How to reduce your sales ramp up period

When a new sales rep joins the team, it would be great to think they can start selling from day one. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.

Even the most seasoned rep will need time to understand your company, products, USPs, and competitors.

So, how long does it take to get new hires up to speed and selling at full capacity? The answer, of course, will depend on your industry, company size and what you deem to be full productivity.

There are several ways to calculate ramp up time. The simplest method is to determine the average length of your sales cycle plus a further 90 days for sales training and onboarding.

For most companies, this sees a sales ramp up period of between three and six months. Quite a long time when you consider that typical rep turnover is just 24 months.

Regardless of how you calculate it, there’s one thing every sales manager can agree: it would be great to reduce your sales ramp up period.

Here’s some tips on how to help new hires reach peak productivity faster.

1. Hire wisely

Hiring a salesperson with the right skills, attitude and experience is the best way to reduce sales ramp up time for new recruits.

Without these fundamentals in place, even the best onboarding strategies will fall flat.

To find the ‘ideal sales rep’, you’ll need to have a clear idea of what you are looking for. Start by outlining a sales profile for your organisation focusing on:

• Attitude
• Knowledge
• Past performance
• Work experience
• Education

Those businesses that hire using a well-defined profile will find it easier to ramp up and maximise the sales potential of new team members.

2. Allocate a buddy

The first few days in any new job can be nerve wracking. A buddy system helps to counter this dynamic, resulting in a positive start and long-lasting benefits.

By pairing new hires with a high performing mentor, you can help to orient new recruits and promote ongoing onboarding and knowledge sharing to help speed up sales ramp time.

New employees will get to see your organisation’s sales process and culture first hand, resulting in a quicker settling in period and a faster route to full productivity.

Not all sales reps are cut out to be mentors, however. Those high performers that rely on their personal contacts or personality will not provide the best feedback for new recruits. Instead, look for reps that exhibit excellent sales behaviours and follow a thorough sales process.

3. Identify successful sales habits

One of the most effective strategies when developing training for new hires (or identifying potential mentors) is to ascertain what ‘good’ performance really looks like.

You can do this by benchmarking existing reps to earmark those high performers that exhibit repeatable behaviours for success.

How much time, for example, do your top reps spend sending emails or making calls? And which activities yield the best results?

Once you have identified the ideal sales habits, you are ready to devise appropriate training for a rapid ramp up to success.

Read more about benchmarking your sales team here.

4. Create effective onboarding resources

Sales onboarding provides newly hired sales reps with the required knowledge to excel in their new role. It will encompass everything they need to know about their new company and show them how to use the sales tools provided.

It should include:

• Company information
• Industry overview
• Unique selling points
• Product information
• Sales skills
• Sales processes and selling tools

A robust onboarding program allows reps to process and absorb information in a manageable way. Break information down into digestible chunks; set out well defined learning objectives; and provide reps with opportunities to practice what they have learnt.

Done well, this should ensure a reduction in the sales ramp up time, so new sales hires can start earning for your company as quickly as possible.

5. Introduce intelligent sales coaching

On-the-job coaching has an important role to play in reducing sales ramp up time.

Frontline sales managers always feedback to new reps, however effective coaching requires more than an occasional chat about deal progress.

Not least because asking sales reps to report their own performance can result in an overly optimistic assessment. Leading coaches to focus efforts in the wrong area or to overlook underlying weaknesses.

With access to accurate data on rep activity, coaches can call a halt to the guesswork and instead, discuss actionable account strategies or support specific skills development.

Read how productivity tools helped DTiQ to measure, monitor, and increase their output.

A further advantage of data-driven coaching is the ability to track indicators rather than outcomes.

By focusing solely on performance, managers may find themselves perceived as authoritarian, rather than a proactive mentor. New reps need to know how to reverse some of the shortcomings they are experiencing so that they can continue to improve.

Thus, when guidance is based on activity data, you’ll discover key insights and leading indicators that enable you to counteract the course of a deal in real time.

Not only does this approach make reps more productive, it also keeps them learning throughout their ramp up time and beyond.

Ready to ramp up?

Laying the foundation for sales rep success is impossible if you don’t have the facts at your fingertips. Relying on instinct is impractical and makes identifying and communicating best-practice almost impossible.

Instead, utilising a tool that can capture daily sales rep activity helps managers identify top performers based on productivity.

Strenstone uses productivity tools to give you the facts you need. Enabling you to benchmark success with a single performance score.

With data-based insights that are easy to access – and act on – you’ll be equipped to ramp sales reps faster and scale your team effectively for a faster route to sales success.

Find out how Strenstone can reduce your sales ramp up time. Book a Demo and Discovery call today.