Let’s Throw Generic Onboarding Overboard
Mis-hiring isn’t the root of all sales ills, but it sure continues to run like hell for first place. We’re amazed here at how many companies we speak with have no formalized hiring process. No profiles. No pre-determined, structured interview questions. No training for interviewers. No simulations. No assessment tools. No reference checks. No background checks. No income verification. And no onboarding process. And they wonder why only three out of four reps are making a serious contribution to the team’s quota.
If you’ve hiring the wrong sales candidate, onboarding is a waste of time and money. And it gives you false hope that the person might be productive in within a reasonable period of time. They won’t.
I’ve read a number of articles and posts recently about onboarding and some of them miss the most important point: onboarding plans shouldn’t be generic. Putting all new sales hires through the same one-day, ten-day, or hundred-day program will not get the most out of them in the shortest period of time.
Companies that use a profile-based, behavioral interview approach have a reasonably accurate assessment of what each candidate brings to the table. Hiring authorities know what traits and skills the candidate possesses and how that candidate has performed in relevant and important selling situations in the past. If a candidate doesn’t have enough of the most critical traits they don’t get hired, because you can’t train them to perform in one way when their DNA, personal attributes, or other strong tendencies are directing them elsewhere. (There are exceptions, of course.)
The skills side is another story. There are no perfect candidates. But to know, when you offer a candidate a job, by how much they fall short in important skill areas and have a plan to train, coach, reinforce, educate, support and in other ways close any gaps that exist using the onboarding process—that’s how to get a B player to A more quickly and predictably.
Here’s a real example: Jason (not his real name) came through the interview process for a software company with flying colors. There was a strong match between his traits and what had been identified as being critical for the job: analytical thinking, positivism, courage, extroversion, etc. He did very well in the skills area as well: territory management, presentation skills, planning, negotiation, leading customers out of their comfort zones. But Jason was short on financial knowledge. The software company sales leaders knew that that financial knowledge is critical for making a sale. In fact, being able to read and interpret a prospect’s financial statements and articulate where, how, and specifically by how much their software would make an impact, would make the difference between being a finalist or not.
You can see where this is headed. The onboarding plan for Jason didn’t have him sitting in classes wasting time on things he already did well. Sure, he was provided with enough product and industry training to get him going. But the real focus was on getting Jason up to speed in financial knowledge and the business contribution his product makes to his customers. So Jason was given a detailed 90-day ramp-up plan as condition of employment. The plan provided resources (six hours with an in-house financial expert, for example), several books to read, a two-day program at the AMA, and monthly progress discussions with his manager.
That was three years ago. Jason’s performance has been stellar, just as they knew it would.
Photo source: Tara Projects, Ireland
Filed under: Hiring
Tags: Hiring, onboarding
LOVE this post – so on the money! We spend so much time with our clients reviewing and improving their hiring processes. You just made me realize we need to spend even more time reviewing and improving their onboarding processes. The two go hand-in-hand for success. Thanks for the smack in the head!
Hi Trish. Thanks for the comment.
Great post Dave, scientist and engineers call this propagation of error. The hiring error keeps getting bigger as it moves through the system. Two things jumped out at me in this post.
First
Not performing background checks and income verification, having a formalized hiring process or training interviewers, is just plan poor business practice regardless of whether we’re talking about the sales department or not, so I’m wont even go there.
Having profiles, structured interview questions, simulations and assessment tools are another issue all together. Before any of these things can be generated there has to be a deliberate effort to define the knowledge, skills and traits needed to achieve objectives in the context of the current strategies, methodologies and processes. Without performing a preliminary analysis there’s no way to construct assessments, structured interview questions or simulations that are company specific.
The question is… why? Why don’t companies invest time, money and talents to determine what are the knowledge, skills and traits that sales teams (VP/Director, Manager, Salesperson) need – knowing full well that people are mission critical to achieving objectives?
Many companies set budgets and quota, but lack organizational development objectives beyond head count. As a result, there’s an absence/misalignment of metrics, compensation, rewards and recognition that would drive the development/acquisition of the tools, processes, methods and expertise to recruit and select the right individuals.
Second
Are you suggesting there isn’t a core set of topics that are common to all new hires that should be part of a standard New Hire Training or on-boarding program?
On-boarding has always meant something different to me. On boarding in my mind is more like orientation…here is your desk, the location of the restrooms, policy and procedure manuals, the tools you’ll be using, the location of resources and most importantly where to get coffee.
From my perspective we’re talking about New Hire Initial Training and Development in the context of the selection criterion used for recruiting. The initial training program must match the selection criterion. Whatever knowledge and skills that’s not going to be covered in the training and development programs must be hired into the company.
The New Hire Initial Training program should be a logical sequential training program that moves the new recruit across the sales process from demand creation to close and beyond if necessary. New hires that don’t have a background in sales should go through the full program (Part 1 – knowledge about concepts, processes and methodologies. Part 2 – practice demand creation and selling skills).
Experienced new hires should go through a fast-track new hire program specifically designed to cover the company’s processes, methodologies, and common language to level-set new recruits and get everyone on the same page.
Once the initial training is complete an individualized developmental agenda should be developed based on the results from the simulation and initial and ongoing assessments.
Hi Martice,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I’m not suggesting at all that there isn’t a core set of new sales hire topics. The intent of my post was to highlight the opportunity of beefing a candidate up on the skills they need improvement in coming in the door.
And yes, the development of the job-specific profile is something that has to be done up front. There is a process for that as well. If you don’t get the profile right, the rest is a waste of time.
I agree! Thanks for the clarification.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by markslatin: Generic onboarding – why it doesn’t work. Dave Stein talks about why 3 of 4 hires don’t meet targets http://bit.ly/84Db8Q...