Last updated on August 3rd, 2023
Today you’ll learn how to onboard new sales reps using a 30-60-90-day template.
Taking new sales reps from newbies to high revenue-generating sellers has to be done with clear intent.
That’s why every sales team needs a sales onboarding plan.
Your sales onboarding process should reduce the time it takes for new reps to be productive members of the team.
This leads to other major benefits that we’ll cover down below.
Table of Contents:
- What Is The Sales Onboarding Process?
- Why Is Sales Onboarding Important For Your Organization?
- What Should Be Included In The Sales Onboarding Process?
- Sales Onboarding Plan: 4 Steps To Bringing New Hires Up To Speed
- What Are Best Practices When Implementing A Sales Onboarding Plan?
- Final Wrap-up Of Sales Onboarding
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What Is The Sales Onboarding Process?
Sales onboarding is the systemized approach to making new reps better sellers.
It begins the moment a new rep is hired and extends until the full timeframe of your sales onboarding plan.
(BUT, even after a rep is fully “onboarded,” training must still be continuous.)
When outlining a sales onboarding process, you’ll find the successful ones to have:
- Product training
- Sales protocols and plays
- Shadowing and reverse shadowing
- KPI benchmarks
- Sales enablement content and software
- Sales rep training milestones
And more to get new sellers acclimated to the organization.
Numerous organizations today adopt a 30-60-90 day plan, which divides what reps learn and do along with milestones for the individual training timeframes.
Overall, a sound sales onboarding process positions new hires to succeed in a measurable way.
And it’s no secret that your onboarding process influences whether or not a salesperson considers a position with your company in the first place.
Why Is Sales Onboarding Important For Your Organization?
Let’s look into three huge benefits of establishing a sales onboarding process.
Create Better Sellers
With better training and coaching, reps are more likely to blossom into great team players.
But without an onboarding plan?
New hires may lack the structure to succeed and may not notice or understand their blind spots.
Sales coaching is a fundamental part of rep improvement because more experienced sellers can help new reps identify areas of strength and improvement.
The better your team sells, the more opportunities that get won on average and quotas that sales teams smash.
Speed Up Rep Ramp-Up Time
Ramp-up time describes the timeframe it takes for a new hire to go from not knowing much to being a proficient seller.
Ideally, you want this timeframe to be as short as possible without cutting corners regarding training quality.
Sales onboarding processes give an excellent pace to rep training, speeding up ramp-up time to your advantage.
Also, consistent training, feedback, knowledge, and information give new hires more confidence in what they’re selling and their sales capabilities.
Remember, Your onboarding process should have reps buy into your product so their prospects can too.
Sales confidence is a by-product of excellent onboarding.
Boost Sales Rep Retention
Rep confidence from onboarding will help them believe in your company more and increase their chances of sticking around long-term.
The more team members stay, the lower your rep turnover, which is essential for teams that want to grow in size.
A survey reported that 65% of employees say the quality of training and learning opportunities positively influence their engagement.
So it’s critical continually implement training, content, and activities during onboarding and post-onboarding. These things will keep your team engaged in the long haul.
What Should Be Included In The Sales Onboarding Process?
Sales Playbook
Sales playbooks are internal documents offering a broad range of sales materials for reps.
It typically details:
- Sales methodologies
- Sales plays
- Buyer personas
- Sales enablement content
- Value prop
- Company information
- Elevator pitch
- Product information
Its role in the sales onboarding process is to cover a broad range of topics and go in-depth in them enough to impact rep knowledge and its implementation.
Structurally, the sales playbook should have content for each part of the sales process, from prospecting to closing.
Having the sales playbook as the centerpiece of sales onboarding will help you focus on a singular asset responsible for a lot of the progress that new hires can make.
KPI Benchmarks And Expectations
Without expectations, there’s no standard to reach.
KPIs (key performance indicators) and your written/verbal expectations hold new hires to merit, proving how well they fit your organization.
So it makes sense to have these in your sales onboarding process to accurately predict how well new reps will:
- Reach critical numbers in their tenure with your company
- Mesh culturally with your organization (as far as rules and with colleagues)
Expectations will also help reps know to limit non-revenue generating activities, and focus on things that win deals.
Sales Enablement Software
Sales enablement software adds more efficiency to training, team selling capabilities, and sales reporting.
Starting reps early with these technologies gets them used to them, which can install good sales practices long term.
For instance, a rep that consistently visits lessons from your LMS system rather than relying on sales meetings to get trained will likely become a better salesperson in the long run.
Like your sales playbook with content in each stage of your sales process, your sales enablement software should do the same.
Sales Onboarding Plan: 4 Steps To Bringing New Hires Up To Speed
Here’s a four step plan for implementing a sales onboarding process (step #4 covers the template itself).
Step 1. Create Or Adopt A Sales Onboarding Template
Start your onboarding implementation by using a sales onboarding template.
Templates can be helpful by saving you time and offering a process that’s proven to work.
With your template, you can mold certain sections of it to fit your company, like training styles and more.
The 30-60-90 day sales plan is a popular template, so we’ll cover it shortly.
Step 2. Go Over Your Sales Playbook And Other Enablement Tools
With a template down, you’ll have sections of it where sales enablement has to be present.
For this reason, sales enablement should be regularly updated so that you have material to go over when discussing your sales process with new reps.
When going over sales materials, be sure to explain:
- Their purpose
- Why they’re important to winning deals
- How they help the rep reach sales numbers
- How they help with training
- When to use which sales tools
Step 3. Establish KPIs And Expectations
As I mentioned earlier, KPIs and expectations let new hires know what’s expected of them.
These benchmarks will help you gauge a rep’s progress across a timeframe.
In other words, if they’re progressing in an adequate timeframe and are reaching numbers, you’ll know you have someone with lots of potential on your hands.
For this reason, KPIs like tasks by type, number of opportunities, and win rates should be tracked.
Fortunately, this is all trackable using a CRM system like VipeCloud’s sales CRM.
The sales “reporting” functionality lets you see sales rep activity at a glance.
The insights you gain can help you better coach them to be more efficient or effective in customer-facing situations.
Step 4. Implement Your Sales Onboarding Plan: A 30-60-90 Day Template
Here’s a template to help onboard new sales reps:
Activity In Days 1-30:
- Company introduction – (What the company does, its standards, culture, and vision)
- Knowing the organization (Sales organizational structure, the reps’ role in the organization)
- Expectations (1-on-1s with managers to set KPI goals and go over benchmarks, company policies, etc.)
- Product training (product value prop, video training, product pitches, basics of what the product does for customers)
- Basic sales enablement training (Showing and having reps practice the use of sales content and enablement software)
- Shadowing (Following a peer or manager to understand the day-to-day, answer questions, and see real-world applications of training)
- Reverse shadowing (Having new hires follow and listen in on how a sales call is conducted)
- Role-playing (Scripts, sales meetings, objection handling, elevator pitches, etc.)
- Quizzing for understanding (You can use an LMS tool for quiz-related questions)
Timeframe outcomes:
- Thorough understanding of your product
- Understanding of the organizational role
- Understanding of ICPs or customer segments
- A clear understanding of KPI benchmarks and expectations
- Knowing which sales enablement tools to use in certain situations
Activity In Days 31-60:
- Introducing more advanced sales enablement tools (ex., CRM automations, and integrations)
- More nuances of the sales process (sales qualification, matching pitch with buyer personas, soft skills of selling, etc.)
- Routine check-ins (managers gauging rep progress, going over numbers, sales feedback)
- Peer-to-peer coaching (sales training with more seasoned reps, sales call reviews, etc.)
- Reverse shadowing
- Sales role-play
- Quizzing
Timeframe outcomes:
- Ability to conduct sales meetings successfully
- More efficient with time and opportunities
- Consistently following sales protocols
- Sales pitch memorization based on customer segments
- A better understanding of sales enablement use-cases
- Ability to identify revenue-generating activities from those that aren’t
- Reaching Established KPIs
Activity In Days 61-90:
- Reverse shadowing
- Advanced objection handling practices (knowing the common objections, why they’re given, and how to overcome them)
- CRM usage for deal management
- Routine check-ins
- Advanced sales enablement use
- Performance evaluation
- Sales performance measurement (Rep tracking their improvement using CRM data)
- Sales role-play
- Quizzing
Timeframe outcomes:
- The consistent reaching of KPIs
- Close an opportunity
- Strongly able to communicate product value prop at anytime
- Advanced understanding of sales process
- Strong feedback implementation capabilities
- Ability to use sales enablement at the right time
- Ability to consistently meet expectations
- Clear understanding and utilization of sales enablement
What Are Best Practices When Implementing A Sales Onboarding Plan?
- Encourage and reward questions – Inviting more questions allows reps to learn. Establish a way of rewarding questions when it comes to new hires.
- Make shadowing a staple – Implement regular and reverse shadowing so new hires and see real-world applications of sales enablement, sales plays, and sales pipelines.
- Restate expectations – Sometimes, reps can forget information. Restating information can help things stick better. A good way of doing this is verbally and through written communication and sales training videos.
- Keep training dynamic – Don’t just rely on sales meetings or notes to train your new hires. Leverage multiple forms of media as well as different subject matter experts in your team for training.
- Keep sales enablement up-to-date – Keep enablement updated consistently, especially as your product and market change. You can have a team specifically dedicated to doing this or appoint a manager that does so.
- Include peer-to-peer coaching and practice – Sometimes, new hires can learn more from a peer salesperson. For that reason, make room for peer-to-peer role plays, shadowing, feedback, and other sales-related activities.
Final Wrap-up Of Sales Onboarding
Succsessful sales onboarding makes your new hire more effective in generating and closing opportunities.
With a proven onboarding process outlined, you can better predict the timeframe of ramp-up time!
And one of the most vital aspects of sales onboarding is sales enablement, so in most sales organizations, all-in-one CRMs are used as the central enablement software.
If you’re looking for a reliable CRM that will help new hires sell better along with metrics that track their progress, then VipeCloud’s Sales & Marketing Suite is for you.
Request a demo today to see how it helps with the sales onboarding process.
You can also see it for yourself when you sign up today!
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