1 Create An Effective Sales Onboarding Program That Increases Topline Revenue by Mohit Garg
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Create An Effective
Sales Onboarding Program ThatIncreases Topline Revenue
by Mohit Garg
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How to design and execute a sales onboarding program that achieves high adoption rates;
How to accelerate sales rep ramp time to productivity;
How to keep your customer front and center of your sales training program;
How to actively coach and reinforce knowledge to ensure it is adopted and your reps are always sales ready; and
How to benchmark and measure the onboarding sales readiness of your new sales reps.
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In this Guide you will learn
MindTickle enables you to prepare your new hires to be sales ready and consistently keep them updated to close more deals.
Design an effective and scalable onboarding program;
Develop a structured coaching program;
Assess and track the sales readiness of your new sales reps; and
Reinforce the sales training on an ongoing basis.
Talk to a SalesEnablement Expert
Outcomes
What is Sales Readiness Software?
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IntroductionWhy should I read this sales onboarding guide?What is sales onboarding?The five steps of sales onboarding
Chapter 1: Sales TrainingIntroduction to sales training
What to SellIndustry knowledge: Setting context from a customer perspectiveBuyer personas: Know your customerKnow your product as your customer sees itCompetitive analysis: Understand your worthBringing it all together: Articulating the core value propositionBring it to life through case studies and customer storiesOutcomes: What to sell certification
How to SellSales processSales process metricsSales funnelSales strategyKeep it relevant to the sales repTechnology and toolsHow to run customer conversations
Make the training stage effectiveFlipping itThe power of videoTest-to-teachGamification
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CONTENTS5
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Chapter 2: AssessIntroduction to the assess stageA framework for holistic sales certificationAssessment designKnowledge assessmentSales missions
Chapter 3: Structured coachingIntroduction to structured coachingTo coach or give feedback Identifying gapsCreating a coaching planImplementing a coaching planWhen to go online or offline
Chapter 4: AnalyzeIntroduction to the analyze stageCreating performance bandsBenchmarkingThe onboarding readiness index
Chapter 5: ReinforceIntroduction to the reinforce stageImplement periodic refreshersSpot check sales readinessReinforce with coaching and role playingMentoringMake it mobileBonus tips
Conclusion:Six points to guide your sales onboarding program
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INTRODUCTION
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According to research by Brigade Group, 50% of new hires never meet their quota. Given
how much time, effort and cost goes into recruiting the right people that’s shocking. To get
your new hires to ramp up and meet quota quicker, that’s where sales onboarding comes in.
I’ve seen companies with about 100 sales reps increase their revenue by 8% by just
implementing effective onboarding. The potential value to your top line can be even higher
if you have a smaller sales team.
So if it takes an average rep 6 to 9 months to meet their quota (assuming they ever do) the
benefits of expediting this process are high, both in terms of opportunity cost and having
to hire fewer reps to meet your targets. Add on top of that the ability to increase the overall
effectiveness of your sales team including:
• Higher win rates
• Increased deal size
• Shortened cycle times
By making your new reps more effective, you’ll achieve more consistent sales, making it
easier for you to predict performance and revenue. That’s why good sales onboarding is so
important. And that’s what I’ll show you in this guide.
Why should I read this sales onboarding guide?
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Sales onboarding is about making sure that your sales reps are truly sales ready. It’s about
understanding your industry, building detailed product knowledge, getting under the skin of
your customer personas, learning how to qualify a lead, articulating your value proposition
and pitching to them effectively. In short, onboarding is about learning “what to sell” and
“how to sell” and how to apply this out in the field.
While new hire orientation can be done relatively quickly, onboarding is a process
that can take up to 12 months. With a robust process, the right tools and effective
measures, it is possible to cut down sales onboarding time by at least 30-40%.
What is sales onboarding?
30-40%CUT DOWN SALES
ONBOARDING TIME BY
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The five steps of sales onboarding
I will now take you through each step in detail, outlining
how to build each aspect of your sales onboarding program.
There are five high-level steps to a sales onboarding process:
TRAINASSESS
REINFORCEThis can be a blend of face-to-face and online
training that covers essentials from product
information to prospecting and then pitching.
Being able to assess both the sales reps
and skills is critical to the onboarding
process.
Using tools to reinforce the
information that has been imparted will ensure that the rep
retains the knowledge.
r.
ANALYZESales managers
should analyze the information available to them to identify
skill gaps and knowledge adoption.
COACH1:1 coaching providestailored attention that
addresses the skill and identifies
knowledge gapsto bring the individualup to speed quicke
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CHAPTER 1Sales Training
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Introduction
Training is the first stage of the sales onboarding process. The training stage of any sales
onboarding program is by far the most important. This is when new reps learn the essential
knowledge that sets the stage for their success for the remainder of the onboarding process, and
then eventually in their future selling activities.
The ‘Train’ stage should take about one month to complete, and cover two key aspects; “What to
Sell” and “How to Sell”.
In order for this “training” to be truly effective, it is extremely important for the company’s
product or service to be projected to the new hire from the eyes of the customer – in the
context of the customer’s business, industry, challenges, needs, opportunities and pain points.
Learning “What to Sell” is much more than just product training or learning how to describe the
company’s solutions and services. Rather, it should prepare your reps to articulate the true value
proposition behind those offerings when they get in front of a customer.
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What to Sell
There are 4 pillars to What to Sell; Industry, Customer Personas, Product and Competitive
Analysis. These put the customer front and center, and cover foundational knowledge regarding
the customer’s industry, business and needs. It also ensures that your rep understands, and can
articulate, the product’s unique value proposition and stand on a firm foundation of case studies
and success stories so that they can engage a prospect in meaningful conversation when they’re
ready to sell.
By the end of the “What to Sell” section, your rep should be able to understand and articulate
what the different customer personas are, how they differ, and how to recognize them. They
should also understand how your product satisfies their needs, and articulate the product value
proposition clearly, along with its competitive advantage.
Value Proposition
Case Studies and Success Stories
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What to Sell
Through the use of online learning, your sales rep can learn some of the “What to Sell”
components during the pre-join period or before your onboarding boot camp, saving you both
time and money.
A structured online program prior to their first day will make it easier for them to get up to
speed, and get them excited about starting to work with you. After day 1, you can then combine
on-demand training, with both live training and online resources, so that your reps can review
materials at their convenience.
With online learning, you can introduce your new hires to the company
culture and corporate vision, as well as a broad introduction to your
customers (perhaps add some testimonials), and other publicly available
or non-proprietary information. !
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What to Sell
1. Industry knowledge: Setting context from a customer perspective
The first pillar in What to Sell is about understanding your industry context from a
customer perspective. Before your rep can put your product and their customer’s needs in
context, they need to understand your business model and and its surrounding ecosystem.
This isn’t so much about specific players in the industry, but rather about how your customer
sees your industry and what first impressions customers build as they research the various
options available in the market. For example, they may come across influencers in the field,
industry bodies and complementary products and service providers, that will all have a role in
influencing their thoughts and understanding of how they can solve their specific problem. It’s
for this reason that it’s critical for your new sales reps to understand your industry and how your
customer perceives it.
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What to Sell
2. Buyer personas: Know your customer
The second pillar is about knowing your customer. Who are they? What are their specific
problems? What do they know about how to solve their problem? What is their buying process?
In most businesses, there is more than one customer persona for each product, for example
at MindTickle we have several different buyer personas and sub-personas as well, that cover
differences between customers and industries. While the MindTickle platform may be evaluated
and administered by sales enablement and training professionals, the ultimate approval and
decision makers are usually sales leaders in fast growing companies.
For each buyer persona (and sub-persona), the sales rep should understand:
• What type of messages resonate with them;
• What channels each persona researches and purchases through;
• What each persona’s specific problems are; and
• What level of maturity in the buying process the persona is at.
This is all valuable information that forms the basis of how your reps adjust their messaging
depending on whom they are interacting with.
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What to Sell
3. Know your product as your customer sees it
It’s no longer enough for your reps to just know your product and its features. Your sales reps
need to add value to your customers by not only understanding their product features, but by
shining a torch on how to apply them to your buyer’s specific needs and issues. This means the
following questions:
• How does the product solve the buyer’s problem?
• How often do the customers use the product and for what purpose?
• What will be the impact to the customer if they purchase this product (for example will it
increase their revenue or save time perhaps)?
By not only understanding your product but also its context to your customer, your reps can help
customers find the solution that meets their needs, making a huge difference to the buyer and
also your bottom line.
One of our customers discovered that by training their reps not only on the features of its different product offerings, but also on how each product met the needs of different customer personas, their sales reps were better equipped to sell to different customers more competently. This gave them
a distinct competitive advantage and increased their revenue.
The most effective and easiest way for your sales reps to develop an appreciation of your product is to have them step into the shoes of the customer and experience the product themselves. While this is not as easy and straightforward to experience for services and solution companies, observing and studying customer stories can be almost as effective.
!
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What to Sell
4. Competitive analysis: Understand your worth
Understanding the competitive landscape goes further than just knowing who your competitors
are, and looks at how your product stacks up against your competition. Don’t just look at what
features your product has that your competitors don’t, but also which customer personas value
these features and the use cases and contexts in which each of those relative strengths and
weaknesses manifest themselves.
It’s likely that many of your prospects will speak to your competitors before making a final
decision. So another component of the competitive environment that your new reps should
learn about is how to handle customer objections and feature requests. By understanding what
your competitors are telling your prospects your reps will know the context of their objections
and be able to rebut them effectively.
One of the fastest growing technology companies in Silicon Valley, AppDynamics, was able to leverage its competitive advantage because it performed an extensive competitive benchmarking exercise and trained its sales reps on the competitive landscape in which it operated.
If you’re dealing with a customer persona who values analytics and reporting, then they will specifically value knowing that you can make data driven decision making easier and more cost-effective for them.
!As a general rule of thumb, about 80% of your objections will be standard and can be trained for online. Sales managers can then deal with skill gaps or non-standard objections during the coaching stage of onboarding.
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What to Sell
Bringing it to life through case studies and customer stories
Underpinning your pillars and value proposition are case studies and success stories that
provide color and context on how to deal with issues out on the field.
Maintaining a library of video recordings of how experienced reps steer customer discussions
can also be really valuable as it provides an opportunity for new reps to pick up sound bites and
examples that have been tried and tested. In addition, sharing a repository of referenceable
customer case studies and stories can be an invaluable resource for sales reps to access when
they want to.
Most of these “What to Sell” components can be learned almost completely online, freeing up
time for sales managers to be more involved at other stages of the onboarding process where
they can add more value.
Observing and listening into real customer calls or demos can be a great opportunity for new reps to see those stories being played out in real action. And role plays can help them cement this knowledge.!
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What to Sell
Outcomes: What to Sell certification
At the end of this stage your reps should be able to:
• Identify and relate to the customer personas;
• Articulate the value proposition as it applies to specific customers; and
• Handle the majority of customer objections.
This can be validated through online quizzes and mock pitching exercises.
By certifying your sales rep at this point, you can see what knowledge they’ve achieved and
where there may be some skill gaps to work on.
Of course if they pass their What to Sell certification, you can give them their learners permit
knowing they’re on their way to becoming competent, and are ready to move onto learning How
to Sell.
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How to Sell
The “How to Sell” component should cover tools and processes that will make your reps more
efficient and shorten the sales cycles. This is functional, and should be tailored to your business.
For example, consider these questions:
• How are leads generated within your business?
• Is there a marketing team that supports them, or will the rep be expected to prospect for themselves?
• What prospecting best practices are used by your best reps?
• What market intelligence is available within the business?
• What questions should they ask a customer when qualifying them?
• What CRM is used, and how is information recorded in it?
• What are each of the components of the sales cycle, from demo to follow-up?
This is all invaluable knowledge, designed to ensure your rep will be ready to get out there and
sell once the onboarding is complete.
30% of sales reps in a typical company are not aware of the latest wins and success stories. Success stories, product updates and best practice sales initiatives are an important part of sales training. !
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How to Sell
Whether your sales reps are experienced hires or freshers, it’s important to train your
new reps on “How to Sell” in the “selling” context of your business and customers. With
experienced sales reps, any rigorous interviewing process will ensure that the reps already come
in with strong selling skills, but they will still need to be trained on the experience that your
customers receive when they interact with your sales team.
There are three aspects of How to Sell:
1. Sales process
2. Technology and tools
3. Customer conversations.
!A fresher sales rep will need to be trained on best practices in negotiation and closing, while a seasoned sales rep who is new to your business should probably focus their energies on learning about pipeline management for your business.
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How to Sell
Sales process
For a new sales rep being on top of their sales process is critical to delivering in their job. This
includes:
•Understanding their sales funnel;
•Knowing how lead generation works within your business;
•Understanding what elements impact pricing of your product; and
•Knowing what actions should be followed to sell in a consistent and efficient manner.
There are three key elements of sales process training that are critical here:
1. Sales process metrics;
2. Sales funnel; and
3. Sales strategy.
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How to Sell
1. Sales process metrics
A winning sales culture is usually about hiring the right people, discipline and the right strategy.
The sales process metrics (aka SLA or service level agreement) are the foundation of a strong
sales culture. Setting expectations on the required SLAs, training new sales reps on them and
actually implementing them, all contribute towards driving the right sales culture.
At MindTickle we believe in putting the customer first so our SLA for making contact with a new inbound lead is 5 minutes. It’s a tight SLA but all our reps are trained on this and strive to meet it, which builds discipline in our sales execution.
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How to Sell
2. Sales funnel
It is important that sales reps have a holistic understanding of each part of the sales funnel, from
lead generation through to account management. The How to Sell should help them develop an
appreciation of the entire customer experience cycle.
While direct sales reps may rely on SDRs to generate leads for them, understanding how those leads are sourced and what expectations are set during the initial calls will help them meet those expectations.
!Understanding how customers are onboarded and what drives customer success will enable sales reps to respond to prospect’s questions and objections more effectively.
!
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How to Sell
2. Sales strategy
If your reps are selling a high volume SaaS product then the best practice sales process for them
to follow will be different than if they were selling a complex enterprise-wide system.
! Best practice sales process may differ between verticals or procurement cycles within your organization.
The key to best practices is to customize them to meet your specific organizational objectives
and customer needs. But once these strategies have been established by the sales leadership,
they need to be passed down to the sales reps like a proven recipe.
If a certain sales rep is going to be working on mid-market deals, then they need to be specifically
educated on what a predictable sales cycle looks like for them. For instance, who are the buyers
and decision makers? What is the primary selling point? How do you create urgency and how
do you close? All of this needs to be defined in the context of mid-market. For SMB and large
enterprise, the same questions would be still be relevant, but would have different answers.
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How to Sell
Keep it relevant to the sales rep
One of the traps I’ve seen many organizations fall into is to spend time on training reps on what’s
important for the sales manager, like forecasting and team quotas. While these are all important,
they’re not necessarily the top priority for a sales rep to learn to become competent to sell – at
least not in their early days. When designing the How to Sell training program, consider what
the sales rep needs to know to take responsibility of their own pipeline, and then consider what
components can be learned online and what requires offline activities to achieve competency.
! It’s important to keep the training simple and focused on what delivers sales results.
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How to Sell
Technology and tools
It is critical that sales reps leverage the latest sales productivity tools, and sales managers need
to ensure that the tools are being used correctly. Since it‘s quite likely that your competitors may
already be using these tools, it’s no longer about getting an edge; it’s simply the cost of doing
business.
Broadly, there are a few categories of technology and tools that every sales organization
should consider adopting:
1. CRM
2. Customer engagement
3. Lead generation
4. Sales readiness
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How to Sell
Technology and tools
1. CRM
Independent of which CRM (e.g. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Close.io, SugarCRM, Dynamics) that
you use, the most important training activity for new hires is to align them with how your CRM
is set up and what is the right method and cadence for recording data. I’m sure I’m preaching to
the choir when I say that poor data entry and compliance is a huge challenge for sales leaders
when it comes to effectively forecasting revenue.
Good habits need to start from day 1, and it’s absolutely critical for your new hires to understand
the importance of leveraging the CRM as an asset for their own success and not as a favor to
their managers.
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How to Sell
Technology and tools
1. Customer engagement
Customer engagement tools includes those that enable reps to:
• Track emails you send to customers (eg. Sidekick, ToutApp, YesWare);
• Share proposals or marketing collateral (eg. Slideshark, Clearslide); and
• Produce online webinars for customers (eg. Clearslide, Fileboard, Join.Me,
GoToMeeting).
Again, the most critical requirement is to ensure that new hires understand how these tools
amplify their sales effectiveness and their ability to meet or exceed their quota.
! Since many of your sales reps may already be familiar with these tools, the training for these tools is best presented on-demand.
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How to Sell
1. Lead generation
Lead generation tools may range from databases (eg. data.com, InsideView, SalesLoft) to social
selling tools (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter) and inbound marketing tools (e.g. Marketo, Pardot, Hubspot).
The relevance and importance of these tools may vary by the role of each sales rep. A regional
sales rep may find local area code lists as the most valuable resource while a mid-market SDR
may source all leads through LinkedIn InMails.
!Documenting what is working for seasoned sales reps and cross pollinating best practices from within and outside the organization, through bite-sized tips and social learning, is the best way to set up your new reps to succeed.
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How to Sell
2. Sales readiness
Sales readiness tools help you enable your reps with training, product knowledge updates,
competitor battle-cards, field communications, pricing, case studies and success stories on an
ongoing basis. It also helps to provide access to these tools as early into the new hire’s journey
as possible.
By using a sales readiness platform that has deep integration with your CRM, you can also make
it easier for reps to use, and leverage the information available in the CRM for your reporting and
analysis.
Through a combination of integration with CRM and a native mobile app for feet-on-street sales
reps, next generation platforms such as MindTickle can significantly enhance the effectiveness of
your sales reps.
Many of MindTickle’s customers provide access to their new hire training platform to new sales reps immediately after accepting the offer (even before joining).
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How to Sell
How to run customer conversations
Every sales organization will have best practices for how their reps should manage various
situations, from how to qualify a lead to winning over a champion or handling customer
objections. The aim here is to bring these best practices to the fore and ensure that your new
sales reps are well versed on these, and can implement them in a way that delivers an engaging
experience for the customer.
While the overall customer experience may be very hard to get one’s arms around in a short
period of time, there is tremendous value in breaking down sales conversations into smaller
pieces in order to prevent the new rep from becoming overwhelmed. This approach also
lends itself really well to creating a structured process for providing coaching and feedback to
individual sales reps.
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How to Sell
How to run customer conversations
Here are a few examples of customer conversations that I ask new sales reps to practice:
1. Introductory elevator pitch – Explain what is MindTickle; add credibility with
customer proof points and impact with a strong focus on the value delivered to the customer
(in less than 2 mins)
2. Discovery / qualification call – Ask the right questions to identify the prospect’s need
(or lack thereof). It’s usually never about selling ice cubes to the Eskimo.
3. First call pitch - Including the following in less than 10 mins:
• How MindTickle helps sales teams that are similar to the prospect;
• Success stories;
• Product differentiation and benefits; and
• How the platform works.
4. Demo – Move beyond features and functions and have reps share how they setup their
demo answering the why rather than the how (in less than 15 mins)
5. Objection handling – Share the most common objections and ask reps to share
recordings of how they respond to them. The library of these recordings can be a great
training resource for both the individual and the broader team.
6. Creating urgency – Ask the rep to identify what questions they would ask to proactively
identify blockers and work with their champion to close the deal.
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How to Sell
Make the “Training” stage effective by flipping it
One method that I’ve found effective when delivering sales training is a flipped classroom.
The structured learning plan can be shared with the reps upfront, so that they understand how
each topic will be approached. The trainer here is more of a consultative guide, rather than a
teacher; this engages reps from the get-go, and gives them the opportunity to take the initiative
in their own learning. Reps are encouraged to speak to each other, benefitting from their peers’
perspective, and get hands on with the product.
!The key to the flipped classroom training model is to ensure that you have defined the required business outcome, provided the pre-work and pre-material, and then develop a structured in-person facilitation format. This will ensure that sales reps come in prepared with their questions, and engage in a democratic learning process. They can then apply their understanding, reinforce it, and even go beyond by taking on more challenging tasks if they wish to stretch themselves.
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How to Sell
Make the “Training” stage effective by leveraging the power of video
We have found that 92% of people will watch a full video, compared to only 78% when given a presentation
The impact of training is much more engaging for a learner when video is used. One thing to
keep in mind when creating sales training videos though, the ideal length is between 3 and 10
minutes. Anything longer is likely to disengage your audience.
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How to Sell
Make the “Training” stage effective by using Test-to-Teach
An important aspect of the training stage is to determine if the reps have absorbed the
knowledge. The test-to-teach approach employs quick quizzes as a way to reinforce material,
as opposed to an examination or assessment objective. Small bite-sized modules and quizzes
not only reinforce specific nuggets of knowledge have been retained, but also get the neurons
fired up when combined with (contextual) explanations along with the correct answers. It’s a bit
like running a series of small sprints, building fitness in short, sharp bursts, that will help you get
through the marathon in the long-run. The tests are small so there’s also a greater chance of the
rep completing it.
MindTickle data shows that 88% of learners complete test-to-teach modules.
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How to Sell
Make the “Training” stage effective with gamification
Gamified techniques are not a new concept in the sales enablement space, but in my
opinion, very few teams tap into the full potential of this technique. When implemented right,
gamification can:
• Enable peer-to-peer feedback
• Enable benchmarking against a standard of performance (and a little healthy
competition)
• Provide positive reinforcement
These all have the potential to keep sales reps engaged and learning.
Gamification can also be leveraged to provide new sales reps with a sense of aspiration by
making the points meaningful in real-life.
One of our clients projects the new hire leaderboard on the sales floor, providing bragging rights to new reps and fostering a sense of healthy competition.
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CHAPTER 2Assess
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Introduction
Once you have run through the sessions on “What to Sell” and “How to Sell”, how do you
measure whether your new hire is actually ready? How much of the knowledge have they
retained? And more importantly, how much will they be able to apply when they’re face-to-face
with a potential customer? How do you identify what are the gaps in the knowledge of each
individual sales rep?
According to the Objective Management Group, 20% of “B” players have the potential to
become “A Players” with the right tools and training. So the potential upside is significant
if you can identify the gaps before the rep moves onto the next phase of their onboarding
program, coaching.
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Introduction
There are two different ways to assess how a rep is learning;
1. An objective appraisal of how the individual is understanding and applying knowledge
2. How the rep compares when their results are applied to a cohort or peer group.
I’ll address the latter in the Analyze stage, but in the Assess stage we’ll look at how to assess the
individual’s competence.
In my experience, the old school methods of written question and answer tests aren’t very
insightful in demonstrating how a rep can play back the value proposition, follow processes, or
handle objections. This is where assessment design is important.
Creating knowledge based assessments, coupled with exercises that require the rep to simulate
a real situation for example, are invaluable when assessing their skill level. You wouldn’t put a
pilot in a cockpit without making sure they’d passed the simulator first, right?
!Based on your objectives, you can then determine what are the key skills that the rep must demonstrate before achieving their certification or readiness certificate. Only sales reps who pass the readiness certification should go to the next stage.
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Framework for holistic salescertification
First, let me be start by sharing my definition of what sales certification means as it relates to
sales rep onboarding.
“Sales rep certification during onboarding means that someone has demonstrated an
understanding of ‘What to Sell’ and ‘How to Sell’, and are equipped with enough knowledge
to move on to coaching, and are closer to being sales ready.”
When certifying a sales rep, it’s not just about giving them a pass / fail; they should be able to
demonstrate their knowledge and skill in the context of the company’s offering and how it meets
the business needs of the customers.
When putting together a framework for sales certification, first you need to be clear about what
you want to test. Revisit the objectives of your sales training, and identify the specific areas of
knowledge that you wish to assess.
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Assessment Design
Once you know what you want to assess, you then need to design the assessment so that it
achieves your objectives. There are two types of assessment that I find particularly useful:
1. Knowledge assessment; and
2. Simulation missions.
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Knowledge Assessment
1. Knowledge assessment
This tests what knowledge the sales rep has retained, understood and can apply in the context
of the customer needs. Once the training is completed, the rep needs to demonstrate their
knowledge, so the assessment should be a “closed-book” test.
The assessment itself needn’t be old school though. It can include a range of quizzes and
situational exercises, so that each of the different aspects of the training are tested.
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Sales Missions
2. Sales missions
Sales missions involve role plays and essentially having sales reps provide a dry-run of the sales
process and its associated techniques.
These exercises will need to be reviewed by either yourself or a Sales Enablement Manager, so
that they can determine whether the rep has “passed”, and therefore achieved their certification.
Once you’ve assessed your sales rep and they’ve achieved certification, they’re ready for the next
level of sales onboarding. This doesn’t mean that they’re ready to get out on the field yet though.
Now it’s time to hone their skills through coaching.
To test the rep’s ability to articulate the value proposition of the company’s product or service for example, you could have them record their sales pitch. They can then play it back, and see how they performed; the video can also then be used as a tool when coaching. Similarly, video can be used to test the rep’s ability to respond to objections.
For extra benefits, you can create a library of sales pitches from all new hires and use crowd-voting and gamification to promote sharing of pitching styles and ideas. The library can also include best practice role plays from top sales reps, so new hires can see how it’s done.
!Another great exercise to test a reps understanding of the sales process, is to have them actually run through the sales process using dummy leads. They can do background research of leads, populate the CRM, identify and track leads, demonstrating their knowledge of the systems and processes. You will then know whether they can manage the process when they’re working the real leads.
!
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CHAPTER 3Structured Coaching
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Introduction
Traditionally sales coaching more often than not ends up being a one-size-fits-all pep talk
focussing on what formula worked for the manager when they were a sales rep. But to really
help a new sales hire, coaching actually needs to focus on their needs.
This has the additional benefit of making coaching a regular and planned activity that is in
the calendar without the need to sync schedules or travel if you have a distributed team. By
implementing a structured approach, you can be more effective at coaching and spend less time
doing it, leaving your reps with more time to drive sales.
When creating an effective coaching plan for your new sales reps, you need to look at it
in the context of the entire onboarding process. I recommend introducing coaching after
you have trained and certified your new hire. Sequencing it in this order has several advantages.
Firstly, the new hire will get more out of your coaching sessions as they come in prepared with all
their baseline knowledge, and you will spend less time explaining the basics of “what to sell” and
“how to sell”. Secondly, and more importantly, you can build on the data collected from the first
two steps in the process to put together a customized coaching plan that will help address the
specific areas that require development and reinforcement.
!A data driven approach to coaching, rather than relying solely on intuition, can provide you with direction on what skill gaps each individual rep needs to be coached on. You can even leverage technology to make the coaching process more efficient – through video recordings of role plays and online feedback forms for example.
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Introduction
To coach or to give feedback:
Before I get into the details of creating a structured coaching plan, it’s important to clarify exactly
what coaching is. Many managers confuse coaching with giving feedback, but in reality they are
two very different things.
Feedback is where a manager tells a rep what they think about their performance and what
they could do differently. It’s not really about the rep at all, but rather about the sales manager’s
perspective on their performance. On the other hand coaching is all about the sales rep; what
would address their gaps, how they can perform better, and strengthen their skills.
Coaching is a structured and intentional process to guide your new sales rep to be sales ready
so they can achieve their maximum potential. Coaching a new sales rep is a critical step in
onboarding them, and when provided in a structured manner, it can accelerate the onboarding
ramp significantly. Tactical feedback can then be given once they’re out in the field.
For this reason, it’s important that sales managers are able to set aside time for coaching, as Jeff
Hoffman correctly states:
“While a manager can give feedback on the way to the elevator, they can’t coach a rep
anytime, anywhere. Instead, managers should allot time on their calendars for coaching
and use it for that purpose alone.”
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Identifying Gaps
Typically, after the training and certification stages of onboarding have been completed, the
sales reps should understand “What to Sell” but may be struggling with aspects of the “How to
Sell”. Perhaps they need more work articulating your value proposition or they may be struggling
with objection handling or even competitive positioning. Each new hire may have a different
Achilles heel and this is where technology can really help you.
!By recording and filing away voice-over presentations or videos of the reps practicing their pitches, you can create a goldmine of insights to help you identify where the exact skill gaps are – for each individual.
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Creating a Coaching Plan
Once you know what needs to be coached, you can then create a structured plan, with tasks
and activities that have been designed to reinforce their training. This stage of the onboarding
process can be completed over 4 to 6 weeks; 3 to 4 weeks of intense coaching, followed by 1 to 2
weeks of on the job coaching.
Here is an example of a coaching program for new sales reps:
!An integral part of the coaching process is to have the newbie shadow one of your A players. Where possible, the new hire can shadow someone when they are demonstrating the specific skill sets that are being coached. This will give them the opportunity to see how it’s done in practice as well.
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Implementing a Coaching Plan
When to go online or offline
No two coaching plans will be the same. Even if two reps have passed their sales certification
process they may still have different areas of weakness so their coaching plan will be different,
customized to address their individual skills and needs. However, there are four main areas
where coaching is likely to be required when onboarding a sales rep:
1. Articulating the product value proposition;
2. Objection handling;
3. Creating the customer pitch deck; and
4. Following the sales process.
These areas cannot be taught solely through an online training platform, they require coaching
and face to face time to make sure they are perfected. But before you start coaching you can
assign the rep different tasks or sales missions to complete that meet these objectives and can
then be used as part of the coaching process.
If they need to improve how they articulate the value proposition, then they can do some more
role plays that include practicing the value proposition, videoing themselves, and then watching
this back with you. The coaching can occur as you play it back together and identify areas where
they can improve their articulation of the value proposition. If following the sales process is an
issue, then practicing with dummy leads will help identify where behavior needs to be corrected.
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Implementing a Coaching Plan
When to go online or offline
!To make coaching easier for you, I suggest putting together some pre-designed exercises that cover each of these areas. You can then select and assign the ones that are to be included in the coaching plan for each individual rep.
Once each of the assigned tasks has been completed the sales is ready for face to face coaching.
You can use these recorded tasks and data from the assignments to give the rep structured
coaching where they need it the most.
Combine this coaching with a shadowing program, where the newbies can watch your A players
in action and see a realistic view of how the coached techniques are applied out in the field. This
integrated approach to coaching can be very powerful, and will have your newbies ready to get
out there and sell quicker.
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CHAPTER 4Analyze
52
Introduction
When implementing a sales onboarding program, or any sales enablement process for that
matter, there comes a time when you need to step back and determine whether it’s delivering
the goods. Are your new sales reps truly sales ready after they finish the initial training? How
long are new reps taking to achieve quota?
Using a data-driven approach to measure the readiness of your new sales reps as they
navigate their progression across the Train, Assess and Coach stages of onboarding is a
good way to determine how effective the onboarding is. I’ve found it to be most effective to
benchmark new hires against existing sales reps. While no individual is the same, generally your
existing sales reps fall into three categories:
1. The A Players – These are your high performing sales reps who consistently exceed targets
2. The B Players – They are just about meeting targets, and need some attention to keep them
on track
3. The C Players – These reps need some help and guidance to get them performing on quota
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Creating Performance Bands
While the typical bell curve applies more to tenured sales reps rather than newbies, it
serves as a framework for projecting the initial data. The question I ask myself is – given
what I know about this new hire, is this person likely to be an A, B or C and then take appropriate
action to help them move up the bell curve.
I have found that moving up the bell curve is more manageable during the early months and gets
harder, the longer the sales rep has dug heels into their current position and in the bell curve.
http://www.intellectcorp.com/bell-curve-hiring.aspx
At MindTickle, we segment new reps into Potential A, Potential B and Potential C bands – not so much for passing judgement on their capabilities, but more to identify their development needs. It’s kind’a like not holding back the kids who are way ahead in a lower grade, and at the same time also making sure that no kid gets left behind. On the same lines, the Potential A new hires are likely to be ready to get out on the field earlier than the other bands, the potential B players require a bit of reinforcement and C players need intensive “bootcamp” style coaching.
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Benchmarking
Benchmarking members of your sales team is an incredibly powerful tool. Imagine if you can
start predicting how long it will take your new sales reps to start meet their quota after just two
weeks in the job?
Moreover, the sooner you can identify the areas of development for each new hire, the earlier
you can get to work plugging those gaps.
We use the following 5 metrics to measure new sales hires and the effectiveness of our
onboarding program:
1. Time to complete training: Where your training includes some self-paced learning
modules and assessment, this measures how long it takes someone to complete the
program and demonstrate that they’ve absorbed the knowledge
2. Time to sales readiness – How long until the rep is ready to engage customers without
the assistance of a more seasoned team member
3. Time to close first sales deal – The amount of time it takes to make the first sale is a
landmark measurement for both the individual and the business. However, when
coupled with ‘time to meet quota, it provides a good indicator of the potential success
of the new hire as well
4. Time to meet quota – At MindTickle, we define productivity as the first month that
the sales rep achieves their quota, however industries with longer lead times or more
seasonal products may consider it more appropriate to measure the first quarter in
which quota is achieved instead. The important thing with this metric is ensuring that
it is easy to measure
5. Average sales cycle (time to close deals) – In my experience, the time spent to close
a deal is the best proxy for productivity. It shows how efficient the rep is in taking a
customer through the sales process, and getting a result. It also should be easy to
measure through the tools available in your CRM.
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Benchmarking
Benchmarking members of your sales team is an incredibly powerful tool. Imagine if you can
start predicting how long it will take your new sales reps to start meet their quota after just two
weeks in the job?
Moreover, the sooner you can identify the areas of development for each new hire, the earlier
you can get to work plugging those gaps.
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The Onboarding Readiness Index
Being able to measure how sales ready your new hires are, and identifying the gaps is invaluable,
but handling several metrics, especially across a number of sales reps and join batches, may
be a taxing exercise. Wouldn’t it be great to have a summary metric to benchmark the “sales
readiness” of each sales rep?
“The Onboarding Readiness Index is a measure that can predict how ready the rep is to
close deals.”
The Onboarding Readiness Index can also be used at a macro level, either at an organizational
level, or a team level, to analyze the relative strength of the unit. If your business has a low sales
readiness index, then it means that your entire sales team is likely selling below par. Just imagine
the impact on your overall sales results if you can identify this early, and also pinpoint where the
bench-strength of your new hires is lacking.
The Onboarding Readiness Index is a combination of three elements:
1. Knowledge score
2. Engagement score
3. Knowledge application score
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The Onboarding Readiness Index
1. Knowledge score
This looks at how much knowledge the new hire has absorbed during their training. To measure
the knowledge score, you can look at assessments conducted during the training (e.g. their
performance in online tests and quizzes) and the assessment or certification done upon
completion of the training stage.
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The Onboarding Readiness Index
2. Engagement score
This looks at how the rep engaged with the content. This score can provide an indicator of where
there may be gaps in the learning process, that may in turn lead to inadequate “sales readiness”.
In an ideal world, the training content should be consumed regularly and consistently on an
ongoing basis to get the most out of it.
This data provides a telling indicator of how seriously your new reps are likely to pursue sales
opportunities. Furthermore, the engagement score can also help you identify where there may
be opportunities to improve and optimize your learning tracks.
This type of feedback is invaluable for continuous process improvement.
In a self-learning module, platforms such as MindTickle let you measure the engagement of the rep while consuming the content. The engagement level can be gauged through proxies, for example did the rep completed the training in one sitting, or were there big gaps in between multiple sessions? Coaching analytics can also be used to measure how many times they
recorded their pitch as part of their structured coaching plan to give you an indication of their commitment to nailing the exercise.
We have found that a gap of just 2 days in between learning can lead to a significant loss in knowledge retention.
!
! If every rep fasts forwards one of the videos, perhaps it’s not engaging or too long or there is a technical snag.
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The Onboarding Readiness Index
3. Knowledge Application score
Even if a new sales rep is highly knowledgeable and engaged, it is still not a true reflection of
their sales readiness unless it’s measured in the context of a sales situation. This third score is
intended to measure whether new reps are demonstrating an adequate depth of understanding
and connecting the dots by applying the knowledge in their simulated customer conversations.
This overall score adds an additional certification threshold, so that you have a standardized and
objective benchmark for when your reps are sales ready.
!Pitch testing or role playing objection handling or qualification calls are a great way of measuring this score. You can even allocate specific objectives to these sales missions, such as clarity, enthusiasm and confidence, and score your reps on each one during your coaching sessions.
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CHAPTER 5Reinforce
61
Introduction
At the end of the day, it’s important to ensure that your sales onboarding delivers long-
lasting results. After all, you spend so much time and energy hiring and onboarding new sale
reps, but like a shiny new car, your investment depreciates the minute they step outside. It
is natural for the reps to forget the training content, and even if they retained everything the
readiness of your reps will decline on a relative scale because it’s a moving target. Competitors
change strategy, industry dynamics change, you introduce new product features or you have
published new referenceable case studies.
It’s not only important to help your newbies maintain their level of knowledge by reinforcing
their training, but also to sustain their overall sales readiness so they can continue to level-up.
Therefore, reinforcement is a critical part of an effective onboarding program.
! Some gaps for your new reps may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues.
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Introduction
To get your reps on their way to achieving their sales quota, here are 5 best practices:
1. Implement periodic refreshers
2. Spot check sales readiness
3. Reinforce with coaching and simulation exercises
4. Mentoring
5. Make it mobile
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Periodic Refreshers
1. Implement periodic refreshers
Broadly, speaking there are two types of sales training formats – baseline training modules (think
of them as long-form modules that provide well-structured and comprehensive knowledge about
a subject matter), and bite-sized updates to refresh the knowledge imparted in the training
modules. These updates, when delivered in the right context, can not not only serve to refresh
the knowledge of your sales reps, but they can also help the sales reps connect the dots on how
those pieces of information can help them win more deals.
Some of your priorities may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s
important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues.
!• Send out a cheat sheet on how to handle specific customer objections or one that outlines the steps to complete one part of the sales process• Send out bite-sized updates on specific product features and how they contribute to the value proposition• Set reminders in SalesForce at points in the process that are critical to CRM compliance• Send a short reminder on their mobile phone that outlines how an A Player prepares for a meeting.
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Spot Check Sales Readiness
2. Spot check sales readiness
Quick pop-quizzes are a great way to periodically test and reinforce what your sales reps have
retained. When combined with explanations for the quiz answers, these quizzes can serve
to enhance the knowledge of the reps. This can be particularly useful for small nuggets of
information that are easily forgotten.
!MindTickle has over 8 different types of quizzes that can make this quite simple to implement, and provide you with data on how your reps performed on each question as well. For example, use a multiple choice question to test their knowledge of the value proposition or label matching to update them on the benefits of a new product feature.
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Coaching and Role Playing
3. Reinforce with coaching and role playing
While a structured coaching plan should already be part of your sales onboarding, you can
reinforce specific skills and troubleshoot issues using role plays. For example, if there is a specific
objection that many reps struggle to deal with, you can have them record their response and
then go over this with them in your next coaching session. And if done on a regular basis, such
exercises help ensure that all sales reps have consistent messaging.
These bite sized missions should take no more than 5 minutes for the rep to do, but can help
provide very actionable feedback.
!MindTickle offers an automated workflow for managing role plays called Sales Missions. You can create online exercises for their team members which require them to submit an audio/video recording of how they would respond to a sales situation. These could range from cold pitches, elevator pitches or leaving voicemails to handling specific customer queries or objections.
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Mentoring
4. Mentoring
You already know that your high performing quota carriers are the best inspiration you
can give to a new hire, but they can also help them reinforce best practices they’ve heard
about during their onboarding. By establishing a formal mentoring program or even an
informal buddy system, your new hires can hear success stories and winning strategies directly
from your rockstars. When positioned as a buddy or mentor relationship, the new hires are likely
to be more open to asking questions that they perhaps might consider too “dumb” to ask their
manager.
Certain sales leaders do not want to spare a minute of their top sellers for such mentoring
activities. I believe that is a short sighted approach, and can be detrimental to the career
progression of your “A player” sales reps.
Mentoring programs have dual benefits in the long term. Not only are they beneficial for the newbies, they also offer an opportunity to your “A” reps to get first hand experience of essential managerial skills such as coaching. This can even be a first step towards graduation to senior roles.
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Mobile Sales Enablement
5. Make it Mobile
By ensuring that reinforcement content and activities are made available to your reps on their
mobile devices, those interactions will be integrated into your reps daily routine and quickly
become just another part of their everyday sales activities. Moreover, for reinforcement to be
effective, the tips and refreshers are much more meaningful when presented in the context of
customer situations.
!The value of a case study or a win story would be most appreciated by a sales rep when presented in the middle of a similar deal that he/she may be assisting with.
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Leverage the Power of Analytics
Bonus Tip: Amplify the impact of reinforcement by leveraging the power of
analytics
According to the Aberdeen Group:
“20% more sales reps achieve quota when their team implements post-training
reinforcement.”
But before you jump straight in, you must prioritize the key capabilities that you want your reps
to focus on, and then determine how best to reinforce those. For example, ensuring that they
fully understand your customer personas may be a challenge for some, or many may find CRM
compliance to be a pain point. This is where analytics and data can play a big role.
At MindTickle, we export the learning performance (scores in quizzes, engagement metrics and results from pitch testing) in order to create groups of new hires based on their development needs. This data has also been very useful for us to create a standardized refresher track that applies to all new hires.
We observed that most new hires find it hard to retain the advanced functionality of the MindTickle analytics. Additionally, our data also tells us that the A player reps on our team have consistently shown a very high degree of awareness regarding competition. So we added competition battle-cards to the reinforcement track and additional reinforcement on advanced analytics functionality.
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Conclusion and Next Steps
Six points to guide your sales onboarding program
With the information and resources provided in this paper, you should be ready to start
developing your own sales onboarding program and see more of your new hires achieve quota
quicker.
Here’s a quick summary of six important points to guide your sales onboarding and get
you off to a great start.
1. Know the business objectives that you need to deliver on and connect your investment
to the business objectives.
2. Keep your customer front and center of your training program design
3. Ensure your sales reps are certified in a way that actually demonstrates their
competency.
4. Implement structured coaching plans that focus on plugging individual skill gaps
5. Benchmark your reps against their peers and measure their onboarding sales
readiness.
6. Continually reinforce training and coaching to ensure knowledge retention and skill
development.
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What is MindTickle Sales Readiness Software?
MindTickle enables you to prepare your new hires to be sales
ready and consistently keep them updated to close more deals.
Design an effective and scalable onboarding program;
Develop a structured coaching program;
Assess and track the sales readiness of your new sales reps; and
Reinforce the sales training on an ongoing basis.
Talk to a SalesEnablement Expert
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