How To Quickly Integrate A New Salesperson Into Your IT Company, Part 1
By Dennis O’Connell, Business Development Manager, HTG Peer Groups
I was asked by one of our peer group members to provide some advice as it related to the hiring and onboarding of a new salesperson. The potential hire did not have an IT industry background. So my advice to him was twofold, focusing around how to get the non-IT person up to speed and how to quickly integrate the new hire into their company.
This article, the first in this two-part series, will focus on how to quickly and effectively get a non-IT person the industry knowledge necessary to sell successfully. This applies to any company that is hiring a salesperson with no experience selling in their particular vertical market, not just those within the IT industry.
In a previous job of mine with a large technology provider, I moved into a sales group tasked with calling on our Telco customers. During one of my first customer meetings, I was listening to the discussion and more than once the three-letter acronym of ATM came up. I was struggling to understand how automatic teller machines fit into the discussion. It just didn’t make sense. After the meeting, I approached one of my team members only to find out they were talking about asynchronous transfer mode. I suddenly discovered that there was a whole new language I was going to have to learn.
This drives my first bit of advice: understand your new salesperson is learning a new language. Yes, a salesperson knows how to sell. Yes, the salesperson is likely good with people and can be successful. But it will require some work to learn industry jargon and to be conversant enough with IT-speak to be able to identify and opportunity and close a deal independently.
As with any new language, this will take time. It won’t be as hard as learning Spanish or German, but it will take an intentional effort. The first three months are going to tedious. You will want to go along or ask a technical person to go on most of the calls with the salesperson for the first few months. You will want to have constant discussions about products and take the time to explain the solutions you sell. Don’t assume a new hire knows what you are talking about. Instead, assume the salesperson doesn’t know. And continually ask the salesperson to explain back to you what you said in his or her own words.
Plan your training schedule. Set aside two days for each of the different products and services you expect the salesperson to sell. Some example questions around one product might be as follows: What is a server? Why do we sell them? What value does this product bring to the customer? What is the price range for which a salesperson is permitted to sell this server? What are the parts that make up the server? Who on your staff is the most proficient in this product? Who does the new hire go to with questions? Can the salesperson escalate to you if the questions aren’t being answered?
So think servers, firewalls, encryption, cloud, Office365, antivirus, and BDR (backup and disaster recovery) to name a few. In just this short list you now have 14 training days.
Use all of your different staff to help the salesperson learn. Your engineers will look at a problem differently than your dedicated quote creator. Two engineers will each explain things differently. Get them involved in the training. It will do two things. First, it will help them articulate the solution better in their head. Second, it should help with team integration.
Have the new salesperson start to shadow a few of your better technical staff at least one day a week.
- This will build rapport between sales and service.
- The salesperson will get a great understanding of what he or she is selling and how your team supports it.
- This will help in the development of industry vocabulary.
- Give the salesperson the license to ask questions to the tech in front of the customer. Sometimes the customer doesn’t really understand what is happening either and will not ask questions for fear of “looking stupid.” Make sure the sales rep has a license for “looking smart” by knowing which questions to ask to help the customer understand.
- Ensure you get buy-in from the technical resources and have a conversation with them to explain the purpose behind the ride alongs.
- Have the new hire start making appointments with his or her network. This brings accountability and builds confidence. This is where the new salesperson can lead the meeting.
At the end of all this, whether it is three months or twelve months, your new salesperson should be able to articulate the value of your product, be able to differentiate you from your competitors, and go out on calls independently and win business.
Happy onboarding!
Dennis O’Connell is part of a team of coaches and consultants serving the IT industry. Prior to joining the HTG Peer Groups staff, he spent almost 35 years in various roles on both the technical and sales side of IT companies including a large original equipment manufacturer (OEM) along with both large and small managed services provider. As a business owner, he created his own peer group to provide guidance and feedback for his company. He loves helping sales executives maximize their potential and their impact on their company’s bottom line. You can reach him at doconnell@htgpeergroups.com or on LinkedIn.