We are living in a golden age of career transitions. Whether you’re feeling burned out or simply looking for a change, there’s no better time than the present to make it happen. After all, with COVID and The Great Resignation top of mind, employers are more open than ever to hiring unconventional candidates.
That said, there’s also tons of competition for jobs these days—especially if you’re entering a new career and don’t have formal job experience. With all these fresh faces looking to make a change, it’s more important than ever to be able to stand out.
Some of the hottest jobs right now are in software: software as a Service (SaaS), to be exact. Customer/client success jobs, software engineering jobs, and sales jobs are great options for career changers, as they tend to be flexible and offer remote options. Customer success and sales jobs are customer-facing roles with tons of growth potential, and both careers appeal to people wanting to leverage existing soft skills and experience working with people. On the other hand, software engineering jobs are largely positions where you work independently and don’t need to worry so much about being “on.”
Our goal at The Non-Clinical PT is to provide you with the resources you need to enter new careers with confidence and preparation—and part of feeling confident and prepared is having formal training in the paths you want to pursue.
So, we decided to take some career upskilling courses and review them for you.
Aspireship’s popular sales and customer success upskilling programs are all the rage, and we were able to dig in with this Aspireship review to help you get the most from your experience. PLUS, we’ve secured a 50% discount for you on Aspireship Pro, which you can get here with our Aspireship promo code:
Without further ado, here’s our review of Aspireship Pro, where we’ll be covering reviews of both their Sales and Customer Success courses!
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What is Aspireship?
Let’s start with the basics…what is Aspireship??
Aspireship is a career development platform that was created to help career changers upskill and learn what they need to move into the SaaS space. The company’s goal is to make this process affordable and fun.
Aspireship is recognized by the US Department of Labor as a Registered Apprenticeship as of May, 2023! This means that employers can hire from their network 100% for free! So, that’s more opportunities for YOU as a member of the Aspireship platform!
What is SaaS (software as a service)?
Every business—from schools to hospitals to restaurants and hotels—they’re all relying on software to keep track of clients/students/patients and just generally make life easier. Software is being used as a service, delivered over the web in this model. Hence SaaS.
Somebody’s gotta sell this software to the clients (that’d be the sales team), and somebody’s gotta teach said clients to use the software (that’d be the customer success team) so clients don’t request refunds out of sheer overwhelm!
Enter Aspireship: a company that helps career changers enter the field of SaaS sales and customer success without any prior experience. It’s a godsend in this era of career transitions!
At the time of this review’s most recent update, Aspireship Pro offers access to :
- SaaS Sales
- SaaS Customer Success
- Sales Management
- Software Engineering
- Revenue Operations (RevOps)
Both the sales and customer success programs are designed to take an absolute newbie and prepare them for totally new careers, while sales management is designed for sales professionals going into leadership/management for the first time. The RevOps and software engineering programs are both meant for career changers, too, and they were added in the time since we did this initial review. We are confident they are of the same high quality as the other foundations programs we were able to review.
We took both the sales and customer success entry level courses, rather than sales management, as we are in the space of helping clinicians change careers altogether.
We’d already heard tons of happy Aspireship reviews, but we wanted to personally take the courses, so we could offer honest and unbiased Aspireship reviews. Note: we went with the Aspireship Pro vs. the Free option. We’ll explain the difference between the two below.
How does Aspireship work?
Aspireship programs are completely online, and they’re taught by industry professionals, including founders, CEOs, and other thought leaders. You’ll get:
- Live and on-demand expert video interviews
- Quizzes and assessments
- Virtual job simulations
The curriculum can be completed entirely on your schedule. Once you fully complete the Aspireship program, you’ll have the opportunity to complete a final assessment, which will then be graded by the Aspireship team. If you pass, you’ll earn a verifiable certificate and the opportunity to be added to the Aspireship Talent Network.
When you use Aspireship, you’ll gain access to a series of educational videos and training modules. Again, we reviewed Aspireship Pro, which offers more resources and support than the Free model.
Aspireship takes a multifaceted approach to upskilling in its educational format.
The courses are broken into multiple overarching steps with several lessons each. Each lesson is followed by a quiz. Most of the lessons are interview format, where someone in the company interviews an industry expert and asks for thoughts on various aspects of the role(s). This makes the lessons interesting and engaging, and they feel like the student gets to be a fly on the wall during closed-door meetings between thought leaders in the sales and customer success fields. It’s very interesting and keeps things from feeling dry.
Here’s what’s covered:
Theory
In both the sales and customer success courses, you’ll learn the foundational steps of a sales process or onboarding process, including what it might look like in different types of companies and where YOU would fit into things. We enjoy that Aspireship delves deep into different types of scenarios like handling objections for sales people and dealing with unhappy customers for client success.
Terminology
One of the hardest parts to starting in a new career is you simply don’t know the lingo. Sure, you could Google it and try to memorize the many terms and acronyms, but Aspireship does a great job of weaving the lingo into the videos in an organic way so you learn it and remember it. You’ll cover concepts like customer lifecycle, onboarding, churn, demand generation, prospecting, and pipelines in engaging and interesting ways. For example, you won’t just learn what a pipeline is, but you’ll learn how it fits into the overarching goals of a company. And you’ll learn how different teams function within an organization.
Support
Let’s be real—so much of the apprehension we have about sales or customer success is worrying we won’t be able to handle the challenging parts. The cold calling. The disappointment. The difficult conversations. Aspireship prepares you for all of this by sharing tips and tricks from the Aspireship team AND additional industry experts. You’ll learn how to manage expectations and address issues that might pop up before they do. And, perhaps most importantly, you’ll realize that communication is key to solving most issues. This builds confidence and helps you think of yourself as holding these roles and succeeding in them—which, in turn, will help you present yourself as succeeding in said roles when you’re in the interview process.
Hard skills
You’ll enjoy tech walkthroughs of Salesforce, which is the industry standard for managing clients in the SaaS world. This is super helpful, as you don’t want to present yourself in interviews as being brand-new and needing training. Plus, if you’re coming in as a clinician or someone who has used another type of SaaS platform, you’ll immediately see parallels and similarities to the EMRs or programs you’ve used in the past, which will, again, help you sell yourself in interviews.
Practice
Can’t lie here: the practice modules are eye-opening and a bit nerve-racking. You get to really see yourself for all you are when you present yourself. Whether it’s good lighting (or bad) or confidence (or nerves), this is the equivalent of filming yourself before a big speech and having the opportunity to improve before showtime. These practice opportunities are set up in an encouraging and engaging way, and you get the opportunity to see a top performer handle the same exercises effectively afterward, which is SUPER helpful.
Flow
We’ve definitely taken courses with zero flow, meaning that the order of the educational modules simply make no sense. Aspireship is not like this….it’s so much better!
Aspireship is so wonderful in how it presents the actual flow. It keeps you engaged and there’s no overwhelm or feeling of drinking from a firehose. The content is presented in a way that makes sense, and if you have Aspireship Pro (highly recommend), you get lifetime access to EVERYTHING that makes these platforms so impressive.
Day in the life
For most career changers, it’s less about what we’re running from than what we’re running toward. There’s no sense in changing careers if you’ll find yourself frustrated by the same things. Aspireship provides a thorough look at what a day in the life looks like for sales and customer success professionals. This is so valuable in deciding whether to pursue these specific careers.
How much does Aspireship Pro cost?
Aspireship can be free. You can get access to the 80+ hour video library, even attend live sessions and get access to part of the formal programs.
BUT, you don’t get it all when you sign up for the free version. You don’t get the full foundations programs (what we reviewed) and you don’t get access to monthly interview training sessions, monthly office hours, peer support in the slack community (which is so helpful). You also won’t get a formal certification (which we all know is so important to stand out from others competing for the same jobs), nor do you get the job placement support that is a HUGE part of what makes Aspireship such a solid program.
Normally, you’ll pay $299 for Aspireship Pro, but it’s only $144 with our discount! It’s absolutely worth every penny to make this investment for what you get (which we’ll discuss now).
What’s the difference between Aspireship Free and Aspireship Pro?
It’s easiest to show the difference using a graphic from Aspireship, so as you can see below, Pro is a VERY small investment compared to the many bootcamps and other training programs out there, and what comes with it is truly priceless. The fact that there’s an Aspireship Talent Network of employers actively looking to hire Aspireship grads is, on its own, worth the price. But the lifetime access to all of their foundational platforms, the certification, and the interview training sessions are simply GOLD.
We highly recommend the Aspireship Pro program—and one of the best parts is that you can truly pay it forward and/or get your money back if you take a job from the Aspireship Talent Network. You will have the option to have 100% of your investment refunded 90 days after accepting a position with a hiring partner through the Aspireship Talent Network, or can choose to grant a “pay it forward” scholarship to another candidate.
Is Aspireship Pro worth it?
ABSOLUTELY. We honestly cannot believe how affordable Aspireship Pro is. (And, with our 50+% discount, you save even more!) At the time we are publishing this review, it is just $299 for Aspireship Pro (only $144 with our discount!), which means you can take all the foundational courses for one flat price.
What we found most useful from the foundations programs included in Aspireship Pro was the following:
- You learn the fundamentals of selling and customer success, and you can really identify the parallels between your current job and the ones you are pursuing.
- You learn how to ask the right questions—ones that get the results you want to close deals and drive customer engagement.
- You learn the types of people with whom you’ll be dealing (think terms like “below the line vs. above the line.”)
- You are quizzed along the way to ensure you really learn and retain the information.
- You have access to the Aspireship Talent Network if you pass the performance evaluation test at the end. (This is a legit test but you can retake each section multiple times before submitting it for review, which helps so much with the learning process and building confidence).
- You learn the basics of the software and tools you’ll need, such as Salesforce. You also understand that every company will use this platform differently, but you can get an overview of basic principles, such as qualified leads vs. unqualified leads, as well as hot/warm/cold leads. You learn fundamentals of selling and customer success as you learn the tools you need to perform such roles.
- You feel like you’re getting a crash course, internship, and training on sales and customer success. This positions you far above other career changers.
- You can eventually upgrade to intensive programs in the area(s) that interest(s) you. The price to upgrade to a more intensive and focused program is very reasonable, too!
Final thoughts on Aspireship:
We’ll leave you with this. Aspireship takes work and investment. Simply plunking down some money and enrolling will not magically prepare you to land a sales or client success job—but if you take the foundational courses, put in the work, take the assessments seriously, and take advantage of the interview preparation and training resources, you can absolutely make this career transition.
Aspireship Pro will absolutely give you the foundation you need to successfully enter the world of sales or customer success. Sure, we had to Google a few terms and rewatch a few videos. We had to research some good approaches to perform well in the final assessments. But that’s OK, and that’s what the course prepares you to do: understand the fundamentals of selling or customer success, then feel confident to develop your own style and brand, excelling in a way that works for YOU!