Question: Has your Sales Organisation housed your onboarding materials in an online portal for consistency and scalability – and is your current onboarding process delivered in a manner that is 100% consistent, scalable and easily accessible?
The Reality
According to our research at ThinkSales Global, only 31.2% of Sales Organisations have housed their onboarding materials in an online portal for consistency and scalability.
In addition, 26% of companies rate their confidence as Outstanding that their current onboarding process is delivered in a manner that is 100% consistent, scalable and easily accessible.
The ‘Systemised Onboarding’ Problem
According to research conducted by The Sales Management Association in 2015, it was found that companies that are effective at onboarding (the systematised process of getting newly hired salespeople up-to-speed and productive) enjoy an advantage over their peers.
In fact, these organisations experience a 10% greater sales growth rate, and 14% better sales and profit objective achievement over their peers.
However, onboarding practices are not consistently implemented. Many sales organisations have not formalised their training delivery, and if they have, content is not regularly updated.
The result is that effective onboarding success eludes most organisations.
Build a consistent and successful onboarding process
The degree of structure and consistent application in onboarding programmes is of significant influence in overall success. Programmes highly rated for structure and consistent application:
- Outperformed those with low ratings in these attributes by 37%
- Reduced the average time-to-productivity for new-hire salespeople by 3.4 months
- Improved the average new salesperson ramp-up time from 9.1 months to 5.7 months?
These results speak for themselves:
- Successful onboarding programmes are those that have been structured and are able to be consistently implemented. Consider building yours into an Intranet or a purpose-built online platform.
- An Onboarding System can be used as a central knowledge bank repository. Blend these learnings with structured, live training, role-plays and in-field exposure.
- Besides the advantage in a quicker ramp-up time to productivity, the research suggests that a formalised and consistent onboarding process can reduce employee churn and increase loyalty, because everyone understands the company culture and what is expected from them from the word go.
Do This:
To create a successful and consistent onboarding programme, include the following elements in video and written format. Include quizzes to test knowledge and ask your other managers and top performers to add their thoughts and experiences to the knowledge bank:
- Company particulars
- Culture
- Sales organisation structure
- Back-office functions in relation to:
- New hire’s role, duties and expectations
- Product / service knowledge
- Understanding the client’s world
- Value proposition
- Industry knowledge
- Sales enablement tools
- Sales engagement process
- Selling skills
Assess the health of your sales organisation
Onboarding materials that are housed in an online portal for consistency and scalability and a process that is delivered with 100% consistency are two of 322 measures of a world-class Sales Organisation.
ThinkSales Global is a specialist revenue engineering consultancy.
We assist our clients to deliver market-defying results through strategic and tactical intentions within a Sales Organisation Maturity Model that addresses the five key pillars of high-performing Sales Organsations, namely:
- Competitive Strategy
- Customer Engagement
- Sales Talent
- Sales Management
- Sales Enablement
How does your Sales Organisation stack up? Find out by taking the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
This first-of-its-kind 360-degree gap analysis report enables your Sales Leadership team to assess its strengths and detect weaknesses and impediments to revenue growth across the five pillars.
Click here for more information on the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
