By Michelle Richardson — Vice President of Sales Performance Research
Around one-third of your salespeople will leave the organization this year. Think about it. To hit your revenue targets, you’ll need to fill all those open positions—and onboarding for sales teams is a lengthy process.
It takes months to onboard and train a sales professional. We surveyed over 150 sales leaders at large B2B organizations in multiple industries and found:
It takes an average of nine months for a new sales professional to be ready to engage with customers, either face-to-face or virtually.
It takes an average of 12 months until those sales professionals are competent and capable of carrying a full quota or performance target.
How can you shorten onboarding time, train new sales hires effectively, and retain them longer?
It starts with a solid sales onboarding program.
Sales onboarding is a systematic process designed to welcome, train, and engage new sales professionals. When done well, sales onboarding puts them on a faster track to meet sales targets and, ultimately, ensure success for the organization.
Your ability to get new sales team members up to speed quickly separates best-in-class organizations from underperforming peers. According to The Brooks Group research report Best Practices of High-Performing Sales Teams:
- Success begins on day one for a sales professional.
- Companies with structured, hybrid onboarding and consistent use of personality assessments and hiring profiles do better.
- Adherence to a clearly defined sales process and continuous training around essential selling skills correlates with higher performance.
The first few months of a new sales professional’s tenure at your company are the most critical. A good onboarding experience impacts retention, performance, and long-term success. It’s important to get your sales onboarding process right.
9 Sales Onboarding Best Practices
Set your new sales professionals up for success with a structured onboarding strategy. Follow these steps for a process that will propel your new sales professionals to productivity as quickly and effectively as possible.
1. Create a Formal Sales Onboarding Process
While you want salespeople to be resourceful, it’s a mistake to simply let them fend for themselves. Your onboarding process can include company and product knowledge, industry insight, regulatory information, sales process, and selling skills.
- 87% of successful teams have extensive, structured onboarding.
- Only 75% of underperforming teams have structured onboarding; 25% have informal or no onboarding.
A structured sales onboarding plan provides a framework that introduces them to the resources, tools, and information they need in an organized manner within an appropriate time frame.
A successful onboarding process will: