Onboarding
Good onboarding is measurable
Onboarding makes or breaks the seller experience and defines initial levels of brand loyalty. It sets sellers up for success or failure. But, how are you measuring the effectiveness of your onboarding?
Why is good onboarding so important?
- It sets people up for success
- It instills confidence
- It generates early wins
- It cultivates a learning mindset
- It frees up leaders to support on a more personalized level
- Ultimately, it improves outcomes, which reduces churn
How do you know if your Onboarding is Working
You can’t improve what you can’t measure
Good onboarding reduces churn and sets sellers up for success. But, if you can’t measure that success then how do you know whether your onboarding is actively supporting your organization’s goals?
For 2023, companies that can measure the success of their onboarding and actively pivot to make adjustments and improvements based on unique onboarding requirements will be the ones who see their churn rate reduce, happiness increase and salesforce productivity boom.
What to measure?
Completion Rate |
How many sellers have completed training. |
Incomplete Modules |
What sections of onboarding do sellers miss, stop halfway through, fail the quiz. |
Critical Action Taken |
Do learning modules relate to or result in action? And, if so, is it the relevant and critical action? |
Time to Productivity |
How quickly a new seller is operating a clear, repeatable sales process. |
Compliant Behavior |
Do those who complete onboarding engage in more compliant activity? – Messaging, social media posts, sales tactics, etc. |
Satisfaction Rate |
Are sellers satisfied with their experience? Are they satisfied with the content? Do they find it useful? |
Knowledge Retention |
Do sellers simply click through content or do they retain knowledge? What evidence is provided? |
Feedback |
Do sellers enjoy onboarding? Do they find it effective? What else do they want to learn? |
Need a learning experience that drives results and sparks joy?
The Lifecycle of Onboarding
A good onboarding system goes beyond learning, it also acts as a guide to your sellers. The journey your seller goes on should be carefully mapped to:
- Mitigate insecurity and/or disengagement
- Celebrate moments of success
- Focus on one outcome at a time
- Deliver the right learning at the right time
- Bring back information at the right time
- Nudge with learning and re-learning triggers
- Share advanced knowledge when they’re ready
Companies that invest in smart onboarding will have an advantage over competitors because of the ability to predict and mitigate churn based on their lifecycle journey.
To find out more about the Evolution of Onboarding solutions check out this report ›
Expert Perspective
Capture and Retain Attention while Cultivating a Learning Mindset
In today’s attention economy, nothing is more valuable than time and attention. The most addictive apps and social media tools capitalize on this fact with unique digital design with nudges, notifications, small doses of novel information, behavioral tactics like taps and swipes, maximizing screen real estate, and motivating users with gamified experiences that can earn social validation.
But impressive design only takes us about 50% of the way toward the future of Learning and Onboarding. The next 25% rests on quality content that is accessible, relevant, and inspiring. The final 25% rests on the “so what” factor — the impact of the learning, and the ability to prove that learning results in the right behaviors, completion of the right tasks, and the ability to cultivate a learning and (re)learning mindset. This is no small feat for social selling, but certainly one worth investing in for the happiness of your sellers.
Act before doubt creeps in
I encourage you to go ahead and take the time from the minute that someone decides to join your company until their kit arrives. Utilize that time because they’re thinking about how they’re going to make this work for them. I encourage you to go ahead and pick up the phone and give them a welcome call. Make them feel like they’re part of a company before their kit even arrives in the mail. This small token will pay dividends.
Focus on effective training strategies
The biggest opportunity for social selling in 2023 is to have effective training strategies when onboarding your new distributors. Especially in this digital world, it’s absolutely crucial to have this effective training in place to encourage engagement and also help drive that business success.
Key Takeaways
- Good onboarding sets sellers up for success.
- But, current corporate onboarding programs are out of date.
- 58% of sellers don’t recommend current corporate onboarding programs.
- Sellers need onboarding that’s personalized to their journey.
- Right information
- At the right time
- Delivered in a familiar format
- Celebrating every milestone
- Track onboarding performance to identify where onboarding fails sellers.
- Iterate and improve based on the metrics that matter.
- Field Retention
- Time to Sale
- Seller Happiness
