One of the most essential elements to include in a new sales hire onboarding process is a step for sales role-play. This would consist of practicing sales scenarios before a sales hire is put into action.

Decrease the Amount of Learning Through Trial and Error
There is no way to teach a new sales hire everything they need to know in an onboarding process. It is expected that you will establish a decent foundation of knowledge before you set a new sales hire free, and then that individual will learn and develop through real-life sales situations.

This learning process is natural, and a new sales hire will learn through trial and error. Nobody is perfect, and mistakes will be made. One main thing that you hope for is that the sales resource learns from these mistakes and continues to grow as a sales professional.

However, learning through trial and error is very expensive. Notice the word “error” and think about that for a minute. If small mistakes impact sales revenue, this could be one of the most expensive forms of sales training.

Learning through trial and error will always be present and should not be seen as a horrible thing. But you want to design your new sales hire onboarding program so that this type of sales training is minimized. Including some sales role-play in your onboarding process will help you do this.

Improve New Sales Hire Confidence
Another thing that sales role-play can do is help you to make your new sales hires more confident. With each practice and exchange, a new sales hire will feel more confident about what to expect and what to do when they are on the phone or put out into the field.

This improved level of confidence can directly impact the impression that a salesperson gives off. Instead of appearing nervous and anxious, a new sales hire will appear more comfortable and in control, and this can have a direct impact on their sales performance and results.

Decrease Anxiety and Call Reluctance
A salesperson’s performance can be directly linked to their sales activity. The more calls they make, the more meetings they have, and the more networking events they attend, the more they will sell.

Having an element of sales role-play in your new sales hire onboarding process will help make your sales hires more confident. By being more confident, the sales resources will have less anxiety and call reluctance. By decreasing these negative feelings and emotions, you should expect higher levels of sales activity, improving the probability of increased sales results.

Decrease Sales Ramp-Up Time
There is some ramp-up time with all new sales hires and new hire onboarding processes. If you look at the numbers, there will be some average amount of time it takes a new sales hire to operate independently and competently.

Of course, the shorter this ramp-up takes, the better you will perform from a sales performance standpoint. However, many factors determine how long it will take you to ramp up new sales hires. Many of those will be out of your control, but the ones in your control are.

For example, you may sell a complex product, and it will take a new sales hire a certain amount of time to understand everything.

But there are some things you can do with your new sales hire onboarding to decrease their ramp-up time, and one of those things is to choose whether or not to include sales role-play. There is no doubt that the more role-playing that new sales hires experience, the shorter their ramp-up time will be.

SalesScripter provides software to help you to implement this piece of your new sales hire onboarding.

 

You can try the SalesScripter sales role-play tool for free here.