The First 90 Days for Field Sales Reps The first 90 days for a field sales rep are the most critical of their career. Either they will start to hit their quota quickly and stay on long at the company, bringing in revenue for years to come. Or they will leave after a few months, having cost the company invaluable time to fill the position once again.

Shadowing another sales rep for a day or two does little to help a new Field Sales Rep get up to speed quickly. Reading through a large manual or online help containing a vast amount of product information also has limited value. Instead of holding an occasional meeting with a new Field Sales Rep to go over how things are going, sales management should invest their time in designing a structured onboarding process that includes a number of specific steps that the Rep goes through to become fully productive as quickly as possible.

How to Onboard New Field Sales Reps Faster: Best Practices

It’s generally accepted that getting an inside sales team member up to speed is faster to get right than getting a field sales team member up to speed. Field sales reps travel between different locations within a defined territory, build up client relationships face-to-face and manage their time to ensure they complete their routes on a daily basis. They also have to represent a company’s brand of products whilst traveling around and so they require in-depth onboarding and training in order to get the very best from them and to get them to start generating sales revenue as quickly as possible. 

Why Traditional Field Sales Rep Onboarding Programs Fall Short

A new hire entering the organization as a Field Sales Representative typically will enter the organization within the first 90 days of a new hire joining the company. A typical Field Sales Representative goes through a series of training events within the first 90 days of a new hire entering the organization as a Field Sales Representative. The initial 90 days of training events are designed to ready the new hire to become a successful Field Sales Representative within a 3 to 9 month time frame. However, readying a new hire to become a successful Field Sales Representative within a 3 to 9 month time frame equates to the new hire spending a long time learning how to sell from your company and thus not generating any sales for your company for a long time.   

The most common culprits behind slow onboarding include:

Information overload without structure. Overloading a new hire with too much information on a product can actually have a negative effect and prevent the representative from being able to perform his or her job effectively in the field. A Field Sales Representative needs to have information that will be used most in the sales process for the products that they will be selling.

No mobile-first delivery. A lot of where new field sales reps get stuck in a companies training program for new reps is because the training delivered to the rep is not delivered in a mobile-first format. Since most of a field sales reps time is spent in the field traveling from meeting to meeting and in client’s parking lots, it is not very effective to require a rep to access training on a laptop in a classroom. A  Mobile CMMS App that delivers all of the information that a rep needs to complete their work in the field is going to be a lot more effective at getting a rep up to speed quickly.

Disconnected tools and systems. The vast majority of a field sales rep’s information is stored in a number of different systems including a CRM such as Salesforce.com, a CMMS, Route Planning software and even static Product Knowledge documents. All of this information causes frustration to sales reps as they spend an inordinate amount of time switching between systems. That is where an AI-Driven Field Sales Management System comes in – bringing all of the information that sales reps need to perform their jobs every day into a single system that they can access as and when required. Understanding the CRM integration benefits for field sales teams — and acting on them before a new rep's start date — eliminates this friction from day one. 

Lack of performance benchmarks. Lacking the ability to clearly measure a field sales reps performance and provide additional training on areas where they may need help. Normally it would take a manager several months into a rep’s ramp to realize that they were having trouble but by then it would take just as long to get them back on track.

Build a Structured Field Sales Rep Onboarding Process: Week by Week

A lack of a structured onboarding process is often the biggest problem when it comes to the onboarding of field sales reps. Because most companies do not have a structured onboarding process in place for new field sales reps, they often follow an informal, often even random approach when it comes to onboarding a new field sales rep. The consequence of such an approach is that new field sales reps will often have to figure things out for themselves while they learn about the various systems, processes and ways of working within a company.

Week 1: Foundation and Familiarity

New field sales reps start with learning the Company Foundation and Familiarity with the basic of the company, the products, the territory and the required tools. They will receive an overview of all software that will be used on a daily basis and learn how to set up their respective logins and configure the required settings for the various Field Sales Management System modules. 

Cover the essentials: company mission, core product lines, target customer profiles, and key internal contacts. Set up all software access on day one — including CRM, Field Sales Tracking Software, and any communication tools.  

All reps will receive a designated ‘Buddy’ from the existing field sales reps to help answer any questions and provide guidance as needed. The buddy system is a great way to enable new reps to learn from the people that have first-hand knowledge of how things work on a daily basis and help to accelerate the learning process for the new reps.

Hand over the new hire to be mentored by an experienced Field Sales Rep, or even better, assign them a Buddy for the first few weeks of the onboarding process. The best person to teach a new hire the ways of a Field Sales Rep, is someone who recently went through the same process.

Week 2–3: Product Knowledge and Territory Deep Dive

Product knowledge training for field sales reps is hard to get right and is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today. As noted above, it’s essential that reps learn only the knowledge that they’ll be able to use to lead with in the field and to sell from. Typically, organizations cover their entire product catalog in training but only deliver the information that the veteran sales reps in the field use to close deals with customer objections in real-world scenarios. Use these scenarios to teach your reps how to handle a variety of sales situations, and then use role playing to act out client conversations.

Get your new field sales reps into product knowledge training as quickly as possible, using real-world selling scenarios. Use customer objections that have really been raised by your current field sales reps. Use role-plays of client conversations. Have your new reps go out into the field and shadow current reps on calls and sales visits. There’s just no substitute for the kind of context that a day of shadowing brings that reading a slide deck just can’t bring. Equipping reps with a mobile sales CRM during this phase means they're logging client interactions and building pipeline habits from the very first territory visit. 

New reps will continue to learn and develop in the following period of their onboarding when they get to know their assigned sales territory in greater detail. In this period they will get familiar with the geography of their territory as well as major accounts within it, the competitive landscape and the largest sales opportunities in their new sales territory.

Week 4–6: Supervised Field Activity

By week four, the field sales rep should be able to hit the road running, collecting information, learning to sell and close his/her first deals. The new rep should be supervised by a manager or senior rep for these first sales calls. The senior rep can observe how the new rep conducts the call and answers customer questions. Then, the manager or senior rep can provide the new rep with feedback on how he/she did on the call.

In addition to documenting the activities of the new field sales reps, log all of the activity in  Field Sales Tracking Software. This allows you and the rest of the sales management team to see the activity that your new reps are doing and become more productive over time.  

Week 7–12: Independent Ramp-Up with Ongoing Coaching

Onboarding with a coaching layer will consistently produce a field sales rep who hits full productivity and performance sooner and will sustain that higher level of performance longer.

Coaching sessions that are part of a sales rep onboarding timeline will ensure that your new field sales reps reach full productivity and maintain high levels of performance in the long term.

Mobile Field Sales Rep Onboarding: Why It Matters

There are a number of aspects of work that a Mobile CMMS App can make higher-leverage than a desktop version, and enabling mobile work for field sales rep onboarding is one of the biggest. As every sales person already carries a smart phone with them everywhere they go, training, reference material, and a performance management dashboard on their smart phone is something that’s going to get used.

On the other hand, laptops are rarely used by field sales reps as their primary work tool.

In the field, a work order contains client information, work order history, current route, and product information. By having this information available on their smart phones, field service reps are able to complete work more efficiently and effectively, especially during the early stages of learning.

Use Technology to Train Field Sales Representatives Faster

The highest performing field sales organizations today grow faster because they use smarter onboarding systems to get their new field reps up to speed faster. The right Field Sales Management System (FSMS) will automatically track all of a rep’s activities and flag for the manager where a rep has deviated from their scheduled route or where a rep has missed a planned visit with a customer. This system will provide the manager with insight into where a new rep could use some additional coaching before the small gaps in performance become big problems.

An AI-Driven Field Sales Management System can automate activity tracking, flag when reps deviate from planned routes or miss scheduled visits, and surface coaching insights that would otherwise require a manager to piece together manually.

This means that the manager of field sales reps can have all of the information they need about a new rep’s activity in real time. DreamzCMMS can automatically fill in all of the scheduling and workflows for reps as well as allow them to complete the work on the go using their mobile device. This information can then help the manager to identify where a rep might need a bit of extra coaching before the smallest of gaps in training turn into big problems with their performance.

Onboard Sales Reps Efficiently 

To bring it all together, here are the field sales rep onboarding best practices that consistently produce faster ramp times and stronger long-term performance:

Standardize before you scale. Set up a field sales rep onboarding process that can be replicated by others before you bring more people on board. A documented, structured field sales rep onboarding program is infinitely easier to execute consistently across a growing team — and when paired with tools that automate your field sales workflows, that consistency compounds into measurable productivity gains. 

Sequence information intentionally. Coordinate the information that is shared with new reps throughout the onboarding process. Avoid filling new reps with too much information in the beginning of onboarding and increase complexity as they become more proficient in their current phase of onboarding.

Make tools central from day one. First, make tools central to your onboarding program from the get-go. Set up your CRM and make sure your reps have access to the mobile app. Configure the rest of the tools you will be tracking as the rep goes through the onboarding process. There is no sense waiting until week two to turn on the tools that are supposed to help support reps’ learning! That would be a week of lost time.

Ready to Build a Faster Field Sales Onboarding Program?

The biggest difference between 60 and 180 days to bring a new field sales rep up to speed is process, tooling and support. We have set up a best-in-class onboarding process for sales reps that allows field operations and sales leaders to start bringing new hires up to speed quickly, reduce costs associated with turnover, and start have them start generating revenue for your company quickly.

At DreamzCMMS we understand the challenges that Field Operations and Sales Leaders face in onboarding their new sales reps to reach full potential as quickly as possible. We support the faster and smarter onboarding of field sales reps through mobile-first training delivery and real-time tracking of tracking rep activity.

Book a Free Demo to see how DreamzCMMS can help you cut the time it takes for your field sales reps to reach full potential in half the time – up to 50% less.