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- #35: Sales new hire training, acquisitions, and making an impact
#35: Sales new hire training, acquisitions, and making an impact
Sales new hire training, acquisitions, and making an impact
Reading time: ~2 min.
Enjoy this week’s email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week
#1 - 90% of startups get sales new hire onboarding wrong
They train new hires on everything they MIGHT need to sell their product. You know...just in case.
New hires get:
Demo training
Pricing training
Product training
Industry training
Systems training
Channel training
Company training
Use case training
Roadmap training
Competitor training
More product training
Even more product training
+++
And they “train” by giving long, boring lectures. You’ve heard it before…“Get our smartest person to tell the new hires all about X.” And that’s what they do. Tell them ALL about X.
This is plain wrong. New hires don't need to be told everything.
They need to know how to do TWO things…prospect and run a first meeting.
To do that, they need to know:
1. Prospect
ICP
value props
problems we solve
how to handle the common questions/objections
2. First meeting
value based discovery
position your solution (deck)
common questions / objections
3 customer stories
next steps
This is what they need to know in their first month. Everything else gets in the way. When they get to their second month, then train them on what they need then.
Shorten your new hire ramp time by changing from “just-in-case” training to “just-in-time” training.
Time for a dad joke break...
My wife and I let astrology get between us. It Taurus apart.
#2 - Being acquired within 24 months - not your 'typical' model
Rick Hill spent 16 years at Cisco before becoming the VP of Sales at Ava Security. In my chat with Rick, he talks about his growth at Cisco, why he moved, and what led up to Ava's acquisition by Motorola Solutions earlier this year.In his career at Cisco, Rick was fortunate to have the opportunity to take on several different roles as he progressed through the ranks. Eventually, however, Rick decided to leave the nest and enter into the startup world. It was the right time for him to take all of the skills and talents that he had the chance to grow and accumulate at Cisco and put them to work in a different way.
Rick explains the adjustment from going from a large company like Cisco to a startup where he was tasked with consistently making big decisions.He went from making decisions with a significant amount of data points to making a volume of decisions with a high level of intensity. He explains how although this change at first felt intense and exhausting, with time he was able to adjust.As Rick likes to say, "it’s where the fun is!"
Check out the full interview for more
#3 - Have you recently started a new sales job in cybersecurity?
Looking to make a major impact? Here’s how to DOUBLE your chances of success:
- Ask lots of questions
- Talk with the top performers
- Learn 3 customer stories in your first week
- Listen to as many call recordings as you can
- Learn great discovery questions BEFORE you learn the pitch
- Meet with a customer. Learn the problems they are solving with your product.
Send me (Andrew) a question or the pitch you want help with on and look for a response in the message thread.
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Rooting for you,
Andrew MonaghanChief [email protected]
