Building an Onboarding Program Part 1

A step-by-step guide to bootstrap enablement

Here’s a scenario I’m certain NEVER happens.

A new sales rep or manager is hired. It’s their first day and they receive their laptop. By the end of the day they still lack access to most of the systems they need. After several escalations in Slack and SMS to their manager they finally get ahold of the “systems team”. They’ve been given access. Hurrah!

In a few days they’re invited to several sales meetings. One meeting is with their sales manager. In that meeting they go over the following: rapport, company history, sales script, who’s who, etc. It’s enough to get them started.

Thirty days later the sales rep is frustrated. They’ve been given a quota which seems insurmountable to achieve. They’re unsure where to go for help. Leads enter their queue every day but they feel they’re wasting their time as there is no visible improvement in their performance.

What is going on here?

It’s simple.

The business has failed to provide the sales rep with an onboarding experience to equip them with the following:

• Responsibility Matrix

• Tools to execute the role

  • Assets

  • Systems

• Knowledge

  • Industry

  • Product

• Skills

  • Prospecting

  • Qualification

  • Deal execution

  • Forecasting

  • Proposal building

  • Negotiating

  • Closing

• Sales Math

So let’s dive right in with a hypothetical example for a startup.

Let’s preface that every new hire program is going to be different. But at the very minimum there’s a general concept I believe is universal. It’s the concept of the…

Minimum Viable Readiness

What does that mean exactly?

It’s the baseline threshold which your enablement program graduates its students to the receiving sales team. If a diagram could illustrate this then it might look like this.

Now if someone could build a program that did the following they would unlock UNLIMITED DEMAND.

Sadly I’ve never achieved this in my life. Instead, my programs hope to achieve the former.

Basic Components of Onboarding