The Ultimate Guide to the Sales Onboarding in IT Companies
Are you new at hiring Sales Reps for your IT company? Most probably you are struggling with what to tell them first and how to create the onboarding process that will last ages. I know how you feel. Here’s what I learned through the past 12 years of working in Sales:
Mind the time
Onboarding doesn’t happen overnight. Even if a new employee is experienced they still need some time.
They are lost. They constantly ask themselves “How should I know more about what we do?”, “Will I get along with other sales reps? What if they see me as a competitor and won’t share their experience?” — these questions might seem too over the top, but that’s what really happens in their heads.
All of the above is normal. We just need to be prepared for such beginnings and give them some space.
Don’t keep the introduction for later
You might think that it’s better to start giving them more information about the company so they can sell right away. Believe it or not, relationships are more important at the beginning than processes themselves.
New reps are afraid that they won’t get along with the existing team and therefore, won’t be motivated enough to make successful sales decisions.
Remember, the better relationship between your reps, the happier and the more inspired they are when selling your product.
Give them access
Create a list of all the platforms you employ in the company so you don’t leave out any in the future. Then give your newbies access to the ones that your Sales Team uses on a daily basis. Here are some of them:
- Email Client
Most of the companies use Gmail, while others use smaller email service providers. This is important because then your reps will use their email to log into other platforms.
- Communication Platforms
IT companies mostly use Slack and Discord. They are easy-to-use and they have all the features businesses need nowadays.
- Project Management Platforms
These are the places where everyone can find their tasks in a flash. Smaller companies use Trello, Basecamp, Todoist, while bigger companies use Jira, ClickUp, and Wrike.
- CRM
Saving leads and seeing which step you are in at any moment of communication is something that all salespeople cherish. Don’t take this opportunity from them and make sure you use one of the Customer Relationship Management tools such as Hubspot(This one is my personal favorite), Pipedrive, or Salesforce.
- Email/Message Automation Tools
You need to prepare a sequence of messages/emails in advance, and this tool does all the sending and following up process for your salespeople, while they can focus on something more important — communicating with warm and hot leads.
For email automation, I would recommend Hubspot, Reply.IO, SalesHandy, or Lemlist. For Linkedin messaging Expandi.io and LinkedinHelper.
Show them how you do it
Don’t forget that every organization has different rules when it comes to things like:
- Internal communication agreements
- Frameworks for organizing work files
- Task management and customer relationship platforms that are used on a daily basis
- And many more
Showing them how those things are done in your company will make them feel less anxious and ready for the next steps of onboarding.
Involve others in teaching
Remember I told you about the importance of the introduction? Here’s how you use that first step.
Create a process where other, already existing reps help your newbie learn about:
- Company
When was it founded, by who, why, and what problems are you solving for your customers
- Sales Cycle
Who your target customers are (ICPs), where and how you are finding them, how you are reaching them, what your introduction call looks like (call script and some recordings of the successful sales calls), how you close deals, and how you practice customer nurturing.
Training and Practice
After your new reps are provided with all the information about the processes, clients, and goals it is time to give them some additional documentation about the company(presentations, use cases, one-pagers, rate cards, courses) and start practicing.
Here are my 2 favorite takeaways from the Sales courses I watched that will help your new members become better at what they do:
Make sure you cover all the steps and only then start measuring your new sales reps’ success rates.
Victoria Sakurova is a Business Development Specialist at JetThoughts. Follow her on Linkedin.
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