Snowboarding, skateboarding, hoverboarding, onboarding, at least three of those things are a good time, unless you’re Marty McFly caught in the middle of a pond (still waiting for those self lacing shoes to hit the mainstream market), but onboarding new employees can often feel just like you’re stuck on McFly’s hoverboard in front of the Courthouse in Back to the Future 2. We’ll walk you through how to get boarding on onboarding efficiently, before your new hire even starts.
Effective sales onboarding brings a new hire up to speed with the techniques and methodologies they’ll use and ensures they’re a good fit for your organization—but it can be a lengthy process. If you aren’t intentional with your onboarding, you can significantly delay a new hire’s ability to make effective contributions.
As soon as a new hire accepts your offer, they’re mentally preparing to take on that next step in their career. Unfortunately, many organizations wait until the start date to begin onboarding their new sales staff. There are many ways to accelerate onboarding after the new hire’s start date, but in this article, we’re going to consider what you can do to jumpstart the process before they start.
Why begin onboarding before the new hire starts?
Onboarding ahead of time has advantages for both the sales organization and the new employee. Let’s take a look at how it affects each side.
How early onboarding benefits your business
Hiring and onboarding new sales employees is a long and expensive process. Research has found that it takes 15 months on average for new sales reps to reach their full potential, with sales reps then leaving after an average of only 18 months. This means that the average sales organization only gets 3 months of highly productive work from a new hire. And this after costing an average of $150,000 to hire and train them.
Starting onboarding earlier can speed up that process, helping to offset the investment you made in hiring and training, and allowing new employees to start generating more value for the organization.
Pre-onboarding can also help with your team culture and employee retention. You want employees to stick around for the long haul while feeling welcomed, valued, and productive—and the early impressions you make in onboarding can have a lasting impact on these goals.
How early onboarding benefits the new hire
Sales reps typically make money via commissions. The more they sell, the more they’re able to earn. And the faster they’re able to get up to speed, the sooner they’ll be able to make more money. So new hires have a vested interest in coming prepared to hit the ground running on day one.
New hires also care about making a good first impression. Sales is a competitive business, and reps that show initiative will stand out from those who come unprepared. If they’re able to begin the learning process before they arrive and come with a plan to succeed, they’ll be starting off on good footing. Making a strong impression early can even help them earn opportunities and accelerate their career advancement.
How to begin onboarding before the new hire starts
To begin the onboarding process early, you’ll need to prepare internally and communicate your expectations with the new hire before they arrive.
Prepare internally
Onboarding a new hire begins with internal planning and preparation, and you should know what onboarding will look like before you even post the job listing, let alone the new hire’s first day. You want to make sure from the start that you have the proper structure in place to streamline their onboarding experience.
This means defining the people and resources that a new hire needs to know in order to be productive right away. Communicate your intentions with their points of contact to ensure that you’re all on the same page. Anticipate the questions a new hire will ask, and have the answers ready to go before they ask them. Create a plan for each phase of onboarding, including all the tools, training, and coaching they’ll need to hit the ground running.
Identify expectations and resources for the new hire
Once you’ve established your onboarding process internally, you can begin communicating that process to the new hire. The goal is to ensure they know exactly what to expect so they can get started right away. Cast a vision for a great future, painting a picture of their success and letting them know you’re excited to have them on the team.
First week
Provide them with a basic understanding of what their first week will look like. Give them an itinerary of the key activities they’ll be doing. Let them know what they’ll be expected to learn or accomplish during that first week. And explain how those expectations will shift as the onboarding progresses.
Points of contact
Share contact information for all the key people they’ll need to know. This should at least include their immediate manager, their human resources contact, and those with whom they’ll be working in their team. They should have an easy reference for exactly who they’ll contact for anything they might need during their onboarding.
About the company
Offer information about your organization itself. Give them the backstory for how your company came to be. Explain the mission that drives your company today. Share about the values that guide decisions. And let them know what they can expect from your company culture. All these elements can help them feel like a part of the team before they start.
Ramp-up period
You should let them know what the compensation ramp-up period will look like. Many organizations use variable compensation for new hires, meaning that they begin with a guaranteed commission of 100% for a certain amount of time, and that rate gradually reduces until they reach the point where all of their commissions are earned like the rest of your sales reps. This gives new reps a chance to settle in without worrying about their paycheck at the start, but it also serves as a powerful motivator for them to get up to speed quickly before that grace period runs out. And the quicker they can get started, the sooner they can increase their earnings. By communicating this early, you’ll give them every incentive to come prepared with a plan they’re ready to execute.
Sales methodologies
Inform them about which sales methodologies your organization uses, and suggest recommended reading material accordingly. If they want to get a head start on ramping up quickly, they can familiarize themselves with the sales philosophies and techniques used by your team. Those who prepare ahead of time will be able to get up to speed much faster than those who don’t.
Send your new hire pre-onboarding materials
Finally, compile all of this into a pre-onboarding welcome packet to send to the new hire. Print out a summary of all the expectations info we’ve outlined, including the first-week expectations, contact info, the ramp-up period, etc.
And rather than just suggesting sales methodology books to read, include physical copies of those books in their packet. This makes it feel much more like a gift than a homework assignment, and it puts a book right in their hands, rather than hoping they’ll take the initiative to go buy a copy for themself.
Throw in some swag to help introduce them to your company culture. T-shirts, mugs, pens, lanyards—whatever they’ll actually use that you can put your company branding on. And have their new team all sign a note to make them feel welcomed before they arrive.
You’ll also want to send the onboarding information to them via email—both their personal email for immediate access and their new work email to have it right in front of them when they log in on day one. You can also pre-populate their work calendar with the itinerary for the first week.
Learn more about accelerating onboarding
At Performio, we’ve worked with tens of thousands of sales teams, and we believe that the right approach to onboarding can drastically speed up the process—taking no more than 9 months at the absolute max, with 6 months being the ideal you should aim for. And we’re confident that our approach to onboarding will result in better-adjusted sales reps who will want to stick around for the long run.
To help you achieve these goals, we’ve compiled all our best tips into a free ebook. You’ll learn how to optimize your training structure, approach onboarding collaboratively, keep training relevant, and more.
Ready to speed up your process? Check out our free ebook: Accelerate Onboarding: How To Shave Months Off Of New Hire Training.