One of the most difficult parts of building a sales force is bringing new account executives up to speed on your company’s sales process. As we mentioned in a prior post, having an established sales process is critical to your ability to measure your sales effectiveness and try new approaches. A written sales process also allows you to efficiently and effectively transfer that knowledge rapidly to new reps. Your team may possess raw sales talent, but if they’re not trained on your process, a lot of that talent may go to waste.
When a new sales rep is brought onboard, every company spends (or should spend) a considerable amount of time coaching and training on the product. Naturally, this makes sense and will be crucial to unlocking the talent of the rep. You shouldn’t anticipate closing many sales unless your reps have a firm understanding of the product, the customer’s pain points and the competition’s offerings. Often overlooked in training though is the process your company has established to actually close a deal and recognize the revenue.
As almost all sales reps can attest to, their first few deals always progress slower than they should. New reps inevitably struggle navigating all the hurdles put in place to actually recognize a deal. Getting the customer onboard is just one aspect, understanding the batch of forms, approvals and other legal and finance-related steps is another. While a new rep is selling the product, they also have to run a gauntlet of internal processes. Running a parallel process can be the difference between closing a deal by quarter-end and having it slip. As most have learned, time kills all deals.
What do I do now?
As a sales manager, even with naturally talented reps, this is the question that will continually arise during the first few sales cycles for all of your new reps. If it’s not your time that is being requested, it will invariably be that of several other reps in your company that are taking time away from their selling to help navigate the process for the new hire.
Sales execution platforms like Shibumi can help tie all of this together and save your team a ton of time while tying everything back to your existing Salesforce.com data. Further, you’ll be in a position to determine where bottlenecks or unncessary steps might be in your process that are hindering your reps’ ability to do their jobs effectively. Yours deals should close more smoothly and your reps will be confident in the process.
See how Shibumi can help you onboard faster and keep your new reps asking the question “Who do I close next” instead of “what do I do now?” Try Shibumi’s built in sales templates or develop your own to keep your team focused on what matters most – closing the deal.