Compressing New Sales Rep Onboarding Time
Posted by Jim Kasper on Wed, Jul 29, 2009 @ 11:31 AM
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A Few Questions You Must Ask Yourself When Onboarding New Sales Reps:
- How much more confidence would a new sales rep exhibit if he/she were able to leverage and implement the best practices of your top reps immediately on their very first call?
- What would it mean to a new sales rep's production, if they could become totally prepared for sales call success on each call with only a couple of minutes of preparation?
- How valuable would it be to your field sales managers, if they could quickly preview a "remotely located" new sales rep's sales call plan and make adjustments prior to the call?
- What would all of this mean to your sales organization in achieving your sales goals?
You spend thousands of dollars recruiting and hiring each new "A" player sales representative.
You spend thousands more onboarding and training the new rep on product, procedures, policies, and sales process. Besides that, you pile on more money for your field sales managers to travel with, observe, and coach your new rep. The salaries and lost sales associated with hiring and training a new sales person are basically "sunk" costs and are unrecoverable.
These "sunk" costs also include the time and money it takes for a new sales representative to move from the conclusion of the onboarding process to the point of full sales productivity. This specific time period is commonly referred to as sales representative "ramp-up" time.
The constant objective you strive to achieve with new sales reps is reducing ramp-up time to full productivity, thereby limiting the "sunk" costs.
Until recently, the only opportunity for ramp-up time compression occurred during the recruiting process. Many companies try to hire successful industry experienced reps to cut ramp-up time. Most of the time it is costly and industry experienced reps are set in their ways.
In a recent survey of global sales executives, representing companies ranging from $100 million to $3 billion (USD), almost 6 out of 10 said one of the major benefits of pre-call planning was reduced ramp-up time.
When combined with sound product/service training, pre-call planning can reduce new hire sales rep onboarding time to full productivity by between 30% - 50%. To most businesses, this means:
1. A higher probability of achieving forecast
2. Lowering cost of sales
3. Reducing turnover in customer base when a sales representative leaves
4. Eliminating tens of thousands of dollars in lost opportunity costs
How much more revenue would the practice of pre-call planning for new sales reps bring to your organization?
Photo credit: Steepways
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