An American networking solution provider with more than 1,800 IT professionals and more than 50 offices.

ITNO was hiring new geographically disbursed field sales representatives to increase revenue and decrease the amount of time needed to achieve sales quotas.

Regional efforts to onboard sales account managers was sporadic and a standardized, uniform approach leveraging best practices in each region did not exist. At the corporate level there was a traditional orientation model, but it was not sufficient to enable sales accounts to be successful. Very little orientation material existed to address the needs of new account managers to attain their quotas in a tightened timeframe.

ITNO needed an onboarding program for sales account managers that would help them:

• Have an in-depth understanding of the complete sales cycle
• Understand sales process, tools and metrics
• Learn corporate value propositions, culture and differentiators
• Develop a perspective on the organization as a whole and the capabilities that it offers

Attrition was higher than desirable levels within the sales account manager team. ITNO requested a customized onboarding program to help the new staff connect with the company and want to contribute longer than the average two-year standard attrition rate. The expectation was that the new program would connect new sales account managers with existing employees and senior staff to help develop a sense of community and belonging within the organization.

We worked with the client to identify success criteria and goals. A Global Knowledge transformation specialist validated desired learning outcomes, success criteria and completed an audience analysis. An onboarding model was then developed and agreed upon. Finally, the workshop content and materials were created.

We delivered an initial pilot session of the onboarding workshop and then revised the content based on feedback from the participants. Phase four was the repeated delivery of the onboarding session to the new hires at the ITNO. Our instructors ran one facilitator session for ITNO, and then we did a train-the-trainer class to teach them how to deliver the course content for future employees. Dozens of employees have been trained so far at three different major city locations on the east coast. Additional employees will be trained through this program as it will be repeated by ITNO as needed to onboard future sales account managers.

By working with Global Knowledge, ITNO was able to streamline the onboarding process for new sales account managers. In under a week, the new hires were equipped with more corporate process and industry knowledge than they would have been after six months of working without the training.

The client was able to quickly ramp new sales team members and expects to see them hit revenue goals in 12-18 months instead of the 18-24 month window that is more traditional. Global Knowledge put in place an onboarding program that gave the sales account managers the necessary skills to be more effective and sell more, even faster. ITNO continues to work with Global Knowledge experts to alter the program to fit changing needs.