5 Topics Inside Sales Onboarding Should Cover
It’s a lot of work to create an inside sales onboarding strategy, but an effective process is one of the best ways to make sure your new hires have what it takes. It sets them up for success right off the bat, so they’ll be more likely to grow and flourish with your company as time goes on. And, as you build a high-performing team, you’ll develop better long-term relationships with your customers, which opens the door for more opportunities to recruit, develop, and retain emerging talent.
But it’s not enough to just teach reps about the inside sales process; they need to be armed with information that will enable them to effectively guide and nurture their prospects.
Let’s take a look at five things your inside sales onboarding should cover so you can focus on the highest-impact areas that will help you build better relationships with your customers and employees alike!
1. Give new reps an overview of the sales process
Once a new sales rep is introduced to your company, culture, mission, values, and HR processes, the real fun begins—role and team-specific training!
Because each company’s sales process is as unique as the products they sell, it can take time for new reps to acclimate, regardless of their years of sales experience. To make this as seamless as possible, start by giving new sales reps an overview of your company’s sales process and customer life cycle. This will help serve as a map and foundation for the rest of their training.
Some specific topics to consider include expectations around how reps should interact with prospects from start to finish; what their typical day may look like (including any meetings), the average length of the sales cycle; and how their inside sales role interacts with marketing, customer support, and other sales teams. As a bonus, include exercises where they think through the most common objections and the best ways to overcome them.
If you haven’t already documented your company’s sales process, it may well be worth it as this overview can also be a valuable resource for more experienced sales reps.
2. Train them on how to use your CRM
For a sales rep, a well-leveraged CRM, such as Salesforce, is more than crucial; it’s like oxygen. More specifically, a CRM is a vital tool for an inside salesperson to store and organize all of their prospects and customer contacts, interactions, and information.
When properly leveraged, a CRM also allows for more productive sales calls by offering a structured process for reps to track information covered on a call while still maintaining spontaneity in the conversation. This helps them prepare for follow-up calls or emails that may happen later in the sales cycle. That’s why sales reps need to receive detailed initial training, as well as ongoing opportunities to learn more advanced uses and workflows of a company’s CRM. For the best results, a digital enablement platform that integrates directly with your CRM will provide contextual training and access to relevant information. Even better, tools that integrate directly with Salesforce will ensure sales enablement content is always just a click away.
3. Product demos with a senior sales rep
Sales reps who are new to the company need guidance, and the best way to offer that is through product demos.
Having new sales reps participate in actual product demos with more senior sales reps is a great way to give them an idea of what your product does and how it helps real customers. It’s also a chance for the senior sales rep to grow their leadership and teamwork skills by guiding the new hire with additional support as they get acclimated.
The most significant benefit of these product demos is that they help new sales reps build confidence, since they may be unsure or even nervous about their first conversations with customers. By assisting on a product demo with a senior sales rep, they can feel more confident in how to talk to prospects and gain an inside scoop on what strategies are working best for other people.
4. Set clear goals for their first milestones
For any new inside sales rep, the onboarding process is a crucial time to set clear goals for their first 30, 60, and 90 days since this will be pivotal in their future success with your company.
A key component of these goals is understanding where your company wants that person to be in those respective periods. By clearly outlining these goals, they can focus on hitting their targets during their earliest days while also understanding how their efforts translate into meeting longer-term expectations and company objectives.
One major benefit to setting these initial goals is that they’ll be able to hit the ground running and start generating revenue, which is what every company wants from their reps. In addition, more money in the bank means you can hire more people for more sales success!
5. Explore and explain your buyer personas
A crucial step of onboarding a new salesperson is to explore and explain your buyer personas. HubSpot defines a persona as: “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”
By discussing these personas in detail as part of onboarding, you can provide the new salesperson with valuable context and insight before even meeting the individuals they represent.
Put simply, the more your sales reps know about the person whose problems they’re trying to solve, the more successful they will be in selling your product. But at the end of the day, nothing prepares salespeople for talking with prospects better than having actual conversations.
Tying it all together
As we mentioned earlier, a successful inside sales onboarding process is essential for building an effective team for long-term revenue. Not only does it help new reps get up to speed on the company’s products, but it also helps them know what they need to do for their calls and interactions with prospects to be more fruitful.
To create that kind of success, provide your reps with a clear overview of how you want them to use the CRM system and training about prospect behavior patterns based on buyer personas. In addition, work with new reps to set goals for their first 30, 60, and 90 days so they can hit the ground running and know precisely how their progress will be measured. Finally, to ensure your sales reps—both new and experienced—always have quick access to the most relevant and useful product and training information, consider leveraging a digital enablement tool like Spekit to seamlessly deliver this valuable information to your teams right in the context of their day-to-day workflow. To see for yourself how Spekit drives productivity and impacts revenue, let’s chat!
About the Author
Melanie Fellay
Mel is the CEO and Co-founder of Spekit, a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient, Entrepreneur’s Top 100 Women of Influence, and featured across Crunchbase, Fast Company, Business Insider, and more. She is leading the revolution to shatter the glass ceiling and unleash the full potential of every employee. Learn more ->
