone presence stay untrained, which is exactly what a role-play scores. Partially covered by drilling aloud, but only partially.
11 the sales stack — cheapest gap to carry. Read the cheat sheet, learn what a CRM stage actually is, move on.

And you will not be exam-eligible. Eligibility needs every core module read with checkpoints passed, so finish 06 or 07 — whichever you skipped — once the interview is behind you, then sit it.

The drip (~12 weeks)

One lesson a day, and nothing more. This is the route for a full diary. Open /today, read the one lesson it offers, pass its checkpoint, clear the due cards, close the laptop. Five days a week through foundation and core lands you exam-eligible in about twelve weeks.

Protect the streak, not the intensity. Consistency is doing the actual work here — the spacing in /trainer is designed around short daily contact, and a fifty-minute Sunday binge does not replace five ten-minute days. Clear every due card and you bank a streak freeze that covers a day you genuinely can't.

Give it one longer session a week. Thirty to forty-five minutes for the produce-exercises from the full run's table, in the same order — reading without producing decays fast.

Never let a week hit zero. If life takes a fortnight, come back to /today and take whatever it offers next — the plan restarts itself from wherever your progress actually is.

The method per lesson

Four steps, ten to fifteen minutes, every time.

Read the lesson. Five to eight minutes. One sitting, no skimming to the checkpoint.
Pass the checkpoint. Don't guess your way through — a wrong answer joins your missed list in /trainer, which is the point. Read the explanation even when you got it right.
Drill it. Clear your due flashcards in /trainer. When a module is finished, take its quiz and re-take it until you're comfortably above 80%.
Say one thing aloud. Pick one question from the module's "how this shows up in interviews" material and answer it standing up, timed, no notes. Sales interviews are an oral exam; reading fluency is not speaking fluency, and the gap between them only closes out loud.

Then leave it alone. Spacing does the retention work — /today will bring the card back exactly when you're about to lose it.

Where the specialist modules fit

The gold modules are enrichment, not prerequisites. None of them appears in the final exam, none affects exam eligibility, and readiness on /progress reaches 100% without buying a single one. Each earns its price in a specific situation:

Module	Buy it when	What it changes
p1 MEDDPICC mastery	You're entering an enterprise AE process, or the JD names MEDDIC/MEDDPICC	Takes you from reciting the letters to scoring a real deal, with three RAG-scored worked examples you can talk through
p2 cold-calling intensive	Before an SDR/BDR interview, or any process with a live cold-call task	Openers, the objection gauntlet and a full annotated call — the stage where unprepared candidates are eliminated fastest
p3 NHS deep dive	The role sells into the NHS and you want to out-prepare the field	Money and people maps, the compliance gauntlet, procurement routes, pilots that actually convert
p4 first 90 days	After you sign — not before	Ramp, first pipeline, first deals, managing your manager, and what to do when it's going badly

If money is tight, buy none of them. Finish core, pass the exam, get into processes. Buy one when a specific interview makes the case for it.

The callback protocol

An interview overrides the plan. The moment a stage is booked, stop the route and go to /cram — pick the stage and it hands you the checklist, the cheat sheets and the templates for exactly that conversation. Typical window is three to five days.

Every stage, regardless of type:

Module 08 in full, plus its cheat sheet.
Story bank rehearsed aloud, every result carrying a real number.
Company research using module 09's forty-minute method: how they make money, who holds the budget, what the sales motion looks like, and the job advert's own language fed back to them.
Glossary rapid-fire in /trainer until it's clean. Hesitating on "what's your coverage ratio?" undoes ten good answers.

Then by stage:

Stage	Add	From the swipe file
Recruiter screen	Module 01 cheat sheet for comp and OTE fluency; your career-change and any-gap one-liners; module 00 for a "why sales" answer that sounds decided. Know your salary position before the call — base, OTE, total, and where you flex.	Job-search extras
Hiring manager — AE	Modules 02 + 03 in full: pipeline maths aloud, qualification frameworks cold, a credible first-90-days pipeline-build answer. Module 09 if they're likely to probe business case.	Discovery questions, cold emails
Hiring manager — AM/KAM	Module 06 in full plus module 02's cheat sheet: book management, renewal and expansion mechanics, GRR versus NRR, account-plan anatomy.	Account-plan and QBR templates
Role-play	Modules 04 + 05, then every relevant role-play scenario in /trainer, out loud. Two adversarial mocks minimum. If it's a cold call, p2 pays for itself here. Process over polish: frame the agenda, ask before you pitch, always book the next step.	Objection talk tracks, call agenda
Presentation / case	Module 08's presentation section for the 30/60/90 structure, module 07 for domain specifics, module 09 for the money slide. Draft it, then present it aloud to someone or something that will criticise it.	30/60/90 template
Exec / final	Module 07 cheat sheet for market fluency, module 09 for commercial judgement, and module 08's closing questions tiered for seniority. Prepare to close: "Do you have any reservations about my candidacy I could address now?"	Follow-up email templates

Afterwards: send the same-day follow-up, log what you were asked while it's fresh, drill whatever you fumbled — then pick the route back up where you left it.

Milestones

Tied to states the product can actually show you, not to weeks on a calendar.

Foundation read — 00, 09, 10, 11 complete, every checkpoint passed, Foundations pillar filling on /progress
Core read — 01–08 complete with checkpoints passed; /exam shows you as eligible
Drilled — every core module quiz above 80% and no missed questions outstanding in /trainer
Exam passed — 85%+, completion record issued (a record of work done, described honestly)
Launchpad open — /launchpad read, weekly activity targets set, tracker built with a next step on every row
First application sent — tailored, tracked, and followed up rather than filed and forgotten
Ongoing — a /today streak you don't break, one mock a week, and /cram before anything real