Effective sales onboarding: How to get it in 7 steps

Sales success relies on well-trained salespeople with excellent product knowledge. Adopting a thorough sales onboarding plan ensures you’re priming all new employees for optimum sales performance.

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about the sales onboarding process. Use it to improve your approach and unlock benefits that make a meaningful impact on overall sales performance.

What is sales onboarding?

The sales onboarding process involves helping new salespeople learn new skills, integrate with your team and become familiar with your sales strategies, processes and technologies.

Many companies need to pay more attention to their sales onboarding process so that new hires have the right knowledge and skills to perform at their best, ensuring optimal sales performance and higher employee retention.

Effective onboarding ensures you get the most from new salespeople. It helps develop them quickly so they can get comfortable in their role and start meeting sales quotas.

Thanks to technology, it’s easier than ever to get it right. Your onboarding program can take advantage of diverse training methods such as video tutorials, hands-on experience and shadowing more experienced sales reps.

Using these techniques, you can effectively cover various topics, from customer pain points to sales CRM training. We’ll discuss how to do this shortly.

First, let’s explore why creating an effective sales onboarding process is so important.

Why is sales onboarding important? Benefits of sales onboarding

The most significant benefit to sales onboarding is that it can significantly decrease “sales ramp-up time”, or how long it takes until your new hire reaches full productivity.

According to the Sales Readiness Group, salespeople in companies with effective onboarding programs hit quotas up to seven weeks faster than those with poor onboarding.

If you’re hiring several salespeople in a growth period, that extra seven weeks of peak sales performance per new hire adds up. If you hire 10 new salespeople in a year, for example, you’ll benefit from an extra 70 weeks of peak performance.

A thorough employee onboarding program can also improve salespeople’s win rates by 14% and their quota attainment by 6.6%.

Additionally, better onboarding can increase sales team retention, minimizing the need for expensive rehiring processes.

According to Gallup, 70% of employees who experience “exceptional” onboarding feel they have “the best possible job.” Those same employees are 2.6 times more likely to be “extremely satisfied” with their workplace – and more likely to stay.

Despite the potential benefits, one in five employees feel their most recent onboarding experience was poor, if they received any onboarding at all. Improving the process relies on understanding the key steps to successfully welcome new salespeople to your business.

7 steps in a successful sales onboarding process

In competitive sales environments where marginal improvements make all the difference, overhauling your onboarding process is a great way to meaningfully boost sales performance.

The seven steps below represent the most important parts of the process. Adapt them to suit your business and create a simple sales onboarding checklist that minimizes ramp-up time.

Step 1: Pre-onboarding preparation

A successful sales onboarding process starts with strong preparation before your new hire begins their first day. Firstly, define clear onboarding objectives to measure your new hire’s progress.

Create measurable objectives to ensure new hires have completed each before moving on to the next.

For example, it’s hard to measure whether a new hire “is familiar with” the product training material. It’s vague, unclear and difficult to measure the objective’s effectiveness. A more measurable objective could include completing training material and preferable scoring on assessments:

A 30-60-90 day plan can help by providing milestones to guide their three first months of development.

Milestones can vary depending on your onboarding priorities. They could look something like this:

Ensure you have prepared a bank of ready-to-go resources so your new hires can begin learning immediately.

Useful resources for newly hired salespeople include:

• An introduction to your business and its mission so your new hires understand your broader business objectives

• An organization chart that outlines key teams and hierarchies to orient your new salespeople in their position

• A brief primer on core products or services that equips your new salespeople with a foundation of key sales knowledge

Collect these resources in a “welcome pack” for every new salesperson to give them a solid introduction to your business and help them settle in quickly.

It’s also important to ensure new hires have accounts for key software by their first day. Once they can access their email account and your sales CRM (with appropriate permissions set), they can start communicating and exploring.

Step 2: Orientation

Your new salesperson’s first week should be all about orientation. The quicker they’re familiar with your business, products, teams, processes and technologies, the quicker they can actively contribute to sales team success.

The introductory resources you’ve prepared will give them a head start, but follow up with more in-depth support if needed.

Here are three meetings to set up for orientation:

• The team welcome meeting. An in-person welcome meeting with key sales team members allows for personal introductions to their line manager and colleagues, helping your new salesperson feel comfortable reaching out for help and giving them a taste of your company culture.

• The mentor one-on-one. A separate one-on-one meeting with an experienced salesperson can provide crucial product knowledge and insights about day-to-day responsibilities. Your new hire can also ask any questions after reading their welcome pack.

• The technology advocate meeting. A quick walkthrough of key technologies they’ll use daily can finish the basic orientation. Assign a knowledgeable team member to guide your new hire through any technology you use, like a CRM, sales enablement tool or project management platform.

At the end of orientation, your new hire will have a broad, if shallow, understanding of your business, processes and technology. They can then move on to sales training.

Step 3: Basic sales training

Equipping new salespeople with the knowledge and skills they’ll need to make sales is at the core of onboarding. A welcome pack and orientation will start this process, but you’ll need to reinforce that introduction with more details.

A thorough sales training program should cover everything a salesperson will need to know to build strong relationships, overcome objections and convert leads into customers, including:

• Comprehensive sales process training covering the details of each step in your business’s sales cycle and key workflow stages

• Sessions dedicated to developing key sales techniques like objection handling or how to approach cold calls and deliver exceptional customer experience

• Detailed sales prospecting guidance, including how to identify and pre-qualify potential leads

• More in-depth sales technology training sessions to boost competency with the most-used features of your CRM

Combined, this is a lot of information to take in. Ensure you spread out your training program over enough time to cover each topic in relevant detail.

Also, think about what order makes the most sense for your new hires to learn things in.

They should have a detailed understanding of your products before learning about your competitors, for example. Otherwise, they won’t understand the details of your differentiation strategy properly.

Step 4: Role-specific training

Basic sales training covers general skills gaps, while role-specific training helps prepare salespeople to succeed in their specific responsibilities.

For example, you might have hired a new salesperson to focus on winning new enterprise-level customers.

Your basic training program will teach them basic sales techniques, along with your business processes, sales methodology and core technologies. Role-specific training will equip them with in-depth knowledge about how you run enterprise sales, including how to find, nurture and convert enterprise leads.

Key things to cover in role-specific sales training include:

• Detailed information on the products or services they’ll be selling to potential customers

• An overview of ideal customer/buyer personas, including general motivations and pain points

• A deep dive into your main competitors, their strengths and weaknesses and how your business differs

• Relevant case studies that demonstrate effective sales approaches

• Examples of sales scripts to help them develop strategies for customer calls

The focus of this section of the onboarding process should be to equip your new hire with a deep understanding of the needs and preferences of the customers they’ll engage with.

It’s also a great opportunity to explain how you measure their performance. Share the key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance metrics for their role to summarize clear expectations for their growth.

Step 5: Shadowing and mentorship

Experienced sales reps are the best resource for new sales hires to learn from. Building shadowing and mentorship programs into your sales onboarding process ensures experienced reps can pass on their knowledge.

However, your sales reps’ time is valuable. It’s most efficient to wait until your new salespeople have already developed a strong knowledge base so they can get maximum value from their more experienced colleagues.

After completing their basic and role-specific sales training, pair each new hire with a “buddy”.

They can then shadow their more experienced colleague as they complete core sales activities. Activities might include observing the lead discovery process, listening to sales calls or watching as they use your CRM to advance leads through the pipeline.

Consider role-playing exercises as a way for your new salespeople to get used to typical sales conversations.

Your shadowing procedure should allow plenty of time for the new salesperson to ask questions and experience real-world examples of different situations.

Schedule regular shadowing check-ins and follow-ups so your new hires can get the most from the experience.

Pairing experienced reps with newcomers exposes trainees to insights your sales training program doesn’t cover.

We asked some sales experts to share some of the most memorable mentor advice they’d received. Here’s an example of the value mentoring can add:

The relationships your new salespeople develop with their mentors can continue to support their development as they grow into the role. Giving them a dedicated point of contact for questions or concerns will help them learn quicker and more comfortably.

Step 6: Ongoing support and development

Onboarding training doesn’t end when your new salespeople start tackling sales activities independently. It will take more time until they ramp up to full effectiveness. Speed up the process by building a structure for continuous development.

Mentor involvement is the most important aspect of ongoing support. As new hires make their first sales calls, for example, their mentor should be available to provide feedback.

The reverse shadowing technique offers an excellent opportunity for your new salespeople to get maximum value from their mentor’s experience. They’ll be able to identify small mistakes in their approach and how to fix them.

A formal feedback process – which may refer to your original 30–60–90-day plan – can also help salespeople develop. Alternatively, it can be a monthly or quarterly review with a sales manager.

The important thing is that there’s a regular forum for your new salesperson to express their challenges and for sales leaders to provide advice.

Finally, think about what additional training resources you can provide to give salespeople more ways to learn.

For example, a series of videos explaining advanced CRM functionality, like integrations, can help develop salespeople and reinforce their practical learning.

Step 7: Sales onboarding evaluation and adjustment

As your new hire reaches the end of the ramp-up process, take the opportunity to evaluate the success of their onboarding.

Holding a post-onboarding review will allow you to ask questions that help you understand where your process works best and where it needs improvement.

For example, you can ask for feedback on:

• How well your process met their early needs, specifically during orientation

• What training resources they found most useful and which ones fell short

• If they feel like they still have skill or knowledge gaps and, if so, where

• Whether your sales training adequately prepared them to use your technology platforms

Like any other process in your business, how you handle onboarding should be a constant work in progress.

Evaluating how successfully it’s working with the support of recent hires can help you adjust the process to be even more effective. As a result, each new hire can contribute to better sales performance.

4 sales onboarding best practices

The structure of your sales onboarding program is the most important part of its effectiveness. However, you should apply best practices throughout the process to maximize success. Without them, your new hires won’t learn as quickly or comprehensively.

Best practices ensure you build a strong foundation of knowledge and skills that will last. They also focus on accommodating different types of learners to maximize the versatility of your onboarding process.

The following four best practices are key to the success of your onboarding process.

1. Curate a comprehensive resource library

Onboarding and training resources play a large part in orienting new hires and kickstarting their development. You should have a broad collection ready whenever you recruit a new salesperson.

Your onboarding resource library should cover everything new hires need to learn about your customers, products, processes and technology.

Here are some examples of helpful resources from each category:

• Customers. Customer personas, case studies and customer journey maps.

• Products. Product sheets, product demo videos and product training modules.

• Processes. Sales playbook, pipeline management map and organization hierarchy.

• Technology. CRM tutorials, sales tools overview and data security guidelines.

A great way to approach this process is to ask your existing salespeople what resources they feel would have helped them develop quicker.

Prepare resources based on their answers, ensure they’re ready before new hires are onboarded and place them into a well-organized hub.

Keep them up to date over time, too. For example, you must update your training resources as your products and processes evolve.

2. Use a variety of sales training methods

Different training methods are best suited to teaching new hires different things. Use a variety of methods in your onboarding process to maximize employee engagement.

It can be tempting to put as much of your training program as possible in document or media form. However, it’s possible to streamline too much.

Avoid removing the human aspect from your onboarding process. It can be invaluable in helping your new hires learn specific aspects of the job.

For example, learning to use a CRM is easiest when you combine watching demo videos, like the one below, and getting hands-on experience.

On the other hand, developing the ability to close deals is better learned through shadowing and mentorship.

A combination of training initiatives ensures you accommodate every type of learner. People have different learning styles, and including diverse onboarding training ensures everyone has access to what they need.

As you develop your onboarding program, consider methods like:

• Reading written resources

• Watching training videos

• Shadowing experienced reps

• Mentoring and feedback

• Hands-on experience

• Sales training games

Combining training methods creates a well-rounded onboarding experience that quickly gets new hires up to speed.

3. Take an in-depth approach to sales technology training

Knowing how to use sales technology effectively can boost performance, with 73% of sales professionals using it to close more deals. Since technology is at the core of the modern sales process, make it a central part of your sales training.

Even in the digital era, not everyone is a technology expert. Proper sales technology training ensures all new hires can use the tools daily.

It starts with having the right resources available to introduce new hires to the technology you use and how you use it.

The next most important consideration is giving them access to the technology at the right time.

The sooner new salespeople can start exploring your CRM, the quicker they’ll learn how it functions. You can use access permissions to limit what they can do, starting with “view only” access so they can get familiar with the interface.

You can reinforce early learning like this later through shadowing. Experienced reps can pass on tips and tricks that improve your new hires’ capabilities.

4. Avoid information overload with a staggered approach

There’s a lot of information to absorb during onboarding training. Avoid overwhelming new hires by taking it slow and giving them time to consolidate information so they remember it over the long term.

If you move too fast, your new salespeople may forget what they’ve learned relatively quickly. Gartner research found that B2B sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn in a week of training.

Psychological studies by Hermann Ebbinghaus visualized this concept in the “forgetting curve”. His studies later found that spaced repetition flattens the curve, helping people remember more information for longer.

His research highlights the importance of giving new sales reps opportunities to revisit information they’ve already learned. Regular repeated learning will help them develop a stronger foundation for long-term growth.

Final thoughts

The best sales teams include well-trained salespeople. A better sales onboarding process makes it easier to reliably turn new hires into high performers.

Tackling the task doesn’t necessarily require sales onboarding software or a high-cost outlay. The main inputs are careful planning and a rigorous approach to developing training materials or resources.

Your effort will be rewarded with a sales department equipped to help you meet your company goals. Paired with a powerful sales CRM like Pipedrive, you’ll have everything you need to win more customers and increase revenue.