Onboarding with Ombud

When you hire a new person for your revenue team, your organization is impatient to get them up to speed quickly. 

It takes a while to ramp up, though. Conventional wisdom states that it takes an average of three months for sales reps to get up to full productivity, and it’s the same for reps on the technical side of sales. According to Bridge Group, sales development reps (SDRs) take an average of 3.1 months to start hitting their targets. 

Most organizations don’t want to wait that long for new sales and proposal team members to start hitting sales targets. That’s where automation comes in. 

New revenue team hires need help

It’s important to remember that three months until full productivity is just an average. 

For some longer sales cycles, it can take between six and nine months. Even experienced salespeople, sales engineers, and proposal writers can take a while to help your organization hit revenue goals, and if you’re hiring entry-level people, it can take even longer. The Sales Management Association (SMA) puts the number at 11 months.  Rain Group breaks it down further: although sellers might be ready to talk to customers in three months, they’re not competent to perform until nine months out, and the success of new talent depends heavily on their manager. New sales personnel with weak management are 240% less likely to become top performers. 

Automation is a way to help with onboarding and keep your hires on track to making their sales goals. 

How can automation help new sales hires? 

1. Information is available when your new hires need it: One of the most difficult parts of a new job is learning the ropes. A content library like the one created by Ombud puts information at your employees’ fingertips. Even your newest hires will be able to find the information they need quickly when talking to prospects or writing a bid. Eventually they may know the answers by heart, but at the start, they’ll know where to find the information they need. 
2. It keeps institutional knowledge in house: Former team members knew your product and your customers backward and forward, but once they packed up and went to another job, that information went with them. A searchable content library keeps that information in the organization, where new hires can find it. (It also keeps you from wanting to pick up the phone and call your former team members for help, even though they no longer work with you.)
3. It breaks down silos: Your newest hires don’t know where they need to go to find the information they need for their bid. They don’t know which SMEs are most responsive, or who to talk to when their go-to person is on vacation. Having a central content library means that all the information is accessible, no matter how new your team member is, or who is out sick. 
4. It makes writing proposals easier: When your newest hire has to write their first proposal, Ombud helps them by allowing them to use a template and tagged data that fits what they’re writing. Using machine learning, Ombud suggests the best content for their bid, taking the first pass at building a draft so your new hire doesn’t have to put a proposal together from scratch. Then they can use that draft as the first step in their writing process, iterating on it with existing team members until it’s customized to the client and ready to be sent out.
5. It keeps training fresh in their minds: Even if you have invested heavily in training your newest hires, they’ll need that information reinforced daily. According to research, 87% of sales training content is forgotten within one month. Having a content library available allows your newest hires to reach for the information they need when they need it.

Sales professionals are burnt out, automation can help

Sales turnover is a constant issue for revenue teams, but lately, the turnover for sales professionals has been higher than usual because sales pros are in demand. According to LinkedIn, sales turnover was up 39% in 2021.

Revenue professionals are leaving work for many reasons, including burnout. The best thing  you can do to keep those team members is to support them, from the moment they’re hired throughout their time without. Automation can help you do that by  enabling the people who most need it: your new hires. 

Request a demo today.