From luxury retail to remote SDR: how Ananya got into tech sales in a month.

You know how to sell. You do it every shift. You read the customer walking in, you work out what they actually want, and you turn "I'm just looking" into a sale.

But try putting that on a tech sales application. No sales title. No tech. A degree in something else. Nothing lands.

That was Ananya. She was working in luxury retail and wanted to become a remote SDR. "Nothing was really landing," she wrote, "as I came with no prior tech sales experience."

About a month after starting meritt, she landed a remote SDR role at a tech startup. Here's her story in her own words.

Here's what changed, and what you can take from it.

Why retail experience gets overlooked

Retail and tech sales use the same muscles. Talking to strangers. Handling no. Staying upbeat when the day is slow.

The problem is that hiring managers skim. They see "luxury retail" and "degree in something unrelated" and move on. Your CV says where you've been, not what you can do.

So Ananya didn't try to win on her CV. She built the skills an SDR uses every day, and practised them until she could prove it.

1. Learn what the job really asks for

The first thing Ananya points to is understanding the role. In her words, meritt helped her "fine tune exactly the skills I need to become an SDR."

She went through the Break into Tech Sales and SDR lessons. They "really made me understand what job seekers are looking for and the skills I need to fine tune," she wrote.

Most entry-level tech sales roles come down to a few things. Researching who to contact. Starting conversations by phone, email and LinkedIn. Handling objections. Booking meetings. When you can explain each one in plain words, you stop sounding like a career changer and start sounding like an SDR.

Try this week: write down the five things an SDR does in a normal day. Next to each one, write a time you did something like it in retail.

2. Practise the calls before they count

Cold calling scares most people. It scared Ananya too, because she had never done it.

What helped was practice that felt real. "The cold calling tool was particularly useful," she wrote, "as it had different levels that were very realistic and great practice for someone who has never done it before."

Levels matter. You start with a friendly call, then move up to the ones where the buyer is busy, pushes back, or says no. By the time you're on a real call, you've already heard the hard lines and know what to say next.

Try this week: do five practice calls out loud. Record them. Listen back and fix one thing each time, like your opening line or how you ask for the meeting.

3. Don't do it alone

Changing career is hard to do on your own. Ananya had weekly check-ins with Will, meritt's co-founder. "Will was extremely helpful and did weekly check-ins which really made the journey easier too," she wrote.

Check-ins keep you moving. Someone asks what you did this week, what's not working, and what's next. Small steps add up fast when someone is holding you to them.

What happened next

It didn't take long. "I landed an SDR role at a startup after 1 month or so," Ananya wrote, "and am on the journey!"

Now she works for a tech startup as a remote SDR. In her video she says "it's actually just a great journey."

Her three steps are simple. Learn the exact skills an SDR needs. Practise the calls until they feel normal. Get support so you keep going.

Your next step

If you're in retail and wondering whether tech sales is open to you, it is. Your customer skills count. What you need is the language of the job and the practice to prove it.

meritt is the AI that gets you a job in sales. Think of it as your talent agent. You learn and practise with AI lessons, including cold calling and AI skills, you earn a certificate, and you get promoted to sales leaders. The programme costs £299.

Try a free lesson at learn.meritt.io/try to practise the real work. When you're ready, see the full programme at learn.meritt.io/course.