Case study: Implementing an “onboarding ecosystem” to reduce time to proficiency by 50%
New sales recruits at a successful, mid-sized tech startup were taking over six months to hit their sales quotas. Our objective was to halve this. We developed an “onboarding ecosystem” which included workflows and supporting systems, to enable new starters to hit the ground running.
Situation
A mid-sized tech startup ($100 million turnover / 250 employees) wanted to improve onboarding new salespeople, who were taking an average of six months to hit their sales quotas (and even after six months their sales quotas were not being met consistently).
Our goals were to:
halve time to proficiency
reduce new hires leaving, and
reduce handholding for sales leaders.
The value of a successful outcome was calculated at $272k / year:
B2B sales team generates approximately $60 million in revenue per year
Average sales quota per salesperson $200k per year
Approximately 8 new salespeople recruited per year
Extra revenue per new salesperson = $34k x 8 salespeople
Expected ROI: $272k / year
Additional ROI also created via existing salespeople also using the solution
If successful, this solution would deliver over $1 million within 4 years.
Analysis
Through interviews with new hires, high performers, and sales managers, it became clear that there were several reasons for the unsatisfactory performance of new starters, and more broadly, the sales team as a whole.
Reasons why new starters weren’t performing as hoped:
No onboarding plan. While HR did have a procedure for administrative onboarding, there was no plan for role-specific onboarding. Role onboarding was left to the Sales Department. The Sales Department’s “plan” was for staff to provide “on-the-job” training as time allowed, with the hire’s remaining time to be filled by unstructured reading and watching of resource material.
No structured mentoring. New hires were not assigned a dedicated mentor but were just introduced to the team and told they could ask anyone questions when necessary. Different salespeople or the sales manager would train them as the situation required. New salespeople felt lost and overwhelmed.
Study/training was not directly linked to practice. It was not possible for new hires to understand how the resource material they were consuming related to what they were expected to do on the job. There was no practicing of tasks—instead, new recruits were expected to observe what more senior salespeople were doing and ask questions. However, management and other staff members were too busy with their own work to (enthusiastically) assist.
Workflows not documented. New salespeople were expected to learn what to do by observing, asking questions, and receiving guidance when provided. This left new salespeople struggling to fully understand their role and company expectations. Not to mention, veteran salespeople all worked differently, so it was difficult for new salespeople to know what good performance looks like. Output quality was also inconsistent among salespeople.
Information not indexed. The Sales Department resources were not centralized or indexed. Salespeople either learned slowly over time where different resources were saved, or ignored them completely. Also, resources were often out of date or no longer relevant.
Overwhelmed management. Because of a lack of documented, consolidated workflows, sales leaders were spending a large amount of their time hand-holding new starters. This left managers feeling frustrated and salespeople feeling like a burden.
Subjective performance assessment. Beyond sales results, sales managers had no way of assessing why a new recruit wasn’t performing, and so made their assessments subjectively, which led to inconsistent management and frustration all round.
Solution
Using our previous experience with building and implementing “onboarding ecosystems,” we proposed a similar solution, leveraging tech that the client was already using. This included workflows and supporting systems (see “Our Approach” for an example of what this might look like.)
Key insights and outcomes
Our solution not only supports new starters, but also provides a scalable framework that benefits existing salespeople. Effective onboarding becomes the de-facto way of working, and onboarding becomes “everboarding”.
Expected outcomes from this approach include:
Decreased time to proficiency for new salespeople
Increase in job satisfaction and motivation for new salespeople
Reduced handholding for sales managers
Reduced loss of high-potential salespeople
Shift towards a high-performance culture, in which standards are raised and excellence becomes the norm
Improved ability to attract top talent due to enhanced reputation
While progress is still being made, feedback from key stakeholders has been positive. Progress toward the goals is on track. We remain optimistic about the next steps and are committed to refining the solution based on feedback and further testing.