Increase Revenue with Faster Sales Onboarding

Impact of Employee Turnover

• 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding (source).

• Up to 20% of employee turnover happens in the first 45 days (source).

• New employees who went through a structured onboarding program were 58% more likely to be with the organization after three years (source).

• Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new hire retention (source).

• The organizational costs of employee turnover are estimated to range between 100% and 300% of the replaced employee’s salary (source).

Introduction

We all know employee turnover hurts the bottom line. Quotas need to be hit. Revenue goals need to be met. This reality makes shortening sales onboarding time a top priority. But for 62% of companies, sales onboarding success falls short of management's expectations, according

to Sales Management Association (SMA). That means a significant number of reps are underperforming or taking too long to get up to speed. If your reps are unprepared, how can your organization meet its goals? Big surprise: it can’t.

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Table of Contents

Sales onboarding is critical for every sales organization 04

Stay Agile 06

Start Onboarding Sooner 07

Make Microlearning a Priority 08

Build Around High-Value Activities 09

Utilize Internal Knowledge 10

More effectively measure new reps’ success 13

Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach 11

Conclusion 14

About Brainshark 15

Sales onboarding is critical for every sales organization

Effective sales onboarding is essential to giving reps the background, foundation, and expectations they need so they can "make the grade." Successful programs require a well-planned out, f lexible approach – with the ability to modify elements based on reps' needs at the individual level and based on what's working (and what's not). Every rep's progress should be monitored and tracked, allowing you to correct learning issues before becoming performance problems. When the approach is well-thought-out and measured, more new reps will reach full productivity on time or ahead of schedule. According to research from CSO Insights, onboarding that meets or exceeds expectations can improve quota attainment by 16.2%. If a typical enterprise rep’s quota

is $1M, and average attainment is 80%, an improvement of 16.2% results in an additional $128k per rep. Pretty impressive. We've now determined how critical onboarding is and its impact on reaching revenue numbers. So why do so many companies struggle with rep ramp-up? The reasons vary, but they often include some combination of the following: • The onboarding process is slow and

inefficient• The training program structure is mainly

informal, with most learning being done "on the fly"

• There is no method for assessing individual readiness; companies push reps out of “the nest” and hope they can fly

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Sales onboarding is critical for every sales organization (cont.)

• There is no formal measurement of sales onboarding efforts or overall program results

• Companies over-hire with the expectation that a large portion of new reps will fail

• Companies over-assign quota, leading to unrealistic expectations for new reps

The costs of poor sales onboarding are no small matter, especially given today's tight sales talent market. The damage under-trained reps can do to customer relationships, and a business' reputation is substantial. The effects of high sales turnover and missed revenue opportunities are equally concerning.

Sales enablement's job is to design an onboarding program that delivers the right skills and knowledge to make it efficient, ultimately decreasing the time to productivity and giving you the best chance to achieve sales goals. Here are some ways to make the most out of your onboarding process to help your newly hired sales reps have effective buyer conversations faster, close their first deals sooner and keep the sales pipeline full.

Impact of Effective Onboarding

• It typically takes eight months for a newly hired employee to reach full productivity (source).

• Organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50% greater new hire productivity (source).

• Manager satisfaction increases by 20% when their employees have formal onboarding training (source).

• The average sales new hire only becomes productive after 11.2 months (source - SMA).

• Organizations with a sales onboarding tool and use it effectively use of it experience win rates seven percentage points higher than those that don't (source).

• Sales reps who go through the best sales onboarding programs are productive 3.4 months sooner, on average, than those onboarded at organizations with weaker programs (source).

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Stay Agile

In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, sales leaders are under intense pressure to accelerate the time to productivity. Too often, reps are pushed into the field before they are ready, and onboarding is done “on the job” – through trial and error. Sending underprepared salespeople out to practice on buyers before they're ready is unfair to both the rep and the buyer. And the hidden cost of lost opportunities and damage to your brand due to inexpert reps makes this approach very expensive. To match the speed of business today, companies should think about onboarding in a completely different way. It's far more effective to take an "agile" onboarding approach, borrowing from

the principles (flexibility, responsiveness, collaboration, etc.) of agile software development. With agile onboarding, you can map the training sequence with upcoming skills and milestones that reps must perform in their roles. For example, suppose reps need to conduct their first prospecting call two weeks after joining the company. In that case, their onboarding plan should initially emphasize phone communications and listening skills, as well as the company's elevator pitch. Once reps have demonstrated mastery and completed their first prospecting call, their subsequent learning and coaching activities should prepare them with the knowledge and skills they'll need for their next customer-facing activity.

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Start Onboarding Sooner

Don't let new sales reps show up to the job without any background. Organizations can ease their new hires into the onboarding experience, even before Day 1, with pre-boarding. This onboarding preparation process gives new reps clear expectations about their role within the organization and a faster connection to the company at large. Pre-boarding can take the form of a brief video message from the onboarding team – with information on who they should recognize upon arrival, the dress code, food options, the schedule for Day 1, and more. In addition, giving new hires 10 minutes

of learning to consume – on the company mission and goals, recent news articles, market data, a customer case study, etc. – can give reps a foundation before arrival, so they're primed to learn. Sales reps who take advantage of pre-learning opportunities – particularly those in roles with an accelerated ramp-up time, such as ADRs – ultimately put themselves on the fast track to productivity. At Brainshark, ADRs who participate in pre-boarding have seen their first qualified sales opportunities by Day 17.

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Make Microlearning a Priority

Total inundation is a total mistake. Yet frequently, onboarding programs take the form of four-to-five-day boot camps, where new reps get flooded with information – from product details to corporate information and much, much (much) more. In this "death by PowerPoint" setting, information retention is typically low. Companies don't realize they've squandered an opportunity to get reps started on a targeted learning path that maximizes productivity.

Instead, be strategic about what’s presented and by whom. For example, don’t include sessions only from senior leadership and HR. Often, incorporating presentations from successful, tenured reps can add an element of relatability and give new hires a model to aspire to.

Also, consider presenting learning in various formats. By offering easily digestible e-learning content, often building on concepts from in-person sessions, organizations can get reps essential details in a form that's easy to track and revisit. Sales readiness technology allows sellers to easily access this microlearning content on the go and progress through onboarding at their own pace. You can further enhance video-based courses with attachments, links, and interactive quizzes, making learning easy and flexible, whether reps are traveling, at home, or visiting a client.

Bootcamps hit reps with a ton of new

information at once – information they often

forget once they start selling. According to

Xerox, via Hubspot, 84% of sales training is forgotten within the first three months.

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Build Around High-Value Activities

According to the Sales Management Association, the average new sales rep spends ten weeks in training and development and takes 11.2 months to become productive. To cut time to productivity, focus sales onboarding on key activities that directly lead to closed deals. Account executives (AEs), for example, might have three weeks to get a handle on prospecting. AEs would spend that time mastering buyer personas, competitors, use cases, and related skills and pass an assessment certifying their ability to prospect. They'd then start prospecting to prospects while working on their next learning path. With shorter periods of training and coaching, this approach allows

reps to start performing revenue-creating activities sooner while they master other aspects of their role. Managers can sit in on calls with new reps or use conversation intelligence software, like Gong, to understand what is being said and deliver insight into what is working (and what isn’t). This type of informal coaching, where you point out what they did well and pose a question around areas of improvement instead of calling out mistakes, can drive performance higher. Next time they get on a call, they can apply what they learned.

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Utilize Internal Knowledge

When a new rep joins a company, they likely only have a rough idea about what they'll be selling. Onboarding should give new reps an understanding of their target audience, company strategy, and products. Peers can be priceless resources for new salespeople. They know your organization well and have already spent months (or years) selling in your target markets. It’s not surprising that 91% of sales reps believe peer learning helps them succeed, according to ATD. Try pairing new hires with high-performers and create a checklist of learning activities for each duo. The mentees might observe three of the tenured rep’s calls in their first 30 days. In turn, the mentor can lead a “pre-brief” and "debrief," explaining how they approach each call and their thought process behind it.

You can also use a video coaching tool to capture best practices from the A-players on each team. Top reps can record short, informal videos describing something as simple as an effective cold-calling strategy or how they won their biggest deal. The best examples often make great additions to formal training content. By harnessing this institutional knowledge and turning it into something new hires can benefit from, you're taking the heat off the sales enablement or training team and reducing the number of "breaks" in the onboarding process, which helps proactively address sales learning roadblocks early on.

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Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach

Sales onboarding often gets delivered in a "one-size-fits-all" fashion – providing identical training to everyone. But not all sales reps are created equal. All reps have different levels of experience and expertise. By using an assessment-based onboarding approach, you will be able to pinpoint areas where reps need additional training. Assessment-based onboarding involves a sales readiness path for each rep, an assessment built for each competency, and benchmarks to establish when they should master the competency. For example, let’s say you determined your rep should master

presentation skills by the end of their first month. Your rep completes their assessment by video, but you realize there are competency gaps. You can then provide your rep with specific training content to meet that immediate need. Aligning onboarding plans to respective roles allows for plans to feature specialized activity milestones – set by the sales enablement team in collaboration with sales managers – that compel reps to develop specific skills and knowledge to help them succeed in their given roles.

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Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach (cont.)

Throughout the onboarding process, assess sales rep readiness (across all roles) to determine if new hires grasp the concepts and skills needed to engage buyers effectively. You can do this through quizzes, in-person coaching sessions, or video coaching activities, where you might ask reps to record themselves delivering

an elevator pitch or a high-level product overview. Recordings are then submitted to sales managers for feedback. Sales reps in each role will gradually take on more responsibilities and begin handling more significant tasks with limited guidance from their managers.

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More effectively measure new reps’ success

Sales rep onboarding should establish a culture of perpetual learning and practice. But how can you gauge whether an onboarding program is successful if you don’t measure it? Time-to-productivity has long been the key metric for onboarding new sales reps. However, getting new reps fully ramped and contributing has often been more art than science. And because time-to-quota achievement is a lagging indicator, it’s not useful for understanding and guiding each rep’s journey to productivity. Instead, use Readiness Scorecards to understand the progress of new reps. Scorecards provide ongoing measurements and the visibility you need to help reps course-correct before entering the field. Scorecards provide the leading indicators

to determine if a rep is progressing at the right pace or needs more training. Milestones like the time-to-first demo or time-to-first qualified opportunity allow you to calibrate a rep's training without waiting to see if they hit their fully ramped quota. Scorecards also provide a "single source of truth" related to rep readiness. This avoids having to scramble to assemble multiple data sources (e.g., "monster" Excel spreadsheet or general-purpose business intelligence (BI) tool). Plus, executives are much more likely to trust data from a dedicated scorecard system than manual collection and manipulation. Simply put, there's no way to fake it with scorecards.

5 Sales Onboarding Errors to Avoid

1. Onboarding by Fire Hose

2. Ill-Conceived Sequence of Onboarding Activities

3. Treating Onboarding as One-and-Done

4. No Pre-Boarding

5. Insufficient Practice

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Conclusion

There’s an insightful saying, credited to many people over the years: “Amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong." That is, sustained, effective and feedback-fueled practice, combined with a dedicated work ethic, separate truly stellar performers from the rest. And that's true – whether you're playing a football game, running a race, preparing a meal, or presenting to a buyer. In the case of sales onboarding, getting reps up to speed quickly is of utmost importance,

especially in today's fast-moving business environment. But you shouldn’t do so at the risk of sending unprepared reps into the marketplace. Instilling a culture of focused practice – and avoiding the mistakes above – is the perfect way to achieve your sales organization's goals, increase revenue, avoid turnover, and ultimately help reps kick-off successful careers at your organization.

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About Brainshark

Brainshark’s data-driven readiness platform for sales enablement provides teams with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to perform at the highest level. With best-of-breed solutions for training and AI-powered coaching, as well as cutting-edge insights into sales performance, customers can ensure their sales reps are always ready to make the most of any selling situation.

With Brainshark, companies can: enable sales teams with microlearning or formal training that accelerates onboarding and keeps reps up-to-speed; validate readiness with sales coaching and practice that ensure

reps master key messages; empower teams with dynamic training content that can be created quickly, updated easily and accessed anywhere; and use powerful scorecards to visualize sales performance trends and make real connections from improved readiness to increased revenue.

Thousands of customers – including more than half of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to close performance gaps and get better results from their sales enablement initiatives. Learn more at www.brainshark.com.

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