The Sales Onboarding Framework

I have onboarded remotely dozens of new hires in the past years. 99% of the time alone and with limited resources. Here is how I did.

Use a tool like Slite or Notion to write down the sales onboarding and make it available to anyone.

It’s the responsibility of the Sales leader to keep the document up to date. It has to be a live document as things change fast.

Sales Onboarding Structure:

General Info

• Org Chart
• Slack Channels

Products & Pricing

• Product demo
• Features deep dive
• Product Roadmap

Sales Culture

• How to work with me (template below): This is a full page about the fundamentals of your managerial style.
• Culture Pillars: what are the pillars of your team and why they are important?
• People I enjoy working with: here, you explain to the new hire what personalities and soft skills you enjoy having around.

Who's Who (Stakeholders)

It is simpler than the org chart, here you explain who are the people the new hire is going to interact with the most from other departments and why.

Sales Playbook

This is the biggest part, it’s a separate document where you have outlined how you sell and how you run things in the sales department. (I wrote about it in my previous newsletter ).

Rules of Engagement

What are the main rules with territories, discounts, markets and managing inbound leads.

Sales Tools

Which tools do activate and how do you use them.

Meeting cadence

Which are the team meetings and why do you do them. What to expect from each of them and how you interact.

Sales Goals & Compensation Plan

Here explain the goals and how you pay your team.

Competitors

Who are your top 3 competitors, why they are hard to beat and which ones are your unique selling points against them?

Roles

Deep dive into each sales role.

Coaching

Here explain how you run coaching and what is the coaching structure in your team

Sales Onboarding Timeline:

Week 1

• Slite/Notion online onboarding
• Mandatory meetings (team, stakeholders, marketing, team).
• Everyday 30 mins meeting between the manager and the rep to deep dive into Sales onboarding’s most important topics like culture, and sales playbook.
• Product Training

Week 2

• Shadow team members on live calls
• Listen to recorded calls (at least 20/week)
• Get a demo account and play around
• Product Training
• Everyday 30 mins meeting between the manager and the rep to deep dive into Sales onboarding’s most important topics like culture, and sales playbook.

Week 3

• Role Play discovery call
• Role Play demo call
• Role Play closing call
• Start building outbound lists for prospecting within a given territory.
• Product Training
• Inbound Training

Week 4

If Role plays have passed successfully you can start:

• Start rerouting some inbound
• Prospecting
• Product Training
• Inbound Training

Graduation! 🎓

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