Successful Onboarding

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning It Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems, and with me is Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. As the ad age goes, you don't have a second chance to make a first impression. Just like when you invite employees to join your team, you must onboard them the best way possible for everyone to be successful. Let's set the bar high as Bill and I discussed successful onboarding and other motivating material on episode 638 of the Winning It Selling Podcast.

0:33 It is so hard to really get someone started well. I hear horror stories all the time. Well, we're ready to start you, but we don't have a computer for you. We don't have your passcodes to get onto the system. Why don't you sit down and read this book for a while. Here's our catalog. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's like you're going to start somebody. Let's have a plan of action and I know people talk about onboarding, but I'm not sure that they do it well, so I'm looking forward to hearing that.

1:13 Yeah. Before we get into that topic, though, we are on chapter 6 and 7 of New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. Chapter 6 is our sales weapons. What's in the arsenal? We talked about kind of the violent nature of Mike Weinberg. Yeah. In this weapons and explosions. It's a war out there. Marshaling the weapons in your arsenal. Yeah. So there's about 15 or 20 of them here that he's got. And Scott and I are going to talk about a few of them in detail and maybe skip the rest just in the end of time.

1:44 But he starts off with our sales story. He gives that pride a place because I obviously it's going to be very important to him because the next two chapters are going to be about it. Chapter 7 and 8, maybe even more, are going to be without the sales story. So we'll talk about that when we get to chapter 7 here. So Scott networking. Yeah. One of the ones that I picked is networking. And as Mike said in the book, it's the proverbial key to the city.

2:08 Perverbal. Perverbal. And I agree with that. I think networking, I'm involved in a lot of groups that tend to a lot of meetings. I attended one yesterday and I'm always grateful to see people that I know, but I'm also grateful to be introduced to other people. And the point of the networking is to be able to build relationships, referral relationships, build that network of resources. And you never know when you're going to need to talk to somebody that you meet at a networking event.

2:33 So keep track of them. And I always follow up with LinkedIn invites. So when you meet somebody in a networking event, send them a LinkedIn invite, follow them on LinkedIn and see what's going on in their world. And what is interesting to them and what they post. Yeah, I think the most the easiest thing to do in a networking situation is meet the people you already know. And don't try to sell with them. Yeah. But I'm saying you need to meet somebody new.

2:55 Right. Don't just keep talking to the people you know that doesn't do you any good. It's time that we'll go to a meeting together and not sit together. Right. I mean, it's like I'll go to these meetings. Five people from the same company. I'll sit at the same table. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, great. Now you can all talk to each other about your company issues or whatever. All right. Number two, social media. I think the most important social media for my type of business is LinkedIn.

3:17 Yeah. You mentioned using LinkedIn to meet people. I think what LinkedIn really does is keeps me connected to old customers. I always find old customers are linked in and reattach myself reconnect with them. And so plus I get messages out. I develop a following of leadership. So I think that's an important social media. I do know people that for them, Facebook is very important or Instagram is very important. So whatever it is, you've got to make a commitment to it.

3:47 You can't just do it every six months. Yeah. All right. The next one is email. We're going to skip over that one. We all know what email is. I would just say be careful that you aren't sending out these thousands of emails to people you've never met. I get them on LinkedIn all the time. I don't care. I'm not answering. I get the one. Oh, I guess you don't like me because you didn't answer my email. Like, crime me a river.

4:14 Yeah. Circle back to put this at the top of your box. You're in box. Yeah. Don't put it at the top of my list. Just leave. Yeah. And that's so noisy. Emails are so noisy for prospecting. Unless you've got a specific thing you can reference. Yeah. Don't send them. Yeah. I like the next one, the proactive telephone call. I mean, this is, you know, as Mike says, bar none, the phone is still the most deadly and accurate weapon to score a face-to-face meeting with a targeted prospect, what a qualified sentence, targeted prospect.

4:46 And using the phone call, you're going to stand out of the noise because emails are so noisy. What calls do I get from people that want to have a conversation with me during the day? Zero. Zero. Constantly. All of these automated calls, it's almost like I don't want to answer the phone. And unfortunately, we're working on desensitizing our prospects for answering the phones because of all these telemarketing campaigns.

5:07 And it's just not effective. However, if you leave an effective voicemail, that can really add, which is the next one that we don't really... I'm not thinking about... I'm glad you're going to mention because I know you have some theories on those. My question to people, when they leave a voicemail message is, would you call you back? And I know in some cases when I say to them, no, I wouldn't call you back with that voice.

5:31 There's no compelling message. This is a commercial phone. This is Bill from Radio Shack and I thought I'd call you. See how you doing? Touchbase, yeah. Who needs it? Okay. Traditional printed marketing material, I think that's an important tool to have in your hand. There's a brochure leave behind, something like that. I don't feel that people look at digital stuff very much, but if it's something that can land their desk, they might be a reminder to them.

5:58 Next one is digital marketing, blogs, podcasts, online videos and webinars. Scott and I have been doing this podcast for four years now. We're finally getting results from it that we can see as tangible results where our clients and prospective clients are listening to our podcast and they are reacting to them in a positive way. So what I would say is if you do it for two months and it doesn't work, you haven't done it long enough.

6:25 You need to be committed to it. You need to be committed to it. We have not missed a week in over four years. We've done our podcast every week and because of that, people are talking about us and we're getting leads from that. Whatever you do, don't do three of them and think you've done it. You have to make a commitment to it and then you need to find a way to break through the clutter. White papers and industry experts, nice leave behinds.

6:55 I don't lead with white papers. Do you, Scott? I don't. I think they're too long. I don't think people have the attention. I think it can really serve as a good credibility tool after they commit and maybe go through a white paper together with them so that they know a process they're going to be going through. Yeah, as part of the end of your sales call, if you want some evidence that you. But it's not my leader. Yeah.

7:20 One of the ones I love is the initial face-to-face sales call. This is sitting across the table, having a conversation with somebody and be able to watch their body language, to be able to feel their expressions, that they have their reactions, to be able to see if they're getting emotional about stuff that you're bringing up and questions that they're asking and to be able to find out how can we connect with each other.

7:42 That face-to-face meeting, I think really only happens, needs to happen once. In some cases, and you do everything virtually or on the phone or via email. But once you know that person and you feel a connected connection to them, I think it makes it a lot easier to have that relationship. And that face-to-face can be online. Yeah, well, yeah. We've had a number of clients that we're talking to right now that we were able to meet in person because they don't live here.

8:05 They're not in this town. Right. So it can still be face-to-face in a web call. But I don't think it can be cameras off. I don't think it's as good on a phone call. So I think that face-to-face is important. And that's my favorite part of selling as well. And it's my favorite part because of the next one, probing questions. This is nothing new to our listeners. Design good questions. Have a storehouse of them. When you're going to meet with somebody, sit down and pick 10 questions that you want to ask and put them in the right order and then start asking those questions.

8:38 You'll get better at them over time, but you will not magically think of the good ones when you're in the call. So prepare your questions and move on. A couple more that we're not going to go into detail. Case studies, those are a leave behind, I think, a good testimonial. Samples and demos. I think if I can hold on to something, I worked with Capital Safety, which was a company that did Des Harnesses. They're now part of 3M.

9:04 But safety harnesses, lanyards, those sorts of things, and they had a truck they drove around that they could lift up something off the tailgate and show people how the harness would work if you drop just three or four feet. And it was a very, very impactful demo. So those are important. Next one is trade shows. Almost every one of our clients does some kind of trade show work. They're at trade shows and they get a ton of their business from trade shows.

9:35 We don't really do those because we don't have really the resources to do them. But I do think trade shows can be very powerful because you meet a lot of people. Do something with the cards. I had a client once got that waited three or four months to do anything with the cards and then they were surprised that they had already bought from somebody else. Right. Like I think you're waiting too long. Right. Right. Exactly.

10:00 Those need to be entered into the CRM and scheduled a call the week after when everybody gets settled down. One of the ones that I like is the facility tours. Bill, you and I went through a facility tour of when we got started. Oh my gosh, what has that started? It was a half hour, 45 minutes. It felt like it was three hours. I mean, it was so intense and all the detail. Everybody working together in different crews and different pits and different process.

10:24 It was just a whole mind. Expanded our mind of what the company did. We thought, oh, it's just a little kind of mail order company. Right. We were doing some mentoring stuff. This is, it was wonderful. It was incredible. And those facility tours when you bring prospects through can be very impactful because you're really seeing that, you know, this is how we work. This is how the sausage is made. This is the quality. This is the people.

10:50 This is the culture that we create. And prospects can feel that energy when they walk into a company. I feel that when we walk into a client's plant and manufacturing and it's amazing to see how everybody's working and smiling and loving their jobs. And it's just like, wow, this is a great culture. And that's very impactful. All right. Next one is team selling, which I didn't do a lot for 30 years. And then Scott and I started working together.

11:14 I didn't mind selling by myself, but man, are we more powerful together than I ever was by myself? Because one of you can be listening while the other one might be engaging the client or the prospect in a conversation. All we've had to learn over time is not to interrupt each other, not to step on each other to know what that person is kind of moving toward and not usurp it. And sometimes we still do. We have a call afterwards.

11:42 It's like, hey, you kind of jumped on my toes there. Right. Yeah. I'll get in a different direction. Okay. I won't do that in the future. So you've got to be able to take that construction and move it forward. The next two, the next two entertainment, I think, taking people out for a baseball game. I do think you build rapport outside the work situation. So taking people to things can be very powerful. Learning about their families is important.

12:18 Presentations. I don't do a lot of presentations. But I think if you have something that you can present on, maybe a software package or something, you're going to have to do a presentation on it. But that's late in the deal for me. That is not an upfront weapon. It's a closing weapon. I think that needs to be a clarified bill because you teach presentation skills. And I was surprised that you'd elaborate more on that one because that's one of the strengths that you deliver to your clients.

12:44 And in context, it's at the end of the sales cycle. Like I've always said, it's a confirmation of a commitment is everything in that presentation. Salesperson has been listening, the prospects been sharing, and together we come up with a great presentation as to how we're going to work together, which then sets up for the next one. Well, let me just say one thing on that. If you do your presentations early, which might also be your company pitch, which some people won't say is the sales story.

13:11 Anyway, you do that early. You're guessing. Right. I'm out at the wall and hoping to see in what sticks. So the presentation is a confirmation, as Scott said, of the things we've discovered and how we're going to work together, which the next one is the proposal. That's a written confirmation of the things that we've talked about and how we are advising them to work together. I think the important thing about a proposal, make sure you put the situation in it.

13:37 That's a summary of the discussions that you've had so far and what you've discovered or what you've agreed to that the issues are and how you're going to deal with those issues. But I go into a proposal conversation and I say, this is not cast in stone. If you see some of my missed that we need to change, let's add, subtract, whatever. And that last call that we had with the last client that we closed and we're working on, he changed two or three things in it.

14:03 And said, don't take that out. I don't think that's really an issue. And I was so happy that he did that because it tightened it up. It made it a better proposal for him. And I think it's important and you brought this up to our listeners before the difference between a proposal and a quote. A proposal is an overall solution. A quote is a price. Is that right? That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so many of us throw quotes and you don't throw your proposal or your quote over the wall.

14:32 I sent you the quote, sent you the proposal. What do you think? I go through the proposals with people so they understand them. And even if I'm just doing a quote, I would go through that quote with them and say, here's what we're going to offer. Here's what you don't see when you just see the price. Right. You can't add value unless you discuss value when you're giving a proposal or a quote. Last one. And I think there's important to have three quotes, three prices, three options within a proposal.

15:01 That way the customer, the prospect ends up picking what's best for them. The next one is one of my favorites and that's references. A reference begins with the first conversation that you have with a prospect is you want to be able to have a qualified prospect deliver a quality program and to be able to get a great referral and reference out of that person. And when you meet a prospect and you have a conversation with them and say, you know, the goal of my relationship with you is to be able to have you write a recommendation and serve as a reference to me of our time together.

15:35 So I want to begin with that in mind as we start to work together. And I think that that really shows at the beginning a high standard that you're shooting for and working with a prospect that wants to make it easier for you to deliver the services that you're offering and they want by being that reference and having that relationship being documented for future examples as to how it's going to look. But we need to be able to have that in mind so that when the job is over with, we can say, let's close.

16:03 Like we began by serving as a recommendation and a reference for me for future jobs. And I think there's 20 different weapons in your arsenal. So pick some that you like and that you can are going to use. You don't have to use them all. As a matter of fact, you know, when you attack, you don't use every weapon in your arsenal. You pick the right ones. We got to go through chapter seven in one minute. So here's what we're going to do.

16:26 He talks about your sales story. I don't know if I have a sales story. I don't think he describes what a sales story is. There's whole chapters about why it's so important to have a sales story and why companies don't have sales stories. And chapter eight, we're going to talk about how you put together a sales story and maybe we'll learn a little bit more. Your thoughts on the sales stories, Scott. I think the sales story is good.

16:46 I think one of the things that he brought out in this chapter is that it's not about you, the salesperson. It's about really areas that can serve your prospects to deliver a solution for a better outcome that they get. But also, you know, for many of us, we might have heard this as an elevator pitch or a two minute, a two minute, you know, sales story. So it's not a five hour conversation. It's something to entice people to talk about how we service our customers, what we do for them, what value we bring.

17:20 Next week, we're going to do chapter eight in new sales simplified. And so all about how to put your sales story together. So before we go into the topic today, let's hear a sales tip from Anthony. Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international

17:37 speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader. Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Today's question is, my sales manager seems to only care about our numbers. You're right. Your sales manager is responsible for your numbers. So they're always going to be worried about your numbers because your numbers are their numbers. So here's what I want you to know. You don't have to do this this way. What you could do is you could say, thank you for caring about my numbers.

18:06 But right now I need some coaching so that I can get the outcomes that would improve those numbers over time. Can I ask you to help me understand how to do this one thing better and this other thing better? Because if I did that, my numbers would go up. Can you give me some coaching or could you give me some training so that I can do better in the future? This is how I would handle this. The sales manager is responsible for your numbers, but to be responsible for your numbers, they also have to be responsible for you.

18:38 See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Well, it's interesting how many people say they aren't coached by their managers but never ask. So go to your sales manager, ask for some help. Right, right. And they'll be happy that you've expressed interest in improving your sales skills. Or they won't. Right, right. So our topic today is successful. Don't bother me. I got stuff to do. I'm busy.

19:07 I'm walking here. I've got to work at your metrics. Onboarding an employee successfully is like the difference between releasing a product into the marketplace and launching one. There's a difference. And I am a real fan of launching products versus just releasing them. And I think launching- I know Scott, you've acted as a fractional sales manager a lot more than I have. So you've experienced this. So Scott's talking about this onboarding from the challenges that he's faced with as he's tried to start new salespeople.

19:36 Well, I think about some of the problems that happened three months in or six months in or sometimes a year in are caused by the onboarding process, which is really defining what leadership expects of you. That's it. What does leadership expect from you as a salesperson? And it's up to leadership to be able to define those expectations. So I think one of the first things- Well, so much of onboarding is HR. You get your computer, sign these forms, your business card, and nothing about expectations about how you're supposed to do the job.

20:12 You'll learn the product, spend two weeks on product knowledge, which is important. But there's more to it. It is. And I would say come in at eight o'clock, HR is going to talk to you from eight to 10. I'm going to pick you up at 10 o'clock. We're going to be able to figure out what we need to do to make some calls at two o'clock and set some appointments for three weeks from now. Well, here's the problem, Scott. I think you're identifying one of the problems.

20:36 The sales manager doesn't do that. He says, I'm really busy today. Why don't you ride along with Larry? Oh, right. Well, no. And that's where the problem starts. Because leadership is not involved in defining the expectations that they have. A new salesperson and setting the behavior, getting into the routine, finding out where the comfort zone is, and then keep moving it up, up, up to avoid the complacency. People need to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

21:07 And that's when they're most receptive on finding the solutions that they need to be able to get a better outcome. One of the things I talk about, Scott, is if a customer is confused, what do they do? They don't do anything. They don't do anything. If a new salesperson is confused, what do they do? They don't do anything. That's right. They kind of do the minimums, looking at their cube, reading something online. No one's guiding them.

21:29 They got to take the time to guide them. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the first step. Get this job description that you posted that they applied for, that you hired them to fulfill and break that job description down into the behaviors. What it says that you need to be proficient in a CRM. Okay. Here's how we use a CRM. And this is what we're expecting you to put in the CRM. And be able to set that expectation right from the beginning and say, you know, we're doing it for real here.

22:00 This is not a hobby. This is not a casual. If management treats the CRM as casual, then the sales peak will treat the CRM as casual. And it's like we're not running a business, we're running a hobby. And that's ridiculous. So my onboarding starts with just three fundamental steps. Number one is set expectations, clear expectations in writing. That's the job description. This is maybe some of the, here's a perfect day is what it looks like, perfect day.

22:31 Set that expectation in writing. Number two is to create weekly accountability of activities. Accountability is not results. Activities are accountability. And I really believe that accountability increases the morale within a culture and a company. And what might those activities be, Scott? Is how many attempts are you going to make picking up the phone and dialing? Every day. Yeah, exactly. How many emails are you going to send out to people that maybe you met at a networking event and you're going to follow up with how many networking events are you going to go to?

23:07 How many networking events are you going to go to? What are some of the leading activities versus the lagging activities of the sales process? Too often, I think sales leadership really loses track of the activities and they get too focused on the results. And then the third, yeah, that's a lagging indicators, right? Right. How many sales did you make? Well, I didn't make any. Well, why not? I don't know. Well, you didn't make any phone calls.

23:32 You didn't go into networking events. You didn't send any emails. You didn't talk to any old customers. I wonder why you didn't get any sales. Well, you know if marketing would send out more emails. I didn't get many leads. Right. Yeah. Where are the leads coming from? The last one is that you have to be an administrator of consequences and corrective action. Those are training opportunities. I've heard this called, you know, sometimes with sales managers when I bring something up to them and go, well, that's a training opportunity for us.

23:56 Thanks for bringing that to our attention. It's like, it's exactly it. Corrective action is not termination. It's corrective action. Right. You need to be able to nip it in the bud as soon as you see it. If you see it and you ignore it, you're endorsing it. And if you continue to endorse it, you're going to be tolerating it. The culture is defined by what leadership is willing to tolerate. Or Scott, what they do is a tolerate it, tolerate it, tolerate it, then yell at them.

24:20 Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's not corrective action. It's like, you let this go. So you said it was okay to let it go. And now you're mad because I didn't respond to your lack of direction. Accountability. It goes right back to accountability again. So a few other steps. One is that by the time somebody starts, have a universe already defined that they're going to call on. Have a lead list of 300 leads and say, here's where we're going to start.

24:52 We've all vetted these to the best of our ability. We all believe there's qualified leads. We have the names. We have the phone numbers. And we're going to start calling or maybe we have the emails and we're going to start sending out individual personalized emails to people so that they get through all of these emails to other spam traps. And it looks like a legitimate email written by a person. But I want to also get through some of the areas that we need to define as the candidate becomes an employee and in the long run a successful sales rep.

25:23 And number one is defined value. How is the value defined by the product or service that you offer? That needs to be defined. And value is defined by the cost consequences and risk minus the price that somebody pays for a solution equals value. So when the cost consequences and risk are high and there's inaction and there's an opportunity cost, if they don't do it, they miss that opportunity. And the solution is applied and the price that they pay for that solution, then the value is defined by that point.

25:59 And we don't really work hard enough on defining consequences of inaction because we all compete against inaction. The another thing that needs to be defined is the problems that you solve. Too often companies get focused on the solutions and they teach their sales people to go out and be problem solvers. No, go out and be problem finders. Then the solution has something to stick to. And then I remember when I started in the training business, I was working for a national company, local sponsor.

26:29 And the first thing I did was go out and have conversations with past customers to talk to them about what we did for them. What did our training, what were the results of our training? And that gave me an idea both of the value that we were offering from an emotional standpoint and then also what problems the people had that we were solving. It was a really good way to get started. I think if you're selling advertising in a publication and you're targeting a restaurant, so I think a good conversation to have with a restaurant owner is, do you have the capacity to do more?

27:02 Do you have the capacity to serve more guests at one time? Yes. What time do you have the capacity to serve more guests? Well, that would be breakfast. Lunch is pretty busy. Dinner's a little slow. If we could do breakfast, I'd really like, okay, let's advertise a breakfast special in the publication and call people into the establishment during that time to build a fill that capacity. The problem is they don't have enough capacity.

27:25 They have capacity, but not enough revenue. That's the problem. Let's solve the problems. What problem do you solve? The next one, number three, is what you sell and why people buy it. Really be clear about what you sell. I mean, you use the example people don't want to drill. They want to hold. What is it that you sell and then why do people buy it, which is the so what question? So what? You offer this. So what? So what?

27:48 So what? Then you eventually get to that why people buy. Then the next one I think is really, really important is that's the ideal customer profile, the ICP. There's many different areas we can look at at that. We can look at the role that people play. We can look at the industry. We can look at the revenue that the company comes in. Maybe we'll look at a geographical area. Maybe we're targeting genders, one or the other or family status.

28:11 If they have children or their family is expanding. If their business is growing, sustaining or evolving into something else and then maybe knowing where they fall on the ladder within the marketplace too is an ideal customer profile. I think one of the most dangerous things is everyone is a customer. Right. That is because you have no way to focus yourself. Narrow down your focus, especially as you get started so that you can work on a particular area.

28:37 Many of the successful companies I worked with, even though their product had brought appeal, this salesperson worked in this silo. They worked in healthcare and this salesperson worked and rather than being territoryed, they were assigned a particular silo and then they became experts at it. Right. I think like you said, if you specialize in everything, the only differentiating is price. And then you're selling a commodity.

29:05 And I don't think any of our listeners want to sell a commodity. I don't think any of them want to sell a price. They want to sell them the best value. So sometimes we need to ask our prospect, are you looking for the cheapest price or the best value? And we know what the answer is and we know who we want to work with by really understanding that ideal customer profile. And then lastly, I really wanted to find what is the goal every single week?

29:27 What is the goal every single week? And it increases over time. So we're starting with somebody onboarding. So what is the goal this week? The goal this week is that we're going to be making 10 calls every single day to set up appointments three weeks from now. And that's going to be the standard. If we're going to make 10 calls every single day, it starts low. We have some onboarding. We've got some training. We've got some product knowledge.

29:47 We've got some preparation. We want to introduce some people and how we really solve problems within an organization. And then that number goes up. So it's 10 to 12 to 15 to 20. Realistically, a salesperson can make 25 sales calls in a day. I know I'm being a little asumptive and I know there's other reasons why people can't. How many of you call and you don't get anything? Well, there are attempts. There are attempts.

30:10 Yeah, there are attempts. And you can cut through 25 calls within an hour. Try it. Prove me wrong. I'm going to make a professor. It took an hour and 15 minutes. Oh, okay. Well, thank you for making those 25 calls. Yeah, or I got 20 done in an hour. Who's better off now? You or me? You are because you made the 20 calls. Well, one of the things I like about your onboarding is you don't wait three weeks for somebody to sit down and start making phone calls.

30:33 Same day. You get them into action right away. You sit with them. You work through the phone calls with them and you get over that fear right away because it's the fear of this impending I'm going to have to make sense calls in three weeks. So you're making them the first five hours of first part of the afternoon. Once they've done all the HR stuff, you're sitting down and making phone calls with them. And I think that's a powerful way to get somebody started.

30:59 Get them into action. It came from my first job being a dishwasher at Mr. Steakhouse when I was 17 years old. When you make phone calls? No, I was started in the dish pit on Saturday night. The busiest night there was. I compared every single day to that first night and I tell you I kept getting better and better and better. I was becoming proficient as a dishwasher at Mr. Steak. But I want to get into and close out this topic with mindset.

31:25 Mindset and actions because they really go together. I want to go over some five points for a mindset and actions for a sales leader. This is a sales manager. So have appropriate accountability defines the culture. I've talked about that before. We really need to be able to set the expectations clearly at the beginning because we have a limited amount of time. Number two is I want to know sooner than later. A sales leader has got to know is this person going to cut it or not?

31:52 And in reality, sales leaderships look at people within the first 30 days and they go, are they on the right direction or not? If we were firing off torpedoes, are they going to hit the target or not? And then when they get to that second month, they're really evaluating of whether or not we're going to cut this person loose during the probationary period or not. If they make it past that probationary period of let's say three months, they'll say, okay, we've decided to keep them.

32:15 We're going to get past the probationary period, which we take on some risks if things don't work out. But they're going to make a decision to keep that person or let that person go if they don't achieve a certain expectation within the next three months. So within six months, they're not going to wait any longer than six months. Number three, for the sales leader, mistakes are okay. Teach them, train them, correct them.

32:38 Number four, find out what their strengths are. Play to their strengths of the sales person that you've hired. And then the last one is be a human being before you're a human doing. Be a human being. These are people talking to people. Getting into the mindset and actions of the sales person is work extra hard. Show your commitment. Come in 30 minutes early. Stay 30 minutes late. Do some homework. Come in with a lot of questions to leadership.

33:03 Really express a lot of interest and curiosity when you're a sales person and you've just started a job. Number two is take a risk. Ask some questions to a prospect. What's the best way of learning something? Is risking questions to a prospect? There's no such thing as a bad question to a prospect when you're just getting started. You learn a lot, whether it's the answer, the response or the reaction. Number three, take notes.

33:26 Review your notes. Type up your notes. Print out your notes. List them up around your cubes. You have all of these resources available for you when you're on the spot, on the phone call or even when you're creating an email. You have all this documentation around you. That means get better at what you're doing. Don't just keep staying the same spot. Yeah. Exactly. And number four is write questions to match your style to their process.

33:52 Every company has a sales process but every sales person has their own style. So write questions that are based on your vernacular, your style that emulate and follow the sales process within your organization. And then the last one I think is the most important. When you're a sales person, ask for consistent feedback. How am I doing? Could you evaluate my progress so far? How am I achieving your expectations? If there's one thing that I should change when I come in tomorrow, what would that be?

34:19 Constantly asking for feedback and being open to it. You're going to be perceived as a sponge soaking up information and that's what you need when you're starting is you need as much information as possible. And that is my topic on successful onboarding. Anything you want to add? Oh, it's so full. I mean, I could add stuff but we just be babbling. Yeah. There's a great material. Don't start that sales person off by saying go follow Larry for a couple of days.

34:48 Or go get a write or not. Here's your here's some things to call. Go get them. All right. Our golden nugget for today as we wrap up comes from the famous Zig Zigler master salesman master speaker. Your value doesn't decrease based on someone's inability to see your worth. Yeah, so true. Not a value yourself and can't value yourself. No one else is going to do it for you. Exactly true. Exactly. Choose. So go to winningitsselling.com for all the information and show notes.

35:17 You'll be able to find it there. Next week, chapter eight of new sales simplified. We're going to go into that sales story and we're excited to have a guest, Lena Scullard. And she is going to talk about chaos to calm, transforming conflict with emotional intelligence. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode six, 38. Go out and get better one skill at a time.

35:44 Joyful selling.