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5 Classic Mistakes in new hire Sales Training

Posted by Matt Sharrers on Sat, Oct 08, 2011
  
  
  
  

New hire sales training is failing. The ramp time for new hires (those with less than 1 year of tenure), is trending down 12% in 2011. The ramp time for full sales productivity measures the time it takes for a new sales person to reach 100% of the monthly sales goal.

Current Ramp Time to Full Productivity Metrics

  • 7.3% in < 3 months
  • 50.7%  in 3-6 months
  • 18.8% in 7-12 months
  • 23.2% in 12+ months

The time between a new salesperson’s start date and achievement of full productivity represents the opportunity cost of a company’s on-boarding process. With sales turnover at just under 40%, and 29% of these people being new hires, the statistics prove it.

In our sales consulting work, we recently reviewed this topic with 736 new hires in 12 industries.

They gave us 5 simple steps to implement in your sales training

Orientation- Ensure the new hire has a world class first day. Our study showed over 2/3 of new hires expressed dissatisfaction with their first day because their Manager was too busy to give them the required attention. The disgruntled participants said their first day meetings were cut short, they ended up getting pawned off on others and left day 1 feeling disengaged.

Fix: Start new hires on Friday not Monday. Seems simple; often overlooked.

Guide- The new hires told us that a detailed onboarding plan that separated Doing vs. Knowing made their first 6 months more impactful.

Fix: Ensure you sequence doing and knowing activities in a fashion that lines up with how the job will unfold.

sales training frameworkMentorship- New hires told us not having a sounding board to lean on other than their boss. Many felt that they were “passed around” by the veterans because nobody wanted to take the time to help.

Fix:  Provide new hires with a dedicated peer mentor. This is somebody who is excelling in the role that can be a guide. Everybody needs a friend other than their boss. The advantage to this is two fold:

  • Mentor— opportunity for your ‘A’ players that may be future managers to get involved in managerial activities.
  • Mentee— fast way to assimilate into the new culture and learn great habits from one of the best.

Structure— New hire training lacked milestones and follow up.

Fix: The participants that ramped the fastest were involved in structured training in their Onboarding Plan.  An example below

  1. Training Activity—Competitive  Intelligence
  2. Objective—understand the value prop of each competitor and mitigation strategy
  3. Duration—3 days
  4. Verification—new hire will be able to list out each competitor in their territory, the value prop, strengths and weaknesses and 3 references where we have successfully defeated them

Simplify- The new hires that struggled to hit their ramp felt their training was complicated.

    Fix: Lay out the plan in a simple format so new hires can bucket all of their activities

    sales training ramp up activities

    Call to Action

    Perform a new hire audit focused on talent management best practices.

    • Have a senior sales rep spend 30 minutes with a new hire using the 5 steps above.
    • Rate each on a 1-3 scale of below, meets and exceeds.
    • The peer to peer approach has proven to create the best environment to get honest feedback.
    • Come back to your new hires and close any gaps
    • Implement the suggestions into your new hire onboarding

    Sales training excellence is an iterative process; do not allow your future ‘A’ players to get anything other than your best.

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    Comments

    send to kelvin, stacy, brandon and rams
    Posted @ Saturday, October 08, 2011 9:16 AM by tony duckett
    Great advice, Matt.  
     
    I've found the same need for clear separation of Knowledge and Doing. Simple stuff, but often overlooked.  
     
    I use a simple model of Tell, Show, Do, Review (or sometimes Discuss | Demo | Do) to build orientation and onboarding programs and to get some of these concepts across to sales managers. 
     
    Adding a clear "understanding check" into the cycle adds real value as well.  
     
    > You tell, they tell you back. You provide feedback until they get it (understanding checks can take the form of assessments or tests in training, but if they can verbalize it to you, you know they have it cold).  
     
    > You show, they show you back (role play or simulation). You provide feedback/coaching until they can do it to your satisfaction. 
     
    > You do (a live demo, when possible), then they do (live) and you discuss and provide feedback/coaching.  
     
    > Then set an action plan for their continued Doing, with your follow-up and further Review (ongoing discussion/training/coaching).  
     
    Of course, you have to be teaching the right content (often missed by training departments unless they are closely integrated with the sales team), ensure good learning design, ensure managers know and buy-into what's being taught, and that the sales managers can coach to help transfer knowledge and skills into real-world settings.  
     
    With that foundation, this simple system once helped me transform new hire training so that new reps with 120-days on the job were outperforming (on average) a representative control group of incumbent reps with 5 years with the company. Simple stuff, but it works. I wish I saw more of it being done.  
     
    Anyway, thanks for a great post and keep 'em coming.  
     
    Mike Kunkle
    Posted @ Sunday, September 30, 2012 1:29 PM by Mike Kunkle
    Excellent! 
    I have worked with several large media sales companies - each that spend big bucks on 3-4 week long, 40 hour a week, new hire sales training programs.  
     
    The biggest problem I have seen with even the largest and most expensive new hire training programs is that steps 4 (process) and 5 (systems) above get only a brief mention, while everything that has to do with the actual selling portion of the training is repeated over and over and over so that they are certain that the new hires understand. 
     
    There seems to be an "go ask your mom." ... "go ask your dad" problem with the Process and Systems training between the initial new hiring training and their post new hire in-office w/ manager training.  
     
    Salespeople are taught to sell but are held accountable using their objectives and performance numbers. 
     
    Sales managers think that their new hires learned about their objectives and performance numbers in new hire training. New hire training programs are designed to skip mostly over objectives and performance numbers - leaving that training up to their sales manager. 
     
    When new hires get to their first day in the office, the manager is busy (as you mentioned) and wants to toss them out into the field and start selling immediately. 
     
    Weeks later these new hires start getting asked why they aren't hitting their performance numbers and objectives and start getting put on "performance programs". This leads to a frustrated, confused new hire that eventually just gets upset and quits. 
     
    I designed an app to help out with this problem, if anyone is interested click on my Name/link above.  
     
    Thank you for such an insightful article - I will share it around!
    Posted @ Thursday, December 06, 2012 12:18 PM by Elizabeth Oliveto
    print
    Posted @ Friday, December 28, 2012 11:43 AM by scott
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