According to a recent study, 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they have had a good onboarding experience. A successful onboarding experience can make new hires 50% more productivity. With these statistics in mind, it seems logical that a great onboarding process is critical to the success of your new sales staff.
What is onboarding?
Onboarding is the process where you integrate your new staff members into your business and they learn about how you like to do business. Office orientation forms part of the onboarding process. Now let’s have a look at how to create a successful onboarding process.
STEP 1: Create a welcome pack
This pack should contain all the equipment and information your new salesperson would need to do their job successfully. You should interact with all the departments in your business to ensure you have everything your new salesperson will need to start on the right foot. Here is a checklist of items to consider for your welcome pack:
- A laptop and mouse,
- A cellphone with a contract,
- An access card if your business is situated in an office park,
- Access to funds for entertaining your clients,
- Passwords and training for the customer relations management (CRM) you use. If you consider using Hubspot, they have a free certificate course to learn how to use their CRM that you can use to train your new staff member on.
- Passwords for their computer and internet access.
- Your company’s playbook.
STEP 2: Create a private LinkedIn group
LinkedIn is a great platform to connect your salespeople on. Make sure that all your salespeople are connected to your company page on LinkedIn and then create a private group that all the salespeople are on. This platform will allow your new salespeople to communicate with the more seasoned salespeople and they will be able to ask them questions while they are out on the field.
STEP 3: Give them a mentor
You should match your new sales rep with a senior sales rep who has the time and is willing to teach. If you match the new sales rep with someone who is doesn’t have the time or inclination to teach them then the experience will be terrible. The senior sales rep should allow the new employee to shadow them while they make sales calls and when they do their after-sales interactions. This will help the new sales reps to see what are some potential problems which can crop up and how they can handle it. Your sales rep should not shadow for too long else they will become more hesitant to make their own sales calls.
STEP 4: Give them a training manual
It is important to give your sales rep a training manual so that they can learn about the specific questions and objections that sales reps deal with within your business. You should list between 10-15 questions and objections which are common in your business and put the ideal answers for those situations. This will also give the sales rep time to develop their answers. You could also give examples of buyer personas in the manual. To ensure that the sales rep reads the manual, you should set up a test date for them where you will ask them questions about what can be found in the manual.
STEP 5: Set clear goals
Now that the sales rep has a clearer idea of how business is done in your company, you should give them some targets to reach. These targets should be based on what previous new sales reps have been able to achieve. This will help the sales rep to know if they are being successful.
By following these five steps you will be well on your way to successfully onboarding your new sales staff member.
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