Streamline sales team onboarding for communications & media

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Welcome to our webinar about uh hiring and onboarding sales teams um yeah maybe we can start with a short round of introductions uh obviously we know each other but I haven't met Selen I know Karina but uh yeah short intro from my end I'm fadon one of the founders at Noble um yeah we are a yeah recruiting agency focusing on hiring recruiting commercial Talent mostly for sze companies started about seven years ago uh before that I have a background in uh in Recruitment and in the software sales myself a few years as well and uh I'm 33 years old and live in Amsterdam what about you urine yes my name is urin nice to meet you and thanks for joining us um I'm a sales trainer and sales coach um predominantly in the software SAS fintech and Tech um industry and next to that I um am a consultant in helping organizations to professionalize or set up their onboarding uh programs for new hires in the sales team been doing that now for over 15 years I'm 45 years old and I live south of Amsterdam inan hey so today we are uh yeah going to talk about hiring and onboarding uh yeah two of our favorite topics that we're quite passionate about uh so I'm going to start with the hiring part and uh yeah I can say that in the past seven years uh working with Noble recruitment with all sorts of s companies from yeah really small early stage startups to yeah really big uh corporates and mostly everything in between uh that we've worked with a lot um yeah we've seen a lot of lot of best practices a lot of uh really good processes really good hiring experiences but unfortunately also a lot of the uh bad ones so um yeah my goal today is to uh yeah sort of go through some of the hiring process best practices and uh yeah share some of the learnings that I've seen in the in the field working with uh yeah some really uh cool companies that do this really well and hopefully also learn learn a bit more about your experiences um yeah and and and learn from each other so my goal is to uh give you some takeaways and uh make uh the hiring process better so on the agenda today we'll uh yeah talk a bit about defining and creating an ideal rep profile file that should you know sort of be the basis of your your hiring strategy and to not fall into the pitfalls of just hiring people that you like uh and then defining a hiring process that enables you to yeah prevent Mish hiring obviously it's yeah you will always make Mish hires in in every uh uh hiring process unfortunately but having the right process in place will minimize the risk uh of of making hiring mistakes and then finally for the hiring part training and implementation on on how to actually yeah keep the machine going when when you have everything in place and then uh yeah urine will take over and tell us about the onboarding importance and challenges the ups and the success factors and the Practical next steps to uh yeah conduct the successful onboarding program for commercial people so starting with defining and creating your ideal rep profile um and it's important that this is also done per role so creating an ID rep profile per role for an account examp utive or an SDR a customer success manager usually the clients that we work with have these roles separate um yeah I thing that we're seeing a lot nowadays is that uh the AE and the SDR role are yeah being combined into one sort of 360 uh sales role um in that case obviously you create a ID rep profile for that role if this is the case within your uh organization um I don't know how how mature your sales organizations are at this moment uh so yeah defining goals and kpis per all sounds pretty basic but we've seen with a lot of startups that yeah even this isn't done so before you start hiring it's important to think about what kind of person uh what kind of salesperson are we going to uh hire how does the ID red profile look like and what goals and kpis are we going to Define per role and also what is realistic right uh what we see with a lot of um sales organ ganizations is that you have a few people performing really really well and yurin knows I think a lot more about this than I do a few people performing really really well then uh you have a large pool of sort of medium performers and also a small portion of the low performers so how are you going to Define your goals and kpis per role um yeah obviously you're going to look at some of the higher performers or the uh average performers and base your goals and kpis on that right you want to define the outbound the the output goals per role but maybe also the input goals then um what you're going to do is create a yeah sort of sort of a scorecard where you look at what skills knowledge and behaviors are important to be successful in this role so um where in marketing you have ICP you have the ideal yeah sort of client profile which is yeah super specific on the characteristics with ID repb profile it's way more important that you look at yeah what skills does somebody have uh what knowledge uh is important for your organization and your sales role and what kind of behaviors um yeah do you want in your sales reps uh for example for an SDR important Behavior can be listening really well so yeah using the two ears and one mouth uh uh uh comparison or for example uh asking good questions asking follow-up questions um when looking at knowledge for some for some companies it's for example super important that you know about the industry or the market that you're selling into um and with the ideal web profile what you do is basically you rank all those skills you define them first and then you rank them also with a weighted score so you um yeah create your sort of Ideal person that has the right amount of market knowledge the right amount of skills the right amount of Behavior Uh that you want to stimulate um and that will help you to stay objective when speaking to candidates but also when looking for candidates when attracting candidates and that you don't fall into the yeah the sort of uh Pitfall that every salesperson coming from each sort of background can be relevant because they're selling themselves so well to you so so that is where a good hiring process basically starts and of course comination with defining budgets for the role uh with a clear OT and quota setting I've had it so many times that that we are being hired by a client to say hey we're looking for this uh this salesperson this account executive can you please find them and then we asked them sure what is the budget for the role what is the OT and they say we have no idea yeah then it's more like how how how can we uh how can we attract or convince a candidate to go and interview with you where yeah you don't even have your yeah budget defined or your quota defined for this wall so I can stress how important that is to before start hiring have you these sort of hygiene factors in place uh make sure that you understand uh the market as well I'm going to share also a salary Benchmark uh after this this uh meeting as well so you have yeah a good Benchmark of what the current market does for the salaries of the sales people in in Amsterdam so that is obviously super important to have that groundwork uh completed uh and it also it also defines in which League you are playing uh when uh I compare it now to football because if you're able to yeah maybe only pay a salesperson uh 60k o per year that's going to be a different person than a person earning 200k OT per year for example um so it also it also is important for the type of person and the type of um yeah role that you have to have this quota and OT setting right and not to mention that you have a realistic OT and a realistic quota because yeah that's also I think a mistake that I've seen a lot with clients they they Define the OT and they Define the quotas just based on Excel sheets and and On th air uh as opposed to you know looking at what reputation does the company have what uh market share does the company have how is the competitive landscape uh you know what is the quality of the sales process Etc um so that's important to have all of that right after that um it's important as a next step to define the hiring process so what you want is an uniform hiring process with every candidate that goes through your process um and not sort of an ad hoc who is available or or who can maybe do an interview today or tomorrow uh yeah sort of strategy because we've seen that that uh yeah is a big Pitfall and that that uh causes Mish hires basically so having interview stages predefined understanding who is going to uh do the first interview who is going to do the second interview the third one and what's going to be the final interview uh but also what is each uh participant's role going to be during that interview for example we have defined in ideal repb profile what skills we behaviors uh we need right and then you can say in the first interview we're only going to uh look at behaviors for example and we're going to look at the culture fit so with that you you know exactly what the goal of the first interview is it's not to talk about a lot about the experience or the skills or the knowledge it's really to focus on the behavior hey is this person going to be a culture fit are the behaviors that this person has and shows the behaviors we are looking at so that's super clear for the person having the first interview what he or she needs to focus on if that makes sense and to yeah further further objectify that a high ring scorecard uh is a great tool to to do that and our hiring scorecard you can see as a collaboration document um where you exactly can rank uh yeah the CATE based on the uh skills behaviors and knowledge that you need that you have predefined obviously and you also predefine who is going to take what uh role and which competencies within that hiring scorecard if that makes sense then finally um yeah a good case study or a good rle play is for me the the best predictor of success in the sales role because it's basically super practical and uh if you have somebody who's bluffed themselves through through the first two interviews they will uh they will usually if you have a good case study or a good um yeah practical interview they will not be able to pass that because that is where you really test test it and uh the best case studies that I have seen are always super realistic scenarios of the job itself um for example if you're interviewing a yeah a salesperson that's is going to uh only to the the first part of the sales process obviously you're going to have a case study that really reflects that so reflecting how somebody ask questions how somebody is able to qualify how somebody is able to prospect or to reach out uh and and make that that scenario as real life as possible for example hey you found this Prospect how are you going to approach this Prospect with the goal of booking in the meeting you know and and my preference is always to not give too much context but to also see how they will approach it uh and what is their way of thinking basically um and and the more senior you go the Yeah the more strategic a case study can become for example um yeah when you're interviewing a a VP of sales or a head of sales yeah then it's maybe also more about what strategic skills does somebody have how how does somebody come up with a sales plan for attacking a new market or uh yeah building an whole sales team so there's also no uniform case study for each role obviously you have to yeah really think about and design a very practical and very extensive case study for each of the different rules that you're uh interviewing for if that makes sense then uh training and implementation this is also a very interesting one um what I've seen a lot is that managers get hired from another company and they are just expected to know how to interview candidates somehow but maybe that person never had a formal training doesn't know how to uh um yeah ask good interview questions uh and is not equipped to yeah to conduct a fair interview process basically so I think as um T yeah TA or or HR or as a hiring manager it's your job to also make sure that yeah people know how to interview actually also having the right HR systems and feedback loop in place we will yeah then make sure that all these uh things are implemented that uh the feedback throughout the hiring scorecard is collected and that yeah the feedback is streamlined so the uh communication is always on par um and yeah hiring mistakes are being prevented basically that's for the hiring part I'll give the word to urine for the homeing part what I would like to discuss with you is why is it so important um what are the key challenges in onboarding what are failures and and success factors and what is very practically a good next step to take um flaten and I always have interesting discussions that's why we teamed up for this one as well um and I think when you talk about onboarding importance I think both the hiring manager both the recruiter and both um the onboarder all have one thing in common and that is that this candidate becomes successful and that the potential of this candidate is U being exposed um during during the ramp up phase as soon as possible and in that common responsibility in stakeholdership I think it's it's crucial also to understand that component of okay we've hired someone we've convinced them to come and work for us they're eager to get started how are we now going to bring out this potential as soon as possible so the the importance of onboarding I think is is is clear in to accelerate the ramp up time uh and on average depending on the length of the deals cycle uh for sales um ramp up time can be Quantified as uh one and a half times the um the deal cycle so for example if you have a deal cycle of uh six weeks for example then um you know the uh the ramp up time could be one and a half times that so this helps you also to to consider okay when do we want to determine is this person going to be successful for us it has a huge impact the onboarding on the retention of employees uh obviously and I I like how flaton feels about this because he truly lives for making a candidate successful uh within his customers and not um possibly defining okay when is the next higher coming up but really having the ambition to make this candidate successful and a it's linked to onboarding uh to making sure that not only is this person going to be successful quickly but is this continuously moving forward into perform performance later on as well post onboarding onboarding is crucial to get eyes and ears on the cultural fit uh one of the most important factors in U becoming a successful team member um and obviously compliance and alignment with the way of doing not only in the cultural way but also in how you approach sales how do you want to approach and and reach out to customers how do we want um our teams to be able to execute this uh and onboarding and recruitment are there undeniably linked I think in uh achieving those goals um you see the three circles um inividual there um these are the four C's that I think are crucial to consider when um not only drafting up a onboarding program but also in executing it Clarity is is number one important for creating a good onboarding program uh why are we doing things that we're doing what is expected of you um who can you go to For What and just full on Clarity in a 360 point of view on on what is expected and what the perspective is um and then that impacts the level of control that someone has the level of confidence that someone has and the level of consistency uh that someone uh experien and and shows during their EMP up phase and they're all connected right when you have a sense of control and your confidence grows you're more eager to try new things out you're more eager to throw yourself in the deep end and to discover new things um the more consistent and the more control uh you have uh the more results will come and that's a rewarding uh process as well so everything that we need to do in enabling someone to be successful quickly can be summarized under these four CES the most common ones I think are indeed clear metrics and success factors during the ramp up phase I will go through that a little bit um with you it's also about resource allocation coordination and communication who does what who owns what right is it just the hiring manager buddying up and making sure that someone lands well or is the team being used as well how about the uh General leadership for example um how about Talent or um uh other uh including factors or stakeholders so really defining ownership in in who does what and who has what tasks and responsibility also scalability is a very common challenge in organizing on boarding um especially if you have a group of uh different people hiring at the same time uh senior Junior meteor differences uh but also possibly different roles within the team uh meaning SDR or AES for example how to differentiate and where to scale um the more uh common tasks and where to personalize the attention can also be an interesting challenge there um still the the fourth one is also interesting the employee retention and engagement making sure that if there is time and effort and money invested in professional onboarding um do we see that impacting uh the retention and engagement and performance of of these and learning from that in the best case scenarios but also in um in situations where you had to exit uh someone um as early as possible what can we learn from that both for stakeholders in recruitment talent and HR both for the hiring manager and both for the onboarding responsible person so these are the main challenges that we um that we spotted um and in those challenges we have seen some learnings um in um organizing this if you could vote to the next one for me on um we have seen people with struggling with that challenge and learning from how not to do this and it starts with really focusing on that that ownership and when there's lack of ownership there's potential of a disorganized onboarding not knowing who to go to for what who is accountable for what who is responsible for what um but also it sometimes exposes the inconsistency in the current processes already oh we're just used to doing it this way because we we know where stuff is and then a new person comes in and all of a sudden it's not as clear for someone that goes in blank for example so unclarity in metrics unclarity in communication um is usually a consequence of someone not taking ownership or accountability of these parts um one of the failures that we've seen um is insufficient insufficient training training and resources and with the best intentions right people wanting someone to succeed um but not being equipped with the tools to train and Coach someone or not having the time right to do it there could be many external factors and internal factors that causes this but it is truly truly important um aligning feedback having clear materials uh having a clear structure so again the clarity part here is uh is crucial um you see the mini me syndrome I get back to that a little bit later but that's usually in the situation where a successful um person in the sales team has been promoted to team lead or um a team manager uh gets um new people in their team and they tend to expose okay this is how I've been successful just do it this way and you'll be successful too which is an interesting case to discuss in onboarding because it has good parts of it but it also has challenging ones and and some threats in uh choosing that approach again with the best intentions um but you might pass the authenticity you might pass the differentiation you might pass the just different level of of someone that's working um in a completely different way and the opportunities that we can see from that as well um ignoring company and culture fit it seems so evident that that's almost a given sometimes that we tend to go on that gut feeling is someone fitting in right but especially in remote onboarding this can be challenging or tricky um if there's more distance in spotting Red Flags uh or if we are overly um spoon feeding new hires and they tend to go in the back seat right you tell me what to do I'm just listening now for four weeks and then uh I'll see what I can do with that um so really balancing and leveraging again um that attention right what do we enable you with and what is your role now in uh in showing us what you transfer to the Daily practice so really leveraging attention enablement and ownership and accountability from from the own border success factors um here I think always the the counterpart of obviously the failures I think to keep this simple it all starts with Clarity uh having a very clear ownership of roles tasks responsibilities of stakeholders is is crucial clear clear definitions on when onboarding is completed and when are you successful so those metrics are then really important to Define and an example is that people that are successful in onboarding is they have a very detailed clear schedule for at least the first two weeks uh that sounds like spoon feeding but it is sort of a soft Landing base on we'll take care of you um please follow this this schedule and ramping up the training content to more practical uh situations in order to to to transfer them to the Daily practice um but also clar on expectations right what do we expect from you as a new hire uh in our team what can you expect from us metrics help there obviously but also the the soft metrics on what kind of attitude do we want to spot with you right what kind of assertiveness or proactiveness do we want to see what do we want to see in your own Direction and control in making the most out of this onboarding program um we will enable you we have a good program ready for you but it's up to you to make the most out of is um so how can we leverage that as well but also Clarity on locations where to find what who to go to for what um how to use what when uh really outlining A playbook for example helps there also in scalability on the metrics we'll get back to that a little bit later the confidence consistency and control keeping this simple um success factors that I've seen in organizations is that they tend to go with a 1.0 skill set during the first month ramping up to a 2.0 skill set so really moving on from getting those true Basics right first in product knowledge what's the basic level that we want and what is realistic um in what we can expect in this first four weeks right uh preventing that overload of of information and just going from step to step if you can speed up you will you will speed up but just getting those true Basics right first so think one point 0 sales skill set true definition of what do we want to see in the first sets of activities um what do we want you to be able to do and to show us in the first couple of uh couple of weeks uh and relevant to that activity ramp up later on to that 2.0 skill set um but also aligning feedback um framing solid internal communication especially if you have more people involved in coaching and and onboarding uh framing that scorecards can help to frame feedback uh especially for a 1.0 skill set so really focusing on this is what I want you to give feedback on in this week this is what I want the feedback next week to be about just ramping up and protecting the on border from an overload of information and really on Focus points on getting those true Basics right first and ownership and accountability like I said I'm a true um Advocate and and believer of um expecting maturity from your own boarders no matter the age and really enabling them to self-reflect on their own performance to score their own um sessions to really give feedback within the team before they receive feedback from the others that have shadowed them or have done role plays with um and a good example is a daily performance review sheet in the first four weeks or a weekly performance review sheet where you have clear metrics on input driven for example CAD or sequencing activities but also that soft metrics side on okay what do you feel is your level of assertiveness what do you feel is your level of control your level of confidence at the moment and you can use a simple traffic light system in those performance sheets and color it red if it's not present and not right color it orange if you're on the right track but and cor color it green if you feel like okay that's on point uh I'm on schedule and then compare and that brings language to to the feedback and Alignment there as well um and companies that been have been successful with this is they really make the onboarder the owner of that daily or weekly performance scorecard review this is your performance right this is your sheet you need to make sure that it's filled out you need to make sure that everyone delivers their input on time this is your performance so make sure that you feel it is complete and that it's all clear what is in there so that the stakeholder that is the hiring manager or the team lead can then use this also to check that soft sort of metric side of their performance um and it helps you also with the challenge of maybe making that tough decision after a month right in in data in Coloring are are we mostly on green or do we see a lot of orange and red right that's a good indicator of okay should we move forward with this and how or should we make um tougher decisions and and based on what right so just getting that more complete uh picture there is tends to be quite quite successful so executing that reflecting on that evaluating and adopting for the next one I think is crucial to not have an onboarding program that's set in stone it's always it's always hybrid it's always learning it's always evolving depending on the people that were hiring and what we're learning uh from internally yeah so questions um for you guys um what do you feel based on these success factors before we go into the Practical next steps Alisa Karina and Selen and and also flaton for you what do you feel is your number one success factor in onboarding um what do you feel works really well in onboarding that's interesting for the others to learn from lad would you like to start yeah yeah sure sure um yeah what we've adopted quite recently is a a Trello board uh with a lot of clarity Y and uh and yeah ownership and accountability of of who do what and also giving the the the person onboarding a lot of ownership there so they they have to you know create they have to go through the program they have uh yeah access to the CH board they can uh use it and um yeah it's it's their responsibility to yeah make sure that uh everything is completed at the end but uh yeah that's quite a practical thing that I don't know where exactly it sits in the cycle probably a bit of everything but uh for us that was a really good tool and a good method to uh to have a better onboarding process basically yeah so it enhances the ownership and accountability right of and it enhances the clarity on where to find what and what to focus on um to give some insights in where is this person at at this stage practical next steps moving forward um even in reframing it uh as you go or starting up from scratch I think it's always good to start with same as with the ideal rep profile same as with ICP right what is an an ideal customer uh based a real customer candidate based um onboarding that we can have and defining that with stakeholders roles onboarding tasks I think is crucial what is the goal of onboarding when is onboarding successful who is involved who takes ownership and then scrolling it down to what kind of materials do we need and what are the expectations that we have for everyone Define metrics and performance during ramp up uh so establish first of all the skill sets same as for hiring people um what do what do we want them to be able to do in their ramp up phase what do we want to enable them to be able to execute to say I know how to right that's the conclusion that we want to draw so really have input driven metrics include the soft metrics for example assertiveness attitude proactiveness um level of confidence level of control these things and really also identify what are red flags and when should we be able to spot these is it not completing tasks is it not uh reaching a certain level in the role place is it um a lack of cultural fit what are red flags and when we spot them how to act on those I think is also to good to Define there when you have those metrics uh defined create that clear support framework and Leverage ing that um focus on a very detailed training program first of all and then creating that soft landing at the end of the ramp up towards the daily practice Define clearly that 1.0 true basic content and and align that with your playbook and and content of your uh training and coaching sessions and try and pre-schedule in to enhance that Clarity in the beginning in all calendar so that everyone knows where to show up for what how to become prepared um for those sessions and then learning and reflecting on those so align and frame the feedback overload um the scorecards can help daily self assessments or weekly self assessments can help and my tip would be to always start with self-reflection first so quite some practical next steps and for that I can share some materials uh later on as well some background information on differentiation five human learning preferences and how to maybe accommodate that during your Learning and Development stage um the pros and cons of the mini syndrome which is just fun and recognizable I think to read for quite a few and um a checklist for onboarding Preparation is something that I can share afterwards yeah maybe to add to this uh I'll also share the um an example of the ideal rep profile that we discussed earlier uh a celery Benchmark and some other uh yeah good good materials afterwards good and I think we can wrap up that yeah yeah I think I think um yeah first of all thank you for being here today obviously with us um as a common threat how yeah what we see when professionalizing our hiring and uh yeah our onboarding efforts and trying to minimize the risks of uh yeah making mistakes in that department yeah I think looking back what I see as a common threat is um as we professionalize we need to you know structure things we need to have systems in place we need to look at kpis and metrics and all of those things that uh yeah usually Talent acquisition and sales people don't really like so so I think it's very common that yeah this brings along with challenges and uh if you have any questions or if we can um help afterwards regarding uh hiring then of course you can uh contact me always welcome to contact me if you have uh any other questions regarding uh the onboarding part uh urina is also available her contact details are here below as well um we will make sure that the materials will be sent out to you along with the recording of the webinar and uh yeah we uh want to thank you uh uh again and hope to see you in hear from me soon