Sales Rep Training

5 Components of a Great Sales Onboarding Experience

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5 Components of a Great Sales Onboarding Experience

What’s the most important component of a sales rep’s onboarding process? If we measure by time spent, most companies’ inadvertent answer would be company history, product, and systems. In an employee’s first few weeks, that’s where the majority of time is spent.

Outside of company orientation, there are five components of a great sales onboarding experience:

  1. Sales
  2. Acumen
  3. Systems
  4. Process
  5. Product

I’ve put these in priority order, let me tell you why I rank sales first and product last (you probably didn’t see that coming):

Sales 

Sales tactics are the little skills that determine if an employee feels successful in their first 90 days. If you want them to stay, this is critical. Too often young reps quit sales because those first few months are full of calls, voicemails, and rejections. Product training will help them in a few months when they have sales conversations, but we need to focus first on getting them more of these conversations. 

DOWNLOAD: Sales Team Retention Infographic

Focus on skills like how to prospect, how to make an outbound dial, how to write a valuable sales email, how to leave a good voicemail, and how to overcome initial brush-offs. When we focus on these skills with new hires, we see results like 200% more productivity than previous new hire classes (HPE, 2023).

Pro Tip: weave sales training and practice into the curriculum daily. Combine with product training to produce better questions, with acumen information to help identify ICPs and do better discovery. Daily practice builds better recall and confidence!

READ: Quick Sales Voicemail Tips to Build Phone Confidence

Yes! Outsourcing sales training in new hire onboarding can be very successful. License a vendor’s online content for a great virtual experience and then come together in live workshops to tailor messaging and role play. You’ll save time and help reps ramp faster.

Acumen 

This is business, industry, and customer know-how. What do they care about, what are the challenges, what are the trends, and how do I have an intelligent conversation with them? Then, how do these relate to what I’m selling? New reps are afraid of conversations, and helping them get to know their customer and their customer’s business, lingo, questions, and challenges can fix this. 

Use customer testimonials, old call recordings, and lingo bingo to get the voice of the customer. 

Systems

I wish I could put systems last, but just like sales, it takes repetition to get good. Please resist the temptation to teach a system start to finish and start instead with the first 10 things they’ll do on the job. 

Practice system drills DURING sales role plays. It’s not the individual skill that’s hard, it’s using them together. Systems finals should include multi-tasking and be timed.

Systems and sales are ripe for outsourcing by the way. Use your systems provider’s training – just re-organize it from the rep’s point of view. Using outsourced training helps mix it up, cover different learning styles, and infuse your program with expertise. Same with sales – some things need to be customized but don’t rely on professional training facilitators to coach selling tips.

READ: How to Build Sales Confidence During Onboarding

Process

Process is how to GSD (get stuff done). Try organizing this by the top ten questions managers get and customers ask. Teach reps how to use tools to answer their questions instead of giving them the answers. I like a good scavenger hunt for this and it’s easy to do remotely. Reps need to know how to get accounts assigned to them, do research, send info, answer customer questions – do a day-in-the-life study of your last newbies, and your curriculum is written!

Process training can also cross over into acumen practice. Role-play conversations with customers or use recordings with questions and challenge reps to find the answers. 

Product

Finally product. Sure, I overcorrected a hair by putting it last, but there’s such a glut of product training in most programs I wanted to balance it a bit! When we give full-blown product training to new hires, we actually DECREASE their confidence. If you don’t expect a rep to have a conversation about the intricacies of what you provide in the first 2 months, then SKIP THIS. Focus instead on what problems it solves, the customer situations/profiles who love it, and the questions to ask to uncover this situation. Then provide resources just in case to look up answers. Slimming down the product features and functionality helps beef up the “how to sell it” portion. 

Pro Tip: do product training daily just before sales training so you can incorporate the product situation questions into your sales questions and be teaching them how to do discovery right from the start.


We’re talking about unconscious incompetence and it’s important. We can’t have reps making outbound dials feel underprepared and afraid. So lop off half of the training you’re doing in the first month and instead drill the basics. If they don’t know the complexities of what they’re selling in month one it’s a win. We will only retain about 50% of what we’re taught in sales onboarding unless we drill it, practice it, and role-play it, so less info and more practice! Bonus: mix it all up and use it together like they will on the job.

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Sales Training: How to Get Buy-in From Your Salespeople

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Sales Training: How to Get Buy-in From Your Salespeople

Are you having a hard time getting salespeople bought into sales training and ongoing learning? Struggling to get their attention? Unable to get them to try and apply new skills?

It all comes down to behavior change. Getting people to try new things and change their behavior is one of the toughest things out there.

READ: What Makes Good Inside Sales Training?

That’s why I use a model called BLISS.

If you’re having trouble getting adoption, include each of the steps below represented in your training program.

B – Buy-in – If you want a salesperson’s time – their most valuable resource – you better show them upfront why it’s well worth their time. Show them ROI and results, or prove that they may need some help here. Basically, prove they’re in trouble without using the skill OR prove the benefit of using the skill.

L –  Learning – As training experts, I don’t need to tell you what good facilitation is. I use the CUP model. C stands for “Connect”, U for “Use” and P for “Practice.” If it’s a video, it’s not learning (more on that topic here).

I – Integration – We have to be able to use skills at the same time when we’re in sales. I can’t just have a folder of product training, skills training, and systems training and not integrate them. So, if you want people to use your new skill, show them HOW and WHEN it’s being applied. Help train the triggers of when to grab this folder and practice it integrated with other skills.

S – Synthesis – Make sure you’re practicing with other skills. If this is something that’s just in theory and sort of left on a shelf, it’s going stay on that shelf. Bring it into the real world. At Factor 8, we always make live calls practicing new skills during training. We’ve learned it, we’ve role-played it, we’ve talked about it, now we’re going to go do it and get some feedback on it.

S – Support – Getting busy revenue leaders to support training initiatives is rough. We’ve got to do buy-in for them as well. My tip here is make it FAST and EASY for frontline managers to support these new skills. Bring them into the training but give them tools to use. We have a manager toolkit for every class we teach with easy-to-use activities in huddles, classes, or training sessions to keep skills alive. Things like call coaching forms or call coaching cheat sheets to help them support the newly learned skills. 

Follow the steps in BLISS and you’ll blissfully ensure that salespeople will embrace and apply new skills. Need help? Email me at LB@factor8.com.

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Sales Confidence: How to Build it During Onboarding

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How to Build Sales Confidence During Onboarding

I’ve heard from many sales leaders lately that it’s tough getting the next generation of sellers to pick up the phone.

We all know that no one wants to make cold calls, but the endless email and InMail touches and cadences that your reps are using aren’t working.

And, with the new Gmail and Yahoo email restrictions that kicked in this year, it’s more important than ever to go back to basics and get new sellers to pick up the phone.

At Factor 8, we’re focused on teaching reps tactical phone sales skills to help them build sales confidence (so they’ll pick up the phone AND feel great about it!)

Today, I’m talking about new sales hire onboarding.

When you’re bringing on someone new – especially when they’re remote – one of the most important things you can do in new hire onboarding is use call recordings.

READ: Tips for Virtually Onboarding New Sales Reps

The game has changed over the past few years. When sellers are remote, they can’t just sit next to their peers,  hear what’s happening, and learn the good, bad, and ugly.

If your company doesn’t record calls, or you’re worried about not having a specific rep’s call recordings, toss that – it doesn’t matter. You can learn so much from any call recording.

In fact, at Factor 8 in our Sales Bar, our online sales training platform, we have thousands of user-submitted recorded sales calls from all different industries, organized by skill (i.e. call intro, overcoming objections, call bridging, closing, etc.)

READ: 7 Hacks to Improve New Sales Rep Onboarding

During onboarding, break down the call and let reps listen to what it sounds like, even if it’s not a good call, because what we’re scared of is what the customer is going to say to us (and the inability to think on our feet to respond to them intelligently).

When reps hear different scenarios on sales calls 20 or 30 times, they begin to feel comfortable and that fear starts to go away and the confidence rises.

And that’s the name of the game, folks: confidence. You’ve got to have it to succeed in sales, and building it begins at onboarding.

Need help building sales confidence in your sales reps? Email me at LB@factor8.com. I’m happy to help!

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New Sales Hire Onboarding

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8 Components of a World-Class New Sales Hire Onboarding Program

Been thinking that revenue targets would be easier to crush if your new hires would ramp up to speed more quickly? You’re spot-on, my friend.

WATCH: Onboarding Sales Reps: 10 Hacks To Improve Training + Ramp Time

Best-in-class onboarding (or new hire training) programs go well beyond the standard “Welcome to the company” orientation and dive into actual job training. But most programs stop after introducing reps to their new systems and products. This leaves reps on their own to figure out things like:

  • What do I do first?
  • How do I get people to call me back?
  • What do I say if they ask me X?

The result? Long ramp times, while they use experience to supplement what they could have been taught.

There will always be a ramp period. Our goal is to shorten it. Awesome new hire programs have been proven to cut new hire ramp-to-target in half (Training Magazine).

What is the right ramp time? Sorry for this, but it depends – on the talent you’re hiring, your training program, and the complexity of your offering and sales cycle. But here are a few basic benchmarks:

  • Top business development (BDR, SDR) programs ramp reps before three months.
  • Account managers between three and six months.
  • If your deals aren’t over $200K, your sales cycle is over 6 months, and it’s taking your reps 6+ months to hit quota, your program probably needs some help.

I’ve been building and benchmarking new hire programs for the past fifteen years, and there are very few who don’t need help. Why?

Most onboarding programs need help because trainers don’t get sales, and sellers don’t usually get training – it’s a sandbox thing.

A great program is a killer combination of both worlds. Incidentally, a great program can also shrink your rep attrition. Keep them longer, ramp them faster = this is worth your investment, sales leaders!

READ: How to Hire and Retain Top Sales Reps and Managers

Here are eight signs of a world-class rep onboarding program (that you should steal immediately!)

1. Training is a process, not an event. 

Think of it as “Just-in-time training.” 100% classroom time is 1-2 weeks and then decreases gradually to once a month.

For example, a new hire is in full-time training for 2 weeks, but by week 4 they’re in class 2 hours a day, and in week six 1 hour a day. By week 8 it’s one hour a week and by month three (and for the rest of their tenure!) they’re in training once a month.

This makes it critical to focus their first two weeks only on what they’ll need in month one on the phone. Why? They’ll have no idea what they don’t know yet. That means you’ll graduate a team of super-confident sellers who can’t wait to get on the phones. Perfect. 

2. Use call recordings. 

This is my favorite tip. My theory on ramp time is that it will always be present because it isn’t the “what to do/say” that takes a long time to get. It’s the “when do I do it/say it” that takes experience to really nail. So shorten that by letting reps listen to call recordings. Nope, the recordings don’t have to be their own, and they shouldn’t all be great calls. Just typical. It’s like reviewing game tapes before the big game – breaking down what the other team (customer) is doing and when they should have used the right play (skill). 

3. Includes 6 critical components 

All six critical components of the program are included and mixed together:

1. Systems & Tools – CRM, Intranet, Lead Management, AI, etc.
2. Product/Service – be sure it’s “how to sell it” and not “the full history of it”
3. Sales – how to sell our products over the phone (not generic sales 101 field training!)
4. Process – how leads and orders get processed + rep and customers’ top 10 questions
5. Acumen – business acumen, industry acumen, and customer acumen – critical!
6. Manager integration – nope, lunch on day one isn’t enough. Get them more involved.

4. GET ON THE PHONES! (ASAP). 

If you can create an exercise where reps are calling current, potential, or even past customers by day two, do it! They can qualify leads, gather success stories, call cold leads – whatever! The right hires are itching to start calling, and the wrong hires will show reluctance and wash out. You’re welcome.

READ: Tips for Virtually Onboarding New Sales Reps

5. Less than 30% is e-learning. 

Sorry large organizations, I know it’s so tempting! But classroom-based training (in-person or virtual) is still the most effective for a reason: You can’t practice selling with a computer! Also, how engaging is your new hire’s experience when they’re clicking forward 200 times a day? Painful.

6. Rigor. 

In my experience, a good 25% of every new hire class should not graduate training (yes, please be sure you’re hiring in groups, not “onesie-twosie”). When you really trust your training department, you’ll count on them to de-facto manage reps during training and coach them out the door if they won’t make it. Start, stop, and break times should be like real life on the floor, and weekly tests let them know how they’re doing.

7. Training mimics the floor. 

Quick hit ways to do this:

a. You have a systems sandbox for training (a monthly updated mirror image of all systems)
b. Phones and systems in the classroom for better role plays
c. Dummy accounts or even real (low scoring) accounts for practice
d. Call coaching or quality forms approved by sales leadership used for role plays/testing
e. Scenario-based testing (because when is a real client going to say, “A. send me a quote…B. schedule a call back…”?)

8. Don’t let HR teach reps how to sell. 

There’s a difference between regular company training and sales training. Aberdeen recently reported that 85% of best-in-class sales teams use a professional sales curriculum or trainer. What is good sales training? (read more about that here)

Overwhelmed? Here are a few easy ways to start:

  • Get to know your training ASAP. Pick your best sales leader and charge them with shortening ramp. Attend training, learn about good training, and partner and assist your trainer with the curriculum.
  • Get the reports. Sales numbers won’t show you class-by-class ramp times unless you specifically build them. Believe me, it’s worth it.
  • Close the loop. Are you reporting the top three skill gaps on the floor to training on a monthly or quarterly basis? Do you have the call coaching and rep meeting cadence in place to provide this?
  • Get some help. Spend the money to bring in a professional sales training leader, someone to fix your program or a great sales training curriculum. When reps ramp faster and stay longer, you’ll wish you budgeted for this three years ago!

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scheduling next steps in sales

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The Importance of Scheduling Next Steps in Sales

I can’t tell you the number of calls that I listen to (or receive) where salespeople do not schedule next steps before ending the call. It’s so basic, so fundamental, yet so often neglected.

READ: Call Bridging 101: Paving the Way for a Follow-up Sales Call

Whether it’s an initial cold call, a discovery session, a product demo, or (I shudder at the thought) a proposal review, the lack of direction is startling.

Below I’ll share the importance of next steps, why reps aren’t doing it, and how managers can ensure their reps are scheduling next steps.

The Importance of Concrete Next Steps in Sales
  1. Efficiency: A streamlined sales process is gold. According to CSO Insights, having a defined sales process can increase win rates by up to 15%. Concrete next steps are a cornerstone of this process.
  2. Commitment: When both parties agree on a specific next step, there’s a subtle commitment. This can increase the chances of a deal moving forward.
  3. Clarity: With clear next steps, there’s no ambiguity. Both the rep and the prospect know what’s coming next.
So, Why Aren’t Reps Doing It?
  1. Fear of Commitment: Some reps fear that setting a concrete next step might deter prospects. They think staying “open-ended” gives prospects breathing room.
  2. Lack of Confidence: A rep unsure of the call’s outcome might hesitate to suggest the next step, fearing rejection.
  3. Overlooking the Basics: Surprisingly, some reps get so engrossed in the conversation that they forget this fundamental step.
How to Ensure Reps Schedule Next Steps
  1. Sales Training: Make next-step training a part of your regular sessions. Emphasize its importance, backed by data. For instance, Hubspot reports that 40-50% of sales go to vendors that respond first. Concrete next steps ensure you’re always a step ahead.
  2. Role Play: Include the process of setting next steps in your role-playing exercises. Make it second nature.
  3. Call Monitoring & Feedback: Use call monitoring tools to track how often reps set concrete next steps. Provide feedback and reinforcement.
  4. Celebrate Wins: When a rep successfully moves a deal forward due to well-defined next steps, celebrate it. Let it be a lesson for the whole team.

READ: Tips for Mastering Call Coaching

The sales dance is a series of well-coordinated steps. Missing one can mean stumbling or even falling flat. As someone who’s been in the sales arena for years, I can’t stress enough the importance of clear next steps. It’s not just about closing the current call; it’s about paving the way for the next one. So, let’s get back to basics, prioritize efficiency, and drive our sales with precision.

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sales rep onboarding

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8 Sales Rep Onboarding Best Practices

By now you’ve heard that the sales rep onboarding experience is a major factor in how they ramp to quota and ultimately affects how they feel about your company.  

There are about 3 million moving parts in an onboarding program since it happens across so many departments, mostly outside of sales. Because of this, it’s easy to lose our way during onboarding. One of the most important hindrances is the lack of investment — both in effort and money — in onboarding.

Insidesales.com did a study that found organizations spend an average of 3x more on rep tools than on rep development, with the average rep having between 5-10 tools. Similarly, Training Magazine found that organizations spend on average 25x more on recruiting than development. 

Moreover, Training Magazine tells us that a good onboarding program can cut ramp time and attrition by 50%. If we focus more time on crafting an onboarding program that will help retain the reps we recruit, we save time, money, and energy down the line.

So let’s do this! Here are 8 best practices you can dive into fixing right now.

Integrate These 8 Best Practices Into Your Sales Rep Onboarding

  1. “Just-in-time” training
  2. Leverage sales (not HR) professionals
  3. Balance software and traditional training methods
  4. Continue onboarding long after the rep is “ready”
  5. Adopt the six critical components of a training program 
  6. Use ample multimedia resources
  7. Create a formal, but flexible, rep training program 
  8. Set realistic, data-based expectations 

Let’s dive a little deeper into why and how to integrate these tips into your onboarding.

1. “Just-in-time” Training

When building an onboarding program, it’s tempting to start by listing all the things “Johnny” may ever need to know and start from the top. Instead, try slicing off only what Johnny needs to know in month one.

It can be tempting to dive deep into company waters with things like histories, organizational charts, and other detailed and specific areas. It’s more effective to shift this information to the backburner for the time being and focus only on what the new rep needs in the first month to be successful. After all, how often does a customer quiz your rep on key events in the company’s founding?

Onboarding training should mirror what a rep’s day-to-day activities will look like once training is finished during the first month on the job (and only that first month).  This ensures reps don’t feel like a fish out of water when the time comes to execute the tactics taught in training.

Why stop at month one? Because we want our reps to come out of onboarding feeling confident! We want them ready to pound the phones and execute what they learned! If we start introducing them to all the sales process complexities, advanced products, and deep conversations, then we run the risk of scaring or overwhelming them.  

This is a time when “you don’t know what you don’t know” is a good thing. If your reps will likely spend that first month talking to existing happy customers or cold calling and leaving a lot of voicemails, stop training there. Bring them back later for the rest. 

2. Leverage Sales (Not HR) Professionals 

Aberdeen reported that 85% of the sales teams considered “best-in-class” use professional sales trainers or curriculum. But the majority of us outsource our onboarding to HR.

This absolutely does not mean that your sales managers should be the trainers. It means that as a sales leader, you have sales managers and a sales training manager reporting to you (or at least attending your meetings). It could also mean that you have a sales manager who acts as a liaison to training.  

But what it definitely means is that you and your sales team all know what is being taught, agree with the how, and are thrilled with what reps can do when they graduate from the onboarding training.

Some companies shy away from investing in an expert for new hires due to the high turnover rate. But, by investing in good sales training and following best practices, companies can reduce new hire turnover rate and save money in the long run.

3.  Balance Online and Classroom Training 

What we use to teach reps is another balancing act between digital learning and resources and traditional training methods. 

Best practice? Use technology for about 30% of your overall curriculum. Much more and we’re missing the opportunity to engage new reps and ensure their first month is lonely and, let’s face it: boring. 

Online learning is easiest to leverage for one of the following areas:

  1. Rote knowledge that isn’t likely to change. This includes policies, laws, company history, and unchanging products.
  2. Already-created, third-party curriculum. Commonly this is from technology vendors like Salesforce or basic Microsoft how-to assets
  3. Trusted adviser curriculum. If you’re working with social, sales, or marketing experts already and have adopted their methodologies, ask about online resources to onboard new reps. 

Leverage your training department’s learning management system with whatever you’re doing. You’ll want to track what reps have and haven’t done and add a layer of accountability with reporting and testing.

4. Don’t Let It End! Continue Training Even After Onboarding

Rep development should be ongoing. Don’t ever fall into the trap of “They’re trained! My job here is done.” That’s akin to the NFL putting players in preseason camp and then stopping practice when the regular season begins.  

Development is an ongoing sport.  

At Factor 8, we’re huge champions of sending new reps to the phones early and often. But that is with the assumption that they’ll come back to the classroom to address the gaps they find while out on the harsh streets of your sales floor. It’s also assuming that managers are closely keeping track of rep progress and development needs.

How do you facilitate this?

Try to organize the curriculum into three levels:

  1. Level 1 maps to onboarding – the foundational/month 1 skills.  
  2. Level 2 is “just in time” after reps master level 1 and get 6-12 months under their belt. They’re ramped to quota, and it’s time for ongoing development to keep growing and do the whole job well.  
  3. Level 3 maps to the mastery of the job in years 2 to 3 — more advanced skills to help them be superstars.   

Between each level we add exercises, activities, assignments, and refreshers to keep the skills top of mind, show new ways to try certain tactics, and help managers engage reps in 1:1 and team skill development. The Sales Bar helps us make all of this accessible on-demand so teams can learn what they want to when they want to while still keeping track. We also drip new content monthly and use leaderboards to keep things fresh and different so users want to log back in.  

Use this as an example of the microlearning and ongoing development young reps crave. Millennials expect a certain percentage of learning to be in the classroom and online, and they expect opportunities to develop themselves long after onboarding.  

Offering blended learning, leveled learning, and ongoing learning checks all those boxes.

5. Adopt the 6 Critical Components of a Sales Training Program

If you’re just starting to build your program or you’re going in to assess yours, start by evaluating what’s being trained. It’s easy to go deep into systems and products, but those are just two of the six components of well-rounded onboarding training:

  1. Systems and tools — Your CRM, intranet, engagement tool, dialer, etc. 
  2. Product and service — What you’re selling. Tip: Focus on “how to sell it” versus a full rundown of product history, speeds, and feeds. This harkens back to best practice #1 and maintaining training relevancy. If your product people are teaching this, chances are your reps don’t need half of it and are using this time to snooze.
  3. Sales — Even if you hire for experience, reps need to be taught how to sell your services to your customers in your industry over the phone.  Haven’t met a new hire yet who doesn’t.
  4. Process — Think of how your leads and orders get processed internally and who a rep goes to for the top customer questions. In other words, how do you get stuff done at your company?
  5. Acumen — Sorry folks, they’re not coming out of school with business acumen and certainly not industry and customer acumen. This is a big gap, and filling it will drastically shorten ramp time.  
  6. Manager integration — this is where tip #5 really comes to life, both during and after onboarding. Reps need to see their leaders often, and training needs input and oversight.

6. Utilize Ample Multimedia Resources

No two reps are identical when it comes to learning style. Make sure you’re meeting every new hire where they’re at by using a mix of helpful resources. 

This includes but is not limited to:

Mixing up these methods not only appeals to reps with different learning styles but also helps keep training exciting and fresh. Who wants to sit and listen to someone else make calls all day and slap a “training” label on it? 

7. Create a Formal, but Flexible Rep Training Program

If you’re not putting all new hires through the same rep onboarding process, how can you ever tell if what you’re doing is working?

As we said: Different reps have different learning styles, so it is important to remain flexible to an extent. Just make sure you have some core pillars of onboarding training in place so all new hires are experiencing the same process.

This helps you measure KPIs and tweak your processes if weak spots surface.

8. Set Realistic, Data-Based Expectations for Your New Reps

How many times have your managers set sky-high call quotas for new reps? How many times have they failed to reach it? But, most importantly, how many times has this been documented?

The only thing more frustrating (for both rep and manager) than someone consistently underperforming on quotas, is for there to be nothing in place to fix it moving forward.

Make sure when you’re setting expectations and KPIs for new hire reps that they are based on data. Once you have a fleshed-out onboarding process, it will be easier than ever to keep track of this information.

Find a Tool That Works for Your Onboarding Needs

What if we told you there’s a tool that complements in-person sales training, allows managers to monitor new hire learning during onboarding, and offers a wide variety of inside sales resources?

It’s not magic — it’s The Sales Bar. Fill out the form below to learn more.

Want more information on our sales rep onboarding programs?

Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


Improve Manager Rep Relationship

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How to Improve the Relationship Between Sales Reps and Managers

With all the economic uncertainty out there, it’s tough to find and keep good reps right now. Data from HubSpot indicates that sales rep turnover is around 35% (even in an economic downturn, attrition is shockingly high).

So how do you keep your star players around? Well, according to our Sales Team Retention Research Project study, the top reason both reps and managers stay with a company is ongoing training and development opportunities to help them succeed in their roles.

In my opinion, the key to a solid rep-manager is: both sides support each other to develop and grow. Here are some tips to put it into action to improve the sales rep-manager relationship. 

What should managers do to retain their reps?

READ: How to Hire and Retain Sales Reps

1. Create coaching opportunities outside the normal flow

A lot of managers wait until the pipeline call or the forecast call to coach. While those meetings add value, they focus on specific outcomes. Where reps often struggle is investing in skills that they can apply to a variety of situations, like negotiation and price anchoring. Spend 30-60 minutes with your reps to work on these skills, and you’ll start seeing more engagement from them. As a general rule, newer or underperforming reps should be coached once per week and tenured or high-performing reps should be coached once per month.

2. Create an explicit growth template

Reps can’t grow if they don’t know what their growth path is supposed to look like. This means you need to actually document the basic competencies and objectives you expect. Then monitor rep improvement on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis—not just during an annual 360-review. 

READ: Increase Sales Coaching Frequency

3. Don’t be hypocritical

People have a strong B.S.-meter. They know when you’re faking them out. So if you’re going to expect things from them, you better make sure you’re holding yourself to the same standards.

This doesn’t mean you need to be “macho” or push bravado all the time. You’re going to make mistakes, just like anyone. But set the example of always striving to be better, holding yourself to a high standard, and fixing problems when they arise. 

4. Drive deeper engagement

The more engaged your reps are at work, the more they’ll stick around. So make sure their work stretches them and helps them grow. Provide opportunities for them to push themselves without setting them up to fail. 

When appropriate, let them provide input on the direction and growth of the product and company. They have valuable insights that you can use. Plus, it helps them feel included. 

5. Stay hungry and humble

Even though you’re in a management position, there’s always the opportunity to learn more. Don’t rest on your laurels. Stay hungry, and always look for ways to learn, grow, and improve. 

DOWNLOAD: Tips for Retaining The New Generation of Sales

6. Don’t expect your people to always copy you

Don’t fall for “mini-me” syndrome. Just because you have a great process for selling doesn’t mean it’s the best for everyone. Instead, think about how effective reps are in driving results and meeting quotas, and focus on helping them close gaps and reach those goals faster. There can be an openness in process and style, while at the same time consistency in results. 

7. Seize on little opportunities to build human connections

Managers can do a lot to show reps that they care about them not only as sales machines, but as individuals. And these don’t take a lot of extra time. 

Especially in virtual environments, reps hear from their managers only to discuss forecasts, or when there’s a problem. Find other ways to connect with them as well, even if it’s just to talk about how they’re doing on a personal level. 

What can reps do to build a better relationship with their managers?

1. Be solution-oriented

Don’t come with problems and no solutions. Be a solution-oriented thinker. It helps show the manager that you’re taking ownership of a problem, rather than force them to handle every little thing that comes up. 

2. Be coachable

The opposite of coachability is “I already know everything.” Know what you know, but also know what you don’t know. And be open to learning and growing. It’s really hard for a manager to support a rep who thinks they know everything. 

READ: 10 Tips for Sales Success from a High Performer

3. Don’t blame the leads

We all hear it all the time: If only the leads were better… Strike that phrase from your vocabulary! Stop blaming outside sources for your problems. Find a way to make the most of what you already have. 

4. Get comfortable with ambiguity

Things aren’t always going to be straightforward, especially at different stages of companies. Can you execute when the answer isn’t fully defined? Are you willing to put the answer together yourself? If so, your manager will love you for it. 

5. Always be curious

No one knows everything. There’s always a chance to learn, grow, and evolve. While your manager should be open to your own style, don’t assume that your way works best. Learn from others, and find a way to implement those learnings in your own unique way. 

Final thoughts on the ultimate rep-manager relationship

The key to a good rep-manager relationship is this: support each other, hold each other accountable, and focus on growth. If you do that, you’ll build a solid foundation that makes both parties hesitant to leave the organization. Happy selling!

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Onboarding New BDRs

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5 Sales Manager Tips for Onboarding New BDRs

Great news. You’ve got proof of concept, found your ICP, and gotten some funding. Now it’s time to build out your BDR team.

Bad news. Once you win the war for talent, the real work of sales training begins. Since most SaaS startups aren’t hiring classes of 15 reps and a trainer, you get the task of onboarding one or two at a time. And then again. And again. And again.

Here are some sales manager tips to save your sanity when onboarding new BDRs:

  1. Start a Google Doc now with everything they’ll need to know. Brainstorm in the following categories:
    • Industry acumen
    • Product knowledge – feature, function, benefit
    • Customer knowledge
    • Ideal customer situations
    • Business acumen
    • Competitor acumen
    • System logins and skills
    • Company info – who’s who, relevant background, etc.
    • Company processes, procedures, etc.
    • Customer FAQ
    • Demos
    • Testimonials and case studies
    • Questions to uncover ideal customer situations and challenges
    • Call recordings to hear good, bad, and ugly calls
    • Phone sales skills like leaving good voicemails, intros, uncovering contacts, and delivering value props on the phone
  2. Wherever possible, start hyperlinking to internal and external sites, videos, and resources so reps can self-serve for the info. Why go back and re-find that email 20 times?
  3. Now identify what you can outsource. Trust me, if you try to hire, train, coach, and lead the team you will either explode or mess a few of these up in a serious way.
    • Buy the system training if your vendor offers it or go find free forums and videos to link to. 
    • Sales skills are another area. Your job is to coach them, not teach them from scratch. Outsource the heavy lifting and stick to leading the team and coaching the delivery. The Sales Bar has hundreds of phone sales resources for new BDRs and Managers. They’ll also want some basic LinkedIn skills. I like Vengreso or Frontline. 
    • Find internal experts. Use your CEO, product geeks, and past customers and get them to do a video or recorded webinar to teach key points. Keep them short and on track with some guidelines during your request; these folks typically aren’t natural trainers! And if they do it live, get it recorded, I promise they won’t be available every time. Where you can’t record, set up a lunch or coffee chat vs. a formal presentation. Get your new rep to record it, plus their notes!
  4. Start a schedule and get your document in chronological order with about 6 hours of learning work/day to start. Make the schedule about 2 weeks long and ramp the training time down while call time goes up. So by the end of the second week, they may be doing 1-2 hours of training/day and 6 hours of work. Show that training doesn’t stop and they have some assignments every month! Bonus: show a path to the next level in their career, even if it’s just a footnote. In addition to the learning, your schedule should include:
    • Call shadowing with you or other reps. Bonus: have them score it using your coaching form. Side note: get a coaching form
    • Calls to past customers to hear their stories and happy outcomes
    • Research on their own – e.g. top features of competitors
    • Outbound calling – even if it’s just to capture contacts, qualify accounts, data cleanse, etc.
    • LOTS of time with you where they bring their questions, you talk shop, build a relationship, and make your newbie feel important
  5. Hook them up with a buddy/mentor. Reps who build strong friendships at work are happier and stay longer according to Gallup. With the average lifespan of a BDR under 18 months, it’s worth the effort. Pay for their first lunch and ask them to get together weekly for the rep’s first month. If it doesn’t stick after that, you’ve at least planted some seeds. Bonus: they’ll come to you less often for their questions when they have a buddy.

This approach will help your reps be more independent while saving you at least twenty hours per rep. Each hire can help make the document better and old hires can support the new. 

Make updating the document and improving it part of their work assignment so it stays current and off your to-do list.

May this also help you resist the temptation to hand your new rep a script and wish them good luck on the phone. Millennials are searching for career development and time with their boss at work, and they make their employment decisions based on this. Spend a few bucks, give them some structure, buy them some training, and you’ll see the payoff in their faster success and tenure!

Want some help onboarding new BDRs?

We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn how you can incorporate sales training into your new BDR onboarding process to speed ramp time and improve retention.


New Sales Rep Onboarding

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7 Hacks to Improve New Sales Rep Onboarding

When was the last time you learned something new as a sales leader? If you’re struggling to find an answer, that’s a problem. 

In fact, the problem is with our entire system of onboarding. Too many organizations see learning as an event, not a career-long process. So once the onboarding phase is complete, training stops, and sales reps are expected to figure things out on their own. 

But ask yourself this: how many salespeople know how to do their job perfectly and meet quotas consistently after a three-month training period?

Don’t worry. I’ll wait. 

Of course, that expectation is silly. Maybe that’s why 62% of companies consider themselves ineffective at onboarding new sales hires. 

No one—and I’m including myself—masters their job so quickly. We become proficient at sales, management, coaching, and leadership a little bit every day. Then one day, we wake up, and suddenly we’ve arrived!!! (That is until it’s time to upskill again.) 

So if you’re relying on a single onboarding phase to create perfectly competent reps, you’re missing the point. The goal of onboarding should be not competence, but confidence—which will motivate them to keep learning over their whole career. 

Not only that but with salesperson turnover at 1.7X higher than other fields, building confidence and empowering your reps to continually improve is a powerful tool to aid in retention. 

So how do you do onboarding the right way? Here are seven hacks that we’ve learned over our years of experience. 

1. Focus on confidence, not competence

I alluded to this already, but too many sales onboarding initiatives start out with the wrong goal. When you try to get reps to a certain competence level within 60-90 days, they just end up drinking from the fire hose, and very little of that knowledge sticks. 

So instead of the unrealistic goal of hitting quota within 90 days, make sales confidence your primary onboarding goal. Train the reps in a smaller number of high-impact topics, then send them out feeling like they’re ready to tackle the world.

THEN set up future training for them to continually upskill over the next months and years. If your reps are already confident, they’ll be anxious to improve themselves and will drink it all in!

2. Cover six primary competencies

Here are the six main competencies where you’ll have the most impact: 

  • Product. Not the history (no one cares—except maybe your investors). But how do you sell it? What problems does it solve? Emphasize benefits, not features. 
  • Systems. What resources do you have in place to support your reps? How do they access them? Where can they go with questions?
  • Process. What are the top five questions a rep will get from customers, and how should they address them? 
  • Acumen. Reps need to know certain basic industry and business terminology to sell in their territory. What do they need to know to be effective on day one?
  • Sales. You may think you’ve bought experience, but in today’s market, you can’t count on that. What basic sales competencies do reps need to have a solid grasp of? 
  • People. Who are the reps going to be working with on a day-to-day basis? Don’t just toss them over the wall—help them get to know their team. 
3. Cut off the talking head

No one learns anything from a talking head (and those that do probably aren’t in sales). Salespeople learn by doing. So don’t just talk at them—get them engaged in the material and using it. 

This is why it’s important to not only train your reps but also your managers. Managers are responsible for building a development culture in your organization. Your managers need to be trained on how to coach so they can help reps better develop their skills.

4. Hire reps in groups

If you want your salespeople to work as a team, hire them as a team. Training reps in groups is a great way to encourage more engagement with the material—and especially offline side discussions. Getting an entire cohort on board with the same material will only help everyone row in the same direction when they get onto the sales floor (or “virtual” sales floor). 

5. Work with third-party professional trainers

According to Aberdeen, 45% of best-in-class sales organizations use third-party sales trainers. With good reason—if you’ve hired a cohort of 20-25 reps, a single sales manager just doesn’t have the bandwidth to coach and train them all, especially in a virtual world. 

Professional sales trainers, on the other hand, will be able to get down in the mud with the reps, spending focused time on getting them up to speed and building their confidence. Remember: it’s important during onboarding to not only get the rep to process new information but encode it into their brains and bodies so they put it into practice. 

(Psst! If you’re searching for inside sales training vendors, check out what you should be looking for here.)

6. Leverage the Voice of the Customer

Your reps are going to be working with customers eventually. So why not incorporate the Voice of the Customer into your training? One great tip is to have a library of pre-recorded, model sales calls that you can pull up and walk through new hires with. These calls should demonstrate top objections and (most importantly) how reps should respond to them. 

7. Build a nest

If your goal is to build rep confidence, then it’s a good idea to have a safe place for them to go. (No, salespeople aren’t all tough as nails—we have a human side too!) Pairing reps with a designated nesting manager—usually a high-performing rep looking to move into management—can help them build confidence and skills. Keep in mind that a nesting manager is someone who’s purely developmental in focus. They’re not pulled in to save deals. They’re just about coaching people. 

Final thoughts on improving training + ramp time

Never underestimate the importance of a strong onboarding program. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If you want reps to have a solid, lasting relationship with your company, then onboarding is the perfect chance to start that relationship on the right foot. 

And don’t be afraid to put some effort into it. Because if you do, you’ll definitely reap rewards down the road. 

Ready to improve new sales rep onboarding?

We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn how you can incorporate training into your sales rep onboarding process to speed ramp time and improve retention.


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