I built an institutional book before the software existed.
At a glance
| Who | I am the founder of Ghost Shift. I led institutional sales at a national test-prep and admissions provider. I now lead sales and growth at an exam-prep company. |
|---|---|
| What I sold | Multi-year MCAT, LSAT and DAT contracts. Buyers included postbaccalaureate, master's-in-biomedical-sciences, pathway-to-medical-school, scholars and law-school academic-excellence programs. |
| How I found them | I checked public program dates, contract cycles and new leadership. I qualified the signing office and planned direct outreach. |
| Result | Just under $1,000,000 in annual institutional contract revenue from outbound sales. I held contracts at about 25 institutions. I logged roughly 150 opportunities. |
The problem
Test-prep companies sell to students one at a time. Institutions buy for entire cohorts on multi-year contracts. These buyers include postbacc programs, medical-school pipelines and scholars programs.
Nobody was pursuing these institutions systematically. Inbound was rare. RFPs went to incumbents.
I found purchase timing in public records. Program pages listed cohort start dates. Board minutes described contract terms. Press releases named new directors. Partnership announcements identified incumbents. Nobody was reading those sources together.
My method
- Read program pages. I skipped university homepages. I checked postbacc, MS Biomedical Sciences, pathway, scholars, diversity-pipeline and law-school programs. I recorded each cohort launch month. Launches clustered in January, May, June and August. Proposals needed to arrive three to five months earlier.
- Qualify the signer. Deans and program directors sign cohort-exclusive contracts. Advising offices sign soft partnerships. A student club or faculty member points toward a program but cannot approve the purchase. I scored large public flagships lower unless a named director could bypass an RFP.
- Track the incumbent. I recorded contract expiry dates and repeated extensions. I revisited replacement opportunities six to nine months before renewal.
- Follow up. I contacted a named decision-maker with a dated reason to talk. I used a short sequence. I logged each opportunity, program, launch month, value and outcome.
Results
- Just under $1M in annual revenue from institutional contracts I sourced and closed. This figure is founder-attested.
- I held contracts at about 25 institutions and logged roughly 150 opportunities. Contract values ranged from $10k to $250k. Terms ranged from one to five years.
- Contracts covered medical-school postbacc and pathway programs, scholars programs and a law-school academic-excellence program. I share institution names on request where cleared.
- I later opened institutional partnerships at a second company. I started from zero in a different exam category.
What Ghost Shift changes
The method worked because I did it every day. I built Ghost Shift to handle that daily research on a schedule. I learn scoring and signer rules from your company's experts. A person still approves every account. I prepare the follow-up in your CRM.
My institutional book shows how I found buyers. The distributor case study shows the method running for another company.
Source: founder-supplied case study and revised business plan provided 8 September 2026. Revenue is my reported annual contract revenue from a prior role. It is not an audited single-year total or a projection of customer results.