♣️ Introducing Earlywork Sales Club
The #1 support system for Earlywork alumni starting their career
Howdy folks!
Today marks the launch of a new chapter in the Earlywork journey: Earlywork Sales Club, our graduate program to help Earlywork Academy alumni perform better & progress faster in their roles, alongside sales peers 🚀
The power of community to change someone’s career has been such an integral part of the Earlywork DNA, and it’s something that’s stuck deeply with us since we first launched Earlywork Village 3 (!) years ago.
Here’s a breakdown of what our new community is and why we’re building it 👇
Getting a job is just the starting point
When Earlywork Academy began in January 2023, we set out to build the fastest, fairest pathway to begin a career in tech sales.
One year in, we helped 100+ fellows land their first tech sales roles and had partnered with 30+ tech companies to hire better junior sales talent, faster, including MYOB, Shippit, Eftsure & Yotpo.
People loved the program (cue shameless Trustpilot plug) and looking at the numbers, we were like “Heck yeah!”
But anecdotally, we started to hear about difficult sales & career challenges from some of our graduates after landing a job.
As the year wound down in Q4, we decided to take a step back and ask ourselves: "How do we ensure we’re creating loveable employment outcomes?
To answer this, we spoke to dozens of Earlywork Academy graduates and found 3 broad challenges when they started their careers in tech sales:
Weak connection with SDR (Sales Development Representative) peers going through similar challenges: Many reps joining startups were one of only a small number of junior sales reps at their company and sometimes, the only junior rep. When navigating the ups and downs of sales like rejection and fear, it was often hard for them to know whether their struggles were normal and find peers going through similar challenges to take inspiration from (or even just vent to).
No reference point for good sales technique and process outside their company: Every company has a certain way of selling, and reps weren’t sure what other techniques and tools were out there to improve their performance in calling and emailing.
Murky progression pathway to Account Executive & other sales roles: The folks coming into our Academy wanted more than just a job, they wanted a career. But companies have a range of titles, requirements and structures, and a lot of reps didn’t know what options they had + how to get there.
It was clear fellows needed additional training and support beyond landing a role, but to holistically understand the problem, we needed to go deeper on what challenges employers were feeling.
Thriving in a role isn’t just about the right technical skills
We interviewed 10 tech sales leaders on the hardest part of training SDRs (Sales Development Representatives).
Cold calls came up to no surprise, but 7/10 leaders also mentioned a challenge that wasn’t sales technique itself.
It was training the mindset behind sales.
There were two big themes here:
1. Confidence 🌟
Fear of saying the wrong thing
Fear of harassing prospects
Fear of asking too many questions
Fear of failing in front of peers
Fear of asking about sensitive areas
2. Resilience 💪
The feeling of being told no and getting rejected
Missing targets and navigating underperformance
There was another major role component where reps struggled beyond sales technique: professional fundamentals 👔
Most of our graduates were stepping into a tech company (or even an office environment) for the first time.
There are a lot of implicit career skills we take for granted that role-specific onboarding programs often neglect, and managers in particular called out the following two as challenging to train:
Internal stakeholder communication
Time management
Why couldn’t managers solve this all themselves?
From a management workflow perspective, the number one pain for managers was simply not having enough time to spend with reps.
Many sales managers are swamped to the point where they don’t have enough bandwidth to give detailed feedback, shadow calls, and run learning sessions themselves.
Zooming out, the status quo of education has been that:
Universities train content that’s well behind industry and students fend for themselves to find a job ❌
Employers give some training to the folks lucky enough to get a job, but with limited management bandwidth & internal resources, graduates only get exposure to a small handful of perspectives ❌
Earlywork Academy started out building an education model reverse-engineered from industry needs and taking students all the way to landing a job.
But a loveable employment outcome is more important than just someone getting a good job and a company filling a role with a good candidate.
It’s about about ensuring talent perform highly in their role & progress in their career.
We realised to build the most effective education model for students & employers alike, we needed to train people to get a job AND train people to thrive on the job…
How we’re solving this
Earlywork Sales Club is the support layer for the post-hire journey of every Earlywork Academy fellow, beyond the initial training and coaching to land a tech sales role.
Think of it as a sales graduate program that transcends company boundaries.
Rather than just top-down training from leaders, our belief is reps learn best by trading insights with peers at the same step of the journey.
Here’s a breakdown of the five core pillars of Sales Club:
🏎️ #1: Earlywork Accelerator
At the heart of Sales Club is Earlywork Accelerator, our in-house onboarding program to help new reps ramp faster.
Every company has their own sales techniques and tools, and will typically have their own onboarding in these areas. So instead, we’re teaching the mindset and professional fundamentals that transcend specific company context and so often aren’t formally taught otherwise.
When any Earlywork graduate starts their sales role, they now go through an additional 4-week live training program covering:
Onboarding Mindset
Cultivating Confidence
Customer Empathy
Career Acceleration
Alongside this, we’re personally coaching every rep 1:1, with ongoing office hours and check-ins across their first 12 months on the job.
From their first month, every rep is also connected with an intimate accountability pod of other reps in similar roles to trade initial learnings and challenges.
🧡 #2: Earlywork SDR Community
Sales Club is more than just training; it’s a group of peers to grow with at every step of the journey.
Beyond the Accelerator, we’re cultivating an ongoing digital community bringing together SDRs across different companies.
It’s a place to ask questions to see how other reps deal with similar sales challenges, share & discover great sales resources, and build relationships with others following a similar career journey.
🎓 #3: Ongoing Learning Events
We believe formalised learning shouldn’t just stop at onboarding.
So we’re running virtual and in-person learning events every month with top-performing AEs and sales managers to help Earlywork reps level up their sales skills and continue to deepen sales peer relationships for life.
Most recently, we had Sylvia Farag (Sales Leader @ Alation | Ex-Salesforce & Stripe Sales Leader) come chat to our Sydney grads about how to work with sales peers, managers & mentors to progress faster in your sales career.
🪜 #4: Earlywork Mentor Network
Mentorship comes in all shapes and sizes, and we recognise reps really value multiple perspectives.
That’s why we’ve engaged a vetted pool of 20+ Account Executives, SDR Managers, and other sales professionals from our network who have generously offered to answer questions and provide tactical tips to Earlywork reps at any time.
💎 #5: SDR Resource Bank
So many reps and companies are out there scrambling to find answers to common sales and career challenges because they don’t have the resources internally.
To save everyone time, we’re growing a centralised library of no-bullshit frameworks, guides & templates built by the Earlywork team to help reps hone their sales craft.
Think career development trackers, target calculators, 1:1 templates and more.
Built once, but accessible by sales reps across dozens of companies.
And the kicker?
We’re giving Earlywork Sales Club access to all Earlywork Academy graduates in sales roles for FREE.
Alongside this, sales managers at our partner companies are being equipped with coaching insights + 1:1 check-ins about their reps, alongside an extensive bank of sales training guides & templates.
Not only are we helping new reps build more confidence in their roles, we’re equally creating a co-pilot for busy sales managers to keep rep performance & retention strong.
The vision of Earlywork Sales Club is to build the #1 support system for sales reps starting their career, based on our insights from 100+ Earlywork graduates starting tech sales roles in the last 12 months.
In years to come, we hope that the 3L model of ‘Learn, Land & Launch’ serves as a template for vocational education across other roles and industries.
But for Earlywork, it’s early days. 🌞
🚀 If you’re looking to test out whether sales might be a good fit for you, learn more about our Academy here
💼 If you’re looking to hire junior sales reps with ongoing training & support in your corner, learn more about our partner model here
🪜 If you’re interested in being featured as a sales mentor or speaker at a Sales Club event, you can register your interest here