Congratulations- you are growing and therefore are in a position to hire a large group of new hires to fulfill work positions within your organization. This is a great achievement and marks positive growth within your business. However, you and your management team may feel stress and anxiety as you prepare for this large influx of people as there is a need for a variety of activities. These are recruitment, selection, hiring, training and managing of this new team or new set of individuals on the team.
Prior to this point, one important indicator of success is whether you have systems and processes in place which makes it possible to have that large group be able to perform as quickly as possible when they come in. These must be set up first in order for anything else to be successful.
For example, say you are hiring 50 new sales people. It isn’t enough to have them all start and hope that they will adopt a sales model that will work within your organization. You must have the sales model identified and have specific processes behind it with proven data from existing sales representatives to teach and illustrate how sales should work within your organization. That isn’t to say you can implement a new sales process, but it is imperative to first match it to current culture and systems and then apply it. Hoping that people will just “get” something by watching others isn’t going to bring you to the results you are looking for in those new team members.
Once you have systems and processes in place that illustrate best practices and success in sales results, you can train those new hires to follow the same systems and processes for success. Through scenarios, case studies and hands-on practice, you can set them up for success before they “practice” with your real life customers.
Four Questions To Understand the Investment
Four questions to ask yourself as you look at the investment for setting up systems/process and then training on those systems/processes:
1. What is the cost to replace a new hire after they have been recruited, hired and trained?
2. What is the cost to lost customer sales in that initial 90 day period and beyond if 50 new hires that were hired aren’t set up to be successful?
3. What about the cost of lost productivity by your more experienced team members who must mentor and train these 50 people to be able to sell?
4. What about the loss to the company culture and morale when 50 people come in without knowing the culture and values of the organization?
When you break down the numbers, they can be significant. Also, considering the cost of customer acquisition is also a significant factor.
Four-Prong Approach
The best solution is to implement a four-prong training strategy for training new sales people. This ensures they have a holistic view of the company, customer and product(s). Investing in training in the first 30,60,90 days will allow you to ensure your sales reps will be successful selling right away.
This can be accomplished through online learning or a blend learning strategy depending on the number employees and locations you have. More detail coming in part 2.