What does onboarding mean? If you said “onboarding a salesperson” consists of doing the HR paperwork, giving a facility tour, a few days of shadowing existing salespeople, and then expecting the salesperson to hit the ground running, you’re not alone. Entirely too many sales managers feel that way—and then they wonder why they don’t get the results that they want.

Onboarding is defined as: “The time period, processes, and activities to prepare your new hire to make a quality sales call on your behalf.” Doing it properly requires 90 days—not nine.

The first 30 days focus exclusively on knowledge

During those first 30 days, your salesperson should be a sponge. You should be focused on providing everything that new salesperson needs to know to make a quality sales call and answer at least the most common customer questions. That means teaching:
• Your products and services, and the problems they solve
• Your target customers and prospects
• The specifics of their territory
• Your internal processes for order processing, shipping, billing, and profit generation
• Your sales culture and your sales training system

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