Sales Onboarding at Hyper-growth Companies: Key learnings from Facebook, Microsoft, Autodesk, HPE, Cloudera, Nutanix and Mindtickle

sales_onboarding_facebook_microsoft_autodesk_HPE_Cloudera_Nutanix_MindtickleThis 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:

  1. New hire orientation
  2. Global sales orientation
  3. Sales Bootcamp
  4. Role-specific Bootcamp
  5. eLearning and testing
  6. 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:

  1. Plan
  2. Pitch Perfect
  3. 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.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE): Craig Spencer, Director, WW Sales and Partner Onboarding

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.

Sales Onboarding at Hyper-Growth Companies: Key Learnings from Autodesk, Google, LinkedIn and Zenefits

sales_onboarding_aurodesk_google_linkedin_ZenefitsLast week I attended the

Onboarding 2025

event in San Francisco at the beautiful

Autodesk Gallery

where Sales Enablement leaders from some of the top companies in Silicon Valley shared their sales onboarding plans and their experiences in what proved to be an extremely productive discussion.

Here are part 1 of the key takeaways from each session. You can find part 2 here.

Autodesk: Julie Sokley, VP Global Sales Operations

Julie gave a great overview of the challenges she faced when taking over Sales Ops at Autodesk. She had to enable a team of over 250 sales reps globally. Her approach followed three key elements: Processes, productivity, and people.

Focusing on the “people” element, she established a sales methodology, built out a hub-based selling approach and created a sales onboarding program.

Key Learnings:

  • Think about structuring your sales onboarding into three phases:
  1. Before you join
  2. While you are here
  3. After onboarding
  • Pre-work is important. Autodesk gives new sales hires 50 hours of pre-work.
  • Autodesk transitioned from product-based selling to pain-point selling, which contributed to their growth. How are your teams approaching selling situations?
  • Don’t send sales reps data, send them stories. This was a critical takeaway as we sometimes get so focused on data that we forget that you need compelling stories to change sales behaviors.
  • Focus on the “why” of training, not the “what”. This will help you get executive buy-in and involvement in sales onboarding.

Google: Jen Bradburn, Sales Training and Development Lead

For the past ten years, Jen has led sales training programs at Google for different groups. During her presentation, she explained how she has changed the sales onboarding for new Google sales reps from a pure online and self-serve experience to interactive and case-study based training. The use of real scenarios during the onboarding program has helped prepare and give reps the confidence they need to work on deals as soon as their onboarding is over.

Key Learnings:

  • Use real sales scenarios and make them interactive case studies for the reps, so they can apply the theory into real sales situations.
  • By overloading the reps with the information they would face in a live selling scenario you can simulate what they would encounter in real life and assess their selling skills.
  • Reps face many surprises in real life, so how can you add those dynamics during onboarding? Google reorganizes the teams going through onboarding so the reps have to scramble and form new teams as they work on case studies which mimic challenges they will have in real situations.
  • Google has designed their sales onboarding with a mix of 50/50 instruction and practice. Find the right balance for your organization.

LinkedIn: Amy Borsetti, Global Director of Sales Effectiveness; Naomi Davidson, Sr. Operations Mgr of Sales Effectiveness; Thomas Igeme, Sales Effectiveness Strategy & Innovations Lead; Jade Bonacolta, Strategy, Innovation & Analytics Associate

Four people from LinkedIn led an incredibly interesting session focusing on data-driven sales coaching, which aims to address the most important question in everyone’s mind:

Are sales reps truly ramping effectively?

Amy had a great slide that said:

“Successful onboarding calls for mutual accountability across sales effectiveness and sales managers”

She talked about the importance of involving sales managers during onboarding and beyond. The new sales onboarding at LinkedIn also has a different approach, focusing on five phases:

Phase 1: Structured pre-work

Phase 2: Classroom-based simulation

Phase 3: Role-based sales clinics and leader-led series

Phase 4: Sales coaching

Phase 5: Success program for under-performers

They also have an interesting approach in which they talk about “Learning Quota” (Phase 1 and 2), “Behavioral Quota” (Phase 3) and “Sales Quota” (Phase 4 and 5).

But the most impactful change the team at LinkedIn did was related to sales coaching. They deployed a “Coaching for Gold” program to train sales managers on how to coach. It explained why to coach, how to coach, and who to coach. They also taught managers the difference between teaching, coaching, and mentoring and implemented a tracking tool to help them record and track their coaching sessions.

Key Learnings:

  • Approach your onboarding program with the different types of quotes in mind and create KPIs for each phase. You want to identify reps that are not going to be a good fit early on.
  • Focus on your B players. LinkedIn saw the best results in terms of lift in performance from their B players.
  • Managers should prioritize coaching efforts and identify the reps who need the most. In fact for reps that received 3 or more coaching sessions on the same competency the lift in quota attainment was up to 14% more than before. That’s a huge impact on revenue.
  • Identify what are the core competencies every rep needs to master and document it and measure how each one impacts results.
  • Build a culture of coaching at your company starting with senior level executive sponsorship so that it becomes a habit for all sales managers.

Zenefits: Elizabeth Pierce, Director of Training and Enablement

Elizabeth walked us through the sales onboarding program at Zenefits and the technology they rely on to get reps up to speed. From pitching, flashcards, quizzes, and more, the sales reps are fully supported by a variety of technology tools that help them ramp up faster.

At Zenefits she implemented a 70:20:10 learning model that splits the time reps spent on different learning activities:

70%: Experience (immersion, experiential learning, learn and develop through experience)

20: Exposure (social learning, learning, and development through others, feedback, and coaching)

10%: Education (formal learning, learning and development through structured courses and programs, in-house and outsourced training and e-learning)

Key Learnings:

  • Leverage the technology your reps are comfortable with. At Zenefits most of the new hires are millennials and use SnapChat, so they created specific training that leverages the platform the team is comfortable with. It also has the added benefit of giving them 24 hours to see and act on a video or other training component. Very creative!
  • Link sales reward with certification. By linking opportunities in SFDC with sales certification, they ensure reps can only see sales opportunities if they keep their sales certification up to date (as soon as their certification expires, they lose visibility into new opportunities).
  • Ramp time needs to match the company’s stage. Startups can’t wait 9 months for a rep to be fully ramped. Your ramp time needs to acknowledge your company’s stage in growth and lifecycle.
  • Use ongoing assessments in the form of short quizzes to keep reps on top of their game and share the data with the sales manager so they have full visibility.

In conversation with Jeremy Powers on Sales Enablement at MongoDB

 

MongoDB sales enablementThis post is based on a podcast on MongoDB’s formula for sales enablement success. You can listen to the entire podcast

here

.
MongoDB is the database for giant ideas. It offers the best features of traditional databases while providing the flexibility, scale, and performance that modern applications require. It is known for helping its customers gain a competitive advantage by leveraging information and technology. It helps customers reduce their risk for mission-critical deployments and accelerates their time to value, enabling them to bring new and interesting apps to market faster. It also dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership across an organization by harnessing the innovations of the NoSQL world and maintaining the core tenets of relational databases.

The company is expanding globally and hiring new sales staff to keep up with its phenomenal growth trajectory. It is seeking more enterprise-ready salespeople to help more organizations leverage their product to scale faster and achieve success.

Maintaining sales effectiveness is a challenge

The key challenge MongoDB faces as it scales is maintaining the effectiveness of its sales team,

“We have to have a very effective onboarding program and support sales to be more effective, be more productive. That’s the main goal and that’s our focus,”

outlines Jeremy Powers who heads up Sales Enablement for the company.

“The goal is to provide the sales team with an in-depth understanding of the industry, our customers, our technology and our solution sets. We then build upon that baseline and knowledge to equip our reps to consistently qualify for opportunities and getting and setting great meetings with the right people. Then ultimately prepare them to engage in highly effective, highly valuable conversations with prospects.  Ultimately we want to arm our sales team to not only differentiate themselves based on what we sell but also based on how they sell and how they interact with the customer. We want to provide an environment through our onboarding program where they can practice these things and really receive feedback, valuable feedback as part of the process,”

explains Powers.

Onboarding, advanced training, and analytics are key to sales effectiveness

MongoDB has taken a three-pronged approach that leverages technology to maintain and improve the sales effectiveness of its sales team.

Onboarding sets the baseline

MongoDB has established a 30, 60 and 90-day onboarding program. In their first month, new hires attend a week-long boot camp. Prior to attending the Bootcamp the new hires use Mindtickle to read up on pre-work so they have a baseline knowledge before attending in-person training.

“We have tried to put participants in the best possible position to succeed and get the most out of the training, the pre-work really provides a great foundation upon which they can build,”

explains Powers.

“It introduces new folks to all kinds of things: the industry, our customers, what we sell and how we sell it. It’s a very comprehensive program that also allows them to do missions that are really effective and provides an opportunity for sales reps to really try things on, have them record themselves delivering a customer success story or proof points.”

Mindtickle is then leveraged to deliver follow-up courses and advanced training, along with new product releases and information to keep sellers up to date.

Advanced sales training brings in real-world learnings

Everyone undertakes advanced sales training within their first 6 months. This is a three-day comprehensive deep dive that builds on their onboarding and learnings from the real world. This boot camp style training is delivered by a cross-functional group that includes executives, sales leaders, product marketing and the sales enablement team.

“We’ve really made the choice, as a company, to make a significant investment in our time and our resources, in order to provide a great development opportunity for our sales team. In fact, we ran the numbers on this and we spent over 6 times the industry average on developing our sellers and that is something we are really proud of,”

explains Powers.

Mindtickle is leveraged again in the advanced training to deliver relevant content, conduct missions and deliver feedback to management and the sales enablement team.

Accountability and constant evaluation keep the team on track

To help keep reps accountable MongoDB leverages Mindtickle’s functionality.

“We really believe in setting clear expectations and a standard of accountability and this like anything else really starts with the sales leaders. We refer to it as leading from the front,”

explains Powers.

“When we look at performance to really evaluate how can we move the needle with specific sales teams and sales reps, objectively we have been able to gauge the degree to which folks really understand and complete the pre-work and quizzes through Mindtickle. We can leverage things called missions in which we have reps record themselves delivering customer success stories that they learn or delivering a standard pitch. We get feedback and managers can also see how someone’s tracking.”

“In Bootcamp we have an entrance exam to kick things off and the much anticipated final exam towards the end of the week. These things give us a really good sense of, Is this sinking in? Is it sticking?”

explains Powers.

“There is a feedback mechanism that we have in place to capture all this data and anecdotal stuff as well, and then feed that into the follow-up process. In terms of adoption and reinforcement, we leverage Mindtickle in a spaced learning concept keeping the contents and concepts top of mind.”

New hire ramp-up time has reduced from 11 to 5 months

This comprehensive program has really started to deliver results for MongoDB, allowing them to reduce their ramp-up time for new hires from over 11 months to just 5 months.

“I think the thing that really set us apart is being able to identify where people are struggling, giving them the support they need, and keeping things recent and relevant. Staying up with new things, new and interesting and great things that we are releasing in the product that address more and more customer problems. Helping them to achieve business outcomes and really being able to attach to that and enable reps to have great conversations. We really find that this process dramatically improved our onboarding,”

explains Powers.

By using the data within Mindtickle MongoDB has been able to provide data to its managers that give them the ability to really focus in on how to improve the effectiveness of each individual rep.

“The great part about it [Mindtickle] is that we are able to take all the data points like the exams and the minor feedbacks from the final presentations and really give managers some great direction. Hey what are the key things that you need to focus on, where are the knowledge gaps, and really equipping and arming them to have a great targeted approach in how they coach and develop their teams,”

explains Powers.

In Conversation with Cloudera on Sales Enablement

 

sales enablement clouderaThis post is based on a webinar on how modern sales organizations leverage sales enablement for their competitive advantage. You can listen to the entire webinar

here

.

Cloudera is an open-source data management and analytics platform. Cloudera has enterprise customers in every vertical market including financial services, public sector, telecommunications, retail, and healthcare. The company has been scaling rapidly, and in just three years has grown its sales operations from a team of 11 reps based in North America to almost 200 reps globally. Supporting the sellers is an additional team of over 150 sales engineers, solution architects, business development and customer-facing staff.

As Cloudera’s sales team was growing rapidly it was experiencing several challenges that fell into two broad categories:

Consistent Messaging

With so many sales reps, one of Cloudera’s biggest challenges was conveying their message consistently and efficiently.  This was compounded by market and product issues, as Drew O’Brien, Field Operations noted,

Cloudera is in a market that’s changing very rapidly on so many different levels. The market right now is very, very hyped and as a result, you have all these different companies entering the market. They all have mixed and often conflicting messages, so how do you come up with something that resonates and cuts through the noise. Because we deal in open-source technology, the product changes rapidly because it’s developed by a worldwide pool of developers from all different walks of life, so things change very fast on that front. Now you add on top of all that rapid hiring, it’s extremely challenging to be crisp and clear.”

Onboarding

While Cloudera had a basic onboarding program in place, like many companies, they relied heavily on marketing to undertake many of their sales enablement activities. As the team grew it became apparent they needed a structured process to onboard sales reps to be as productive faster.

Sales enablement investment

Cloudera has invested heavily in sales enablement resources and put together a formidable team. This made all the difference according to O’Brien,

Investing in it [sales enablement] early, making that investment in the supporting infrastructure for our sales people while building a foundation rather than after we’ve built the house already was something that we did earlier than most companies do and it saved on a lot of things for us. Secondly actually building formal infrastructure and not relying on marketing and random half-hearted webinars and weekly web access at the end of our training.”

To help create their value proposition Cloudera put together a cross-functional team of sales and marketing leaders and business development individuals over a three-week process. Lars Nilsson, VP Global Inside Sales explains, “

Together we came up with an entire kind of value framework for how do we talk about what it is we do, the problems that we solve, and companies in different segments, whether they be different revenue segments or different industry, verticals or different geographies.”

If you involve all of those parties in the development process, in the creation process, they feel like, in many ways, they’re part-owner of it. And for sales teams, driving an option is a matter of getting it started and then, if you can show success and you can actually demonstrate that this indeed does make their lives easier and helps them be more effective, then it kind of begins to gain its own momentum. Because we involved marketing and product management and all those different account executives in the process, it became much easier for them to understand what it was we were doing,”

clarified O’Brien.

Following this process the business then developed assets and content in various different forms, that was disseminated and communicated so that alignment could occur. The alignment resulted in a common message that everyone in the sales team could use when talking about the business, its products and value.

Cloudera leveraged Mindtickle to elevate the readiness of their field sales team and provide them with the right information at the right time. “

You can’t have a field sales team be effective if you’re trying to give every little piece of information to them and have a rep know absolutely every little thing about your products and market. The exercise of readiness is acting like a filter, distilling what’s really important from a selling perspective.  What do reps really need to know, and make sure they know that and nothing more. If they need more than that, they can learn it as they need it or they can call another resource. That’s why you have systems engineers, professional services people and product managers so that when the time is right, you can bring in additional resources to help you out. So involving everybody in the process just helps solidify the mission, the goal, everybody’s on the same page, and for us, it’s been very, very effective so far,

” explains O’Brien.

More effective onboarding

While Cloudera already had a sales onboarding class in place they identified a need to make it more robust for their new hires. Krista Wiederhold, Sales Enablement Coordinator explains, “

We looked at

ways of improving it to be more effective, making it more engaging and role-based, moving a lot of the lecture to the first 30 days. So for us, we were kind of just grabbing what we already had in place, and making it better.”

Being able to leverage technology was key to taking their onboarding program to a new level. Cloudera uses Mindtickle to prepare their reps for boot camp Nilsson explains, “

Because we have offloaded or off-boarded a lot of the content that our sales reps usually get during that week of onboarding training, we bring in people from all over the world to our corporate headquarters for this week-long onboarding. We have put 3 days of content into the pre-work in the form of videos and on-demand instructor-led video content, so when they come to Palo Alto we have a lot more time to do role plays, live presentations, and whiteboard, where they learn the content and retain it. For me that was a huge value add-in, just taking all the content you have and allowing your reps to consume it before they come.”

“Using Mindtickle we get feedback from employees, specifically there are ways to do polls and collect feedback in terms of what content’s helpful, what they need to learn next, so that’s the way we gather information from the field to test its effectiveness. Within the system, we also pull analytics and other metrics we can use to see how effective the enablement efforts we’re putting forward are working,”

continues Wiederhold. “

We can see how fast a rep is coming up to speed on particular topics. Being able to look back at the courses that they completed, exams we ran in Mindtickle or to really test them for the areas that they may need a little bit more help on. So we really look at it to get more insight into how we’re revving them up or how fast it takes them to close a deal, get their first meeting or assess them on areas of our product that they may need more education on. We look at the course analytics as well as how long it takes them to close a deal or land a meeting.”

Achieving objectives

The technology was key to Cloudera’s solution according to O’Brien, “

Invest in technology, like Mindtickle or something like that, to actually structure your programs and enablement practices in an organized way and that just methodically covers everything that you need to cover.”

Using a technology that can perform multiple functions in the process certainly made the process easier for the sales enablement team according to Wiederhold,

“Investing in systems that are going to help you accomplish and teach the field and make it easier for to meet them where they’re at. Also pick a tool that’s going to have integrations from a learner perspective, and that you can modify and make it a lot easier to consume materials. We personally use Mindtickle for onboarding as well as ongoing enablement.”

Technology has also played an important role in reporting and analytics for Cloudera. Mindtickle has enabled the sales enablement team to look at what their reps are doing, what courses they are watching and then reporting back to management on this.

When you see these reports, and they stack rank in the different regions, and the different segments by how many of their reps have completed versus started versus not started. That sends the message loud and clear to the field and everyone who has a stake. If you are a manager and you see yours at the bottom of the stack with respect to your reps learning one of our key new values drivers, then we’re providing a tool for our leaders to manage their teams. They can then go ahead and make sure their reps get the training,” continues Nilsson.

A final area where technology can really be leveraged is in certifying and testing reps. “

Most recently we’re rolling out certifications. We’re building courses on a particular topic and certifying the field on that course with an exam, or making them do a pitch presentation,”

explains O’Brien.

Results

Now we have a common framework and a common set of messages that 200 individual contributor sellers and the extended teams of sales engineers, solution architects, business development, inside sales, we’re all singing kind off the same hymn sheet, when it comes to who we are, what we do, and the problems we solve and the stories we tell,”

exclaims Nilsson.

 

“So when we’re out there, inspiring and teaching, it all sounds the same, from the CEO down to one of my SDRs. Today there’s a lot of excitement globally, just to be able to share stories because we’ve all have common terminology, language, and value drivers. It’s actually a wonderful place to be. Took us a while to get here, but now we feel poised as this very fast moving company that wants to continue to do that. We have a lot of hopes and dreams here at Cloudera and we definitely feel poised to be able to do that with all the things that we’ve invested in and around sales.”



ForeScout Combines Technology & Role Play for Successful Sales Onboarding [Podcast, Part 3]

In this 7-minute

interview Capovilla outlines:

  • How ForeScout’s 30 – 60 – 90-day onboarding program is structured;
  • What the pitch back is and how it’s used to keep new hires on track;
  • Her advice to new sales enablement directors on how to build an onboarding program from scratch; and
  • How ForeScout has leveraged technology in its onboarding.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

Soundcloud

,

Stitcher

,

iTunes

or find it

here

.

forescout sales onboarding

The best way to learn is to have the trainees apply concepts to real deals so we have them do teach back concepts. We do a lot  of 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.”

Renee Capovilla, Director of Sales Enablement at ForeScout, is reflecting back on what has been critical to ramp up their new sales hires quickly.  “Our goal is to really pack those first 90 days with a lot of learning and effective training and then get them out into their territory. But it’s about month six to nine that they start hitting their productivity targets.”

Ramping up new sales hires so quickly is no mean feat and Capovilla puts it down to a combination of effective learning and smart use of technology. “You want to know how they are using [their learning] 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 says explaining the importance of online role plays.

When prompted to explain her secret to success she offered humbly, “I think what I might have as an advantage is the fact that I enabled the technology sooner rather than later. Don’t feel intimidated to add technology early on, because it won’t just help with the cycle time.”

New Hire Orientation Template – What Every New Hire Should Know

New hire orientation, sometimes called employment orientation, is a chance to make a positive first impression that will have a long-lasting impact on your employees. According to The Wynhurst Group, “22% of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment and the cost of losing an employee in the first year is estimated to be at least three times salary.”

This means that dropping the ball on orientation for new employees can be a major factor in terms of whether employees hang around for the long term or treat their job as simply a stepping stone to something bigger and better.

Mindtickle Ramp Time EBook

A stellar employment orientation program is a chance for you to really make your new employees feel welcome, happier, and more productive. Happy employees lead to customer happiness and more top-line revenue impact! The question is how do you get them there?

New hire orientation programs are no longer about filling out forms and signing policies. Pushing the envelope means moving beyond merely completing a new employee orientation checklist or hosting death by PowerPoint marathon new hire training events.

Today, onboarding managers need to conduct a well-designed, centralized, and cohesive orientation program, well beyond the scope of a new employee orientation checklist.

Don’t be shy about leveraging technology to facilitate your orientation program. Thanks to a tech-savvy workforce, organizations are using technology as an integral part of their new hire orientation programs.

To get you started, we created a new hire orientation template with all of the foundational topics required to bring in new hires in a way that makes them feel welcome, fully briefed on expectations, and poised to succeed.

Use this template to include all the key topics that are important to cover for new hire onboarding. With the basics nailed, you can focus on putting the icing on the cake!

What every new hire needs to know

  1. Welcome
  2. Company history
  3. Leadership
  4. Culture
  5. Documentation
  6. Compliance
  7. Policy

Topic 1: Welcome

Greet new hires with an enthusiastic reception! Make sure that the orientation for new employees process starts with a warm welcome and don’t wait for Day 1 to get started! You can put together a welcome kit and ensure that it reaches the new hire before their start date.

The first days can be exhausting and overwhelming for new employees, so don’t overdo it. Instead, focus on reassuring the new hire that they have made a great choice, they are where they belong, and as a company, you are happy to have them there. Beyond the initial welcome, you should also provide some high-level information on the business including its mission statement and where the company is going.

Also, help your new hires start to build the relationships that will be critical to their success and productivity. Introduce new hires to their colleagues and allow time for them to observe and ask questions. The more familiar a new employee is with her department, co-workers, and job expectations, the more likely she is to be productive right from the start.

Topic 2: Company history

Highlight the positive history of the business. Every company has a lot of history behind it and everyone loves a good story. Even start-ups have stories they can draw from. Offer background on how the company made it to the point where it is today. Provide linkage between the past, present, and the future by telling stories about the company from the past and where the company is investing for the future. Explain WHY you do what you do.

This is also a great opportunity to bring out employees that have dedicated their careers to the company, to show what longevity and commitment truly means. Your best employees have the potential to be your best trainers. By utilizing your top employees, you can grant your organization access to the most efficient and successful ways of serving customers!

Topic 3: Leadership

Introduce the leadership team. The leadership team of any organization is going to make or break what employees think of the company that they work for. When your leadership team is able to connect with and inspire new employees, the company is going to be better off for it in the long run. Ensuring that the orientation process provides employees with a chance to connect with senior management will help them better understand the organizational structure, culture, and overall management vibe.

Time-strapped and/or geographically distributed teams can streamline the onboarding process for leadership by codifying the key messages into videos and engaging the team in the content production process. This is particularly practical when you are dealing with a higher volume of new hires. A video is an excellent way to communicate the excitement and passion that is driving the organization.

From a personal touch standpoint, you can create social forums and discussion boards and let the entire team participate in the assimilation of a new hire. This also allows leaders to focus on important things like strategy and vision with a personal touch while ensuring that employees are supported for success.

Topic 4: Culture

Provide information regarding business culture. No two companies are the same from a cultural perspective. Some companies are going to be more formal, while others will be very laid back. It is important to inform your new hire for company traditions such as casual Friday or where people all go to lunch together on Tuesday. No one wants to be the new person that has to figure these things out on their own as they go. Teaching new hires about traditions and culture is often overlooked in the onboarding experience!

The type of culture that a company has should be highlighted during orientation so that new hires can have an understanding of the work environment. The more that they know of the culture, the better they are going to be able to fit in and grow with the company.

Topic 5: Documentation

Address formalities from a document perspective. Documentation is required as part of any new job. Now is the time, during orientation, where you can have your new hires come prepared with all of the documents that they need. Getting these formalities out of the way in a strong pre-join program can make for an even easier onboarding process.

Topic 6:  Compliance

Offer information about compliance. Providing information to new hires regarding what is expected of them to maintain compliance will help your new hire avoid confusion down the line as well as costly legal problems. The new hire orientation coverage of compliance should start with a talk about information security. Things such as the law regarding competition and anti-bribery are also important areas to focus on. Health and safety precaution concerns should also be addressed. Be sure to do adequate research on any applicable compliance laws that may be specific to your organization.

Topic 7: Policy

Highlight company policies. Every company is chock full of policy and it is usually more than one can memorize. It is important to at least go through key policies at a high-level during new hire orientation. Consider touching on topics such as leave, sick time, and vacation time so employees know what to expect. Also, show new employees how company policies apply to their departments and their specific job functions.

The other areas of company policy to cover should include travel policy, expense reporting, and reimbursement policies. There may also be policies regarding internet usage, rewards, and recognition opportunities, as well as employee referral opportunities. When it’s all said and done, the most beneficial information on policies will be where the new hire can go to find answers to their policy questions.

New hires have an uphill climb to productivity. With all the information they are expected to absorb they can easily feel overwhelmed.

A good employee orientation program answers your new hire’s initial questions while giving them a structured runway to become familiar with their new role. Having a welcoming and informative new hire orientation will set up your new hires for success in the short and long-run! And if you’re still looking for more resources for when it comes to new hire training and onboarding, take a look at the sales onboarding checklist here

3 Examples of Gamification for New Employee Onboarding

For most companies out there today, the new hire orientation process is often the same. An employee arrives and is instructed to watch a series of training videos or read a manual.

This is typically followed by the employee receiving additional on-the-job training for their position before he or she is let loose.

While this may seem like it is beneficial, it can be extremely boring for the employee. And believe it or not, it actually hurts both parties.

Gamification in new employee onboarding

The new employee that you have just hired has to take additional time going through copious amounts of training material. Instead of being able to put your new employee to work, you have to wait until he or she is completely finished training. Wouldn’t it be much better if you were able to help your employee through the training process while allowing them to absorb much more information?

How can this be done? Try gamification! Check out these three elements of gamification in new employee onboarding and why they may end up benefiting your business.

1. Progress & achievement – From the beginning, any small achievements that your employee accomplishes should be rewarded. While you may think this sounds silly at first, a study back in 2008 found that nearly 86 percent of new hires decide whether or not they want to stick with the company within the first six months of employment. Make your employees feel like they are valuable to your business and not simply another cog in the wheel of progress. How can this be done? Think of something simple like a digital checklist. During the new hire orientation, have your employee check off items as they accomplish them. Tasks may be as simple as “Fill out tax paperwork” or “Get photo ID picture taken.” After all, tasks are completed, send out a simple congratulations email for a job well done.

2. Leveling up – “Leveling Up” is typically a phrase that you might hear while playing a video game. The player has to accomplish a certain number of tasks before additional steps can be taken. The same can be applied to your new hire orientation. Set up a list of actionable goals that your employee must accomplish before other responsibilities can be given. For instance, you may want to have a new employee make at least ten cold calls to potential clients before he or she can sit in on sales meetings. It’s little goals like these that will motivate your employees to keep pushing towards being more productive.

3. Quests – Utilizing gamification quests is another great way to improve new employee onboarding within your company. The idea behind quests is that they can be applied to any training subject, no matter what it is. Take a subject such as safety in the workplace. Instead of having an employee watch a two-hour training video, have the employee interview other workers about their top safety tips. Then have the employee report his or her findings back and decide on which tips can be agreed upon. While you may think having your new employees watch videos or read through manuals will help understand the information, having them seek out the information is much more beneficial. It is also more enjoyable way to learn.

These are just a few of the many examples of gamification that you can implement into your company’s new hire orientation process. By doing so, you have the potential to build a team of employees that are much more engaged and productive within the workplace.

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What Is The Future of HR?

HR - Mindtickle

There has not been a better time to work in HR.

What we do quite literally makes or breaks a company. If we can’t attract, train, and retain the best talent, then the company will lose ground rapidly.

HR is undergoing change. Not just small-scale change, but a fundamental seismic shift. A change that will see traditional HR falling behind and be replaced by new, skilled HR, ready to change the future of HR. In particular, everything from technology to social media and distributed workspaces has a major impact in the way we hire, train, and retain the millennial workforce.

According to Deloitte, 91% of Millennials expect to stay in their current job for 3 years or less, with 45% of companies reporting higher turnover rates among this group vs. other generations. When looking at the future of HR, it is critical to understand that Millennials behave differently and need different types of solutions to stay engaged at work.

What are the top 3 trends that you see shaping the HR landscape?

Nisha: I’m seeing a shift where HR is getting transitioned into a true business partner who not only understands HR implications but also the core business operations as well. HR is now more connected to how the whole business is functioning, how the business is making revenue, and why the organization works the way it does. Knowing this, HR can more effectively manage the human capital needs of the organization. In fact,  human capital is one of the top three challenges for CEOs globally. So HR professionals who have a phenomenal knowledge of what’s happening at the bottom level can manage human capital needs based on business needs.

The other trend that I wanted to highlight is that HR is becoming more data-driven. Using data and analytics, HR is able to make accurate projections and take front decisions to lead the change that helps the organization achieves success. In fact, while we’re talking about HR transformation, one of the key competencies for transforming HR is the ability to analyze data effectively, find answers to those key business questions, and then manage people to achieve success.

When Google initially launched People Analytics as a tool to make their human capital decisions, it was an alien strategy for most of the companies out there. Now, more and more companies are using workforce analytics to predict the future needs and make decisions accordingly. For example, you can find out if there are any talent shortages that are going to happen in the future and if so, what type of talent or what type of skills would the organization require in the future. Can that talent be trained in the organization? If not, where we can we find them? All these questions can be answered by using data and analytics, and HR is becoming more data-driven.

The third trend is that I’m now noticing is that HR is becoming more specialized. Because, as we’ve seen, more and more new roles are emerging in the HR industry like recruitment marketing, employer branding, and HR analytics or data analytics. I want to highlight one of the recent studies conducted by Bersin Associate, which is a Deloitte company. They say that ‘ 7% of HR’s real value comes from its role as an internal people operations team: more than 5 times its value comes from its role in supporting, developing, and identifying leaders’.

So in the future, business leaders want HR professionals to be specialists who have in-depth knowledge in data analysis, who know how to assess talent and how to build compelling employer brand, and who can handle the HR technology as well.

What is the role of technology in HR of the future?

Nisha: That’s a great question. As we all know, technology is an enabler, right? Being in the HR industry, I know it’s impossible to run an HR function without multiple technologies. When it comes to HR technology, the good thing is that all the new technologies are highly integrated into letting the HR professional see the trends and insights. This is really crucial going forward for HR to be able to make decisions and manage human capital.

From identifying talent to handling the employee lifecycle management, maintaining workforce data to analyzing the talent trends and facilitating online training, technology is playing a great role. An organization with the right type of talent who knows how to make the most of HR technologies are bound to succeed. That being said, as an HR person I should definitely say this, technology cannot replace the human element.

There are some particular areas where HR interaction is a must have. For example, the one-on-one interaction between the employee and the manager. It is also needed during retention issues or if there’s any conflict resolution needed.

But as a whole, HR is evolving and technology has and will continue to impact the way HR drives business outcomes from employee onboarding to continuing skill development and beyond.

How has social media, social conversation, and digital in general influenced HR leadership and how will this continue to evolve?

Nisha: Social media, in general, has influenced the way HR attracts, hires, and engages talent. It is a competitive advantage to build a compelling, authentic, and genuine employer brand and attract talent. The greatest impact that I see right now is organizations can have some control over how their organization is perceived as a workplace, by providing content on social media.

For example, from a tweet that talks about how excited to work at the organization, to an employee sharing a photograph of their work desk, or an employee letting their audience know how they have fun working at your organization.

For instance the employer branding approach of Zappos. They have actually created a separate Twitter handle for employer branding. If you haven’t checked it out, you should check it out – it’s @InsideZappos. Their ultimate goal is to let everyone know what life is really like at Zappos. How cool is that!

They do a fun weekly tweet-chat where Zappos employees and HR team are available to talk to everyone and let their audience know how it’s like to work at their organization as well as what are the current possibilities that they’re exploring at their organization. This gives an opportunity for potential talent to interact with Zappos HR professionals and even employees.

Let me make it clear. Social media is not just a tool to broadcast. Use it as a way to engage your audience – it’s a two-way communication.

The use of social and digital will continue to evolve. As HR professionals, we’ll have to collaborate with marketing and learn some marketing skills to come up with compelling recruitment marketing techniques. We need to know how to make employer branding message reach our target audience in general.

Companies are using social media as a tool to identify cultural fit as well. Going through candidates social profiles now recruiters know what the candidates are like. For example, going through a Facebook feeds of a candidate, you can get to know a little more about candidate’s interests and passions. All the data is exposed on social media and that’s what recruiters are really looking for. What type of person is this candidate? Is he going to be a right fit for the organization? Is he going to mash up with the culture of the organization? That’s going to be an initial key in choosing a candidate. After that, once he comes for an interview, the recruiter or HR will be able to ask him behavioral and technical questions to identify the cultural fit and competence.

How can HR leaders prepare for the future?

Nisha: One of the top talent issues that is keeping business leaders up at night is the widening skills gap among HR professionals. One of the things organizations should do is to have a professional development or career advancement program for all employees across business functions. When it comes to HR, it’s not that prevalent out there. I really wanted to shout out to all the HR leaders out there to have a professional development program for your HR team in order to prepare them for the competencies that are going to be required in the future.HR is about the intersection of people with business, strategy, and technology. Keep your fingers on the pulse of these three factors and Understand what is important for your company in terms of HR are be open to all the changes that are happening in your industry, you’ll succeed for sure.

Thank you for your insight Nisha!

Nisha Raghavan - MindtickleNisha Raghavan, Founder & host of India HR LIVE, is a Global HR professional with extensive experience in handling Talent Management, Employee Engagement, and Cultural diversity in the workplace. After having worked in Corporate India for a while, she moved to The United States and talks about her Global HR experiences on her blog Your HR Buddy!! She is the Co-host of DriveThruHR, HR’s #1 Daily Radio Show at 12 noon CT and was recently listed as one of the Top 100 most social HR experts on Twitter by Huffington Post. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, & on Twitter @TheHrbuddy.