Onboarding sales reps efficiently is the key to shaping a promising new hire into a productive member of your sales team. Yet, some sales leaders fail to onboard new sales reps effectively, leaving it as a mere formality or even as an inconvenience to get through as soon as possible. On the other hand, some leaders instead try to overload new salespeople with too much information as soon as they walk in the door. Neither of these approaches works, and both create a poorly performing sales representative at best and cause a once optimistic recruit to develop negative feelings about your company at worst – but there is a better way. Use our 6-step guide to successfully onboarding sales reps below to ensure you motivate and retain new sales reps.
1. Start with a plan for onboarding salespeople
There is a time and a place to ‘wing it,’ but not when you’re onboarding salespeople. Most sales experts agree that a new rep can take up to 6 months to reach total productivity. This is precisely why a comprehensive training plan can help recruits reach their potential quickly.
An effective sales plan for onboarding sales teams starts with helping them hit the ground running on their first day. To do this, your new sales reps should already have a simple understanding of your company. Even the best salesman can’t close if he does not know what he is selling. So initially, you need to dive into detail about what your company is all about. Ideally, you should send your new sales hires a digital welcome package full of resources to help them when they start and know what to expect. This should include:
- Mission statement
- Core values
- Key differentiating points
- Company culture
- Products & Services
- History
- Relevant information about long-term/loyal customer
Also read: E-Learning and Its Role in Today’s Sales Teams
2. Prepare materials for onboarding sales reps
Next, it’s vital that you plan your onboarding materials in advance. Here’s what you should include in your onboarding plan:
A Sales Playbook
A good training plan for onboarding sales reps starts with a thorough and accessible sales playbook. If your company does not have a sales playbook, start creating one now. A good training manual ensures they have all the tools they need to succeed while onboarding new sales reps.
What to include in a sales playbook
Besides covering all the job expectations, your sales manual should offer example sales scripts that your top sales reps have used successfully in the past. The bulk of the manual needs to contain an easily referenced list of potential customers’ most common questions and objections, along with practical ways to reply to these questions and concerns.
After meeting with a new hire, present the manual and have the employee spend the first day going over it—Quiz the rep at the end of the day. The new hire should respond effortlessly to your questions and concerns using the responses provided in the manual. At this point, you want the person to be capable of parroting back the reply as written. There will be time to personalize a response in the future. Send home the new employee with an assignment to review the manual and develop a few more questions, concerns, and replies.
Training videos
A training manual is great, but as we know, everyone learns differently. By providing content in video format to onboard sales reps, new hires can learn new content visually and aurally. I recommend providing sales training videos for new hires to learn effective sales strategies your existing team is already implementing. Provide your content on a mobile-ready app or website, and your chances of your new sales rep watching the content go up drastically, and it’s more likely they’ll even watch the videos outside of business hours. For instance, some of our clients have new hires take our online sales course SOCO Academy as part of their onboarding process.
3. Establish expectations
Next, sales leaders must communicate their expectations when onboarding sales reps. To do this, you need to consider what success means in your organization and then clearly relay that to your new sales reps. Then, you can start to create goals, milestones, and achievements that you can use to measure the success of your sales reps’ onboarding process and receptiveness.
Also read:
- Sales Coaching Techniques – How Leaders Can Coach Their Sales Teams to Maximise Results
- 4 Effective Exercises For Using Role-Playing As A Sales Training Tool
- How To Choose The Best Sales Training Company For Your Business
4. Practice makes perfect
After introducing a sales team member to your company’s products and services, it is time for practical experience. The best way to start is to have the new employee sit in on a sales call. Before the presentation, go over the client’s background, including whom you are meeting with, how you found the prospect, and your expectations of the call.
After the sales call, conduct a recap to get feedback on how the rep felt the call went. Discuss how he may have handled the call differently. It is important to recognize that everyone has their own way of selling, so don’t insist that your approach is the only one.
Once a new hire has sat in on a few sales calls, let them have a go with trying to close a few of your aging leads. Sit in on these sales calls, and at the end of each one, go over what worked and what might need some tweaking. When you think the employee is ready, provide a new lead as a test.
Once the initial steps to onboard new sales reps are complete, your job is not. It is essential to realize the most successful sales reps are always learning, adapting, and improving the way they sell, so encourage experimenting to allow new hires to find better ways of selling. Always follow up with continuous coaching and training.
5. Evaluate performance
When onboarding sales reps, you must assess their performance according to your previously clearly defined (and clearly understood) expectations in Step. 3. To ensure the best results, a team leader should be appointed who can check on the progress of the new sales reps to help move them along their onboarding journey.
6. Invest in training and support
When you offer your team educational opportunities, you tell them you value them enough to invest in your company’s and each employee’s future. This often significantly boosts your employees’ morale and job satisfaction. Of course, each employee has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. However, training can help lessen their weaknesses and help to bring everyone to the same level. This means less reliance on a select few employees who do something well as more of the team will excel at the tasks. What’s more, becoming known in the industry as a business willing to invest in employee training makes your company much more attractive to the type of job candidates you want to hire.
Also read: How to Onboard New Sales Reps | Training New Hires Fast
Hone Essential Management Skills & Build High-Performance Sales Teams
A high-performing team is highly motivated. They take on challenges with an eagerness to exceed expectations, and they don’t blindly follow orders; they look to improve upon them.
Leading a team to new heights takes understanding your team’s unique strengths, how to navigate uncharted territory and how to inspire them to reach their maximum potential. It takes a talented leader to do that.
Join SOCO’s Management Mastery course, where we cover the essential management skills every leader needs to bring out the best of their team, whether they’re working in the office, at home, or in a blended environment.
The following checklist for onboarding salespeople can be saved and used as a reference:
