Tips to Onboard and Coach a New Sales Rep

Image source: Unsplash

Onboarding an employee is a process of training that employee and getting them acquainted with the organization. Onboarding sales representatives usually includes the normal best practice of having them review your organization’s handbook and attend orientation meetings. However, there is a need to train them and let them know what their responsibilities are. Onboarding sales reps the proper way ensures the retention of such staff and more importantly, boosts productivity. The Society for Human Resources Management states three main objectives a proper onboarding process should achieve: acclimate, engage, and retain. What are the tips to onboard and coach new sales reps effectively?

Let There Be A Standard

One of the problems most companies have is failing to apply the same standard across all boards. As a manager, you need to understand that onboarding new sales could last almost a year. So with this in mind, you will need to define your onboarding process and standardize it for subsequent onboarding processes. After all, you are not going to hire all the staff you will ever need in one day. Your standard can follow these phases:

• The early days should be more about the company’s culture and how to blend in.
• The next level should be about getting acquainted with the company’s product and how to serve your customers.
• You can then move over to explain to them how the market works and your main clients.

This process lays more importance on getting the sales rep to have a deep understanding of the company’s services. This is better than pushing them to the market almost immediately.

Put It All In A Handout

When your onboarding process takes almost a year, it will be impossible to expect your sales reps to retain all you would teach them during that period. Going over it means like another year of training and there is still no guarantee that your sales rep will learn everything by heart. So to ensure everything told to the employee can be revised from time to time, you have to put the lectures down in writing in the form of a handout. The company can also work to build a frequently asked set of questions and answers document about the company and about the role. The handout and FAQs document can help the new sales rep recount any forgotten aspect of his or her job.

Make Your Expectations Clear

In order for new hires to be effective, you need to let them know what is expected of them and this is what the onboarding process is all about. Nowadays, some companies hire their sales representatives remotely. For example, if you hired some of your staff remotely. During the onboarding process, you can let them know that they are expected to work from coworking spaces and so all other things they will need from an office would be provided for them there. You can do this as a form of encouragement instead of forceful. For another example, you may need to increase sales by a certain percentage. You have to communicate this with your new sales reps so they know how to grind out more sales. Once there is a clear understanding of what the employee needs from the sales rep, everyone will be on the same page and office duties will be carried out in confidence.

Partner New Sales Reps With Virtuoso Team Members

An onboarding process is usually to pattern your new sales reps after some of your veteran staff members that have been long in the business. To effectively achieve this, you can pair them up for close understudying. Seeing how things are being done is definitely more effective than just being taught from a whiteboard or over a discussion. This process has to be handled with care though as your top seller may not have the opportunity or patience to add some other duty to his or her already busy schedule.

Optimize Your Process

Onboarding your sales reps properly is a process that needs optimization over time. The chances that you will assume the best onboarding approach for your organization right from the first episode are slim. Well, it is okay if you do not get it right the first time but if you are willing to keep analyzing your onboarding efforts and optimize them for greater success in the future. Make sure to also ask your new hires how the onboarding process is going and encourage them to talk about areas that are uncomfortable for them. This will help you with the onboarding optimization process.

Conclusion

When you hire new sales reps, you want to turn them into high-class employees delivering excellence in productivity. Proper onboarding is very instrumental to that objective. These tips here will go a long way in helping you as a manager to make your onboarding process a very fruitful one. The success of any organization is in the hands of the staff members. This should ring in your head as a manager continually during your next staff onboarding project.