Business leaders often say that their employees are the most important asset of their business. However, without a strong new hire orientation program, some companies are failing to invest in employees. This puts long-term success in serious jeopardy.
New employee orientation, if done right, can lead to more productive workers and, ultimately, increased customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, a lot of organizations are doing it wrong. So, how do you it right? We outline the first steps for building out a new hire orientation template that will get your team ramped up and productive.
How we make a difference
New hire orientation should instill a sense of accomplishment from day one. They should be inspired enough to go home and proudly explain their new role to their family, friends, and neighbors: “We sell products that make a difference.” Whether they run a department or are an individual contributor, all employees need to know that they are significant to the big picture. You can give them that by:
Explaining how the business works and how they fit in and contribute.
Talking about trends and opportunities and how your company plays a part in changing the lives of customers.
Offering an energetic multimedia presentation that illustrates the company’s proud traditions and opportunities.
Customers
Serving customers should be the number one goal of any company. When an employee understands the company’s number one goal, they are more likely to work a job with a clear feeling of purpose. You don’t have to provide new hires with a list of customer names and addresses. But you should make sure that employees from top to bottom see customers as more than faceless, nameless deep pockets who pay for your products or services. Here are some areas to cover to ensure that your new hire is able to stand in your customer’s shoes:
Share customer success stories and what value you are adding to customers.
Understand your customer’s full range of options, as well as his or her ecosystem of providers and competitors.
Know your customer’s experience, try role-playing exercises at all points of the customer’s experience with your company.
Anticipate customer needs. Follow trends and know what customers will want tomorrow. With scenario planning, new hires can serve customers better by watching out for underlying market shifts that impact your industry.
Products and services
From orientation forward, demonstrate your company as your customer’s hero. You can do that by helping employees develop an understanding of how your products–whatever they are–help individuals, families, or businesses meet everyday challenges.
Your new hire orientation could include anecdotes that describe how your company helped fill a need or provided the solution to a specific problem. Intimate knowledge of your company’s place in consumer’s hearts can be another source of employee pride.
Consider a video presentation that follows your products and services from production to consumer and beyond. That might sound a bit hokey, but it can help new employees understand how your company connects with customers. Putting a video in new hire orientation will help employees engage and make material relatable and easier to remember. Developing effective training videos takes some work, but it is not difficult.
How to reach customers
Even if a new employee isn’t a part of the sales force, he should understand how your products make their way to the consumer.
What is the core benefit of your product and service?
How do marketing and sales work together?
Does your company ship worldwide from a central distribution point?
Are your products or services offered to the public by retailers?
Do you reach customers via direct sales associates?
The answer to “How do we sell?” will be a part of an employee’s identity throughout their life on the job. It can demonstrate your company’s local or global reach or help a new employee understand that there is a ladder of opportunity should sales be their ultimate goal.
Journey so far
Employees need to know that they are a part of something stable. Even if it isn’t a big conglomerate, they should know that the company has a history and a future, and that they can be a part of it. That doesn’t mean that new employee orientation should include a detailed analysis of a decade of annual reports, but employees should hear about the company’s foundation and plans for growth.
The path you lay out for new employees during new hire orientation paves the way for their journey into a long-term relationship with your organization. This template will get you started with a strong foundation to welcome your new hires and get them productive more quickly. Show them where they fit into the big picture and set the stage for a bright future!
This post is based on a webinar on how to accelerate new hire productivity for consistent production with sales onboarding. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
CrowdStrike is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Silicon Valley. It is on a mission to stop breaches through next-generation anti-virus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed hunting – all in the cloud. CrowdStrike has a unique ability to not only prevent cyber attacks but also respond to malicious attacks. It’s no surprise then that they were recently ranked number 40 on
Deloitte’s’ technology Fast 500
, North America, recognized for the exponential growth of 2,665% in the past 3 years. Thanks to this stunning growth trajectory the company’s sales force has doubled recently and is continuing to grow rapidly. Rapid growth comes with its challenges
Trying to maintain exponential growth was CrowdStrike’s biggest sales enablement challenge. To achieve this Tracey Meersman, Director of Sales Enablement, believed the key was to focus in on how they onboarded their new sales hires. It’s a sound strategy when you consider that 60% of businesses with onboarding programs ramp up faster and achieve double the top line revenue per rep with an agile structured onboarding process.
To create their successful onboarding program CrowdStrike ensured it was: The onboarding program has five distinct phases
“The complete program is pretty quick, just 90 days with ongoing mentoring and coaching opportunities. One of the things that we’re tasked with is helping our B players become A players, and to ramp people as quickly as possible as the cost of onboarding is very expensive. And we’re tasked with trying to get everyone ramped on their phones, so they’re out in the field, selling and achieving quota as quickly as possible,”
comments Meersman.
The 5-part onboarding program was designed to achieve this while incorporating CrowdStrike’s four building blocks of onboarding; compliance, clarity, connection, and culture.
Pre-Boarding
Phase one begins prior to the new hire commencing with CrowdStrike, leveraging technology to deliver courses to future employees. “
Topics include the company’s strategy, resources, benefits, and compliance. The objective is to identify CrowdStrike’s advantages, complete onboarding activities and reaffirm their decision to join CrowdStrike,”
explains Meersman.
Pre-Bootcamp
“Phase 2 occurs on the new hire’s start date with a virtual webinar. Topics include a product overview, initiatives and most importantly an opportunity to ask questions. The objective is to accelerate their ramp and productivity by utilizing tools and resources, engaging in the culture and finalizing onboarding requirements. For sales new hires, they are added to the CrowdStrike Sales Academy. A learning platform powered by Mindtickle which we use specifically for sales. New hires are assigned specific learning activities related to their role. This includes the mobile capability to complete learning through the Mindtickle mobile app,”
continues Meersman.
Bootcamp
“And Phase 3 is an in-person program featuring executive presentations and departmental overview. For new sales hires this includes an additional 1.5-day interactive boot camp to align selling strategies to the company’s growth objectives by articulating our key messages and unique business value. New hires are onboarded a minimum of one week prior to attending the in-person program and there is pre-work to provide foundational knowledge. The boot camp provides an opportunity to pitch back messages in CrowdStrike’s unique business value as well as align with the sales process in the key prospect and customer program. “That allows us to be able to use a scenario-based approach through the Mindtickle platform as well,”
explains Meersman.
Post-Bootcamp
With boot camp completed the next aspect is to align the learning with real-world selling.
“So how often have we heard from sales reps, ‘I’ve never used this or that. It’s not what my customers want/need to hear’? More than once, right? So our onboarding program aligns with real-world sales scenarios with learning activities at specific intervals in their onboarding journey including the opportunity for sales scenarios and coaching by their manager. they also have the opportunity to have a buddy to be able to reinforce the learning and provide just-in-time information,”
explains Meersman.
Continuous Reinforcement
“
[Continuous reinforcement] is also a key component that includes personalization, scalability, structured and milestone-based approaches. So each learning activity in CrowdStrike’s sales academy includes a knowledge transfer. We have the ability to teach hires, not penalize them through the use of what Mindtickle refers to as ‘tickles’. So those would be matching true-false to multiple choice questions. There are 16 different tickles within Mindtickle and we try to utilize all of that. We also do continual learning in terms of providing a quick update and courses. We try to push those out on a weekly basis so the new hires are not just getting onboarding information they’re also getting just in time information that’s related to their role,”
outlines Meersman. Milestones help drive consistency
“It’s imperative for our growth and success that the program is standard and consistent,”
explains Meersman.
“Therefore there are key milestones within the onboarding program at weeks one to four as well as at 60 and 90 days. CrowdStrikes’ Sales Academy provides the structure through workflows, with key milestones to be successfully completed at each interval. The sales rep needs to complete the activities before moving forward to the next onboarding phase. When we’re looking at the components of the onboarding program we’re looking at five distinct areas; one is, understanding the buyer, understanding CrowdStrike’s offerings, beating the competition, CrowdStrike’s differentiation, including our unique business value, use cases and success metrics and all the sales tools and resources.” Personalization helps each new hire learn what they need to
When you’re onboarding tens or hundreds of new sales reps at a time personalization is a huge challenge. So how does CrowdStrike achieve this?
“First the process and programs need to be personalized for each role. As with many sales organizations, there are various target markets and associated roles and responsibilities. The program needs to be role-based. So our onboarding guide, though applicable for the entire sales team, has call outs for specific roles,”
explains Meersman. This is easily achieved thanks to Mindtickle’s deep integration with
salesforce.com
that enables the onboarding program administrators to allocate aspects of the course to specific roles, markets or responsibilities. Scalability is achieved by leveraging mobile technology
“The other key component of sales onboarding at CrowdStrike is that it had to be scalable. Utilizing CrowdStrike Sales Academy ensures that the sale onboarding program is scalable through the app based Mindtickle platform. From day 1 forward the program is available 24/7 to new hires. And soon the platform will have the capability for managers to be able to run their own report to track progress,”
comments Meersman. Experiential learning aligns to real-world selling
“When we looked at our program we also wanted to be able to blend learning and activity. Within our approach and utilizing the Mindtickle platform, we’re able to provide a blend of self-paced knowledge combined with activities that are reviewed by the rep’s manager, which provides a virtual coaching opportunity. This is really key for the manager to be involved in the new hire’s onboarding,”
explains Meersman.
“
This is accomplished by having the reps complete what is known in the Mindtickle platform as missions, that are activities that your rep completes. These include elevator pitches and value proposition as well as email and voicemail pamphlets And respond to specific situations including objection-handling, competitive scenarios etc. So rather than spend time and resources having the new rep deliver the poor pitch during our boot camp, they have to complete this within the CrowdStrike Sales Academy after boot camp. Again this is reviewed by their manager and provides an additional coaching opportunity.”
Experiential learning is also applied to peer-to-peer learning.
“From the experiential learning standpoint it is very key we get this all the time from reps. I’d like to see how one of my peers and how they pitch, how they handle the objection. In the real world they’re often presenting to executives, so they want to be able to build up that knowledge and see how their other peers are doing it as well.”
Utilizing Mindtickle’s app, CrowdStrike is also able to share peer examples so the reps can learn from each other in their own time as well.
“And we talk a lot about sales rep but there’s also the capability for a day technical salespeople to be able to do a demo as well through the platform. So it’s not just the pitches for the field sales rep but also applicable for the technical sales people as well,”
adds Meersman Communication between reps and management enhances coaching opportunities
Communication should go two ways. Leveraging the Mindtickle app CrowdStrike is able to facilitate this kind of communication.
“This allows the new rep and manager to effectively communicate progress, areas of improvement and also coaching opportunities. Reports are also available to managers so that they can track that progress. Right now I provide those reports to them but there will be a self-service portal coming soon,”
“Additionally each new hire should buddy with a peer with whom they connect on a regular basis, learn how to be successful in their role and feel comfortable asking questions they don’t want to ask their manager. The buddy reinforces the key learnings and helps the new hire if they require training on utilization of key tools and resources. So think of all of those questions that you don’t want to ask your manager like how to use Salesforce, find specific tools and resources etc.” And make it easy … for reps and for sales enablement
Tools have to be easy to use otherwise they’re not really enabling the rep. “
And that’s really a key component because so many sales reps live in salesforce they have access to the Mindtickle platform through salesforce. So there’s no need to login to an official website. This makes it very very easy and because the Mindtickle app has the mobile capability as well it’s also very easy to access.”
But enablement and collaboration are also important for the administrators of the system as Meersman explains, “
I am a strong party of one. A one-woman show in terms of creating and maintaining the content. I know of many who are probably in the same situation. The good news is that I have a great relationship with our product marketing organization. And we work together to be able to create content. And also others meet within the organization depending on what the topic is.”
“So my commercial for Mindtickle is nobody ever said that it was fun using an LMS. I love the Mindtickle platform and our reps do as well because we have the mobile capability, we have the tickles or the gamification and social aspects, and we can push out bite-size chunks to people as well as perform better missions which are really the scenario-based approaches. And that provides reinforcement.”
Meersman continues “
My philosophy is it does not have to be so hard. In every sales enablement role I’ve had, it’s been a new role and I basically had to onboard myself which in turn led me to create onboarding programs for sale new hires. It was challenging for me, I didn’t have it to be challenging for the new sales hire. It’s my role and responsibility to connect the dots for sales reps to make it easier to learn quickly and attain specific productivity metrics.” CrowdStrike’s onboarding program has been a success for management and reps
CrowdStrike has seen impressive results with their new hire sales onboarding. “
The typical ramp time for an enterprise software sales rep in our industry is six to 12 months. However, we’ve been able to fully ramp reps in half that time. Over 70% of ramped reps achieved or exceeded quota in their first quarter following their ramp.”
Meersman continues,
“We define ramp as the rep’s ability to achieve quota.”
“Our boot camp has received an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5. 99% of reps recommend the program, but in terms of value, our ratings are 100%. And we’re also correlating the training to learning. Out of our top 10 reps, the majority has been onboard for less than one year but are top in completing training. And several of them have been promoted. We also use KPIs and our onboarded reps are achieving or overachieving those KPIs as well,”
Meersman says proudly.
And the feedback from the field speaks for itself.
“Of all my years of various on boarding / new hire trainings I will say that this was the best experience and easiest to grasp.” ~
New sales rep
“You’ve got it down to a science, and I just wanted you to know how valuable it was in helping to get me ramped up.” ~
His formula for creating an effective sales enablement function from scratch;
How sales enablement can earn a seat at the executive table; and
How sales enablement can help businesses adapt to the challenges of managing successful multi-generational sales teams.
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here “Sales enablement is the hub that spokes out to every part of the organization. We work with product marketing, product management, marketing, sales, IT etc. So we kind of translate languages if you will, between those groups.”
As Head of Global Enablement at Oracle Marketing Cloud, that makes Roderick Jefferson chief translator. His collaborative approach to sales enablement means that he focuses on deciding what the business requires.
“The one thing we never want to do in enablement is assuming that we know what a stakeholder needs. So we sit down and ask those questions, like how do you define success beyond simply wrap up time? What other components would you like to see added to enablement? What do you see as the deficiencies now?” comments Jefferson.
“Because enablement has to be a sales partner, it cannot be a sales scribe that you just throw things at,” he continues. “You only think about sales training when something is broken. Think about enablement as a fabric that weaves across and through the entire understanding and culture of a company.”
It’s this perspective that Jefferson has followed throughout his career in sales and sales enablement. Listen now to hear how Jefferson has built sales enablement functions from the ground up at blue-chip companies including salesforce.com, eBay, and Oracle.
Sales readiness and sales training are the same things, right? Not quite.
While it’s a common misconception that sales training and readiness are the same, sales readiness actually encompasses much more than just training. Training is about knowledge, learning what you need to know about your customer, the product, your industry, and how to sell. When you train your reps you want to be sure they understand and retain what they have learned.
But when you prepare your reps to be sales ready, you are ensuring that they have the skills they need for successful customer conversations. Sales readiness prepares your reps with an outcome-oriented approach. It is an agile way to ensure they are better prepared, more effective and achieve predictable results
Sales readiness covers everything your reps need to be ready for the moment of truth; when they’re in front of a prospect or customer. Training is obviously an important part of this, but in this day and age it’s not enough to just train your reps, they need to be agile as well. With so much information to consume, reps need to have the right inflow of product, competition and peer success information when they need it. They also need to be able to hone their craft on-the-go and receive guidance and feedback regardless of where they are.
Sales readiness is about enabling your reps so they have everything they need to maximize their effectiveness and productivity.
“Sales readiness is a continuous process of creating and executing strategies to ensure preparedness of an organization’s sales force to meet its business objectives.”
Running a four-minute mile was once an elusive dream, but in 1954 Roger Bannister achieved the impossible. Fast-forward 60 years and the 4-minute mile is a rite of passage for professional runners aspiring to beat Hicham El Guerrouj, who currently holds the world record with a time of 3:43:13, set in 1999.
For athletes, success is a powerful motivator. Once they know one person has achieved the impossible it inspires others to not only follow in their footsteps but smash their record. And it’s no different for salespeople. After all, they’re a competitive bunch, which is why sales success stories are a powerful motivational tool for sales reps.
What is a sales success story?
A sales success story is designed for the purpose of internal communication where a sales rep talks about how they navigated the buying process and closed a sale with a customer. They provide insights into how the rep achieved success, and can give their peers ideas about how they could apply the winning techniques. Success stories may also provide insights into how customers use your product (or solution) and the value it adds to their business, providing more information that can be applied in sales conversations.
However, like any sales enablement tools, they’re only effective if the content is useful and if it’s delivered to your reps in a way that they can consume easily. That’s why it’s important to enable your reps with sales success stories that have been well researched and delivered. In this post we’ll take you through how to create sales success stories that will help your reps sell more.
Why are sales success stories important and how are they used?
Sales success stories are an important element of peer-to-peer learning. They are internal tools that can be used to train new hires on how deals have been won, and inspire and educate seasoned reps. They can be used as training tools, where reps learn how their peers have successfully sold to similar customers, different verticals, or beat the competition. The success stories may also provide anecdotal evidence of how your product is used and its success. Reps can use this knowledge in customer conversations to explain the value your product can provide to a prospect.
How do you create a sales success story?
Sales success stories can be created in several different formats, depending on what is most useful for your audience. For sales reps, I’ve found it best to deliver them as short but powerful snippets of information that are delivered direct to their mobile device and / or inside CRM system. Some of the formats that I’ve seen used include:
A 3 to 10 minute video of the rep explaining their story;
Written collateral like a case study that’s available for reps to read in their downtime;
A few PowerPoint slides that have dot points with the relevant information; and
Audio or podcasts that can be listened to while reps are traveling.
By making the information short and punchy it’s easier for reps to consume while they’re on the go. One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating a standard structure for your customer success stories. This structure guides how you collect the information, all the way through to how it’s presented to your reps. I suggest following this four point structure:
Some other ways that you can make your success stories easier for your reps to access and digest include:
Make them searchable, particularly if they’re longer case studies. This will help your reps find them quickly when they’re preparing for a meeting
Make them available on their mobile device. Many field sales reps use their cell phone or tablet as a pseudo office nowadays, so it’s imperative that they can access success stories on them
Make them available on your CRM system like Salesforce.com
Make them available offline. This will enable your reps to go through them when they’re on a plane or find them even if they don’t have Internet access, and
Keep it simple. While there’s a lot of information that you may want to convey, keep it short or use bullet points so it’s easier to skim through. And follow a standard structure as suggested so that reps know where to find what they’re looking for.
Collecting the information for your success story
It’s always best to go straight to the source when collecting information, that’s why I suggest interviewing your sales rep directly for your success story. If your customer is open to it you can also ask them to be included in the interview process. That way you can obtain their perspective on the sales process as well. And because the interview will only be used for internal purposes, I’ve found that most reps (and customers) are much more open and candid about their experiences.
If you’re not familiar with interviewing people it can be a bit daunting. To help you get the most from your sales rep (and possibly customer) interviews, I’ve suggested below some questions that you can use in your interviews. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather it’s intended to be guided to help you through the process. So you can pick and choose which questions to ask in your interview based on the situation and how the interview is going.
Once you have collected your information it’s just a matter of editing your video or audio or writing up your success story and publishing it on your sales enablement tool or content management system.
Understand the situation
An overview of your customer’s business
Please give me a quick overview of your customer’s business?
What does it do and how long has it been in operation?
How many employees are there?
What are its revenues?
Your champion’s role within their business
Can you please describe their role
Where does their role sit in the broader org structure?
Your customer’s customers
Who are their target customers?
How do they use their product?
Your competitors
What other solutions was the customer looking at?
How did you find out about your competitors?
Political navigation
Was there any saboteur in the deal? How did you overcome them?
Define the problem
The pain points and challenges your customer faced
What were the key challenges that your customer’s business was facing prior to using our product?
Were there specific pain points in their process that they wanted to remove?
What were they doing before to solve for these issues?
Did they use other tools or processes? How did they work?
The impact on your customer’s business
How did these challenges impact their business? Higher costs? Productivity? Revenue?
The decision-making process
What were other people involved in the decision making process?
How did you navigate the internal politics of the customer’s decision making process?
How did you identify your sales champion within the customer’s business?
How did the champion help you get the deal over the line?
Outline the solution
How you helped your customer solve for their pain points and challenges
Explain how you went about identifying your customer’s pain points or the challenges they were facing
How did you address these challenges in your customer conversations?
How did you help them resolve these challenges?
Who else helped you resolve the challenges?
Did they need to make any changes to their business to resolve these challenges? How were these received by their sales teams? Other internal teams? Their executives?
What support did you receive from other departments in their business?
What objections did you encounter from other departments in their business? How did you overcome this?
Did you encounter any other challenges or objections in the sales process? What were they? How did you resolve them?
How your customer uses our product
How is your customer currently using our product?
What features do they find helpful?
How does our product help alleviate their pain points or solve their challenges [describe what these challenges were]?
How does our product help them achieve their goals?
Has your customer reduced costs as a result? How do they quantify this?
Has your customer improved productivity as a result? How do they quantify this?
Has your customer increased revenue or sales growth as a result? How do they quantify this?
Has our product helped you and your team achieve success in your goals? How?
Additional Information
Do you have anything interesting about this sales or the sales process that you would like to share?
Improve Your Sales Rep Productivity!
Ready to see what Mindtickle can do for your sales teams?
Listen nowto hear how AG Salesworks helps businesses prepare their SDRs for success.
In this 13 minuteinterview Ferrara and Snell outline:
What core competencies make an SDR best in class;
How training for a new SDR differs from an experienced professional; and
What are the best metrics to use when benchmarking your SDRs.
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here. “It’s just like the framework of a car. It doesn’t matter what color they are. It doesn’t matter what the whistles in the car are. It’s what the frame is, and you can take that one frame and make it blue, and then make the next one red. And the red one has a pleather interior and a blue one has got leather interior. But as long as the framework is where you can take that from sale to sale with you.”
Training SDRs is just like building a car according to Chris Snell, Strategic Advisor at AG Salesworks. And Craig Ferrara, VP Client Operations agrees.
“We’ve worked with nearly 400 companies’ in completely different spaces. And whether they’re HR or IT or operations, the core competencies that we typically follow, our training process is relevant to all of them. You know that foundation, no matter what industry, will still have application and it works across all industries.”
So it begs the question, what framework do you need to train best-in-class SDRs for your business.
This post is based on a podcast on how ForeScout enables its sales team for their competitive advantage. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast
here
.
ForeScout is a cutting-edge network security company that can detect devices the instant they connect to a network. They are at the forefront of cybersecurity and have been named one of the
20 Fastest Growing Security Companies in 2015
by the Silicon Review. The company has customers around the world and requires a cohesive sales team in order to keep up with growing demand.
According to Renee Capovilla, Director of Sales Enablement, their motto is to turn its A players into ForeScout sales superstars by mastering six core elements:
Industry knowledge;
Buyer knowledge;
Product knowledge;
Pitch knowledge;
Process knowledge; and
Systems knowledge.
The business encountered challenges in the process, messaging and onboarding
When I first joined ForeScout it became very clear to me that we needed to up-level our sales process. We had a documented sales process but it just wasn’t being followed consistently. Moreover, from a messaging perspective, there was no consistency across the sales organization. In order to scale the business and to accelerate our new hire ramp up, we needed to re-engineer our sales process and more importantly document that.”
Three solutions were identified
To address the key challenges, the company focused its efforts on three key areas.
Creating a sales playbook
“The goal of the playbook is to capture and certify what your top performers are saying, asking and doing at every stage of the sales cycle. A playbook needs to provide guidance around first the deal, the call and the forecast management best practices throughout the sales process. Because we have a complex sale process and we work with a lot of very high stake deals, it’s critical that the playbook clearly defines the roles and responsibilities and the rules of engagement of all the different seller stakeholders, to ensure that we in the end delight that buyer throughout the selling process,”
explains Capovilla.
“The playbook should use the sales process as the framework. This approach has enabled us to give that clear direction and guidance on what the rep should do say, do and ask it at every stage of their sale cycle, replicating the best of the best. Then as part of this, it should also include a review section which is the coaching questions at every stage. This is where the manager comes in and plays the part of the coach with the rep, it’s a must-have.”
“We also have sections for the buyer role profiles, so we understand the buyer we are selling to and what they are doing through the sales process so we can lead them through it. We have security topic focus conversational tracks that really draw out the business value for why we are talking to those buyers and then we have an objection handling section which is again one of my favorites. And then we have key customer success story section where reps can talk about other customer successes again embellishing that conversation with the customer,”
outlines Capovilla.
The sales playbook is currently being migrated to Mindtickle so that the technology can be leveraged for all aspects of the process.
Instituting a corporate pitch certification program
When approaching the issue of consistent messaging, ForeScout decided to institute a company-wide corporate pitch certification program.
“This corporate pitch program serves as a framework to which we present our capabilities, our differentiators and our values to our customers. It enables that discussion again around security buyers’ challenges, we present use cases, the current infrastructure gaps that could be occurring and then we help walk the customer through how ForeScout can uniquely address each one of them.”
“I call it the 30 – 3 – 30. You need to be able to just give a 30-second pitch on your company. I think everybody has to have that in their arsenal of conversation. Then we go into the three which is the “three-minute elevator pitch.” That’s where you start talking a little bit more about the buyer challenges and a few of the use cases, but not in too much depth because we have to stick to three minutes. And then the last is, of course, the 30, and that’s where we consider the full-on pitch,”
she continues.
Each pitch is recorded and reviewed using Mindtickle and feedback is provided back to the reps. This then enables the certification to be recorded as well.
Building a robust onboarding program
ForeScout’s onboarding program builds on the sales playbook.
“We use the playbook content as the basis for developing our sales university and we use Mindtickle. Our perspective is that the playbook beckons that onboarding program. It’s the basis for developing the university courseware and the referencing coaching guide that drives our overall process and best practice application post the onboarding experience,”
Capovilla explains.
“We have tackled it in a 30-60-90 day approach. The first month is focused on completion of the online courses that we have put in Mindtickle, along with the prescribed shadowing activities. Around week four to six we bring in the new hires to a boot camp, where we expose them to the best people. We bring the concepts that were taught in those online courses to life, and learning scenarios and role play sprinkled with a little bit of tribal knowledge and customer situations. In my opinion, the best way to learn is to have the trainees apply the concepts to real deals so we also have them do teach back concepts, that’s the role play. We do a lot these role plays, where the trainees have to present what they’ve learned to their peers, and it’s through that collaboration that the learning really starts happening.”
“That’s why I got the platform:
because all of that is in Mindtickle. We use that platform to push out quick updates, to make sure that they haven’t forgotten what we taught them initially in the courses and the missions. One of my favorites is the pitch back because you really want to know once the rep knows it. You want to know how they are using it on a sales call and the only way you’re going to know that is if they tell you. So the pitch back is so important for us to hear what they are going to say when they get to the customer, a great way to reinforce the learning through listening,”
she explains.
“Mindtickle allows me to ramp up my onboarding as well as my ongoing field training. I enable the technology sooner rather than later. Don’t feel intimidated to add the technology early on, because it won’t just help with the cycle time,”
Capovilla continues.
“It’s the ease of use for both the administrator and the user. I’m on both sides of the platform all day long. I quickly set-up a course, a mission, a pitch back. It’s so easy and then from a user perspective, I love the UI. It’s just beautiful and simple and clear, you know what you need to do. We also love the fun and interactive learning experience. Invariably we hear comments like ‘this was the best learning experience I have had, very positive’. I think people learn a lot from seeing themselves.”
New hires are now hitting productivity targets within six to nine months
In a dynamic industry that is constantly evolving getting new hires to ramp up is challenging, but ForeScout has found their sales playbook and onboarding program so effective that by the six to nine month mark their new hires are hitting their productivity targets. They are also expected to deliver their corporate pitch within their first 30 days, using a scorecard to help judge it impartially.
“If you partner with the right companies they will work with you on your team. Mindtickle’s been great. I don’t look at them as a vendor, I look at them as a partner. So when I get stuck or have a challenge, I call my Customer Success rep and we work through it. It’s really like having another person on my team. That’s how I have been able to be successful,”
This post is based on a podcast on how Nutanix scales its revenue with channel partners. You can listen to the entire podcast
here
.
Nutanix is an enterprise cloud platform that helps businesses focus on what’s really important without sacrificing security. They rely on channel partners to scale their sales fast and effectively. “
I see basically channel resellers as an extension of our sales,”
explains Joan Morales, Senior Channel Marketing Manager for Nutanix. “
That means having the knowledge, the tools, access to the resources that they need, including marketing programs and training materials, so they can be successful in selling Nutanix.”
The business has been expanding rapidly since its inception in 2009. In only a few years it has gone from having a few hundred channel partners to several thousand, selling across dozens of countries and reaching thousands of customers globally. Recently the business went public with a stunning stock market debut.
Making their channel partners successfulis was the challenge
With their heavy reliance on channel partners for sales breadth and reach, the key challenge for Nutanix was identifying what they needed to be successful in their sales enablement strategy, and how to deliver it to their reps in a way that was easy to access and digest.
Geography was another challenge they faced. While Nutanix is headquartered
in San Jose they needed to be where their channel partners and customers were.
Channel partners are an extension of their own sales force
The core of Nutanix’ channel partner strategy is to treat them as an extension of their own sales force; with the same care, love, respect, and passion.
“Making it easy and simple and as complete as we make it for our own employees, with the same tools, and in most of the cases the same content. So that everybody goes back to the same core knowledge and the same core aspects of Nutanix,”
explains Morales.
Leveraging technology for ease of access
“Ease of use is one of the most important aspects. Making an experience that is easy, sociable, fun. What is really critical for us is giving access to as many things as we can give access to,”
comments Morales. “
When we have live training for our own employees we bring them back into the headquarters and we train them for a week. We could not do that for our channel partners of course because the scale and the reach is really large. So we thought about how we can make all of that great content accessible to channel partners around the globe in their own time.”
“We made a huge inventory of all the content we needed to share with partners and we looked for a platform that was a video-based platform. Easy to use, completely web-based, with no software to be installed, that’s actually more of a consumer experience than an enterprise experience. We wanted to deliver to our partners an experience that is actually closer to Facebook or a video game, not a boring enterprise software experience,”
he explained.
After a detailed market survey, Nutanix chose Mindtickle to deliver this experience to their channel partners (and employees). “
Mindtickle was one of the best in terms of delivering all aspects of the training.”
Engage users by reinforcing concepts
To engage their channel partners’ reps and help them learn, Nutanix leveraged gamification and reinforcement features in Mindtickle.
“Basically we were able to put all our training in video and we created small weekly modules of training. After each one of the weekly modules of training, there are different types of tests that you take on Mindtickle. You have video testing, with points associated to every single thing that happens. This makes cumbersome training into a game. You get exposed to a new concept and then right after you get questions on that new concept that you just listened to. By doing this and replicating this time after time you’ll build knowledge very easily. Mindtickle has a very large menu of different types of test questions,”
explains Morales.
“So Mindtickle basically was able to deliver that kind of fun, engaging, easy to manage, easy to deliver the experience. We were trying to find a partner that could be a company that was eager to innovate, eager to do things quickly, to basically helps us deliver these new types of experience for our channel partners. And that’s a very important aspect that we also found in Mindtickle. We found a team that is eager to innovate, is eager to work beyond the normal hours sometimes when it’s necessary to make sure that things happen on time.”
Track key metrics closely to identify gaps
Metrics play an important role in managing Nutanix’ channel partners. There are three types of analytics that they measure closely:
Deal size:This helps them identify where they can close larger deals;
Sales cycle:The faster they can sell the more deals they can close;
Success rates:The more success their partners have the more they can sell.
The business does look at other metrics to track how well their channel partners are performing, such as days to close their first deal. These metrics all help Nutanix identify which channel partners are the most successful.
Nutanix’ success is evident in their revenue and channel partner feedback
Nutanix’ channel partners have provided positive feedback on their sales training and updates. “
We have had many channel partners come back to us, telling us that the training that we are delivering is the best thing they have seen. All their salespeople are willing to take the training because it’s easy, it’s fun and it’s a video experience that basically is entertaining,”
comments Morales.
Through reporting and analysis, Nutanix has identified that channel partners who have access to their training program through Mindtickle are able to close deals faster. They also have deals of higher value and able to drive more sales more consistently over a longer period of time.
This is the second part of my series on learnings from the
Onboarding 2025
event in San Francisco. This post looks at key takeaways from some of the top companies in Silicon Valley on their sales onboarding plans and experiences. You can find also find part 1 of this series here.
Facebook: Laine Forman, Global Programs, Learning Program Manager
Laine gave us a great overview of how sales onboarding is being revamped at Facebook and how critical it is that it’s aligned with the company’s values of “
move fast and make an impact
”.
At a company that has
weekly
product updates, it is important to have a dynamic sales onboarding program. Facebook breaks down sales onboarding into 6 key areas:
New hire orientation
Global sales orientation
Sales Bootcamp
Role-specific Bootcamp
eLearning and testing
Mentoring and shadowing
A new operating framework establishes what is done on a global level and outlines what needs to be regional, to account for cultural differences and local nuances or example, although new hire orientation and global sales orientation are done at the HQ in Silicon Valley the sales boot camps are done regionally.
Another important fact that Laine highlighted is that change, especially on a global scale for a company the size of Facebook is extremely hard. Getting different stakeholders involved early on is key to make it happen.
Key Learnings:
Awareness is important. Is everyone aware and agree on what problem needs to be solved and why your onboarding program needs to change?
Transparency to everyone involved will move things along. Don’t just communicate changes to the onboarding program but rather bring people to the table to discuss.
Collaboration with the right people will ensure your program succeeds. Get training facilitators and content creators in the mix, not just sales leaders, as you will need their buy-in for the program to be accepted.
Focus on what will be most effective for the learner as you creatively think about the different elements of your onboarding.
Microsoft: Hector Rosales, Global Program Manager – Sales Onboarding
It was very interesting to learn how a behemoth like Microsoft has deployed their sales onboarding. Their approach was somewhat different from other companies in that they decided to go for a fully online experience with no classroom training. Microsoft developed their own learning platform (running on Microsoft Azure, of course) in which all sales reps have access to training programs.
Microsoft’s sales onboarding program focuses on sales, discipline and product fundamentals. They implemented an interesting framework called Manager Checkpoints that revolves around the following elements:
Plan
Pitch Perfect
Drive
These three elements are foundational for sales managers to ensure the reps are managing their plans (territories, accounts, etc.), are pitching the solutions correctly and can drive towards closing the deals.
Key Learnings:
Don’t overwhelm reps in their first 90 days with too much information. Microsoft has condensed information that is important for the reps to know during onboarding but doesn’t want them to get too many details that are not relevant until they have fully onboarded. This ensures reps are still knowledgeable but not lost.
Checklists rule. Providing manager checklists can help with coaching sessions and ensures consistency and the ability to track progress.
Structure the onboarding experience. New reps will appreciate a guided approach to what they need to learn.
Use stories to highlight the importance of certain key elements for your sales pitch and sales situations.
Give managers visibility into “where’s my new hire and what do I need to do” – this is easily done with the right technology (and you don’t have to build it yourself).
Autodesk: Kriss Ryan, Program Manager, Global Sales Onboarding
Kriss from Autodesk gave us a more detailed look at how to involve sales managers during onboarding. Kriss created an “advisory group” that oversees the entire process from interviews of new hires, defining sales manager processes, elements of foundational learning and onboarding delivery. The advisory group was essential to get everyone in sync about the importance of sales onboarding and the crucial role managers play.
What also stood out was Autodesk’s Sales Management Bootcamp. This is a program designed with the sales manager in mind that had three modules:
Module 1: Creating early Engagement (how managers can stay connected with new hires from interview through the first 90 days)
Module 2: New Hire Expectations & Standards (establishing early how you manage and how you will measure your reps)
Module 3: Accelerating Time to Productivity (sales accelerator and onboarding bench development)
Module 4: “In/Outboard” (new hire progression to performance management and identification of reps that won’t make it)
Key Learnings:
Onboarding is not the same as orientation. This was a great point and some companies do make the mistake of thinking that the traditional HR orientation is the onboarding. Make sure to distinguish the two for your company.
Have your managers attend the sales onboarding. Having gone through the experience themselves will help to not only get their buy-in and feedback, they will be better able to coach reps and connect with them through the program.
Track, measure and communicate the success of your sales onboarding program. If improving onboarding can impact even 1% of revenue per employee, this is huge when you think about the cumulative effect to the bottom line. Find out what the right metric is for your company.
Treat sales managers as your customers. They are the fundamental piece for a successful onboarding.
Don’t be afraid to release “imperfection”. You can’t wait to have the perfect sales onboarding, so don’t waste time and course-correct.
HPE’s presentation was interesting as it focused on the key element that is on everyone’s mind when the talk is about sales onboarding: time to productivity.
How do you sell sales onboarding to senior management? What are the key metrics that will resonate with them?
Key Learnings:
Use sales numbers to sell your onboarding program.
If you don’t have sales experience, hire someone for your team that has that kind of experience or partner with someone that can provide that perspective.
Build a successful program by thinking about what will make it successful. For example, HPE devised the following framework
Business aligned and supported
Targeted recruiting and pre-boarding
Structured and comprehensive solutions
Formal productivity targets and metrics
End-to-end program management
Nutanix: Joan Morales, Senior Manager of Partner and Alliances Marketing, Cloudera: Phil Aaronson, Director of Global Onboarding and Readiness, Mindtickle: Mohit Garg, Co-Founder and CRO
This was a panel discussion and presentation from two hyper-growth companies (Nutanix went IPO just 4 weeks ago and Cloudera is on the IPO path) and Mindtickle. After talking about some industry stats, the discussion centered around sales competencies and onboarding for channel partners.
Key Learnings:
Define what sales competencies are important for your reps to succeed so that you can effectively measure onboarding success
Give reps the opportunity to go through a real-life scenario that forces them to think about all the different elements they will encounter in selling situation (pain discovery, technical questions, potential objections, etc.)
Make onboarding a fun, engaging and competitive. Gamification technology can help drive new sales reps and channel reps to not just go through content but pay attention as well.
Provide reps with learning paths and visual maps to tell them where they are, where they need to go and what will take to get there.
Have your best sales reps produce the content your new hires will consume. It will feel more authentic, earn their respect, and the reps that produce the content will help spread out the word about onboarding.
There were so many great learning that is difficult to capture all of them in a simple post, I hope this nuggets of information will give you some food for thought and help you create better sales onboarding.
CrowdStrike is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Silicon Valley. It is on a mission to stop breaches through next-generation anti-virus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed hunting – all in the cloud. CrowdStrike has a unique ability to not only prevent cyber attacks but also respond to malicious attacks. It’s no surprise then that they were recently ranked number 40 on
“It’s just like the framework of a car. It doesn’t matter what color they are. It doesn’t matter what the whistles in the car are. It’s what the frame is, and you can take that one frame and make it blue, and then make the next one red. And the red one has a pleather interior and a blue one has got leather interior. But as long as the framework is where you can take that from sale to sale with you.”
This post is based on a podcast on how ForeScout enables its sales team for their competitive advantage. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast 
This post is based on a podcast on how Nutanix scales its revenue with channel partners. You can listen to the entire podcast 
This is the second part of my series on learnings from the