3 Trends in Sales Onboarding

Onboarding is one of the most costly necessities of any talent management strategy. Onboarding processes that are labor-intensive and out-of-date can hurt your sales force by increasing turnover and draining company resources. That said, delivering onboarding that is scalable, cost-effective, and relevant for your sales force is an ever-changing challenge.

When a member came to us looking to replace their dated, labor intensive onboarding with more scalable and cost-effective processes, we sent the question back out to the membership. We asked member executives about the: (1) design and delivery of their sales onboarding, (2) key elements of their onboarding program, and (3) recent cost-effective advancements or investments in onboarding.

We profiled five members’ onboarding programs in our latest brief, Delivering Sales Onboarding. The onboarding practices we heard from members helped shed light on how companies are using both in-person and virtual onboarding to increase the efficiency of their onboarding programs. Company perspectives aligned to two main efficiency-increasing priorities; executives at profiled companies either looked to decrease implementation cost (proliferation of virtual channels) or increase delivery effectiveness (enhance in-person training).

Below are three of the most interesting elements from members’ onboarding programs:

Use of managers and experienced sales reps:  Members used both managers and tenured reps to deliver training to new hires. This not only cut costs by erasing the need for a separate sales training organization to deliver training to dispersed reps, but also helped to contextualize training. Managers and tenured reps often develop into mentors for new reps and help to guide them through the onboarding process.

Hold new hires accountable: Keeping new hires responsible for absorption of their onboarding materials proved valuable for members who sought to ensure both the effectiveness of their program and the abilities of their reps. Numerous failed assessments give managers an opportunity to identify underperforming reps before they pose a significant drain on resources.

Build social communities: Social communities (LinkedIn, Facebook, Chatter or internally developed groups) enable new hires to form deeper connections, reinforce training, and share success stories. These communities also allow managers and trainers visibility into reps’ training progress.

CEB Sales Members, check out the full report: Delivering Sales Onboarding and use the profiles to validate or compare your organizations onboarding practices. Also, visit the Onboarding Topic Center.