How to Onboard your Sales Team Remotely?
Sales employee onboarding is the process of integrating new hires into the sales organization. It involves all activities that allow a new entrance into an organization to better acclimatize to the new workplace.
As a sales leader, it’s your responsibility to create a memorable onboarding experience for your new sales reps to foster productivity and employee engagement and set them up for long-term success.
This article will make you understand why onboarding your new sales reps is so important in the virtual realm and how to go about onboarding your newest salespeople remotely.
Why Is Onboarding New Sales Hires So Important?
Employee onboarding is an extension of your hiring process, and when done effectively, it could be a win-win scenario for both parties. A proper onboarding process helps in employee acclimatization, engagement, and retention.
Whether the sales onboarding process is in-person or entirely virtual, it helps to achieve three obvious things:
It ensures easy employee acclimatization
Sales onboarding program is focused on making the newly hired sales reps feel welcome in their new workspace. Think of an onboarding process to show your new hires to their new ‘office room’ and other ‘rooms’ they need to enter virtually to get the job done effectively.
An active onboarding process is meant to make new hires fall in love with the new work culture even before day one in a virtual work environment. The process helps ensure your new hires get the necessary support and are well prepared for the role they’re about to step into. That way, they tend to get the full picture of the do’s and dont’s concerning their new job and mentally prepare themselves for it.
It boosts new employee engagement
Engagement is a function of productivity, and the more engaged your sales reps are, the more productive they tend to become. The onboarding program presents the right opportunity for sales leaders to connect and engage directly with the new hires.
Since the program will have other sales professionals in attendance, your new sales reps will get to meet and establish relationships with existing staff who would make them feel more comfortable in the new sales organization by means of exchanging ideas.
It increases employee retention rate
Retaining sales top talents could be a big headache for sales organizations. The case of an employee leaving their current workplace for another is not uncommon, especially now that most employees choose to work remotely. If you don’t want to lose your top talents so soon, it’s time to take your onboarding program very seriously.
An active sales onboarding process lets new hires share your company goals, which in turn helps boost engagement, and strengthen relationships. Thus, making them less likely to seek employment elsewhere and increasing the chances of retaining top talents for the long term.
5 Tips for Onboarding A Remote Sales Team Effectively
Now that you understand what an active onboarding process can help you achieve, it’s time to learn how to do it right. The following tips are helpful for the quick and effective onboarding of new salespeople into your sales organization:
#1. Have an Onboarding Plan
Creating a flexible onboarding schedule and sharing it with your new hires from the very beginning could help make the whole onboarding process more fun and easier for all the parties involved.
Your onboarding plan should include the necessary components that will add more value to new sales reps as you prepare them for their new role remotely. These may include scheduling specific timetables for the general employee orientation, operational sales onboarding training, product and service training sessions, virtual sales process training, and other crucial training.
You should also set specific expectations and timeframe for the entire onboarding program to ensure you don’t miss out on important topics while also not dragging the process too long.
However, your onboarding timeline should be well-paced to ensure your new sales reps are not overwhelmed or overloaded with information.
#2. Give a solid workstation and technology setup before day one
We all know how the administrative task of any sales organization could be taxing, even for the expert sales management professionals. This shouldn’t be something to let your new sales reps worry about. Take care of most administrative setup on their behalf ahead of time to give them the chance to focus their expertise solely on selling.
Set up the tools and provide them with logins to the company’s technology before day one on the remote job. That way, they’ll feel empowered and get to access the right tools to perform without having to ask around for help about it..
#3. Make Learning Lots Fun for them
New sales reps are always looking forward to learning more about their new work culture and roles as soon as they got the job. Help them with the information they need and organize your sales training materials in such a way that they’re always within the reach of every salesperson (newcomers or stale) in your sales organization.
Arrange for experienced reps or stakeholders to walk your new sales reps through topics one-on-one and how to use the company sales platform, knowledge base, or wiki to the fullest to get information about the company, company products or services, and what is expected of them in their new job role.
#4. Schedule A Team Welcome Party
Bring the existing and new sales reps together by scheduling a virtual introductory party to build a team connection. You can hold a team welcome party on your video-conferencing platform and ensure everyone gets to introduce themselves briefly. This is an important aspect of any onboarding process that should come early to build a strong connection between existing sales team members and newcomers.
#5. Give them the chance to Guide the Way
Some of the top talents you just recruited have the unique selling styles they use to close deals. They are also coming into your organization with great sales skillsets and experience that can help your company boost sales performance and achieve goals quickly. The right way they can contribute their quota to your existing sales process and help speed up your sales cycle is to allow them the freedom to guide the way and see the results. Do not over micromanage them; instead give them the chance to solve a problem themselves sometimes.
However, make your company expectations clear and get on the same page on specific goals related to their onboarding.
Conclusion
A standardized onboarding process helps ensure that new sales reps get the sales training, engagement, and resources needed to get off to a quick start and fit into the company culture and value in every way.
However, when onboarding has to be done remotely, it tends to be more challenging than doing it in person. Take inspiration from the tips above to create a unique sales onboarding process for the new entrance into your company.
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