Very frequently in businesses, management sees significant periods of time in which new hires are not yet contributing to sales, internal culture, and the overall success of the company. In many cases, it can take eight months for a newly hired employee to reach full productivity.  One of the best ways to have new employees become successful, is to have a great on-boarding process.

Within a Sales team, your phone system can play a large role in lowering the ramp time for new hires. Why not utilize the tool already embedded in the day to day of your business to train and motivate new hires? Below are 5 tips on how you can lower ramp time and on-boarding for new hires:

Good Role Models - Learn from the Best!

One of the best ways to learn, is to have some of the highest performing members of your team lead by example. These team members have worked tirelessly to become the best of the best, so let them show it off to the newbies! New hires can use call recordings to listen to both successful calls and past unsuccessful calls to learn the best techniques and styles to communicate. Live monitoring of calls can allow new hires to learn, sales, and customer communications. Using a monitoring tool creates the ability to hear both sides of the call without needing to be directly next to the sales rep.

Live Coaching and Feedback

When new hires begin to call prospects, customers, and candidates for the first time, it can be a difficult skill to grasp and successfully achieve. To be honest, it can be scary! Whether fresh out of school, or with years of experience starting with a new product and company; these nerves are more common than you think. The coaching, feedback, and tools that a manager supplies to a new hire can make or break how their learning and skills progress. Tools that allow a manager to live coach a junior member of the team creates a supportive and developmental environment to ensure that quality conversations are occurring.

Continuity of Care

When turnover happens, the hardest thing for a new hire to do is obtain the information discuss prior calls. This can add a significant period to on-boarding. By having detailed call notes and call recordings associated to records in your CRM or ATS, the disconnect is removed; as new hires are able to have full visibility of the history and status of the account. No one likes to have the same question asked twice, so ensure that all information is properly stored for the next person taking over a relationship.

Set Expectations

Setting expectations, goals, and reviewing KPIs is one of the key aspects of a successful training process. 60% of companies fail to set milestones or motivating goals for new hires. The number of outbound dials is typically a major KPI, but stating a KPI does not mean anything if it can not clearly be seen or measured. Using reporting and call statistics associated with your phone system helps to define the expectation, allowing new hires to ramp up more efficiently.

Company Culture and Competitive Environment

In customer facing roles, it is important to create a competitive environment, while supporting a fun and collaborative culture. Call statistics and live dashboards can be posted publicly, to allow for a competitive atmosphere. Call statistics play a major role in any internal gamification of the sales process. Ring a bell, play a song, and improve the way that new and current employees feel valued when they reach important metrics. When new hires are brought into an environment of fun & motivational competition, it leads to faster and more inclusive on-boarding.

Originally posted on the CloudCall Blog