Is the Onboarding of New Reps Your Achilles Heel?

Joining us for today’s show is Jeff Harris, the Chief Business Development Officer for Millar. Today we are going to demonstrate how to drive revenue per sales head up and time to productivity for new sales hires down.

Why is this an important topic? Getting an increase in sales head count is difficult. The expense cops expect all the current sales reps to be at quota before they agree to add any new heads. And when new sales people are hired there is little patience from the executive team members, who want each to generate revenue as quickly as possible. The sales enablement function exists to onboard new sales hires and to drive revenue per sales head up. Neglect sales enablement and forgo adding head count in the future.

Our expert contributor is Jeff Harris, the Chief Business Development Officer for Millar, a medical device company. What makes today’s guest incredibly unique among sales leaders, is Jeff’s background as a former Chief Learning Officer.

In the first segment we dive into the ideal the onboarding program for new hires. Jeff describes must-have elements of an onboarding program to quickly ramp new reps to full productivity.

Jeff outlines in the second segment how to enable the sales field with tools such as use-cases and battle cards. The onboarding training walks through the essential elements required to enable new reps. These include items such as positioning statements, ideal customer profiles, marketing tools, and client references. Do you place them in a reps hands with the proper training?

Driving accountability of your new hires requires a thoughtful certification program. You are investing in them, they need to reciprocate. What gets inspected gets retained, and Jeff describes the sales readiness program.

The final segment of the show describes the design and delivery of an onboarding program. This includes your learning delivery process (blended learning, coaching, role playing, classroom, online) and curriculum design.