Sales training organizations have long struggled with how to achieve long-term behavioral change, and how to prove it. The research brief from Sirius Decisions explains how combining coaching with enhanced measurement can actually deliver the visibility and accountability you need.
Sales coaching is often left up to managers to execute as part of on-the-job training. This has resulted in sub-optimal results, particularly where managers are not equipped with the knowledge and tools to coach or where reps are left to develop bad habits. To help reps bridge the gap between on-the-job realities and the skills and processes they’re taught in formal training, coaching must be offered in two ways:
Traditional: This is often a one-on-one interaction between reps and their manager that helps to influence behavior through observation and feedback. In order to be successful this requires training, justification and situational application; and
Unassisted: As managers can’t be there all the time, it’s necessary to align training with the rest of your support structure so that reps can choose the right route to solving their issue on their own. This may include a blend of process or tools playbook or content marketing and competency models.
With training and coaching in place, the next step is to determine an appropriate and accurate way to measure the success of the activity. The Research Brief identifies several ways to achieve this, both from an objective service perspective and also by collecting specific feedback from both reps and managers.
By measuring the impact of training initiatives, coaching can then reinforce the activities more effectively and produce actual behavioral change that has a real impact on sales performance.
A copy of the Research Brief is now available for download Mindtickle.com.
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.
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.
Listen nowto hear how Besecker has created a customer-centric perspective to sales enablement to Qualtrics.
In this 16-minuteinterview Besecker outlines:
How to put customer experience at the core of your sales enablement strategy;
What a “white gloves” onboarding experience includes; and
How to improve the sales enablement experience of your reps.
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here. “One of the mistakes that a lot of companies are starting to kind of fall into is really just death by complexity,” observes Charlie Besecker.
As head of Qualtrics’ global enablement function, his focus is simple, “You’ve got a group of insanely engaged, motivated, ambitious people that are smart and angry. What can we do to make this entire process more efficient and ultimately more effective?”
Qualtrics is the leading customer experience software, and it lives and breathes its customers first approach right down to how it enables its sales force. “Our success is directly correlated with the satisfaction of our customers. We don’t succeed if they don’t renew and if they don’t love our product and love the experience they have with Qualtrics then they won’t renew. And so that’s why we don’t really talk about Qualtrics’ success in sales without the other being the success of our customers,” explains Besecker.
This approach permeates all aspects of its enablement strategy from professional development to the onboarding experience of its new hires. Besecker has termed the latter a “white gloves” experience. “The whole white gloves concept is really akin to some of the finest hotels that you can visit, where we are attempting to anticipate that wants and needs of our new hires before they realize those needs themselves.”
This session at SiriusDecision Summit 2016, titled “Sales Effectiveness: Enablement,” was part of their ‘foundations’ series at the event and so far one of the best I attended. The analysts started by helping define sales enablement as the function responsible for the following:
Talent: How do you attract, onboard and optimize sales employees?
Assets: What are the internal-facing content and activation content being used with the buyer?
Communication: How do we make sure the sales reps get the information they need from the org and how do we get their feedback about what is working and what is not?
Functional Structure: How do we structure the organization to support this scope?
Measurement and Insight: How do we measure and identify what is working?
If you’re interested in learning more about modern sales enablement, read on here.
But if you are a sales enablement professional looking to get the basics, copy these 5 key areas and post it in front of you as these are your mandates.
I like the way SiriusDecisions summarized the role of sales enablement by saying that Sales enablement helps strategy become action
The difference between the Sales Ops and Sales Enablement was also discussed. While Sales OPs focuses more on the efficiency piece, sales enablement focuses mostly on the effectiveness part (think of SiriusDecisions Sales Efficiency and Effectiveness chart). The true power is when those are aligned to drive higher yield per rep for your organization (e.g. more revenue per rep).
What keeps sales enablement up at night?
If there is one thing sales enablement professionals need to constantly think about is “how do we drive greater sales productivity?”. Easier said than done because according to SiriusDecisions there are five challenges most sales enablement departments face:
Organizational structure and roles: how do I make sure I have the right people, processes, and metrics in place?
Sales asset management: We have too much content, we can’t find it, use it, and personalize it.
Sales talent acquisition: In this extremely competitive market for talent where only 4% of top B2B reps are looking for work how do we attract the best?
Sales onboarding: How can we accelerate time to competency for our sales reps?
Ongoing development: How can I create long-term value of my training initiatives? How can I create long-term opportunities for micro-learning for my reps in the field when I have new content, products, messaging?
Sales Talent Lifecycle Framework
During the session, SiriusDecisions introduced The Sales Talent Lifecycle Framework.
This framework is for helping sales enablement professionals to figure out how to answer questions about how to attract, onboard and optimize their sales reps? Notice how the framework shows the competencies, company actions, tactics, and employee actions throughout the process. A key learning from this section of the presentation was that companies need to approach the job of attracting quality reps from a demand generation process. With the scarcity of sales talent, it is even more important to think about attracting talent the same way you generate qualified leads to the sales team.
But what do you do after a new sales candidate agrees to join the company? Not to worry as SiriusDecisions also has a framework called the Sales Onboarding Effectiveness and Efficiency Model. Here’s a glimpse at one of the sections:
Notice how the Competencies are divided into three areas:
Knowledge
Skills
Process
Each one has suggested items to consider as you build your own onboarding program. But as important as it is to teach reps key skills, processes, and tools, can they take what they just learned and actually apply it? Role-play certification becomes very important to ensure the reps can articulate in their own words your value proposition, handle key objections, and close the sale.
A good way to do it is by giving them scenarios to practice from. SiriusDecisions also talked about different levels of certification for role-plays:
Content: Tests if the reps know the content that was taught, can be done with basic video role-play scenarios
Application: Test if the reps know how to do it, with live scenarios or simulation
Execution: Can reps actually perform in the field? This is done via active coaching of reps in the field
A good analogy used during the presentation is the first level of certification is like a Shakespearian play where you perform the script to the letter. The second and third levels of certification are more akin to improve. How are you certifying your reps?
I’m often asked by sales leaders about how to ensure that sales onboarding delivers long-lasting results. After all, you spend so much time and energy hiring and onboarding new sales reps, but like a shiny new car, your investment depreciates the minute they step outside. Trying to reinforce sales training is a challenge many enablement leaders face.
It is natural for the reps to forget the training content and even if they retained everything the readiness of your reps will decline on a relative scale because it is a moving target. Competitors change strategy, industry dynamics change, you introduce new product features or you have published new referenceable case studies.
It’s not only important to help your newbies maintain their level of knowledge by reinforcing their training, but also to sustain their overall sales readiness so they can continue to level up. Therefore, reinforcement is a critical part of an effective onboarding program.
But how should one go about creating a reinforcement plan for new reps that delivers the goods? Some of your gaps for new reps may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues. To get your reps on their way to achieving their sales quota, here are 5 best practices:
Implement periodic refreshers to reinforce sales training
Broadly, speaking there are two types of sales training formats – baseline training modules (think of them as long-form modules that provide a well-structured and comprehensive knowledge about a subject matter, and bite-sized updates to refresh the knowledge imparted in the training modules. These updates when delivered in the right context can not only serve to refresh the knowledge of your sales reps, but they can also help the sales reps connect the dots on how those pieces of information can help them win more deals. Here are a few examples:
Send out a cheat sheet on how to handle specific customer objections or one that outlines the steps to complete one part of the sales process
Send out bite-sized updates on specific product features and how they contribute to the value proposition
Set reminders in SalesForce at points in the process that are critical to CRM compliance
Send a short reminder on their mobile phone that outlines how an A Player prepares for a meeting
Some of your priorities may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues.
Spot check sales readiness
Quick pop-quizzes are a great way to periodically test and reinforce what your sales reps have retained. When combined with explanations for the quiz answers, these quizzes can serve to enhance the knowledge of the reps. This can be particularly useful for small nuggets of information that are easily forgotten.
Mindtickle has over eight different types of quizzes that can make this quite simple to implement, and provide you with data on how your reps performed on each question as well. For example, use a multiple choice question to test their knowledge of the value proposition or label matching to update them on the benefits of a new product feature.
Reinforce sales training with coaching and simulation exercises
While a structured coaching plan should already be part of your sales onboarding, you can reinforce specific skills and troubleshoot issues using mini-simulations. For example, if there is a specific objection that many reps struggle to deal with, you can have them record their response and then go over this with them in your next feedback session. And if done on a regular basis, such exercises help ensure that all sales reps have consistent messaging.
Mindtickle offers an automated workflow for managing these simulation exercises called Sales Missions. Sales managers can create online exercises for their team members which require them to submit an audio-video recording of how they would respond to a sales situation. These could range from cold pitches, elevator pitches, leaving voicemails to handling specific customer queries or objections. These bite-sized missions should take no more than 5 minutes for the rep to do but can help provide very actionable feedback.
Mentoring
You already know your high-performing quota carriers are the best inspiration you can give to a new hire, but they can also help them reinforce the best practices they’ve heard about during their onboarding. By establishing a formal mentoring program or even an informal buddy system, your new hires can hear success stories and winning strategies directly from your rockstars. When positioned as a buddy or mentor relationship, the new hires are likely to be more open to asking questions that they perhaps might consider too “dumb” to ask their manager.
Certain sales leaders do not want to spare a minute of their top sellers for such mentoring activities. I believe that is a short-sighted approach and can be detrimental to the career progression of your “A player” sales reps. Such mentoring programs have dual benefits in the long term. Not only are they beneficial for the newbies, they also offer an opportunity to your “A” reps to get a first-hand experience of essential managerial skills such as coaching, as the first step towards graduation to senior roles.
Make it mobile
By ensuring that reinforcement content and activities are made available to the reps on their mobile devices, those interactions will be integrated into your reps daily routine and quickly become just another part of their everyday sales activities. Moreover, for reinforcement to be effective, the tips and refreshers are much more meaningful when presented in the context of customer situations. For example – the value of a case study or a win story would be most appreciated by a sales rep when presented in the middle of a similar deal that he/she may be assisting with.
Bonus tip: Amplify the impact of reinforcement by leveraging the power of analytics
According to the Aberdeen Group, 20% more sales reps achieve quota when their team implements post-training reinforcement. But before you jump straight in, you must prioritize the key capabilities that you want your reps to focus on, and then determine how best to reinforce those. For example, ensuring that they fully understand your customer personas may be a challenge for some, or many may find CRM compliance to be a pain point. This is where analytics and data can play a big role again.
At Mindtickle, we export the learning performance (scores in quizzes, engagement metrics, and results from pitch testing) in order to create groups of new hires based on their development needs. This data has also been very useful for us to create a standardized refresher track that applies to all new hires.
For example – we observed that most new hires find it hard to retain the advanced functionality of the Mindtickle analytics. Additionally, our data also tells us that the A player reps on our team have consistently shown a very high degree of awareness regarding competition. So we added competition battle-cards to the reinforcement track and additional reinforcement on advanced analytic functionality.
I’ve written previously about how effective onboarding of sales reps can increase the top line of your business, but how exactly should you do it? Given that it can take between 6 to 9 months to get a new sales rep to meet their quota, the benefits of expediting the process are high both in terms of opportunity cost and having to hire fewer reps to meet your targets. I’m often asked to share tips and best practices when implementing sales onboarding training, so I thought it was worth putting my thoughts down.
Broadly, when developing a sales onboarding process, I suggest dividing the program into 5 stages.
Training is the first stage of the sales onboarding process; this post will cover this stage in detail. Future posts will then go through Assess, Coach, Analyze and Reinforce.
Sales training stage
The training stage should take about one month to complete, and cover two key aspects; “What to Sell” and “How to Sell”.
What to sell
There are 4 key pillars of “What to Sell.” These put the customer front and center and should cover foundational knowledge regarding the customer’s industry, business, and needs. It also ensures that your rep understands, and can articulate, the product’s unique value proposition so that they can engage a prospect in meaningful conversation when they’re ready to sell.
By the end of the “What to Sell” section, your rep should be able to understand and articulate what the different customer personas are, how they differ, and how to recognize them. They should also understand how the product satisfies their needs, and articulate the value proposition clearly, along with its competitive advantage.
Through the use of online learning, your sales rep can learn some of the “What to Sell” components during the pre-join period, saving you both time and money. For example, with online learning, you can introduce your new hires to the company culture and corporate vision, as well as a broad introduction to your customers (perhaps add some testimonials), and other publicly available or non-proprietary information. A structured online program prior to their first day will make it easier for them to get up to speed, and get them excited about starting to work with you. After day 1, you can then combine on-demand training, with both live training and online resources, so that your reps can review materials at their convenience.
How to sell
The “How to Sell” component should cover tools and processes that will make your rep more efficient and shorten the sales cycles. This is functional and should be tailored to your business.
For example, consider these questions:
How are leads generated within your business?
Is there a marketing team that supports them, or will the rep be expected to prospect for themselves?
What prospecting best practices are used by your best reps?
What is market intelligence available within the business?
What questions should they ask a customer when qualifying them?
What CRM is used, and how is the information recorded in it?
What are each of the components of the sales cycle, from demo to follow-up?
This is all invaluable knowledge, designed to ensure your rep will be ready to get out there and sell, once the onboarding is complete. Success stories, product updates, and best practice sales initiatives, are also important to include here.
Data point: 30% of reps in a typical company are not aware of latest wins and success stories.
How do you make sales training effective?
Flip It
One method that I’ve found effective when delivering sales training is a flipped classroom.
The structured learning plan can be shared with the reps upfront so that they understand how each topic will be approached. The trainer here is more of a consultative guide, rather than a teacher; this engages reps from the get-go and gives them the opportunity to take the initiative in their own learning. Reps are encouraged to speak to each other, benefit from their peers’ perspective, and get hands-on with the product.
The key to this training model is to ensure that you have defined the required business outcome, provided the pre-work and pre-material, and then develop a structured in-person facilitation format. This will ensure that sales reps come in prepared with their questions, and engage in a democratic learning process.
They can then apply their understanding, reinforce it, and even go beyond by taking on more challenging tasks if they wish to stretch themselves.
Leverage the power of the video format
We have found that 92% of people will watch a full video, compared to only 78% when given a presentation. The impact is much more engaging for the learner, like this video that I use when training our new reps at Mindtickle.
One thing to keep in mind when creating sales training videos, the ideal length is between 3 and 10 minutes. Anything longer is likely to disengage your audience.
Test-to-teach
An important aspect of training is to determine if the reps absorbed the knowledge. While I’ll go through assessment and certification when I cover the “Assess” stage, it’s worth talking about the “test-to-teach” approach I have practiced for the last four years. It’s an integral part of the Train stage.
The test-to-teach approach employs quick quizzes as a way to reinforce the material, as opposed to an examination or assessment objective. Small bite-sized modules and quizzes, not only reinforce specific nuggets of knowledge have been retained, but also get the neurons fired up when combined with explanations and additional (contextual) along with the correct answers. It’s a bit like running a series of small sprints, building fitness in short, sharp bursts, that will help you get through the marathon in the long run.
The tests are small so there’s also a greater chance of the rep completing it, in fact, Mindtickle data shows that 88% of learners complete test-to-teach modules.
Gamification
Gamified techniques are not a new concept in the sales enablement space, but in my opinion, very few teams tap into the full potential of this technique. When implemented right, gamification can enable peer-to-peer feedback, benchmarking against a standard of performance (and a little healthy competition), and positive reinforcement, all have the potential to keep sales reps engaged and learning. Gamification can also be leveraged to provide the new sales reps a sense of aspiration by making the points meaningful in real-life. One of our clients projects the new hire leaderboard on the sales floor provide bragging rights to the new reps against their peers and fosters a sense of healthy competition.
Following these handy tips in your sales onboarding process will help you move the bell curve forward, and result in a higher percentage of new hires achieve their sales quota after the initial ramp-up phase.
Companies that implement ongoing education for their employees are setting the stage for long-term success. Your employees need to upgrade and broaden their skills periodically as well as stay familiar with the latest industry trends, technology, and practices.
This can’t be understated. Technology evolves rapidly in most industries. Failure to maintain the skills needed to succeed, makes it challenging for employees to perform their duties with any degree of productivity.
The reality of implementing ongoing training consistently with sales reps in the field, customer service agents on the go and busy remote employees, is an entirely different story altogether…
The flipped classroom approach presents a highly scalable way of making an ongoing training program a reality for any business that needs to keep employees up to date. The premise behind the flipped classroom is to create an environment where the lecture and homework aspects of your course are reversed. Today’s employee, more tech-savvy than ever before, is used to consuming learning content online. This enables trainers or managers to spend time in class engaging in discussion, applying concepts and answering employee questions.
In 4 Signs You Should Invest in a Flipped Classroom, we gave you a few questions to consider for an investment in the flipped classroom approach. Here is step by step tips on how to develop and implement the flipped classroom for your organization.
Action Plan for Developing Your Flipped Classroom Training
Start By Setting Objectives – It’s important to know your objectives before you start designing a plan. Set the end objectives you want to achieve with your training program. For example, assume a bunch of new sales hires are joining soon. Objectives of the training could be focused on getting the sales reps prepared on buyer personas, buying habits, customer pain points and how your product addresses the customer’s needs. In addition, objectives could also cover how your product solves the customer’s problem and the positive impact.
Develop a Training Plan – Once you identify what outcomes are needed from the learning activity, decide on the optimal mix of training content for your organization and develop an outline. Create a training structure based on your objectives and priorities. Then, identify topics that go inside each of the training elements.
Mindtickle Sales Onboarding Course Example
Note that there is no one size fits all solution. Instead, customize your approach to every topic keeping in mind the opportunity for pre-work. You want to first have employees experience the learning activity on their own, then come to the classroom prepared for discussion. 3. Prepare Content for the Training – Video is an excellent medium for delivering the flipped classroom approach and preparation will reduce the amount of time it takes to produce the videos. (Unless you are an improv whiz!). For example in sales onboarding, simply record your “A player pitch” for a highly engaging demo to use in your training.
As you review content, look at your objectives and include data that makes for a good introductory overview along with seminal concepts. Every topic in the Analytically evaluate if your training content will meet the objectives.
Repurpose PowerPoint presentations into smaller presentations covering the topics. Script out your presentations from slide notes. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your employees!
Recording video is much easier than you may think. You can use your mobile phone to record videos and use simple tools to do basic editing. A parting thought on video – resist the urge to be a perfectionist when recording or editing. When delivering live training there are bound to be mistaken here and there. It’s no different with video so don’t worry about small errors! 4. Implement the Flipped Classroom – When your employees go through the course online and come back to the classroom for an effective face-to-face session, it is even more critical to foster a team of intrinsically motivated employees. Having the right incentives in place will allow you to run a successful training with enthusiastic employees. Deliver the in-class discussion questions for each topic ahead of time. Let your employees know that they should prepare for in-class conversation and questions by sharing a structured learning plan with them upfront and explaining your ground rules and expectations about participation. It is critical that they understand that those who come to training having completed the lesson, engaged and ready to ask questions to get far more out of the experience those are unprepared. 5. Evaluate Training Results – The next step is to evaluate (through an assessment) the efficiency of the training. The analysis of the training report will give you information on knowledge gaps on which your employees can be coached in the face to face session. It is important to seek feedback from your employees and deliver quizzes and assessments to ensure that you are on track to meet objectives. If some videos are not effective, find out what is effective! Finding out what works may take some time. Once the flipped training is complete deliver a final assessment to evaluate knowledge. Now your employees are prepared to do their job efficiently!
With the flipped classroom it is important to remember that the experience can be as much of a learning experience for you as a trainer as it is for your trainees. No doubt there is a learning curve and there may also be some resistance as you make the shift away from more traditional approaches to the flipped classroom model. Give the flipped classroom a chance and keep iterating to meet your organization’s goals!
What do you think about the flipped classroom approach?
So you just hired a new salesperson? For many businesses, the ramp-up time for new sales reps is typically six months or more. With turnover being slightly less than two years for most reps, companies need to have a solid onboarding plan in order to realize a return on their investment. An outdated or overly labor-intensive sales onboarding program leads to increased turnover and wasted company resources.
Source: via Mike Kunkle, Sales Onboarding: Twice as Good, Half the Time
Sales onboarding isn’t just about going through pitch videos or having new reps shadow tenured sales reps. Not only should your sales onboarding have a clearly defined objective and end goal, your sales reps also need to know the milestones that they need to achieve to be successful. Your new salesperson has potential, but that potential is only unlocked with a structured onboarding program. For advice on what excellence in sales onboarding looks like, we turn to Mike Kunkle, a recognized leader in sales training and organizational effectiveness. Mike shares actionable steps you can take to help accelerate ramp-up times and reduce turnover.
What are the pressures and trends that sales managers must contend with today?
Mike Kunkle: The pressure is still all about the number… making your sales quota. It’s the environment that’s changed. Due to information available online, with a few clicks, today’s buyers are doing their own research before reaching out to suppliers. Buyers are more informed than ever – although not always more accurately informed.
Along with these changes in buyer behavior, there are more RFPs than ever before and more decision-makers involved. For instance, the average number of buyers involved in a complex sale is 5.4 (according to CEB). If that’s the average, there are some that have even more buyers involved.
Tweet This: “The pressure is still all about the number… making your sales quota.”
Then there are factors like corporate cost reductions that result in shrinking training departments and budgets, making it more difficult to serve our sales forces. To further complicate things, even in this day and age of big data, many still roll the dice when we hire and select sales reps on gut feel.
Bottom line is that the expectations placed on sales managers are enormous, and often organizations pull them in far too many directions, rather than removing obstacles to allow them to focus on hiring, training, coaching, and managing their teams as effectively as possible.
You said: “It takes many companies from 7 to 12 months to ramp-up their new sales reps.” Why is sales reps ramp time moving in the wrong direction?
Mike Kunkle: If you look as far back as 2003, which I did recently for an article I was writing, ramp-up times were shorter. “Ramp up times have generally gotten longer over the years. There’s variance, but if you trend-line the data, we seem to be headed in the wrong direction. There could be quite a few reasons for that, though, including a more complex, competitive business environment, a shift toward the buyer’s market, and/or an increase in complexity of problems, opportunities, and solutions to address them, or even some year-to-year difference in research protocol or other speculative reasons.”
Selling was a lot less complex than it is today, and to a large degree, it’s because there wasn’t a proliferation of information on the Internet. It was before buyers were doing so much research on their own.
Combine that with a drain on training department budgets and sizes, in comparison to the early 2000’s, and how much new reps need to learn to be productive, and it’s not hard to imagine why onboarding remains a sales challenge.
Question: What can be done to accelerate sales rep ramp time?
Mike Kunkle: I’d start by defining outcomes. When you say accelerate, is that just a faster time, or is it higher productivity in the same time, or both shorter ramp-up time with higher productivity? The first thing is to get clarity around what you want and benchmark where you are, so you have a measuring stick to gauge your progress. Put a stake in the ground saying, “This is where we are today.” Then ask yourself: “where are we aiming and what are we trying to do?”
When companies actually try to shorten their ramp up time, many of them are actually deterring productivity as opposed to enhancing it. There’s an awful lot of five days of death by PowerPoint in orientation and onboarding.
Tweet This: “The sales job has become increasingly complex.”
We need to step back and apply some sound instructional design thinking, stuff that has been around since the dawn of time. Analyze top producer practices and really try to understand what are the differentiating factors between top and mid producers. Then document the best practices in your organization.
The best practices give you a real focus on what are the things that are making a difference. When you’re developing content or teaching content to new people, you know what you’re teaching gets results. This is where hard core prioritization and decisions need to be made. What are the absolute need-to-know and need-to-do things to achieve sales rep productivity?
For example, three common goals I’ve used in some businesses include:
making their first sale,
achieving their first monthly quota,
and then making quota 3 months in a row.
These goals won’t work for every business. They have to match reality, and when achieved, they signify that the employee is truly ramped-up and a fully-productive sales rep. The concept sounds simple but it is far from easy… People struggle most with the NEED to know vs. NICE to know piece.
You also want to have ways to reinforce what is taught such as job aids, places to get answers, buddies or mentors, and plenty of follow-up and coaching from either specialized onboarding coaches or sales managers.
Check back for part 2 of our interview on sales onboarding with Mike Kunkle. We’ll cover common mistakes training managers make in sales onboarding as well as actionable advice and best practices.
Mike is a training and organizational effectiveness leader with special expertise in sales force transformation.
After his initial years on the frontline in sales and sales management, he spent the next 21 years as a corporate manager or consultant, leading departments and projects with one purpose – improve sales results.
Today, in his role as commercial training & development leader for a Fortune 10 corporation, Mike uses his in expertise in best-in-class learning strategies, methods, processes, and change leadership to develop the capabilities of sales representatives and sales managers to drive business results.
“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.”
“One of the mistakes that a lot of companies are starting to kind of fall into is really just death by complexity,” observes Charlie Besecker.
Sales training stage
Mike is a training and organizational effectiveness leader with special expertise in sales force transformation.