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[Re-sent] #84: How to onboard new sales hires

[Re-sent] #84: How to onboard new sales hires

How to onboard new sales hires with no enablement, tools or budget

October 23, 2022

Reading time: ~2 min

Proven strategies to grow cyber security sales

Enjoy this email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week???

How to onboard new sales hires with no enablement, no tools and no budget

There are few more impactful levers to pull to improve sales productivity and capacity than how fast you can ramp new sales hires.

In a world where six to nine month sales cycles are all too common - a 50% reduction in ramp time significantly impacts revenue.

But few startups have the resources to do it properly. It's not a lack of desire on behalf of the sales leadership team. It’s because they can't afford to have an FTE for enablement and don't want to allocate precious budget to tools.

But DIY does not have to be lame!

I've built and/or run sales new hire programs for 10+ companies, and here is how I was a sales leader…

Give them clear leading indicator objectives to hit

Often, new hires don't know what's expected of them beyond revenue goals. This is a mistake. They should understand how they are measured in the first few weeks and months of their tenure. I recommend providing them guidance like these:

start prospecting at the end of the first week
be able to run the first meeting with a prospect by the end of week 2
X number of first meetings with ICP prospects by the end of each month
X amount of self-generated pipeline by the end of each month

Being clear about these objectives gives you the lens for deciding what's most important in their training.

At the start, focus on deeply understanding prospects and their problems

Almost every new hire program get's this wrong. On the first day, they want to brainwash the new hire with the company founding story, philosophy, mission statement, pitch deck, product demo, a speech from the founder, etc., etc. Basically, everything about us and nothing about prospects.

Here's the ah ah … if you fill people's brains with this self-centered stuff, this is what they will focus on and remember going forward. And you will have left little room for the most critical thing; deeply understanding prospects and their problems.

Sources to get great info:

Existing customers
- Can you record interviews with existing customers or have them virtually join an onboarding session? Don't just give the new hire a case study and call it good!
YouTube videos
- A quick search on YouTube will show you many videos about job roles in cyber security departments. These are a gold mine!
Conversation Intelligence calls
- If you have a tool already (e.g., Gong, Chorus), have the new hires listen only to the discovery portions of first meetings.

Industry and market knowledge

What you do with this depends on the experience of the sellers you are hiring. But you will find many YouTube videos on the cyber security market and its sub-markets. Look for videos that cover these topics from a business viewpoint instead of technical information. And don't be afraid to use videos posted by competitors. The most important thing is to get the right content for the new hire.

The business value of your products

By this point, the temptation will be to get to product training. Resist this!! Instead, have the new sellers work on developing business value hypotheses and statements. Have them focus on business outcomes and impacts.

An excellent way to orient this is to have them create their own reasons why your target personas would love what you do. Maybe have them meet with you live and present what they came up with, so you can give immediate feedback.

Now you can do light product training and demos

Let your most sales or business-oriented SE give them demos. Ask the new hires to think about which personas would care about what they are being shown.

Selling Jiu Jitsu

Finally, they will be ready to learn how to handle the everyday things that come up on sales calls, such as:

Top 10 objections or questions
Great discovery questions
Powerful customer stories

With just a little work following these principles, you will great a powerful onboarding experience for your new sellers.

Time for a dad joke break...

Q: "Why can’t you use "beef stew" as a password?"

A: "It’s not stroganoff"

-Russell Spitler, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Ryan Georgian, Sales Director at Nudge Security

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