January 9, 2024 – 8 min read
The sales onboarding process for new sales reps is a critical phase in building a successful team. An essential component of this process is conducting regular, 1:1 meeting—a personal, one-on-one conversation between a sales leader and the new team member. These meetings are invaluable for creating a smooth and engaging onboarding experience, ensuring that the new sales representative is equipped with everything they need to excel in their role.
Onboarding is an essential step in fostering a productive, engaged, and dedicated employee. One of the most crucial components of this process is regular 1:1 meetings. This personal interaction forms the backbone of effective onboarding, setting the stage for further growth, engagement, and loyalty of your sales team.
As a leader, it is essential to make the most of your time with new reps to ensure their long-term success. With a more formalized approach to your 1:1 meetings, you can create an onboarding experience that equips new reps with the information and support they need to excel in their roles.
The Impact Plan is an essential tool for successful onboarding. The Impact Plan focuses on the key elements that contribute to speed to proficiency, engagement, and motivation. Major components of this plan include:
Understanding the Business and Products: Clear and comprehensive understanding of the business and product line is paramount. Ensure your team members are working through the company resources and attending the required training to get them up to speed. During your 1:1 meeting, ask questions to ensure an understanding of the business and products and coach them to accelerate their success.
Setting Performance Goals: Set performance goals that are realistic as well as ambitious. Give them a clear idea about their responsibilities and targets that need to be met. Be specific about the activities they may be measured on—for example: quarterly quotas, calls/visits per day/week, revenue targets, etc.
Comprehensive Toolset: The impact plan should include any and all information that is critical to a new hire’s success, such as sales training, strategies, processes, tools, technologies, resources, tips for relationship building, and conflict resolution.
Regular Review and Feedback: Regular review and feedback play a crucial role in shaping a successful salesperson. It provides them with the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and improve their methods.
As with any meeting, proper preparation is vital for conducting productive 1:1 onboarding meetings with your sales reps:
According to an industry survey, 74% of sales reps, sales managers spend anywhere from zero to three hours coaching newly onboarded reps. By contrast, 45% of sales leaders say they spend that amount of time coaching onboarded reps.
The length and frequency of 1:1 meetings depends on the end in mind for the meetings. Most 1:1 meetings are between 30 and 60 minutes. When considering meeting length consider what time is needed to allow for some personal catch-up, discussion of main meeting topics, sharing feedback, and setting action items. Begin by starting with a shorter meeting and then assessing if this is enough time to cover all topics without feeling rushed.
Use a similar approach as it relates to the frequency of meetings. If you’re meeting on activities that need more frequent monitoring, then a weekly cadence may make the most sense. In onboarding, it’s best to start with more frequent meetings and then taper back as employees become more familiar with their roles and don’t require as much guidance.
Regardless of whether you choose to meet weekly or bi-weekly, for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, or somewhere in-between, always be respectful of people’s time. This means coming prepared to the meeting with a clear agenda, starting and ending meetings on time, and allowing enough time for discussion and feedback.
Periodically assess if any of your 1:1 meetings need realignment as needs, priorities, roles, and projects change.
Here are some questions that can enhance your 1:1 meetings with team members:
The impact of 1:1 meetings on sales onboarding success is undeniable. These personalized interactions between sales representatives and their leaders have far-reaching effects on individual performance, team dynamics, employee engagement, and overall sales outcomes.
Additional benefits include:
Companies with a formal onboarding program report that 60.7% of reps reached full productivity within the first six months, and 85% of reps reached full productivity within the first 11 months. For those without a formal onboarding program, those numbers were 42.8% and 67.8%.
1:1 meetings are pivotal in the sales onboarding process, offering personalized guidance, building trust, and clarifying expectations. By including goal setting, performance feedback, role-playing exercises, and Q&A sessions in these meetings, sales managers can create a supportive and productive environment for new sales representatives. Proper preparation for 1:1 meetings, coupled with the use of technology, ensures a seamless onboarding experience that leads to accelerated learning, improved sales performance, and enhanced team cohesion.
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